Imagining a Renaissance in Popular Entertainment: A Reframing for Writers, Creators, Teachers, and All Who Simply Want Truly Meaningful Entertainment
Let's try to "figure out" the entertainment space together
Imagining Your Predicament
This past Tuesday afternoon, at Christendom College where I teach in the philosophy department, I gave a 30-minute lunchtime talk entitled, “Popular Entertainment and the Good Life.” The talk was given to a live-streamed audience, so that the audience was able to submit questions and I was able to answer them in real time.
Here are some of the questions I received (paraphrased from memory):
1. What advice would you give to you a young filmmaker just starting out?
2. What do you mean when you call our culture an “anti-culture”?
3. How do we discern when a piece of popular entertainment has crossed a hard moral line?
4. What books and movies would you recommend?
(Some of the new subscribers to The Comic Muse were among the audience, so if you remember questions I have forgotten, please let me know.)
I was very glad to receive these thoughtful questions at the end of my talk. I was further encouraged when I learned that there were some 70 souls in the audience—pretty good, I thought, for a daytime lecture.
Both the nature of the audience’s questions, in addition to the size of the audience, told me something: that there is a hunger out there to “figure out” the entertainment space in our lives.
It is not some trivial matter. Our love for good popular entertainment is not something that we should be half-ashamed about. It is an important good for us as individuals, but also for our families, our friendships, and even, I would contend, for the political community.
Fun Fact: Aristotle spends the last chapters of his magisterial work on the political life, the Politics, talking about music. Aristotle was no dummy. He knew the subtle but enormous impact music and other forms of popular entertainment have on the political community’s pursuit of the good life.
Most importantly, the questions I received on Tuesday helped me better to imagine the real needs and problems of an underserved sector of folks who want to enjoy, and perhaps even to make, great works of popular entertainment—works with real depth, that image what is truly good and beautiful for human beings.
I imagine a young person eager to make films, but not sure how to go about doing it.
I imagine someone trying to understand the deeply troubling developments in our culture, and why our culture seems to be undermining, rather than assisting, that person’s efforts to be happy.
I imagine a couple or a family watching a movie or TV show that is so good in some ways and so objectionable in others, and wondering whether to fast-forward, or to simply turn it off.
I imagine a mom or a dad wanting a definitive list of good books and movies for their children, a compass by which to navigate the threatening waters of the sea of popular entertainment.
I imagine a renaissance in popular entertainment, fueled by wonder, philosophy, and the quest for the good life.
Imagining a Renaissance in Popular Entertainment
That last sentence is one I wrote last weekend, when I was thinking about how to refine my own attempts to “figure out” the entertainment space in my life.
What was I trying to capture in that sentence?
As those in the Marketing Dept. like to put it, that sentence was an attempt to articulate my “Why.”
It was an attempt to give expression to my vision for what I want to do, both as a writer and as someone trying to build a business around my writing.
It was an attempt to state clearly how I hope to serve you, by helping make your enjoyment of popular entertainment, or your creative journey, more meaningful.
I’m not here as a watchdog. The Comic Muse is not about bashing the modern entertainment industry, or railing against Hollywood, or casting aspersions on this or that film or book or celebrity.
Watchdogs provide an important service. I often hop on to Common Sense Media to read about a movie before I watch it. But being a watchdog is not my mission here. Though there is a critique of our entertainment culture implied in my desire for a “renaissance,” and while there is a critique of our culture at-large when I call it an “anti-culture,” my foremost aim is not to criticize but to build.
The Sword and the Trowel
In my talk the other day I used a metaphor G.K. Chesterton used when he talked about building a new culture: the sword and the trowel.
For Chesterton, the “sword” is the weapon of defense. It represents logic and debate and argument. In building a culture, one needs to defend what is vulnerable with the power of the sword.
The “trowel” is not a weapon, but a tool used to build new things. And for Chesterton, the “trowel” that is needed in building up a civilization is the imagination. The Chesterton who penned such essays as “In Defense of Penny Dreadfuls” and “In Defense of Detective Stories” would agree with me, too, I believe, that the imagination we foremost need is a popular imagination. That is, an imagination capable of touching and forming the hearts, not just of an elite, but of the many.
Reframing “Popular Entertainment”
Psychologists tell us that good mental hygiene requires that we “reframe” difficult or challenging situations so that we see them, not as negatives, but as opportunities for growth.
I would like to reframe what we typically mean by “popular entertainment” in our anti-culture.
In one sense, I mean by “popular entertainment” what you think I mean: novels, short stories, movies, TV shows, video games, theater, popular music, stand-up comedy, etc.
But I also mean something extra: these forms of popular entertainment informed by wonder, by curiosity, by the practices of an enduring craft, by genuine beauty, and by a philosophical zest to know what is real and what makes for a good life.
That’s entertainment.
Can Philosophy Really Be Helpful?
Aristotle’s philosophical analysis of the most popular forms of entertainment of his day—tragic and comic drama, epic poetry—is in his little book, the Poetics. In the scholar Lane Cooper’s book on the Poetics, he ends by asking the question:
“Can the Poetics really be helpful to a poet? Must he not use artistic principles by instinct?”
In answering his own question, Cooper quotes the Elizabethan poet and dramatist Ben Jonson:
“Aristotle was the first accurate critic and truest judge—nay, the greatest philosopher the world ever had….But all this is vain without a natural wit, and a poetical nature in chief; for no man as soon as he knows this [the Poetics], or reads it, shall be able to write the better; but as he is adapted to it by nature he shall grow the perfecter writer.”
Zooming out on Jonson’s point: the Poetics—i.e., a philosophical understanding of poetry and of all popular entertainment—can make for better entertainment. Philosophy has a role to play here. It can show us, as artists, how to create works and, as audiences, to identify and appreciate works with real depth and a real contribution to make to our common life.
My Own Contribution to the Renaissance
To the renaissance I have been describing my chief contribution is my own fiction. My novel, The Good Death of Kate Montclair, appears from Chrism Press on March 15—less than two weeks! (You can pre-order the book here. The Kindle version just went live on Amazon.)
Just the other night I offered my last edits on the cover, and so I don’t expect to see the book again until I hold a printed volume in my hand.
I’ve also been at work with the marketing of the book: planning a live book-signing event at Christendom College, another live event at our favorite local winery (mentioned in Kate Montclair), trying to schedule radio and podcast and print interviews.
But ours is not an age in which an author can publish a book and then simply sit back and await the armored van with the royalty checks. My aim, as I’ve said, is to build a business around my writing, and that is where The Comic Muse comes in.
For here I will offer my best thoughts on how to achieve the renaissance in popular entertainment, both in philosophical terms but also in real actionable advice.
The Comic Muse is meant for writers and creators of all sorts, for teachers, and for all those who want to approach popular entertainment with a fresh, philosophical take.
Last weekend I also revised the About page for The Comic Muse, indicating that all future posts will be in one of three categories:
The Craft and Business of Writing
The Philosophy of Story
The Quest for the Good Life
Though it’s hard to get a pure sample. This post kind of straddles Category 1 and Category 2.
Illustrator extraordinaire Ted Schluenderfritz is also preparing some new illustrations for The Comic Muse, which I hope you will enjoy seeing before the launch of Kate Montclair on March 15.
Let me know what you think of these new categories—and, more generally, how I might serve you better on The Comic Muse. You can use the comment function here or contact me at danielmcinerny@proton.me.
P.S. I am currently writing a short story associated with the world of Kate Montclair, which will be made available for all new subscribers to The Comic Muse. But don’t worry. I’ll be sure to make available a copy of the short story to all my current subscribers as well.