Exceptionalism

Exceptionalism must necessarily be rare. It is a quality of some sort of uncommon superiority.

For instance, take a look at this video that was put together by a group known as Red Letter Media. It is a portion of a much longer review about the movie Titanic (which you can watch here) via voiceover by a (demented?) character named Mr. Plinkett. This clip appears towards the end of the review and discusses the ideas of exceptionalism and averageness:

In this case, he measures art in terms of financial success because performing well financially is an indication that more people have seen your work, sometimes over and over. What has broad appeal and can reach out and connect with an audience will, therefore, be profitable and a source of income for the artist.

Mr. Plinkett focuses on movies, and it's easy form of art to use as an example since they are so accessible and appeal to widely varying audiences: dullards, intellectuals and everyone sprawled across the bell curve. Movies manipulate your emotions with strategic imagery, musical scores, and sound effects that have known psychological connections to the images or themes presented. A lot of the work of interpreting a movie has been done for you.

It's harder to make a connection like that with less passive works of art such as literature, paintings and architecture. Even a graphic novel or comic book will make you do more of the work than a movie will.

A work of abstract art elicits different reactions from different people because of your unique experiences as a human being; you don't need to be told what to feel. You get a sense of what the artist is saying and, depending on how interested you are in appreciating the work, you give a more personalized impression of what they're trying to say. Songs written with obtuse lyrics also force you to engage more closely, and those without lyrics present you with something akin to a sound collage that can leave interpreting any message more of your responsibility. Maybe that's why The Beatles' Revolution 9 is widely scorned (see here, here, here, here). You have to try harder to figure out what John Lennon was trying to say than you did in a song like In My Life. Once you accept the song in its own right, you then get to consider whether or not he really did a good job.

Consider a movie like 2001: A Space Odyssey, where you have varying moments of pure abstractness with no apparent explanation, followed by dialog-heavy scenes where the events playing out are more easily understood. And consider this statement from a review by the BBC in the year 2000:

"The appeal of this film diminishes with time as its almost comatose pacing threatens to alienate it from a modern audience."

The fact that the movie is about two and a half hours long may not help much on that front, but considering that both Titanic and Avatar (to date, the highest-grossing films of all time) were even longer than that, their run-times didn't appear to give much trouble to today's mainstream audiences. If the slow pacing that the article mentions is a prominent factor in the film possibly being dismissed by modern audiences, consider what they would think if they had to sit and watch a truly abstract piece of film like Koyaanisqatsi, which might provide something of an endurance test on the sitting capabilities for a normal crowd even at a relatively meager hour and a half run time. But why?

This gives the impression that vast even obtuse works are superior to simple thrillers, comedies and romance films. That is not necessarily the case. What defines an exceptional work might have more to do with familiarity, as Mr. Plinkett indicated in the video. Does your thinking get challenged by the same themes, storylines and ideas repackaged and resold to you over and over? Exceptionalism may be finding those ways to challenge your thinking, introducing new concepts, or even just offering a different perspective on a familiar idea. An obtuse, even confusing (if only initially) piece of work may be more likely to do that than most of the works you've been entertained by before. Exceptionalism means thought-provoking; inspiring. It touches you in a clever and unique way, and you may find yourself moved by whatever that artwork is that you've encountered.

Quite possibly any job can produce such exceptional results, be it film, music, graffiti, porn, shoes or whatever. Any job, that is, unless your job is to simply make money. Now you've set aside your message in favor of an external reward and your job turns to ashes. Your message could be anything and the commerce of your work takes control. What is so wrong about that? People must prioritize earning a living and finding a way to live comfortably, of course. To earn that comfort you must devote at least some of your attention to appeasing your audience, even if that consists merely of your boss and coworkers and you make your fortune enchanting them in some way. Exceptionalism might then be overcoming a drive for profitability and focusing solely on purpose. The talent is making it work, even if the product is completely unprofitable. 

In the end, producing exceptional art may be a privilege reserved for people who don't live paycheck to paycheck or struggle to make ends meet. It is worth noting that those people who can manage to produce highly thought-provoking work in spite of their place in life would themselves be truly exceptional people.

In his last interview, Orson Welles said "the marketplace is always the enemy of the artist." It's not hard to see why. When you seek profit from your art, you are giving up some of your autonomy. You can certainly make the case that your goal is to entertain, but must you work to entertain every person with disposable income? How broadly appealing does a piece of art need to be in order for that thing to be successful? Perhaps what would be truly exceptional would be to find a curiously profound piece of work that everyone can get. Maybe there is a role for consensus after all.

What exactly qualifies as exceptional work is most likely entirely subjective. Ultimately, I consider complexity, uniqueness and an attention to detail that stems from a work ethic which few others have the time or patience to commit themselves to as the best indications of exceptionalism.