Ebert, gaming, Panic and other randomness

Greetings to the many new readers of Pick-Up Flix after yesterday's surprise and welcome Tweet by movie critic and born-again blogger Roger Ebert. Strange enough, he didn't mention the item I thought he was most likely to mention, which was my defense for his video game blog — it's the post right below this one. Instead he plugged my review of A Town Called Panic (two posts below), which he saw months ago and also loved. Not long after Ebert's post, Zeitgeist Films also Tweeted my Panic review, which was another welcome surprise. Many thanks to Zeitgeist and Roger — they've made this writer ecstatic. (They've also made this writer use the verb "tweet" several times, which is several times too many.)

Lastly, I hate to beat a dead horse here, but my page designer and I were still arguing about this video game art topic when something struck me that seemed profound at the time. It will be my last word on the subject. Anyway, I kept thinking of these video game fans and I wondered what other kinds of art they had experienced. Not to generalize, but I kept thinking that the only other artistic mediums they had experimented with were video games, comic books, Star Wars and Japanese anime. No paintings, no poetry, no architecture, no sculptures, no great works of literature. Surely someone on that diet could not tell anyone else what is and is not art. Then this Robin Williams quote from Good Will Hunting seemed to descend from the clouds in a magnificent halo of blinding light. The scene comes at a turning point in the film, when Williams (as Sean) confronts Matt Damon (as genius Will) in a park about his attitude toward people, knowledge, life and, yes, art.

Sean: Thought about what you said to me the other day, about my painting. Stayed up half the night thinking about it. Something occurred to me … fell into a deep peaceful sleep, and haven't thought about you since. Do you know what occurred to me?

Will: No.

Sean: You're just a kid, you don't have the faintest idea what you're talkin' about.

Will: Why thank you.

Sean: It's all right. You've never been out of Boston.

Will: Nope.

Sean: So if I asked you about art, you'd probably give me the skinny on every art book ever written. Michelangelo, you know a lot about him. Life's work, political aspirations, him and the pope, sexual orientations … the whole works, right? But I'll bet you can't tell me what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel. You've never actually stood there and looked up at that beautiful ceiling; seen that. If I ask you about women, you'd probably give me a syllabus about your personal favorites. You may have even been laid a few times. But you can't tell me what it feels like to wake up next to a woman and feel truly happy. You're a tough kid. And I'd ask you about war, you'd probably throw Shakespeare at me, right, "Once more unto the breach dear friends." But you've never been near one. You've never held your best friend's head in your lap, watch him gasp his last breath looking to you for help. I'd ask you about love, you'd probably quote me a sonnet. But you've never looked at a woman and been totally vulnerable. Known someone that could level you with her eyes, feeling like God put an angel on earth just for you. Who could rescue you from the depths of hell. And you wouldn't know what it's like to be her angel, to have that love for her, be there forever, through anything, through cancer. And you wouldn't know about sleeping sitting up in the hospital room for two months, holding her hand, because the doctors could see in your eyes, that the terms "visiting hours" don't apply to you. You don't know about real loss, 'cause it only occurs when you've loved something more than you love yourself. And I doubt you've ever dared to love anybody that much. And look at you … I don't see an intelligent, confident man … I see a cocky, scared-shitless kid. But you're a genius, Will. No one denies that. No one could possibly understand the depths of you. But you presume to know everything about me because you saw a painting of mine, and you ripped my fucking life apart. You're an orphan right?

[Will nods]

Sean: You think I know the first thing about how hard your life has been, how you feel, who you are, because I read Oliver Twist? Does that encapsulate you? Personally … I don't give a shit about all that, because you know what, I can't learn anything from you I can't read in some fuckin' book. Unless you want to talk about you, who you are. Then I'm fascinated. I'm in. But you don't want to do that, do you sport? You're terrified of what you might say. Your move, chief.

This single scene probably won Williams the supporting actor Academy Award in 1997, and probably helped win Damon and Ben Affleck the original screenplay Oscar. Not all of it applies to my point, but the part about art, love and war do. If life is a video game, then gamers should acquire a certain amount of XP before they can comment definitively about art. After these gamers live full lives, and possibly experience other mediums of art, maybe they'll feel differently about video games. Or maybe they'll feel the same. Either way, it hardly matters because Yahtzee is right: what is and isn't art is entirely up to the individual looking at it, or playing it.