Are There Any Valid Criticisms? (aka Kalessin's Rant)

[Fordim Hedgethistle]

The bad art simply hasn't survived

Sadly, I must take issue with this. From Victorian pornography to Renaissance nationalist doggerrel (the Pope is a horse's a**, Spaniards are all b*****s, etc) there is lots of bad art that has come to us 'through the ages'. The old "test of time" theory does not quite hold up, I'm afraid, given these and a whole host of other examples. . .

The only difference between bad art and good art that has survived is in the interested powers/people who want to preserve it. Publishing houses want to keep Dickens around because his stuff still sells (relatively) well and you don't have to cut out a slice of the profits to any pesky estate. Academics want to keep anti-Papal doggerrel around to study it, people of dubious taste and morality want to keep the Victorian porn about in order to. . .well. . .you get the picture (actually, I hope you do not).

There is no "gold standard" of historical transmission that can guarantee quality and worth in art -- it's all still just the market place. Gone With the Wind continues to outsell the roughly contemporaneous Ulysses, and while I enjoyed Margaret Mitchell's buccolic romp through the Old South (passing quickly over the text's racism and classism) I would not in a million years make any claim that it is a better book than anything produced by James Joyce!