I got into a discussion with a friend yesterday over the “Affection Fallacy.” The fallacy essentially asserts that a work of art cannot be judged by its emotional impact on the reader. I could buy into the “Affection Bias,” or the belief that we often over-favor our personal reaction to a work but that is not the claim here. The claim is that it is FALSE to rely on art’s ability to move us as barometer of its value. I asked in my comment:

“It seems like it is a bunch of Academics who don’t know what they are talking about. How can you confuse a work and its impact? Aren’t they one and the same? Or do we judge art on its grammar and nothing more?”

That is, if we are to exclude emotional impact, what are we leave with? It seems that the alternatives are just as arbitrary and maybe even more meaningless. His response was that:

This comes down to the inevitable Locke/Hobbes dichotomy–does the consistency of tyranny compensate for the cases in which it is so dangerously wrong? Or do the risks of group-think that comes from the masses cause greater problems still?

The clichéd argument of course is that it is safer to trust a small group of experts than a million idiots. I think this is the greatest mistake a society can make. The track record of these experts is abysmal at best. Hollywood is the perfect example, it is the epitome of an insulated group of “experts.” Look at what they deliver. It creates an “arbiter class.” It’s the reason that Harry Potter is banned from the New York Times’ Bestseller list and it’s the reason that time and time again, we see artists die penniless only to find success after death. Snobs are so often fucking wrong that it’s not even funny. From their empowerment we get self-fulfilling prophecies like “Men don’t read,” and “That just won’t sell.” I don’t think that Tucker’s book is canon-material, but it does say a lot about its age. That people are laughing–actually laughing as they read–is the cha-ching of value.

Ultimately, I think you have to ask yourself the ultimate purpose of art. Is it not to create a reaction, subtle or overt or otherwise? Instead of trusting the academics, we ought to go straight to the creators and consumers. Robert Evans (of The Godfather) said that Hollywood lost its way when it stopped testing audience response. When they began to judge simply in dollars instead of the boos and cheers, they grew wildly out of touch. He calls today the “age of despair.” I say that the gains you get in objectivity by throwing out emotion pales in comparison to the loss in feeling and resonance. Art is a collaborative process, it is the artist, his subject and the viewer in a continuous feedback loop. Now that loop is running at a greater rate of speed. Embrace it instead of running away.

Yes, Hobbes was right when he claimed that we can escape our brutish existence with the “benevolent” guidance of a supreme authority. But Locke’s not doing so bad either. To say that the masses are too prone to flights of fancy misses the crucial point: if we aren’t producing for the people, who exactly are we producing for? If it just for ourselves then the “affection fallacy” isn’t necessary anyway. And from this light it becomes clear that its only purpose is to control and exclude, something that when it comes to art, we cannot afford. For every “Chicken Soup for the Lesbian’s Soul” that we keep from literary respect, we drive a John Kennedy Toole to suicide. For every professor we allow to feel important by denigrating a successful writer, we leave “Fight Club” sitting on the table, ignored. I have read maybe 10 good newspaper articles in the last month, but I have read so many profoundly great blog posts that my del.icio.us account is overflowing. So really academics aren’t trying to save you from yourself, they are trying to save you for themselves. If they strike emotion from the scoresheet, all that’s left is grammar and vocabulary and irony. And how does that give us meaning?

I’m not trying to say that if it makes you cry, it’s good. That would be ridiculous. But I think the opposite is even worse. Excluding impact puts the bland on a level playing field with the vivid–a thought that I have no doubt appeals to academics for a reason. Acknowledging how a work speaks to a reader isn’t a fallacy, it’s judging the content at its most fundamental and basic level. Quite frankly, we’ve done it their way for about 50 years now and every profound work in that era has been shit on by critics, publishers and distributors. That’s all the proof I need to know that we ought to move on….

Edit: Evidence that “experts” are overvalued.

–We’re rubbish at predicting how what happens will affect us emotionally

(We underestimate how well we will do, and overestimate how much missing that goal will hurt us)

–NYT: The Politics of God

(Understanding the history of Western fundamentalism and the rise of religious freedom so we can combat it in the East.)

–Why Trapped in the Closet is an R. Kelly triumph

(A perfect example of a critic losing touch with reality because the assume everyone else thinks the same way they do. This is the same trap a lot of English professors fall prey to where they assert meaning that makes absolutely no sense given the context. Reminds me a little of the Psychologist’s fallacy What’s more likely, a sexually deviant, R&B singer wrote a god-awful song that he thinks is good because he has no shame or that it is an attempt at meta-fiction and a comment on culture?)

–Word-of-mouth rampant on college campuses

(As the paradox of choices becomes a problem for more and more people, word of mouth is going to rise exponentially in value–something marketers and publishers have never been good at understanding.)

–The Starbuckian Handbook

(For those of us that use Starbucks like an office, this means a lot. The TMMB did a thread on it here)

– Surprises on the Executive Bookshelf

(A look at what the leaders are reading. Fuck the NYT subscription, read it on the blog instead)

I don’t do these posts too often because you can read all the stories on my del.icio.us account. If you like these better, let me know OR just add me to your list on the site. If you want to tag me stuff, I’m always open.

From: XXXXX XXXXXXXX

Subject: give

To: “[email protected]”

Cc: XXXXX XXXXXXXX

Date: Aug 19, 2007 6:38 PM

My office a call. I want to talk to you about TV projects

_______________________

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Chief Executive Officer

XXXX Digital Entertainment

P: XXX.XXX.XXXX

Assistant: XXXXX XXX.XXX.XXXX

Well, not like that. PR 2.0 and the New Media rest on one thing: Personal Relationships. Actually, forget that. The world now rests on these relationships. They’ve always been important but now–now, people connect with anyone, anywhere. So if it isn’t with you it will be with the next guy.

Like I said earlier in the week, I signed my first client. In a space with behemoth competitors who do nothing but scout for a living, you’d think it would be next to impossible to speak with the talent. That is a mistake. For one thing, no one else is actually speaking WITH the talent, they’re speaking DOWN TO the talent. It is actually very easy. There is hardly an important blogger or site out there that hasn’t at least gotten an email from me. Sometimes it has been about stuff that helps me but a lot of time it hasn’t. I’ve talked to pretty much everyone–and look at me, I’m a nobody.

In actuality, the pitch has devolved instead of evolved. It has been pared down to its purest form: The Connection. That’s PR–the bond. What do you bring to the table right then and there, what can tear down the suspicion, the resentment, the fear? In most cases, genuineness is the cheapest and best route. Instead of tricking the talent into thinking you like their art, what if you actually liked it? Instead of creating the illusion of history or of research, what if it was already created?

If you break down the email situation above, it is very easy to see what happened and then what could have happened. Tucker probably popped up on the CEO’s tracking grid–someone told him he was hot. And because the CEO has the words Chief and Executive in his title, he figured it was a safe bet assuming that he was more important. He didn’t know his space. He didn’t bother to look that the traffic of his online video service had half the traffic of the client he couldn’t bother to write a professional email to. Probability said that some smuck on the internet couldn’t have already made the rounds in Hollywood (and wrote about it) and stated loudly his terms for any future negotiations.

The thing is that those metrics–the probabilities, the assumptions and the fancy titles–they don’t mean as much as they used to and they certainly aren’t as accurate. The glory days are over. No question, Hollywood still has power, tons of it. But it would be a mistake for them to conclude that nobody else does. And that is the current source of conflict and surest ticket to obsolescence. Old school or new school, humility and a keen sense of reality are now the ultimate assets.

So when I send emails, or made cold-pitches to new people I make sure that respect is my number one priority. Tell me where you can go wrong treating people that way. It makes them feel good and it makes me feel good. You can’t feign respect–only obsequiousness. I enter the conversation informed or I don’t enter at all and I always, always have something to offer. Again, that something can be respect. Your email should be real. It should have real words; words that people use. No one wants to hear about your plan to “maximize all existing and possible revenue streams by leveraging strategic partnerships in the, various applicable niches.” They want to see that you are a master of your space but aware enough to realize that not everyone else is. They need to know that you are personable and honest and are prepared to give before you receive. That means giving a taste of what you have to offer and having the confidence to know they’ll want the whole thing. And being big enough to know that sometimes they won’t and that your only loss was helping someone.

Think back to ultimatum games; people don’t live in a vacuum and they don’t always act in an economically rational way. You have to think that in America, in an atypically wealthy sector of the population that is predisposed towards intellectual and artistic activities, things like dignity and emotion are going to mean almost as much as money. There is more at stake here than dollars. All your reaches need to be run through that lens because then and only then will you be able to establish meaningful connections with the people who matter.

Normally, someone would hide these methods from the public eye. I don’t have anything to lose. Ultimately, I am supremely confident in my ability to connect and contribute to the necessary influencers in the right communities. You should be too. This isn’t the stock market and I have inside information. This is a strength competition–whoever works harder wins. Do you know your space or not? If you don’t, someone will do better. Put in the time, bring authenticity to the table and you will be accepted.

By no means am I perfect here. I fuck up all the time. I’ve rushed emails before truly researching or I have snapped to judgments without getting the full picture. But, when that happens I ALWAYS admit it before I am called on it. Because if they notice first then it is over. And if it isn’t, then they aren’t worth dealing with. And I have never, ever sent anything close to the email spotlighted above.

Conclusion: Be respectful. Be knowledgeable. Be honest and always apologize. With those (genuine) traits in your pocket you can have real access and real opportunities with anyone you can think of.