Bad Art is What?

For centuries art has been the cause of numerous debates; chief among these is the manner by which one discerns bad art from good art. It has been a heated battle, in academia, as to how to sort the brilliant work from utter tripe, and I think I have a suitable solution for at least how to weed out the garbage: ask teenagers.

Let me explain.

The teenage mind is foggy realm of disparate, extreme, emotional states, insecurity and reality television. Just as the human tongue can only detect 4 basics tastes (salty, sweet, sour and bitter), the teenage mind can only assess its reality using a handful of discerning categories: action, thing, concept, and awesome. The specifics of each of these four categories break down differently for the genders:





When attempting to understand their surroundings or to deduce the meaning of current events, the teenage brain crudely tosses every sensation they encounter into 1 of these 4 conceptual bins. The more a given situation triggers these 4 categories, the better or more awesome the teenager thinks the situation/event/object is, and, conversely, the more terrible the situation/event/object actually is. Using this schematic of the newly post-pubescent brain and understanding of its rudimentary operative rational, scientists, like me, can accurately determine what teenagers will think is “fire” and what they will deem as lame. By doing this we can, respectively, determine what is garbage and what is, most likely, a transcendent masterpiece. Consider the recent frenzy over the Twilight series. The movies are built around a vampire love story, are framed by a good deal of pop music, and require ample texts to your biffle of how you “<3 twilite.itz the best wen Jacob iz ript : ) ; P” Twilight causes activity in each of the areas of the teenage female brain, and thus we can postulate from these findings that the teenage vampire love series will be an extremely successful franchise among the members of that demographic—and also, that it’s a piece of crap. Thus we arrive at a very useful manner of determining bad and good art. Bad art is what teenagers like. Good art is what teenagers hate. The average teenage boy would hate There Will Be Blood: not once in the movie does a character mention redbull, or fight robots, or go to the future; there’s no nudity. It is, for that unfortunate adolescent boy who happens to watch it, an untranslatable mess. He would despise the film. Which is an indication, if nothing else, of its greatness. The average teenage boy thinks Hurley is fire…I’m not wearing that brand ever.