I’m simply arguing, that I don’t agree with the idea of the designation art being automatically attached to a movie like a toy in a box of cereal, simply because people put effort into it.
This is what I was trying to get at earlier. It’s more than enough to call something bad art. Loads of bad art exists. But there’s no real point in trying to disqualify bad art AS art simply because you don’t like it. That’s just being unfair and irrational. Manos: The Hands of Fate is a work of art. It’s a work of exceedingly, shockingly POOR art, but it’s an artistic expression. I understand the inclination to hyperbolically try and strip it of its legitimacy if you dislike it, i.e. every person who has ever looked at a Jackson Pollock and said “this isn’t art my 3 year old can do this hahaha” but that’s not how art (or the Force) works.
Art’s very definition isn’t like prizes at the bottom of a crackerjack box at all. And you don’t need to go so far as to attempt re-defining art (and the nature of artistic expression) simply because a movie didn’t work on you the way you’d hoped it would.
Yes, but here you make the mistake of assuming that my like or dislike for a movie has anything to do with it. It doesn’t. There are plenty of movies, that I like, that I don’t consider art, and there are plenty of movies I don’t like, that I would consider art. I just think just designating any form of expression as art, is deflating the term art. It puts some piece of fluff entertainment like a Transformers movie, a product clearly created to make a buck (not that there’s anything wrong with that) in the same league as a painting by Rembrandt.
Further: The notion of “originality” being a key aspect of artistic validity is vastly overrated. Sure, it’s wonderful when it’s present, and I appreciate its presence quite a bit, especially when the execution is realizing the potential of the newness. But the definition of “art” isn’t reserved only for “new” things, and honestly, I’d go so far as to say “originality” as people try to describe it (i.e. “something nobody’s ever seen or tried before”) is not only limiting, but a hugely unrealistic expectation to hold over any work of art as a baseline. The large preponderance of art - not just film, or television, but book, painting, music, etc. is mostly unoriginal by those criteria - and that includes Star Wars, which is mostly pastiche of pre-existing art. You could argue the pastiche is “new” but even then I don’t think that argument holds, and the most strikingly “original” aspect of it was almost entirely technical in nature. The tech was advanced to serve the art - but the art itself wasn’t really “original.”
Nor does it need to be. It’s just another example of retroactively boxing in artistic expression in order to redefine other works in relation to it, and find those other works to be wanting. It’s not very generous, and isn’t doing any favors to art, or to the movies you love.
You don’t have to disqualify something from being art in order to dislike it. You can just dislike it. Intensely even. But it’s still art. Just bad art.
I think the entire concept of artistic expression as you define it is meaningless, because by that definition any form of expression is art, hence nothing is art. It’s like those schools, where a student can’t fail, and everyone gets a passing grade. Anyone calls themselves an artist these days, effectively putting themselves in the leagues of a Mozart, Beethoven, Leonardo DaVinci, Stanley Kubrick, Oscar Wilde, etc, etc. It’s preposterous in my view. Making a painting doesn’t automatically make you an artist in my book, just like being able to count to ten doesn’t make you a Math Professor.