# Good vs iconic art

When it comes to narrative forms of art (film, literature, comics), there’s
often a great disconnect between works that are highly…

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### Good vs iconic art

When it comes to narrative forms of art (film, literature, comics), there’s
often a great disconnect between works that are highly influential (and thus
become ‘classics’) and works that are well-executed. I don’t think this is an
accident.

Well-executed works (hereafter, “good”) don’t particularly need to be novel.
Whether they are high art or low art doesn’t matter — someone working in a
“low” genre (say, harem anime) can be skilled enough to produce a truly
shining example of that genre. Like good design, good art disappears: it is a
complete and flawless implementation of expectations, and only upon close
examination does the skill and effort involved in executing the expected
attributes of the genre become visible.

As an example of unambiguously “low” art being extremely well executed,
consider Monster Musume — a harem show involving young women who are
mythological creatures. It seeks to sate essentially puerile desires: the goal
is to have sexually-charged slapstick humor involving attractive women who are
part animal. It is not the first show to do this by a long shot, but it may be
the best: nearly all elements outside those that add to that goal are
invisible, and it reaches its goal admirably, but at the same time it has a
good and well-planned justification for nearly everything that happens (by
combining the idea of diplomatic relations, corrupt/lazy officials, and a
largely hostile population, you get an interesting take on the fantasy harem
genre that can be seen as a stealth satire of racial politics and
international relations), and it furthermore satirizes its own genre admirably
(the protagonist’s name is never spoken in the show and rarely in the source
material, and his facial features are often left blank; in other words, he is
an exaggerated form of the self-insert character).

While “good” art may be popular in the short term, it is rarely influential:
mostly, it subsumes itself in its own influences. Iconic works are by
definition influential; they often come from outsiders and break best
practices. While iconic works are memorable, it is rare that an iconic work is
superior to those works that copy it. Consider Dracula and Frankenstein — both
extremely iconic works, both widely adapted, and both (in their original form)
nearly laughably incompetently constructed by the standards of both our time
and theirs. It is not the high standards of craftsmanship that make Dracula
and Frankenstein iconic; it’s not their popularity, either, although both were
popular. Instead, each brought into being a particular collection of ideas
that fit into a missing slot in the culture; this undigested piece of mental
matter was sized upon and as these works were adapted or influenced other
works the core interesting idea was progressively isolated from its trappings,
until the point at which it becomes fully assimilated and no longer numinous.
Dracula is no longer numinous to us: we have a mental image of Bela Lugosi in
a cape, and we forget that he was supposed to have hairy palms, and we forget
about Doctor Von Hellsing being a blood expert, and we forget about Lucy being
obsessed with wax cylinder audio recording; while all of those elements are
more interesting to us now, the iconic elements of that story are sufficiently
captured by Bela Lugosi in a cape, to the point that this view of vampires as
nobility (which did not originate in Dracula but really had its purest
representation in the 1933 Universal Studios adaptation of Dracula that has
become the most iconic one) has become dominant. The idea of permanently young
and beautiful blood-sucking aristocrats afraid of the sun is one that
resonated with the early twentieth century American culture very strongly,
even as Max Schreck’s portrayal of Orlock in Nosferatu is a more accurate
representation of how Dracula was portrayed in the book. Likewise:
Frankenstein’s Monster originally looked far more human, and was highly
intelligent (speaking several languages); we have made an icon out of an ugly
Frankenstein’s Monster incapable of speech or complex thought and a Victor
Frankenstein with a god complex and boundless ambition, rather than a
beautiful but slightly unnerving monster and a Dr Frankenstein who wouldn’t be
out of place at a My Chemical Romance concert because the former was a closer
fit for exactly what was (and no longer is) unnerving about the story. Iconic
works allow us to identify the unheimlich and integrate it into ourselves and
our society in a disarmed form; or, to be more cynical: the Spectacle uses
iconic works as an early warning system telling it what to consume next. Of
course, as highly iconic figures become fully integrated, they cease to have
the impact they otherwise would: recent Godzilla and King Kong movies flopped
for the same reason that new viewers wouldn’t watch the originals, which is to
say that these monsters have been integrated and are no longer monstrous.

Iconic works don’t need to be bad in order to be iconic, but even if they
display technical excellence, they will face initial rejection. Consider Neon
Genesis Evangelion: certainly iconic, and hardly poorly made, this show
garnered very little interest during its initial run. Part of the reason is
that it aired on an incorrect slot: this show, with its dense references to
media from the 70s and its complex character dynamics and psychosexual
undertones, was airing in a time slot that normally was geared toward ten year
old boys. But, it’s more than that: Evangelion remains highly divisive, and
remains relevant more than twenty years after it first aired, because its
iconic elements have not yet been fully assimilated. Evangelion didn’t
introduce the unwilling soldier (in fact, this element is part of why Gundam
was iconic); it didn’t introduce the idea of a complex and incestuous
conspiracy between a private high-tech defense organization and various
government and religious authorities. But, Evangelion took upon itself the
task of examining attributes of the mech genre realistically, and did so by
taking a bunch of characters who border on archetypal and spending a great
deal of effort trying to make their behavior and characterization realistic.
Evangelion is still relevant because we haven’t figured out what makes it
relevant yet: every post-Evangelion mech show is in some way a response to
Evangelion in the same way that every post-Dracula vampire novel was a
response to Dracula, yet even as some individual creators have done several
generations of responses, none are a sufficient substitute for the original.
For instance, Yoji Enokido, after working on Evangelion, went on to work on
Utena (a non-mech show with certain very visible Evangelion references), Rah
Xephon (a mech show that has been seen as an Evangelion clone), Star Driver (a
mech show very similar to Rah Xephon with a more typical mecha protagonist),
and Captain Earth (another mech show with a more typical mecha protagonist,
which has some scenes directly lifted from Rah Xephon); while his vision has
diverged from Evangelion proper, he’s still chewing a piece of the same cud.

By [John Ohno](https://medium.com/@enkiv2) on [October 3,
2016](https://medium.com/p/913732cea272).

[Canonical link](https://medium.com/@enkiv2/good-vs-iconic-art-913732cea272)

Exported from [Medium](https://medium.com) on September 18, 2020.