Roger Ebert

This last Counterpoint (and the next one, whenever that gets posted) was, again, not about Roger Ebert.  It was about the arguments that he put forth and popularized, as I think the responses to his remarks are too often either raging at him or ignoring him entirely, neither of which gives any real thought to why his comments were incorrect.  However, I figured I'd briefly comment on Ebert himself throughout that process and how I felt about it.

I admit when he first made these comments I was very angry.  I wasn't one of the idiots telling him to die in a fire and making death threats; those people just make gamers look bad.  But I was definitely very upset.  I was upset that someone so respected was making these comments.  I was upset that he admitted his lack of experience with games, yet still asserted strongly that they not only were not, but were entirely incapable of ever being art.  But what upset me the most was the "high and mighty" tone with which he did it and the intense hypocrisy that resulted.

To illustrate a bit of the tone with which he presented his arguments, here's a quote from the end of his textual face-off with Clive Barker, entitled "Games vs. Art," in case the "video games can never ever be art" message wasn't clear enough:

I mentioned that a Campbell's soup could be art. I was imprecise. Actually, it is Andy Warhol's painting of the label that is art. Would Warhol have considered Clive Barker's video game "Undying" as art? Certainly. He would have kept it in its shrink-wrapped box, placed it inside a Plexiglas display case, mounted it on a pedestal, and labeled it "Video Game."

 Yes, Roger Ebert, an expert in film with little to no experience with video games, just said that the only artistic value video games have is as an artifact on display, while comparing the actual artistic content of a game to canned soup.  The amount of pompous arrogance in that paragraph is off the friggin' charts.

So you can understand why the initial reaction by so many gamers was hate and rage, often to the point of immense fandumb.  But the most infuriating aspect of it, for me at least, was this man was doing exactly what had been done to his own beloved medium during its rise to artistic legitimacy.  Just do a bit of reading into early adaptation theory, especially regarding Shakespeare if you want to find it really fast, and you'll see a lot of early critics explaining why a filmic representation of something can never be as good as the theatrical production.  Because, obviously, the theater is home to the best literary works created by man, whereas film is simpleton's entertainment.  If you said that in a room of art students nowdays you'd be immediately beaten to a... well, at least debated into exhaustion.  But then, when film was just developing, it was very common for the entire medium to be devalued because it was too new to fit within the definitions of "art" that had prevailed up until then.  And here Ebert was doing the exact same thing.  Talk about a former slave becoming the captain of a slave ship.

However, that is no excuse for treating him so poorly or hating him for what he said.  He rightfully earned a lot of respect as a movie critic in the days of his classic television show, though I admit I haven't retained much of that respect over the years.  I am not going to cry about how awful he is, because he is not.  But it did disappoint me that someone could be such a strong and influential figure in an artistic medium, then turn around and give a new medium the same treatment his was still getting only a few decades ago.  However, similarly disappointing was that most people's reactions seemed to be hating him or writing off his arguments as the ramblings of an ignorant fool.  Ebert is not an evil moron, and his arguments are not worthless.  They're misinformed and arrogant, but hardly worthless, and I think it's important that we not make the same mistake with Ebert as we have with his arguments.