During the entire month of April, I’m participating in the A to Z Blogging Challenge. The alphabet will be my motivation, though the content of the posts will be very similar to what regular readers are used to. Check out the link for more amazing bloggers, and enjoy April!
Translated from French je ne sais quoi, is literally ‘I don’t know what’.
Art is subjective. People can choose to define ‘good’ art as something that sells well, or something that everyone knows about, or something that sits in every house in the world being admired. But really, ‘good’ is all up to the observer. For instance, those books that everyone raves about, that have had or will have several movies built around them. Those are good, right?
Unless you didn’t enjoy them. Maybe fantasy isn’t your thing. Or you’re more drawn to strong feminine leads. Or fights to the death for the right for your village to eat nauseate you.
But still people try and define what makes art good. “I like explosions”. “I like compelling characters”. “I like twisted May/December romances with a smattering of S&M built in.”
Or, my favorite that I’ve heard so very often (including from me). “I don’t know, it wasn’t the best writing/movie/song I’ve ever heard. When I think about it, it had all the flaws that drive me insane in most work. But I. Just. Kept. Watching/Reading/Listening.”
Why? Because it had that certain je ne sais quoi.
I think that’s why in the end, all the technical skill in the world will only take a piece of art so far. It can be perfectly edited/workshopped/touched up/mixed, have all the elements that the general population is paying for right now, and be visually amazing.
And it still won’t do well.
It doesn’t have that je ne sais quoi.
How do you define the indefinable when you’re describing something you loved but can’t quite say why?
I blogged the other day about how I watch the CW show “Hart of Dixie” even though it’s not a great show, I like it. I like the actors and the setting is pretty. It’s kind of hammy and predictible, but I don’t care! So it’s kind of a guilty pleasure type show, but sometimes I like that. It does the whole city girl in a small town thing exactly right.
Art IS in the eye of the beholder!
Hi! I’m stopping by from the A to Z Challenge. I’m looking forward to reading your posts.
Giggle, Laugh, Cry
Sometimes something just grabs you and you can’t explain why. It just does. That’s the je ne sais quoi.
There was one best selling series that I really didn’t like and still I kept reading the next one. I described it as whiskey, bad going down, worse coming up and still I keep going. Does that count?
Je ne sais quoi, IMHO, often boils down to the state I’m in when I meet something. There are movies I’ll always like because the first time I watched them I was with friends, we were happy and laughing and together, and it was fun. There are movies I’ll always hate, because I was forced to watch them by someone who would insist, “You’ll like this. Really. It’s about knights.” And then just sit there going “ssshhhhhh!!!” if I talked during the movie.
Books, now, tend to get more second chances from me.
Two things have this je ne sais quoi quality for me. One is the movie Inception. My cuz and I LOVELOVELOVE it and when we try and explain it to people or tell them why–we just can’t get it out. It’s just THAT good. The second is the Sookie Stackhouse series by Charlaine Harris. I literally yell at each book when I read them, yet I’m already anticipating buying the next one.
Except that people do often like the same sorts of things. In music, for example, there is evidence to suggest that people tend to like particular ‘clusters’ of music that tightly follow particular patterns (even more specific than genres. We’re talking particular song forms and chord structures). Of course, the end point of that is the painting by numbers approach of some of the plot structure people, which annoys me, so perhaps I’ll leave that point.
I have no idea how I define it. I kind of liked the way you did it! Whenever I read a book, I always give it a 5 if it kept me from doing the stuff that I really needed to do. It means that despite its flaws, I just HAD to keep reading! And that’s a perfect book in my mind, flaws or not.
Hi…I’m hopping over from the A to Z Challenge. Lovely blog…good luck with the challenge!
Donna L Martin
http://www.donasdays.blogspot.com
*stares*
I might need to read this after I’ve had some sleep. Long work day just leaves me thinking, What?. lol Interesting post.
This is a really good point. Sometimes despire all the effort we put in, it comes down to instincts and luck.