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As I mentioned on a post written two days ago, I finished watched the “new” Battlestar Galactica on Sunday.    I’ve been thinking about the series this week, and I’ve found some food for thought in the lectures Joseph Campbell did on James Joyce’s literary works called The Wings of Art.   In the first part of this six-part lecture series, Campbell describes James Joyce’s thoughts on art and aesthetics that he gleaned from three sources:  Aristotle, Dante, and Thomas Aquinas.

In this post, I would like to relate James Joyce’s thoughts on what he called proper vs. improper art.   Proper art is what we normally think of when we hear the phrase “art for art’s sake.”   Improper art, on the other hand, is used in the service of either desire for an object, which Joyce calls pornographic art, or criticism of an object or idea, which he calls didactic art.

I have to explain that Joyce’s term of pornographic art can be somewhat misleading, because art which is used to make you desire an object could include sexual desire, but it means any form of desire.    All commercial art, or commercials in general can be considered pornographic art because they are not drawing attention to themselves but rather are making you want to buy a product or service.   The commercials on television are certainly pornographic under this definition, what about the program Battlestar Galactica itself?

Let’s take a look at the way the characters are portrayed through the writing.  Pornographic art in terms of character portrayal would be the typical Hollywood “hot” star who draws viewers simply through sex appeal.   I think the dialogue for the characters was so good that even if you felt an initial surface attraction for a character because he or she was attractive, this would melt into a sympathy or empathy for them based on the experiences they went through during the 73 episodes of the series.   So I wouldn’t consider BSG improper art under the category of pornographic art.

What about the other category, that of didactic art?   This is art which wants to turn you against something, usually not a person as much as an idea.    In Harold Bloom’s book The Western Canon:  The Books and School of the Ages, he argues that one of the lamentable trends in the humanities at the university level was to attack the very idea of the canon or list of classics as a propaganda tool to promote the interests of the elites in society.   He refers to that trend in the humanities as the “School of Resentment”.    Part of this trend is to advocate for books that may not be aesthetically as good as those in the traditional canon, but which served as an agent of progressive social change, such as “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” by Harriet Beecher Stowe.    This is precisely the definition of “didactic art”, and it is what Harold Bloom deplored.

Looking back on Battlestar Galactica, I commend Ronald Moore and other writers for NOT taking sides when it came to exploring difficult questions such as the use of torture, as opposed to a series like “24” which was obviously pushing the “pro-torture” side of the debate.    When it came to questions involving economic inequality, it was obvious that the writers felt these issues important because the equivalent on BSG of the “working class” were depicted in many of the episodes, as opposed to shows in the Star Trek franchise where they were much more rarely seen.   But even here the issues were more evenhandedly dealt with, and they weren’t trying to convert the audience to one or another point of view.    That takes not only sophistication as a writer, but it takes a sophisticated view of the audience.

As Harold Bloom pointed out with reference to Shakespeare, we have no idea based on the hundreds of characters in his plays what Shakespeare’s own sympathies or allegiances were on the political spectrum.    In a similar way, Ronald Moore and the other writers allow you to make up your own mind, which is a tremendous compliment to the audience.

So the series tried not to take sides in political and/or economic debates, and was therefore not didactic.   Even if you were attracted to some of the characters because they just happened to be good-looking, you always were taken way beneath the surface so that you felt some sympathy or empathy for them, and so the series was also not pornographic (in this limited definition of the term).   Therefore, it is a good example of “art for art’s sake” or “proper art”.

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