In the business world, it's very common now to use a 2 x 2 matrix to illustrate different outcomes in a system as if it consisted of two binary variables. The Boston Consulting Group popularised this method with its Growth-share matrix for analysing markets. In that matrix, your firm's market share is either high or low and the market growth in total is either high or low. If your product has high market share in a high-growth market, that's a "star" you should probably invest in to hold on to. If you have high market share in a low-growth market, that's a "cash cow" you should milk for all it's worth. If you have low market share in a low-growth market, that's a "dog" to get rid of. And if you have low market share in a high-growth market, that's a "question mark" asking whether you can invest to become a star or give up on before it becomes a dog. Got it? In the change management arena, there's another 2 x 2 matrix I've come across that I think is useful for this week's thought experiment. It looks something like this:
As you can see, this matrix says there are two things to consider when evaluating a task. The first is whether or not the task is being done well; the second is whether or not it is moving you toward the right goal. Quite obviously, when you are evaluating your operations, the best you can hope for is to be doing a task well and towards the right goal. That gives you the smiley face. A trap that many organisations fall into, however, is not realising when they are in the worst outcome. The worst outcome is to be headed toward the wrong goal, but doing your task...well. You might have reflexively thought it would be worse to do the wrong task poorly, and many groups will tell themselves that their day-to-day operations are running smoothly so they must be okay, but it's clearly better to be walking toward a cliff than running toward it. Let's look at this week's thought experiment now and see how this matrix analysis can help us sort it out.
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The critics all agreed. The cinematography was breathtaking, the acting first rate, the dialogue crisp, the pacing perfect, and the original score both magnificent in its own right and used expertly in the service of the movie. But they also agreed that De Puta Madre was morally repulsive. The worldview it presented was one in which Hispanics are racially superior to other human beings, cruelty to the old is seen as necessary, and childless women are liable to be raped with impunity.
There the consensus ended. For some, the moral depravity of the film undermined what would otherwise be its strong claims to being a great work of art. For others, the medium and the message needed to be separated. The film was both a great work of cinematic art and a moral disgrace. We can admire it for its former qualities and loathe it for the latter.
The debate was more than academic, for so repugnant was the film's message that it would be banned, unless it could be argued that its artistic merits justified exemption from censorship. The director warned that a ban would be a catastrophe for free artistic expression. Was he right?
Baggini, J., The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten, 2005, p. 142.
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As Baggini admits in his discussion of this experiment, the most obvious real-life example of something like De Puta Madre is Leni Riefenstahl's 1935 Nazi propaganda film Triumph of the Will. That movie: "chronicles the 1934 Nazi Party Congress in Nuremberg, which was attended by more than 700,000 Nazi supporters. The film contains excerpts from speeches given by Nazi leaders at the Congress, including Adolf Hitler, Rudolf Hess, and Julius Streicher, interspersed with footage of massed Sturmabteilung (SA) and Schutzstaffel (SS) troops and public reaction. Hitler commissioned the film and served as an unofficial executive producer; his name appears in the opening titles." The film is still banned in Germany and is shocking to see. I watched it this week in preparation for this blog and the entire movie is available for free on youtube here:
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The critics all agreed. The cinematography was breathtaking, the acting first rate, the dialogue crisp, the pacing perfect, and the original score both magnificent in its own right and used expertly in the service of the movie. But they also agreed that De Puta Madre was morally repulsive. The worldview it presented was one in which Hispanics are racially superior to other human beings, cruelty to the old is seen as necessary, and childless women are liable to be raped with impunity.
There the consensus ended. For some, the moral depravity of the film undermined what would otherwise be its strong claims to being a great work of art. For others, the medium and the message needed to be separated. The film was both a great work of cinematic art and a moral disgrace. We can admire it for its former qualities and loathe it for the latter.
The debate was more than academic, for so repugnant was the film's message that it would be banned, unless it could be argued that its artistic merits justified exemption from censorship. The director warned that a ban would be a catastrophe for free artistic expression. Was he right?
Baggini, J., The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten, 2005, p. 142.
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As Baggini admits in his discussion of this experiment, the most obvious real-life example of something like De Puta Madre is Leni Riefenstahl's 1935 Nazi propaganda film Triumph of the Will. That movie: "chronicles the 1934 Nazi Party Congress in Nuremberg, which was attended by more than 700,000 Nazi supporters. The film contains excerpts from speeches given by Nazi leaders at the Congress, including Adolf Hitler, Rudolf Hess, and Julius Streicher, interspersed with footage of massed Sturmabteilung (SA) and Schutzstaffel (SS) troops and public reaction. Hitler commissioned the film and served as an unofficial executive producer; his name appears in the opening titles." The film is still banned in Germany and is shocking to see. I watched it this week in preparation for this blog and the entire movie is available for free on youtube here:
While watching this well-executed film that is full of emotive speeches given to enormous, highly-ordered crowds captured in vivid, groundbreaking cinematography and accompanied by stirring classical music, I understood the point that Baggini wanted to make with this thought experiment. And I understood how movie critics (who generally come from moral relativist backgrounds) wound up giving this a score of 87% on Rotten Tomatoes. But for me, Triumph of the Will was a complete clunker. All of the emotions that Riefenstahl intended me to feel were completely rejected. The movie was an hour and forty-five minutes of unintentional wincing. It reminded me of the change management task matrix, and how the worst thing you can do is to do a job well towards the wrong goal. In fact, this crystallised to me why the Nazi's are so readily considered the worst evil in history. No matter how much hatred other lesser regimes or bumbling fools might harbour in their black little hearts, the Nazis have always been considered much worse—because they were good at what they did.
Can these two variables really be separated? The skill of the craft from the moral direction of the aim? Baggini listed two opposing views on this. The first comes from Oscar Wilde who wrote, "There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written." As Baggini noted, "Wilde's claim was that art was autonomous from morality, and so to apply the standards of ethics to art was simply a mistake." Countering that, however, Baggini is quick to point out the view of Keats who wrote, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty." Baggini takes this as meaning that, "a morally repugnant yet brilliant work of art would be a contradiction in terms, and those who admired De Puta Madre would be plain mistaken."
With apologies to Oscar Wilde (who said what he said at a time when society's norms about his homosexuality were deeply immoral), I side with Keats on this issue. As I wrote in my thoughts on aesthetics:
Science is the root method of gathering knowledge. Engineering is knowledge applied to the physical world. Business is knowledge applied to the economic world. Politics is knowledge applied to the realm of government. Medicine is knowledge applied to the body. Art is knowledge applied to the emotions. Science finds knowledge. Art uses knowledge to inspire. (It can also inspire scientists.) Art causes emotional responses so it often draws emotional people to it, but great art is created by rational processes, filled with knowledge, fueled by emotion, and executed with skill. Bad art is blind emotion that purports falsehoods for truth.
Watching The Triumph of the Will, I couldn't help but think it was bad art—blind emotion purporting falsehoods for truth. As is the case for anything complex, Hume's bundle theory explains how we can see various properties of objects separately, so we might indeed be able to take cues from the good craftsmanship of a bad artist, but that doesn't mean the art he or she produces is any good, or even worth looking at except for the historically- or technically-minded student. In this week's thought experiment, De Puta Madre would similarly be judged as bad art. As for the question of its censorship, I wrote this in My Response to Thought Experiment 33: The Free-Speech Booth:
So to me, the limitations of free speech should be held to the higher standard of the harm principle. As distasteful as I find members of the Westboro Baptist Church or the KKK or preachers of Sharia law, I think these people have the right to offend us. Now, our ears should have the right not to hear them, so I don't think these people have the right to shout their beliefs (to be a public nuisance) towards others who are merely trying to go about their daily lives, but if people just want to speak their beliefs or share them in writing, they should be free to do so. I must caveat that, however, by pointing out how the line to harm can easily be crossed. When evangelists of any kind spout provably false claims in the hopes of recruiting members to their cause under false pretenses (which would materially harm their lives), such false speech should be restricted, just as it is within advertising laws. This is how I think a number of European countries that are generally considered strong upholders of freedom of speech can manage to correctly outlaw speech that might be interpreted as Holocaust denial.
Therefore, depending on the historical facts surrounding De Puta Madre and the country it is being considered within, the question of whether it may be banned or not depends on whether or not its message is likely to rise to the level of causing actual harm or only merely offense. The thought experiment stated that "it would be banned, unless it could be argued that its artistic merits justified exemption from censorship," but this is the wrong consideration. No matter how eloquent the message, intentionally threatening harm (e.g. shouting "Fire!" sonorously in six languages) can and should be banned. From the limited information in this week's thought experiment, I think De Puta Madre could be shown, but it would be a flop because it would bore its audience to tears in eye-rolling disbelief.
What do you think? Have you ever loved a movie or a book with a terrible message just because it was skillfully made? What does the obviously evil example of The Triumph of the Wills tell you about less overt or morally ambiguous examples? Can ethics and aesthetics really be united once an ethical stance has been accepted? As a philosopher and artist, I've made my point clear on this, but I wonder what the audience says.
With apologies to Oscar Wilde (who said what he said at a time when society's norms about his homosexuality were deeply immoral), I side with Keats on this issue. As I wrote in my thoughts on aesthetics:
Science is the root method of gathering knowledge. Engineering is knowledge applied to the physical world. Business is knowledge applied to the economic world. Politics is knowledge applied to the realm of government. Medicine is knowledge applied to the body. Art is knowledge applied to the emotions. Science finds knowledge. Art uses knowledge to inspire. (It can also inspire scientists.) Art causes emotional responses so it often draws emotional people to it, but great art is created by rational processes, filled with knowledge, fueled by emotion, and executed with skill. Bad art is blind emotion that purports falsehoods for truth.
Watching The Triumph of the Will, I couldn't help but think it was bad art—blind emotion purporting falsehoods for truth. As is the case for anything complex, Hume's bundle theory explains how we can see various properties of objects separately, so we might indeed be able to take cues from the good craftsmanship of a bad artist, but that doesn't mean the art he or she produces is any good, or even worth looking at except for the historically- or technically-minded student. In this week's thought experiment, De Puta Madre would similarly be judged as bad art. As for the question of its censorship, I wrote this in My Response to Thought Experiment 33: The Free-Speech Booth:
So to me, the limitations of free speech should be held to the higher standard of the harm principle. As distasteful as I find members of the Westboro Baptist Church or the KKK or preachers of Sharia law, I think these people have the right to offend us. Now, our ears should have the right not to hear them, so I don't think these people have the right to shout their beliefs (to be a public nuisance) towards others who are merely trying to go about their daily lives, but if people just want to speak their beliefs or share them in writing, they should be free to do so. I must caveat that, however, by pointing out how the line to harm can easily be crossed. When evangelists of any kind spout provably false claims in the hopes of recruiting members to their cause under false pretenses (which would materially harm their lives), such false speech should be restricted, just as it is within advertising laws. This is how I think a number of European countries that are generally considered strong upholders of freedom of speech can manage to correctly outlaw speech that might be interpreted as Holocaust denial.
Therefore, depending on the historical facts surrounding De Puta Madre and the country it is being considered within, the question of whether it may be banned or not depends on whether or not its message is likely to rise to the level of causing actual harm or only merely offense. The thought experiment stated that "it would be banned, unless it could be argued that its artistic merits justified exemption from censorship," but this is the wrong consideration. No matter how eloquent the message, intentionally threatening harm (e.g. shouting "Fire!" sonorously in six languages) can and should be banned. From the limited information in this week's thought experiment, I think De Puta Madre could be shown, but it would be a flop because it would bore its audience to tears in eye-rolling disbelief.
What do you think? Have you ever loved a movie or a book with a terrible message just because it was skillfully made? What does the obviously evil example of The Triumph of the Wills tell you about less overt or morally ambiguous examples? Can ethics and aesthetics really be united once an ethical stance has been accepted? As a philosopher and artist, I've made my point clear on this, but I wonder what the audience says.
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