There are abundant examples of “low-brow” art that certainly main-
tains a tie to our shared humanity and augments the very meaning of our
humanity. In fact, one could argue that these forms of art are essential to
the creation of the narrative of our shared humanity, for they are acces-
sible to a wider number of members of the human society. The explo-
ration of mendacity in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, the portrayal of love and
despair in Phantom of the Opera, the reflection on art and taste in The
Big Lebowski, take place in films that are readily accessible to a broad
public, and their accessibility in no way detracts from the powerful
depiction of aspects of our shared humanity.
Indeed, there seems to be a whole set of problems that emerge when
art turns its back on the public. Shusterman criticizes contemporary art
for denying the role of aesthetic experience in art, explaining that popu-
lar art, precisely because it has not disconnected from the importance of
aesthetic experience, continues to enjoy a strong interest from the public:
[A]esthetic interest is increasingly directed toward popular art, which has
not yet learned to eschew the experiential goals of pleasure, affect, and
meaningful coherence, even if it often fails to achieve them. (“The End of
Aesthetic Experience,” 38)What do the sophisticated verses from Dante have in common with a
popular Hollywood film? Both kinds of art serve to connect the viewer
to a shared world of values. Through the aesthetic experience to which
they give rise, works of art offer us new insights into our shared human-
ity, they can lead us to see reality in a new way, offering us glimpse of
beauty and perfection, thereby elevating us. Certain works of art are
more powerful than others in fulfilling this function, but an exploration
of those differences would lead us to a discussion of the particular aes-
thetic merits of works of art, a discussion which is certainly worthy of
attention but which is not the focus of this paper. Certainly, there are
qualitative differences between artifacts, and the work of the critics is
important in opening discussions of this sort. I do not wish to suggest
that there are not important differences between bad art, tacky art, and
offensive art, yet art can be bad, tacky, and offensive and yet not harm-
ful to the very future of art and its humanizing function.
As Mill emphasizes in his essay, On Liberty, in society there will be
a wide diversity of tastes: one may “without blame” either like or dislike
x, y, z. To extend Mill’s point, I would emphasize that one may also, of
course, “without blame” create art in keeping with a variety of tastes and
with a variety of views of what the function of art should be.^34 Yet, if one
The Humanizing Function of Art 91