Pleasure Over Quality Over Quantity
The dichotomy artists are most often obsessed with is ‘quality vs. quantity’, meaning the choice between creating a lot of works vs. creating fewer and better ones. Even those who embrace a philosophy of ‘quality AND quantity’—either by way of creating some of each, or by creating works that are themselves both—are buying into the premise of the dichotomy, measuring their work against it as a benchmark even as they seek to transcend it and forge a new path. The truth is though, to reduce it all to ‘quality vs. quantity’ is to leave out the most important aspect of that which you create—its pleasurability.
Above all else, what you create must be pleasurable—regardless of content, it must be pleasing to any of the senses with which it will be taken in. If it is a movie, it must be pleasing to the eyes and to the ears. There should be no unnecessary barrier to its absorption—like a pill being taken, it should slide down the throat easily with water, not be jagged and misshapen. People should want to enjoy what you have created even just on the mere level of how it feels to look at it, or listen to it. What this means is that you must meet basic technical aspects, and also sweeten them—record and mix, but also master. The finished product should be something someone could throw on as background, either to work to, or sleep to, or whatever. It must feel good.
Art without pleasure is sex without pleasure. Pleasure is mostly the entire reason we even have art—we want to marvel in something that just feels good. It’s why a mass market paperback with shiny embossed letters on the cover is more pleasurable to read than the modern ones with a matte, flat finish. It’s why vinyl came back—it feels good to feel a record sleeve, admire the big art, slide a record out, put it on. Your competition, at the end of the day, is not other works of quality, other works of quantity—you are up against anything and everything that is pleasurable. Your average person would rather watch a well-oiled machine reality show that they know sucks than an art film that looks and sound cold to the touch. They would rather fuck a warm dumb guy than an icy smart guy.
You can create something pleasurable with pretty much any materials possible. You don’t need top of the line equipment—you just need to create towards pleasurability above all else. It’s a mindset more than it is a formula—in addition to wondering how a scene is playing, ask yourself, ‘is this scene itself pleasurable? does it ruin the pleasure of the rest of the movie?’. The film Carrie is an inordinately pleasurable movie, save for, as the great Pauline Kael once pointed out, that one scene where the boys are getting ready and the audio speeds up for no reason. Every time I watch that movie, I dread that part—there is no purpose to it, it is not entertaining, it is grating. As a result, there are way worse movies I’d rather throw on for vibe than Carrie, just because they’re entirely pleasurable throughout.
It doesn’t matter what genre you are working in, or what medium—pleasurability is important no matter what. You can make a pleasurable gory horror movie, a pleasurable death metal song—you can make a pleasurable anything. So, choose to do so—focus on pleasure way more than you focus on quality, or on quantity. It is your path to irresistibility.
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