Hey Chuck, good on ya. You really don't see any appreciable difference?

It seems like, you know, you're defending popular culture against elitist dismissal, which, sure, yay, go, do. For the purposes that, for of an assertion that any kind of art can provoke meaningful interpretation, "evoking the inexpressible" is just one of those meaningful interpretations, true.

But "meaningful interpretations" aren't interchangeable. If somebody has a transfixing experience watching The Lorax, that's pretty obviously more on them (and their prescription medication) than the work itself. If someone experiences epiphany watching Ran, it's certainly still on them to a degree, but there's also an explicit structure in the work--a scaffold, if you will--that's been put there for that purpose.

The Lorax has a scaffold of its own, of course; it has a moral it's overtly built to support. And so it's possible to make some analysis of these things, and the reactions a given person has, and look at how much is them, and how much is the work. You're talking about the same thing with the card you got in the hospital. You can't give the credit to the card. I don't think you can even fairly call your emotions a conversation with the author of the card.

Actually, I guess I should go back on that, and I'm going to call myself on it instead of erasing it and re-writing it so that I'm not wrong. I'm a dad and a husband now, and I'm surprised that I can pick up simple, schmaltzy Hallmark cards in the Rite-Aid--you know the kind, with swirly letters and gauzy pictures of flowers--and when I think of them coming from my wife or my kids, I get teary-eyed. I was going to say that that's because of me, that the card is still just a stupid card, but I think that's undermining my own premise. Whatever "scaffold" the card has, it's having exactly the effect on me that its creator intended. That certainly is a conversation with that creator, and it's pretty elitist of me to pretend otherwise. Sorry, anonymous-Hallmark-card-writing dude. Good job!

Anyway, I think it still adds up the same: we can take all these things--the cards, The Lorax, Ran--and talk about their intentions along with our reactions. And you do this, yourself, when you're talking about The Hunger Games and The Road. There are things they try to do that are similar--and in some of those things, Hunger Games does it better--but there are also things The Road tries to do that aren't even on the map for The Hunger Games. And The Road succeeds, by your report. And again by your report, it's "rapturous."

So, you know, when it makes you--as in, you, Chuck, not as in you, "anyone"--use a word like "rapturous," and also in Moriarty's idea of "sublime art," there's a different thing happening there. A qualitatively different thing. It's an example you yourself are giving, and I think it contradicts your other statement, when you say that "the line between high art and low art — or genre fiction vs. literary fiction, or young adult books vs. real books — has become irrelevant."

You know, not to be too simplistic, but things have different effects, and when something has the effect it intends to, it should get the credit. High art, literary fiction, "real" books--they have different goals than the others. Like with Hunger Games, there's overlap. But there's also non-overlap. And to say the line is irrelevant seems like a big disservice those people who are putting in the effort to shoot for those goals, as well as kind of a belittlement of their achievement when they succeed.

And just to be clear, I like comics and games and I read comics and play games and I don't think I've experienced any high art, literary fiction, or "real" books in probably over three years. I'm pretty firmly a "low art" guy. I'm not writing from some kind of "things I like are cool, things you like suck" thing. I couldn't if I tried. If I was going to put on a front as all "high art," I wouldn't have a leg to stand on.

Except I like to listen to Neil deGrasse Tyson talk. Does that count?