Artistic pacing is a favorite criticism of art critics I read online. Let’s dive into what it means and if it is legitimate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This topic is very relevant to me right now. The past two movies I saw have been heavily criticised for being too slowly paced (Moon<\/em> and Departures<\/em>). <\/p>\n\n\n\n Two of my favorite albums from this year, Grizzly Bear’s Veckatimist<\/em> and The Antlers’ Hospice<\/em>, are very slow-paced. Even I criticized the last book I read on these grounds. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Not to mention, it’s Infinite Summer, and certainly, Infinite Jest<\/a><\/em> <\/a>has come under this criticism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But upon reflection, I don’t think there is any good objective way to evaluate pacing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As I’ve stated in the past, I think there are lots of objective criteria for evaluating and criticizing art:<\/p>\n\n\n\n But artistic pacing seems to be different somehow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n First off, I thought Departures<\/em> had perfect pacing. When we say something is too slowly paced, really what is being said is that you were bored or there wasn’t enough action for you. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In other words, things didn’t change quickly enough to keep your interest. Now, worded this way, we see that this really is a fault of the viewer, not the artist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It seems that any reasonable artist will be aware of pacing and will have chosen the pacing because they feel it fit or is necessary. <\/p>\n\n\n\n David Foster Wallace thought the pacing of Infinite Jest<\/em> should have been even slower<\/em><\/strong> than it was. It wasn’t some accidental misstep or flaw of the artist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n My main guess for the prevalence of this criticism is that our current culture is very much influenced by TV, the internet, and yes, Twitter. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Pacing is such that you get a full dose of entertainment in one quick sitting. Nothing can ever be fast enough. Things are flicking by so fast that I often become disoriented when I see a TV (I haven’t watched TV in any real sense in over a year). <\/p>\n\n\n\n So, it is hard to adjust to different pacings of works of art (which must be slower in order to achieve some sort of meaning that is beyond just entertainment<\/a>). <\/p>\n\n\n\n Sure, someone is bored easily, but that shouldn’t mean that should be used as legitimate grounds for criticism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now that being said, the real question I’ve been pondering is just how slow can something be before there is a case to be made. <\/p>\n\n\n\n There is a song on Veckatimist<\/em> that is quite tedious for me to listen to (and in fact was the immediate cause of this post). It just repeats a little too often and I want to skip to the end. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But the end, when it finally changes, just isn’t as good without the tedious build-up. So in some sense, the slow pacing of the song must have been intentional. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But was there a way around this? A more interesting way to build maybe?<\/p>\n\n\n\n I’m not sure I explained the issue as thoroughly as I would have liked, and it still remains highly unresolved in my mind. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Any thoughts? <\/p>\n\n\n\n I feel like any pacing criticism can be converted into a reflection on how patient the viewer is combined with some legitimate criticism in some other area.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Artistic pacing is a favorite criticism of art critics I read online. Let’s dive into what it means and if it is legitimate. Too Slow Pacing This topic is very relevant to me right now. The past two movies I saw have been heavily criticised for being too slowly paced (Moon and Departures). Two of … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11415,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/amindformadness.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/07\/artistic-pacing.jpg?fit=1200%2C600&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amindformadness.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amindformadness.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amindformadness.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amindformadness.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amindformadness.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=499"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/amindformadness.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11416,"href":"https:\/\/amindformadness.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499\/revisions\/11416"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amindformadness.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amindformadness.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amindformadness.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amindformadness.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Is Artistic Pacing Objective?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The Viewer’s Patience<\/h2>\n\n\n\n