“So, everything is terrible?”
“Basically, yes,” said Arthur.
His boss looked blankly back at him. Arthur elaborated.
“The most celebrated art piece this year is a spider. Not a man-made spider from some other material, just a spider. Not even an exotic spider - one you could find in most houses in the country. Not even a dead spider - it’s alive and moves! In a plastic box.”
“Yes,” said Arthur’s boss. “I love that spider. Lovely little bugger. What’s your point?”
Arthur wasn’t sure what else he needed to say but tried anyway. “A spider. It’s… it’s not exactly Guernica, is it?”
His boss looked uncomfortable, meaning he probably didn’t know the reference, but cleared his throat and turned away. “But the new movies and books and music coming out - they can’t all be terrible? I saw that heist movie last night with that muscled bald man and that was fun. My kids enjoyed it. The parts they looked up from their phones, they said they really liked it. Solid turn-your-brain-off entertainment,”
There was that phrase again. Arthur wasn’t sure why he asked but he did anyway: “What was their favourite part?”
Arthur’s boss thought for a moment. “The car chase with the flamingoes where that new rap song where every other word is bleeped out plays over it.”
Arthur nodded - he felt sure his boss was describing a battery ad that must have ran before the feature that he had seen briefly on social media but wasn’t about to prolong this conversation longer than was necessary.
“Look, Arthur - we just can’t run an Arts section that is so relentlessly negative. All the new novels coming out are ‘trite’ and ‘boring’, the music is ‘bland’ and ‘repetitive’, the movies are ‘derivative’ and ‘overlong’. Is there a single thing reviewed here that gets a recommendation?”
Arthur thought for a few beats too long before his boss said “Exactly. Bottom line, we need to get the publication’s name out there on some marquees quoting positive things from our reviews and you need to fix that. Are we clear?”
So it was that Arthur, an Arts editor for a once well-regarded publication, found himself having to sacrifice his integrity in order to maintain his position. He knew he was lucky to have the job - he had once had a team of critics with varying specialities, but budget cuts had meant that he take on more and more of these responsibilities and let those staff go, one by one - especially after he had looked at the market for other positions after the meeting with his boss and wasn’t surprised to discover there were no other roles going for his profession. It had been the same the last time he had checked last week, and the week before that and…
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“Have you thought of taking Exodia?” asked his wife Patience over dinner.
He had, but didn’t think it was necessary. Exodia was a new drug that dumbed you down so that you could enjoy more things - cultural experiences in particular - in life without the complications of critical thinking. Everyone was on it. Life’s better this way, was the common refrain from users.
Arthur didn’t want to take away his enjoyment of older art, which Exodia would do. Back in the day, creatives knew how to write a novel, a song, make a movie, and do it all well. New artists were incapable of achieving the same level of quality but he felt sure he could fake it in print, thus maintaining a steady paycheck, and spending his free time appreciating the only art worth experiencing anymore from yesteryear.
Then: the drudgery became overwhelming. He had to review a weekly TV show that was nothing more than an ongoing ad for a new holiday resort in the Middle East. The celebrity actors appearing throughout didn’t do anything except remark on the wonders of the resort, wearing and consuming other products by companies that had paid to be seen on one of the biggest shows in the world.
Apparently it was a comedy but Arthur couldn’t discern any jokes, only references. But that seemed to be enough for audiences and, picking up on this from other positive reviews, Arthur replicated the same enthusiasm for the abundant references and adulation of superficiality in his weekly reviews. The first season was 23 hours long with each episode somehow managing to cost $50 million despite being filmed exclusively in the same location without costly special effects.
Halfway through the season - having also consumed: several novels about “cosy” mysteries where nothing happened, not even a mystery, which was the most mysterious thing about them; numerous albums where every song was about how much money the artist in question had; two films featuring the muscled bald man and his one expression doing very little else but nodding to something off-screen; and an art exhibition he had mistaken for a fast food restaurant - Arthur buckled and decided to try Exodia. To someone with a smidgen of taste or intelligence, this much ‘culture’ was too deadening to the soul.
“You know you could just ask for a refill,” said his doctor when Arthur went to see them about getting a prescription.
“But I’ve never been on it?”
His doctor shook her head. “I prescribed you a round of Exodia about… a year ago, it says here. Ah, you don’t remember?”
Arthur shook his head slowly, nervously.
“That’s actually a common side effect of these drugs that alter the brain chemistry - sometimes the memory is affected. It’s mentioned on the label, see?”
Arthur glanced at the label without looking, his mind trying to recall memories that had evaded him without success.
“Is it possible that my body has overcome the effects over the past year?” He was wondering why he hadn’t been enjoying any of the art on offer if he had been on it.
“It’s possible if you haven’t taken it in a while - here’s a refill prescription.”
Now, despite having been on Exodia for a few months, Arthur still couldn’t enjoy the art that everyone else seemed to. It made him ask a lot of disturbing questions. Had the quality of art gotten even worse in the last year and that Exodia needed to become stronger in order to enjoy such low levels of vapidity? Was everyone pretending to enjoy things to fit in? Was anyone actually taking in anything they were experiencing, especially as they were continually staring down at their phones every few seconds anyway? Maybe this was all a sick joke being played on him by an alien species, or he was having a breakdown of some kind, and all of this was a simulation or delusion?
Turn off your brain, said everyone regarding whatever piece of ‘culture’ they were discussing, as if that was a recommendation.
Well, they were right in that regard. The moment Arthur stopped asking himself questions he couldn’t possibly answer, he did feel better.
Perhaps there was a creatively subversive way of observing the downfall of culture, said a small voice somewhere within him. And that made him feel better about enduring the art he would have to in the forthcoming years.