Entertainment – kbrecordzz

kbrecordzz' tagline is "art & entertainment", and in my last post I described the "art" part and why it's my main focus over technology. But what about the "entertainment" part? Why add entertainment to the slogan if art is the thing that's so much more important than everything else?

Art and entertainment are two separate things, but there isn't really a clear divide between them. Entertainment can be art, and art can be entertaining. It's more the process that make them differ from each other. Why you do it, more than what you do. Art is done for the sake of itself, while entertainment is made for an audience, and this tends to make the products different in certain ways.

While art often turns out to be thought-provoking and about defying expectations, entertainment tends to be lighthearted and comfortable. It doesn't have to be about good feelings, because it's simply about entertaining people (true crime and horror movies can also entertain), but since entertainment is made with an audience in mind, it at least often appeals to the simpler sides of us. Because of this, entertainment is often easier to access and understand than art, and because of this it also often has a potential to reach a bigger and wider audience.

However, you can mix and combine these two ways of approaching creativity in both good and less good ways. You could water down art by appealing to the lowest common denominator and make it less interesting in a wish to make it more understandable to a wider audience. Or you could combine both your more complicated ideas with your simpler ideas, all while keeping the high quality, not compromising with the art but rather letting it be seen and more easily digested by a wider audience by making it both interesting and entertaining. Appealing to the common crowd can mean downgrading yourself to the stupidest ideas (not stupid as in funny, but stupid as in just stupid) that everyone understand, but it can also be to find those powerful emotions that are in all of us, to make us experience something cool instead of something dumbed-down.

I think companies like SM Entertainment and Nintendo are good at that last example. When I watch the music video for "The Boys" by Girls' Generation, or play The Legend of Zelda - Ocarina of Time, I both feel the unique and timeless art, and it also hits the weak parts of me that just want bright colors, pretty faces, jokes and to go around collecting rupees and killing enemies. And it doesn't feel like a compromise, it feels like a great mix.

And I know that because that music video and that game are both so easily accessible, the great unique art in them has been seen, and will be seen by many people, many who would miss great art otherwise. I believe this is a consequence of SM Entertainment and Nintendo believing in entertainment and broad appeal. They don't just want to make challenging art, they want people to enjoy it as well! And if art now is as important and everlasting as I argued for in my last post, why not make it easier for people to get to experience it? ¹

Beyond making art more accessible to people (and at the same time making entertainment more artistically interesting) as a "good deed", I also sometimes feel like the greatest creative works of all are when they hit both the deep part of you and the shallow part of you like this. That it's not just about getting the best of art and the best of entertainment, but that they can become something even better when working together.

But that's just how I feel sometimes. Because don't we all at the same time have some artist we think is brilliant but others don't seem to get? That kind of artist-artist who doesn't care about doing it for an audience. Where it wouldn't be the same if everyone suddenly understood them, because part of what's great about them is that weirdness that's so hard to understand? When it's so good just because it hits you right in the heart in a way no mainstream artist could do?

I'm not really sure. Maybe it's always a compromise. Or maybe SM Entertainment and Nintendo actually have a magical way of combining the easy-going with the beautiful that makes them stand above everyone else ². I still think it's an interesting challenge to make great art understandable to many people, without letting it lose its edge. It's difficult, which makes it interesting, and that challenge is probably also a part of why I'm so obsessed by the combination of art and entertainment.

But in the end, it mostly comes down to that I just like it. I like art, I like entertainment, and I especially like a really good combination of the two. Something about what SM Entertainment and Nintendo do sparks something inside me. I can argue for a bigger reason to do something (as I did in my last post), but that's still not why I do it. It may be a reason for why I sometimes choose to do it over something else, or for why it feels more purposeful when I do that compared to when I do other things. But I still make art & entertainment because it's what I enjoy doing in the moment. And if I don't, I'll do something else.

Footnotes:
¹ I would also argue that even though many of the old classic artworks we still talk about today aren't the easiest ones to access (or digest), we probably know of them because they were published for an audience in some way. There are probably great works from back in the day that we don't remember today because no one ever really got to see them. So having a way to make great art more widely accessible feels like a good thing.
² Or at least had. After Lee Soo-man left SM Entertainment in 2022 I suspect a slow creative death/downfall. And we should be happy we still have Shigeru Miyamoto alive and active in Nintendo. Even if he's not the one creating the games anymore, it's hard to understate how much one person can influence a whole company culture. Just as no one has even come close to replacing Steve Jobs during the last 14 years, no one will replace Shigeru Miyamoto.

Subscribe to Golden emails