The Hidden Dangers for the Skeptical Viewer
What does C.S. Lewis say about art and criticism? Part 3
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Skepticism can seem to be the safest route to enjoy entertainment. If you start with the assumption that a work will likely be a disappointment, you believe you can avoid actually being disappointed. Your expectations are low, so your hopes don’t get dashed.
But we don’t see the costs behind a perpetual skeptical outlook. In his work, An Experiment in Criticism, C.S. Lewis tries to help us avoid the traps with this way of engaging with art. He describes at least two dangers that lurk in the seeming safety of skepticism.
No more pleasant surprises
Those who assume they’ll hate a show before they even watch are rarely wrong. It’s not that they can’t be wrong about the show, but their skepticism hinders their possibility of enjoying it contrary to their preconceptions.
Lewis continually argues that we must surrender to a work of art to evaluate it properly. That can’t happen if you begin your journey in skepticism. “You cannot be armed to the teeth and surrendered at the same time,” he writes.
I understand the desire to avoid being hurt yet again by a franchise we once loved.1 We are determined not to be like Charlie Brown and his continual fruitless attempts to kick the football. But the same thing that makes him try yet again, should drive us to drop our skeptical approach. It might happen this time.
“No poem will give up its secret to a reader who enters it regarding the poet as a potential deceiver and determined not to be taken in,” Lewis writes. “We must risk being taken in, if we are to get anything.”
“No poem will give up its secret to a reader who enters it regarding the poet as a potential deceiver and determined not to be taken in. We must risk being taken in, if we are to get anything.” — C.S. Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism
Those determined not to be taken in by a TV show are like the dwarfs in The Last Battle, Lewis’ conclusion to The Chronicles of Narnia. They’ve endured the harsh rule of a false Aslan, but when the real one appears they refuse to believe. “We’ve been taken in once and now you expect us to be taken in the next minute,” says one of the dwarfs. “We’ve no more use for stories about Aslan, see!”
While they’re sitting in a bright country with a delicious meal in front of them, the entrenched skepticism of the dwarfs causes them to believe they’re still trapped in a dirty shed surrounded by slop. “They will not let us help them,” Aslan explains. “They have chosen cunning instead of belief. Their prison is only in their own mind, yet they are in that prison, and so afraid of being taken in that they cannot be taken out.”
This is the situation the skeptical viewer finds themselves in. Yes, because of their determination, they will never be taken in again, but in avoiding disappointment, they trap themselves in disgust. They will rarely experience a pleasant surprise enjoyment of a show because skepticism becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Low expectations actually hinder expectations from being exceeded.
While this danger will prevent the skeptic from enjoying a potentially enjoyable show, the more serious danger of skepticism can subvert their character.
The imperceptible decline of the viewer
In Mere Christianity, Lewis talks about how our morals can subtly shift by how we regard the actions of our enemies
“Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out. Is one's first feeling, ‘Thank God, even they aren't quite so bad as that,’ or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies are as bad as possible? If it is the second then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils. You see, one is beginning to wish that black was a little blacker. If we give that wish its head, later on we shall wish to see grey as black, and then to see white itself as black. Finally, we shall insist on seeing everything — God and our friends and ourselves included — as bad, and not be able to stop doing it: we shall be fixed forever in a universe of pure hatred.”
I’m afraid, many viewers are stuck in that universe of pure hatred. Often, instead of spending their lives finding something they enjoy, they fill their days with what they now hate. This tendency rises from skepticism, but it rarely stays merely skeptical. Eventually, they go on the attack.
“A sincere inquisitor or a sincere witch-finder can hardly do his chosen work with mildness,” Lewis says. Notice how few shows or movies are allowed to be middling. To gain attention, the skeptic must move to the warrior, and they must traffic in the extremes.
Lewis argues these warriors find in “every turn of expression the symptom of attitudes which it is a matter of life and death to accept or resist.” They don’t allow themselves the liberty of believing something can be a matter of taste.
In avoiding disappointment, the skeptical viewer traps themselves in disgust.
As the skeptics become warriors, they “can become dangers as great as those they were formed to combat. The use of the guillotine becomes an addiction. Thus under the Vigilant criticism, a new head falls nearly every month. The list of approved authors grows absurdly small. No one is safe.”
The use of the guillotine becomes an addiction. If that was the case when Lewis published his work in the early 1960s, how much more is it the case in the social media age? People build entire platforms on performative hatred of shows and movies. Their rage is rewarded so they, like Lewis’ example in Mere Christianity, start to see gray as black, and eventually, everything is blameworthy.
To paraphrase Psalms, there is no show good, no not one. But that attitude is not driven by a realization of sinfulness or an acceptance of God’s holiness, it flows from unchecked skepticism.
Being skeptical may keep you from more disappointments, but opening yourself up to art helps keep your heart tender. As Lewis wrote in The Four Loves, “To love at all is to be vulnerable.” That could even apply to your favorite franchise or a new show you’re thinking about watching.
If you seek to protect yourself from those inevitable disappointments that come from engaging with art, you not only miss some pleasant surprises but your heart changes. “It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.”
That’s why Lewis says we must receive art instead of using it. Next week, we’ll look at what we gain from receiving art, before concluding the next week with how we can actually apply this way of engaging with a show or movie.
Previous articles on Lewis’ approach to art criticism:
Not Safe But Good
C.S. Lewis quote of the week
An open mind, in questions that are not ultimate, is useful. But an open mind about the ultimate foundations either of Theoretical or of Practical Reason is idiocy. If a man's mind is open on these things, let his mouth at least be shut.
The Lamp Post
Additional recent articles from me
Churchgoers Believe Public Perception of Christians Is Declining in the U.S. — Lifeway Research
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