Success/Failure

By success, I mean artistic success. You know, an artist's/writer's/game designer's ideas and intents successfully getting their idea across to the audience via whatever medium they're using (taking advantage of the strengths of interactive games, or using the word/picture combo unique to comics/sequential art, for example). The process of execution is the use of elements/tropes/archetypes/cliches as a means of conveying that idea, such as the use of different manga styled eye shapes to give of the superficial expressions on a character design.

I gauge the success by the audience's initial reaction and by the percentage of them that got those reactions, and whether they macth what the creator intended, regardless of whether anyone likes it or not (for example, lots of people may hate a horror film, while others like it, but that has nothing to do with it's quality, as it's meant to scare the audience, and since it gets that reaction out of most of them, it's an artistic success, because it did what it set out to do.)

But, is the unexpected reaction a failure or a success (subversions, inversions)? Do you think that this could be a cover-up excuse for an artistic failure?

edited 10th Jun '11 1:01:53 PM by redandblack64

I think what you're saying is basically that artistic success is measured by whether the work achieved what you set out to do with it - scare people, or whatever.

Well, that's certainly one measure of success or failure. But what about unintended effects, like the horror film that doesn't scare anyone but was considered hilarious? Is that successful on any level? Also, is it possible to say that some works are more successful than others because they had a "higher" objective i.e. to make some sort of comment on society as opposed to just entertain?

Pretty much, but I'm puzzled by the unintended side effects a work can have, because it's easy to make excuses for the other failures that the creator(s) made. At the same time, this could be a sign of what they should aim for in their sequel.

I don't believe that something with a 'higher' objective is more succesful than some thing that's just made for pure entertainment. All that matters is whether or not the work does what it set out to do. You can have something that's serious and deals with things like racism, politics, war, etc., and it can fall flat on it's face. At the same time, you can have a shonen manga that is all about the action and comedy, and mangages to do what the author originally intended. In this case, the shonen manga is more successful because it doesn't fail to get the reactions it wanted to out of the reader than the more "serious" work.