Art and Entertainment

The line between art and entertainment can be hard to draw.  It’s actually easier to say what art has in common with entertainment than what makes it different.  They’re both diverting. They’re both cultural products.  The differences, I think, have to do with intention, context, and the feeling produced in the viewer.  Art offers something extra in that realm.  Sometimes it produces an inchoate yearning that has to do with your potential as a human being.  Or maybe it evokes awe, or startles you, or is weird.  Whatever the feeling you get from it, art gets under your skin.

The Knick, a TV show directed by Stephen Soderbergh, is piece of entertainment that feels like art to me.  It has atmosphere.  The cinematography is intimate.  The sound design, modern, driving.  The editing, sensitively done.  None of the trailers I’ve see for it do it justice.  But here is one . . .