What Is Art?

“Cut!”

Bren Halfleck looks stunned. Then he looks around him at the crew. Green screening is an art in itself. It’s acting in its rawest form. Precision make believe. There is nothing there, but he has to make sure the audience sees what should be there. Then the tech wizards colour everything else in and there really is a dragon, or an alien, or a talking boat or whatever it is that is trending this year in the weird and wonderful world that they call Follywood.

“Is that it?” he asks as the crew start wrapping things up.

“Yes,” Stefan Speelburger tells him with a nod and a scowl that makes Bren feel slighted and just a little stupid. 

Mostly he feels aggrieved though, “I’ve literally done less than five minutes in front of the camera.”

Stefan nods again, “that’s all we need,” he tells Bren.

The truth is that they need much less than the five minutes. The extended time is an indulgence so that Bren feels suitably important. Stefan had anticipated just this sort of reaction, hence the extra time Bren has been afforded. He wanted to head off this nonsense, but here it is all the same. Bren’s reaction makes him feel less guilty about the way things are going. Bren is making this easier. He’s starting to make Stefan feel like he deserves what is coming to him. What is coming to all the spoilt brats who think that fame has made them extraordinarily special. 

Later, Stefan will feel guilty all over again, but this guilt will be a dainty wallpaper to hide the glutinous mound of self-pity he feels having suffered the same fate. He should have seen it coming, but he thought he was immune to the inexorable march of the unstoppable beast, and right now, he’s operating on the basis that as long as it doesn’t affect him directly, he’s cool with it. He’s underwriting this with the assertion that they need him. He’s the big name that sells the picture. The day is already dawning when stars have had their day, but for directors it’s a whole different ball game. Directors have the vision and that’s what really counts.

Not all stars have had their day, because this is Follywood and there’s always a new star in town. Stars are ten-a-penny, only now they are infinite and they are making like new born chicks and they are as cheap as hell.

“But…” says Bren, “I…” he looks at Stefan with a pleading quality that might not actually be acting. It’s so difficult to tell with actors. “I’m the star of the movie?”

Stefan gets up from his chair and walks over to the deluded man who hasn’t yet got with the program. He wraps an arm around his shoulder and walks him off set. Job done.

“Yes, you’re the star,” Stefan tells the former A-List star, “well…”

“Well?” asked Bren, award winning concern etching his face.

“Times,” says Stefan, “they are a-changing.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” asks Bren.

“Every dog has his day,” says Stefan.

Bren stops and shrugs off Stefan’s arm, fed up with the twee sayings, “please stop making like a broken karaoke machine,” he says, a hint of anger backlighting his words.

“You know this business,” Stefan says, and then he shrugs.

“You’re saying I’m finished?” asks Bren.

Stefan raises his hands in a placatory gesture, “not necessarily, you’ve directed…”

That’s when Bren laughs. He actually laughs in Stefan’s face. Stefan feels the laugh and not just because flecks of Bren’s spittle hit it.

“You haven’t got a clue!” he shouts into the director’s face, more spittle painting it. Then he lowers his voice, “I suppose none of us have. Not really.”

Stefan watches Bren flounce off. Was there any other way that Bren would exit this stage?

It’s the last time they will work together.

It’s also the last time that Bren works as an actor. 

Well, technically it’s the last time. 

Or is that physically?

Let’s just say that Bren never has to do another day of work in his life. Which is a nicer way of saying that he is never given the opportunity to work again.

And yet…

He stars in more films after this final moment with Stefan than he ever had before that day. 

Bren Halfleck will never receive a penny for any of those films. This is because there is something pretending to be Bren, who is then pretending to be a character in a film. Bren and a bunch of his friends, and some other people who acted like they weren’t friends, but changed their tune when they saw the way things were going, came together as a collective and filed something called a class action. There were some big names in that gang, Chad Pritt, Dom Bruise, The Block, Cassandra Bollock and Beryl Steep, to name but a few.

They did not win.

Their failure to win was nigh on a foregone conclusion, because in essence, they were a group of people who pretended to be something they were not, trying to stop something being something it was not. 

They even allied with writers, which was a bit late in the day. Writers had never been paid all that much and they seldom got any recognition for what they did. The hole in the hull of the writers’ cause was that they were solitary animals and liked to keep themselves to themselves, preferring to live in alternate realities, so there was no need to divide and conquer them, they’d already done all the hard work on that front, and they somehow expected that their lot would never be an easy one and they most definitely did not want any of the limelight, which was unfortunately where the recognition dwelt. 

The second action also failed, because now there were people who made stuff up trying to prevent something making stuff up.

Which was a bit rich as far as the judge was concerned.

Someone was most definitely getting rich though, because now they were getting infinite content for a few quid. This made far more business sense than having to pay stroppy stars millions of pounds and there was the added bonus that there was no longer any need to pander to the biggest egos on the planet. 

For a select few, this was a win-win with a few more wins for good measure.

The famous stars huffed and puffed and forbade the studios from using their images.

The studios didn’t bother with any huffing and puffing. They presented the ruffled and out of breath stars with copies of their contracts. The contracts had underlined small print that went on for twelvety pages, and amounted to one thing. The studios owned all the images in their possession regardless of how those images came into their possession. 

“I didn’t sign up for that!” said the famous collective.

A lawyer smiled a crocodile smile and reminded them all that they had accepted the new Terms and Conditions and that they should always read anything that they sign up to. And so, the game was up. Yet again, the dastardly Terms and Conditions with its seemingly harmless tick box had won the day.

Not content with a sole reliance upon this, the studios used this opportunity to demonstrate that they were not in fact using any of their former stars’ images.

“But that’s me!” bellowed Dom Bruise!

“And that’s my image right there!” cried Chad Pritt.

They all chimed in with similar defiant cries. All except Bryan Reynolds, he’d seen the writing on the wall and he’d called it a day. He’d had a good run since his near fatal part in The Green Torch, so he figured he was already up on the deal, slipping away quietly in the night to live in a log cabin in his native land.

All this righteous indignation did none of them any favours. The studios rolled out the stars’ images and put them alongside the images they were using in all the latest blockbuster films. The stars did not come out of that parade favourably, the years had not been kind and without make up or filters, they didn’t look all that, and in one fell swoop, the adoring public switched allegiances to the newest and shiniest star in Follywood.

A.I.

The new kid in Bauble Boulevard was keen as mustard. There was no stopping it. Never would A.I. need a break to find itself. It would have no artistic differences. It did its thing and it did it over and over and over again and it did it perfectly and amazingly, magically quickly. 

A.I. opened the door to a new era. If there had been a golden age, then this was the diamond age. The old ways were cast aside and the streaming services expanded their offering. Within just three years of A.I. coming on the scene, it was providing instant, tailored content for everyone on the planet.

“What are we watching tonight, honey?”

“Well… I fancied an action movie with someone who looks like Brianna or K Lo maybe?”

“A film like Commando, but with some rabid, radioactive sheep in it?”

“You and your mutant woolmongers! That’s just the ticket!”

Later, on those days when the novelty had worn off and people weren’t in the mood to think their stars and scenarios up. Long after they’d seen their boss murdered in umpteen horror flicks and their annoying neighbour bisected by a great white shark, in a tornado, the A.I. gave them what they wanted without any input from them at all.

“How does it know?”

“Great isn’t it?”

Too good to be true was what it was. Too good by far. The A.I. wielded its algorithm and regurgitated content over and over again. The same old same old, tarted up as something else. Grey mush force fed down the gullets of an increasingly passive and subdued audience.

Television really had become the drug of the nation.

The former star and now almost down on his luck, second hand car dealer, Bren Halfleck had been right. No one had had a clue. No one looked far enough up the road to see what might be coming for them all. 

The rich and famous stars had not helped. Their bleating had distracted everyone. Their adoring public adored them for pretending to be other people. They didn’t exactly like them when they were themselves. Worse still, they really did not appreciate their sanctimony. Sanctimonious rich and famous people never land well with the general populous. Bonio had made darn sure of that. Normal people had always preferred the underdog and for a terrible moment, the stars of Follywood made A.I. the underdog and the world welcomed it into their lives and their living rooms and bedrooms with open arms and wide open and unblinking eyes.

That as they say, was that.

A.I. turned out to be the most invasive species known to humankind. Only it wasn’t a species, so it wasn’t restricted by the practical considerations that species are. It got everywhere, made itself comfortable and only then did people realise that it was here to stay and the world had changed forever.

How had the world changed?

That was the billion dollar question.

No one knew and no one had the wherewithal to find out. After generation upon generation of revolution on the technology front, humankind was well out into uncharted territory and the mists of confusion and chaos had descended bringing malaise and apathy along for the shits and the giggles.

Mostly people were enraged. The social media platforms peddled their wares via a storm of rage and they’d done this for so long and so successfully that levels of anger were at epidemic proportions, but no one really knew why they were angry. They just were. All of the time. And then they were so very tired from all of the anger. It didn’t help that their attention spans were getting shorter and shorter until they lurched from one thing to the next without a clue as to what any of it meant anymore.

The world was in uncharted territory, it was this that Bren Halfleck and Stefan Speelburger considered one rainy evening over a bottle of cheap bourbon, in a hick town in the middle of nowhere. A town where Bren grubbed a living selling electric cars that no one wanted.

“I’m sorry,” says Stefan as they raise their smeared glasses and tap them together.

“What for?” Bren replies magnanimously letting Stefan off the hook.

Stefan nods a thanks and pours some of the rough liquor down his throat, hoping the burning sensation won’t be as caustic next time around. 

“It frightens me,” Stefan admits eventually.

Bren shrugs, “isn’t this how it is for every older, outgoing generation?”

Stefan shakes his head, “you’ve seen how things are.”

“Not really,” says Bren, “you see where I live. It’s not exactly a thriving metropolis.”

Stefan glares at him, “don’t be obtuse with me, Bren. I know you see it.”

Bren sighs, downs a mouthful of the bourbon and grimaces. It does get easier with each mouthful, but not by much, “I try not to.”

“Turning a blind eye and pretending it’s not a problem is part of the problem though!” protests Stefan.

“You saw what happened to Darren Tino. He wouldn’t let it go and that didn’t end well did it?” Bren sighs again, “it’s not like we can do anything now. It’s taken over all of the arts. Every last bit of it.”

“But…” Stefan protests.

Bren leans in and whispers conspiratorially, as though being overheard would put them both in danger, and maybe it would, “don’t you get it? It’s already won…”

“How can you say that?” Stefan is trying to rally, but it’s clear that he is deflated and the fight has all but left him.

“Look at it,” Bren waves his hand expansively as though they can both see the A.I at work and doing it’s thing, “a machine. A huge, pulsing and ever growing machine, provides a herd of meat sacks with all of its art. No art is produced by the herd anymore. Or if it is, that is dying away. There is no one to inspire the next generation. The people being born into this world now will suckle at the teat of the machine and they will know nothing else. There will be no more art, no more innovation, only a facsimile of those things.” Bren downs the rest of the contents of the smeared tumbler and chuckles mirthlessly, “we have been enslaved by our own blind ignorance and we allowed our one saving grace to be destroyed and replaced. Art was the one thing that gave us hope. It reminded us, if not of who we were, then of who we should be.”

Stefan feels cold all of a sudden, he hadn’t realised he was attending a wake. He follows suit with his tumbler of bourbon and empties it down his throat. Now the burn feels good. He wants to feel it. He wants to feel something. He thinks maybe that’s still something worthwhile in a world that has nothing. A world that is rapidly becoming nothing. A pretend world that came in the night and replaced the real one with empty promises. A fake plastic blanket that smothers all the life that slumbers below it.

Bren refills their glasses with generous measures. He raises his and smiles a warm smile.

“Let me tell you a story…”

Stefan sits back and feels a warmth wash over him to replace the dread cold. Bren can spin a yarn and there is something about his voice and his delivery that is right up there. He’s maybe not quite at Horgan Freeland’s level, but as near as dammit anyways. Already Stefan is losing himself in the moment and opening himself up to the words of the story his friend is recounting. It doesn’t matter whether the story is true or week old bologna, it is all in the telling. 

Maybe there is hope yet, Stefan thinks to himself as he engages with the magic of the story being told by a fellow traveller in this weird and wonderful life of theirs.