AN AESTHETIC CONTROVERSY THAT DOESN'T MATTER
understanding the Arrow/Smallville casting dust up
By Alora Young
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| Why is this man the Green Arrow? |
Here’s an aesthetic controversy that doesn’t matter. It’s not going to find its way into Artforum, The New York Times or The Village Voice, because this tiny controversy is over two shows that don’t matter: the newly premiered Arrow and the recently wrapped up Smallville. These shows are produced by television’s most marginal and aesthetically insignificant network, the CW, and so the people who care about this controversy are the kind of social misfits who lust over fictional characters and make most of their friends on the internet. Their concerns are off to the side and off the cultural map, and yet what they feel is not insignificant. They have caught something crucial about how we experience art, how it can give order and meaning to our lives and can ultimately lead us to moral and ethical choices that we might not otherwise see. We’re not used to thinking of the aesthetic and, more importantly, business decisions of minor television producers on minor networks as being subject to moral and ethical import, but that’s what happens when the true believers decide to take a stand and prove that when it comes to judging art, everything matters.