In order for any work of art – for example, a film, a novel, a poem, or a song – to have merit, it must be understandable to most people.
From my perspective, there is no correlation between the merit of art and whether it can be understood by most people.
To begin, many masterpieces are far ahead of their time and thus are impossible to be understood by the average people. Most people do not attain much training towards the appreciation of art, and accordingly prefer more conventional art rather than experimental art of great artistic value. Take A Story of an Hour, a novel written by Kate Chopin as an example. The novel is about a wife experiencing awakening and feeling a sense of freedom as well as ecstasy after knowing her husband’s death. But because this book was published in the 19th century when women were suppressed by the male dominance, Kate Chopin was criticized a lot and had to reedited the novel. Human beings are very limited in understanding the world by the epoch they live in, and standards about the merit of an art have changed all the time. Therefore, it is impossible to require the average people to understand high art, and that is why many brilliant movies won Golden Palm could not achieve good box office.
In addition, true artists create art pieces are not to make profit but to express themselves - feelings, conception of the world, and philosophical ideas. Like what Martin Scorsese said in 2019, “Hollywood blockbusters are just theme parks with no artistic values,” there are diverse opinions towards cinema as an industry or cinema as an art form. Directors of Hollywood movies produce movies to drive audience’s attention and to make money, while those brilliant directors including Truffaut and Larz Von Trier, produce movies to express their own attitude towards the world and do not care whether the audience can understand or appreciate their works. For example, although The House That Jack Built directed by Larz Von Trier in 2019 was criticized a lot for its violence and aloofness, the director himself did not mind about those criticizes and stated that he did not want to please or impress the audience.
Finally, the true merit of arts lies in whether they can evoke sympathy of the audience. De Quincey wrote in the article “The Literature of Knowledge and the Literature of Power” that work like newton’s, belonging to the literature of knowledge, gives access to the hidden truths of nature, while the function of the literature of power, say, Paradise Lost written by Milton, is to move and speaks to the higher understanding through affections of pleasure and sympathy. And that is the true merit of arts distinguished from illustrations, pop music, reference book, or commercial films. Cinemas directed by Jia Zhang-Ke, for example, do not use a lot of fancy special effects, but give audience a direct picture about the most common individuals’ life, their sufferings and joys. Although they cannot provide the audience more knowledge like documentaries, but can strengthen their consciousness of a mysterious residuum of human nature.
In a nutshell, the merit of an art piece has nothing to do with whether most people can understand or not.
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Transition Words or Phrases used:
accordingly, but, finally, if, so, then, therefore, thus, well, while, for example, in addition, as well as
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 18.0 19.5258426966 92% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 7.0 12.4196629213 56% => OK
Conjunction : 27.0 14.8657303371 182% => OK
Relative clauses : 6.0 11.3162921348 53% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 24.0 33.0505617978 73% => OK
Preposition: 70.0 58.6224719101 119% => OK
Nominalization: 14.0 12.9106741573 108% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2588.0 2235.4752809 116% => OK
No of words: 513.0 442.535393258 116% => OK
Chars per words: 5.04483430799 5.05705443957 100% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.75914943092 4.55969084622 104% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.83803797859 2.79657885939 101% => OK
Unique words: 276.0 215.323595506 128% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.538011695906 0.4932671777 109% => OK
syllable_count: 803.7 704.065955056 114% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59117977528 101% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 2.0 6.24550561798 32% => OK
Article: 5.0 4.99550561798 100% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 3.10617977528 129% => OK
Conjunction: 9.0 1.77640449438 507% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 5.0 4.38483146067 114% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 18.0 20.2370786517 89% => OK
Sentence length: 28.0 23.0359550562 122% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively long.
Sentence length SD: 76.9012514146 60.3974514979 127% => OK
Chars per sentence: 143.777777778 118.986275619 121% => OK
Words per sentence: 28.5 23.4991977007 121% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.94444444444 5.21951772744 114% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 4.97078651685 101% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 7.80617977528 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 17.0 10.2758426966 165% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 1.0 5.13820224719 19% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 0.0 4.83258426966 0% => More facts, knowledge or examples wanted.
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.214882747636 0.243740707755 88% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0660190618075 0.0831039109588 79% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0500559573239 0.0758088955206 66% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.132129186556 0.150359130593 88% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0426589776354 0.0667264976115 64% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 16.6 14.1392134831 117% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 43.06 48.8420337079 88% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.92365168539 111% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 14.2 12.1743820225 117% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.25 12.1639044944 101% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 9.03 8.38706741573 108% => OK
difficult_words: 130.0 100.480337079 129% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 12.0 11.8971910112 101% => OK
gunning_fog: 13.2 11.2143820225 118% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.7820224719 102% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 75.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.5 Out of 6
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Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.