Just to choose a universally known example of explicit art: What "point" does the portrait of Mona Lisa convey? That beautiful women should smile more? I suppose I could get behind
that notion, but that hardly seems like much of a "point" to begin with. The idea that "art must
always have a point" is fundamentally missing the entire point of art:
That it is inherently a pointless thing. What
truly separates the artistic from the artless is
not that it has a "point to make" but that it has a
vision. Yes, works of art
can have points to make, but to generalise so drastically as to say "art must have a point" is just plain wrong.
What is the supposed "message" conveyed in, say, the Asterix comics? I fail to see any, and yet any who would argue these
works of fiction are in any way "artless" are just plain wrong. And now to move on to the even more flimsy "argument" here...
Counter-counterpoint: The Lord of the Rings, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, the collective Tarzan stories, the early Conan the Barbarian works, Journey to the Centre of the Earth, The War of the Worlds, and many many
many more such works of fiction were written by authors wanting to explore themes and settings that had
nothing to do with actual reality. And those are
just books from the 1850s to 1950s,
long before the supposed "over-commercialisation" of fiction. I could give dozens more examples of
extremely well-known works in
just that category alone,
none of which focus on "reality."
Quod erat demonstrandum,
escapism is very much a thing. Anyone thinking otherwise is either trying to push their own selfish agenda, or they are just completely unaware of the main point of fiction:
That it is a work of fucking fiction. Being unable to differentiate between reality and fiction is a sign of severe mental illness, by the way, and no sane person wants everything they read or experience to be purely grounded in reality with zero fantastical elements of any kind.
I mean, Jesus Freaking Christ, we are in a thread dedicated to the discussion of a porn game focussing on a hotel that for no adequately explored reason
exclusively caters to female guests, there are elves and magic in the world, slavery has not only never been abolished and has in fact, if anything,
flourished. Oh, and not to forget, literally every single person living in the aforementioned hotel is a young and attractive woman with an inexplicable sexual attraction towards the owner. Tell me which part of all that screams "this is a serious work about making a point regarding real-world issues."
...Actually, don't even bloody bother, because this entire insipid and pointless excuse for a "discussion" is
plain fucking stupid and I refuse to prolong it any further.
-Mal