By Jason Koop

“Art is subjective”.

That’s a line most of us have heard, in one form or another, in our lifetime. Put that line into a Google search, and you will get many people’s (and AI’s) take on it.

My thoughts on that line have run the gamut from “What does that even mean?” to “That’s your excuse for defending something that is just bad” to me using it to defend my own preferences.

For the sake of this post, I’m not coming at the line “art is subjective” from the perspective that there is no “good” or “bad” art, because “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”. And I’m not saying I can convince you that some piece of art is “good” or “bad” because of how it grades on a specific formula. I’m going to approach the line “Art is subjective” from the mindset that a piece of art can mean different things to different people at different times.

Basically, to appropriate Shrek’s greatest line: Art is like onions.

What brought this on is two videos I saw on YouTube that discussed two franchises/series I have some definite thoughts about. The first was The Dark Underlying Theme of IDW Sonic by Sonic Theory, and the other was The Chronicles of Narnia: The Black Sheep of 2000’s Fantasy by The Thrifty Typewriter.

In The Dark Underlying Theme of IDW Sonic, Sonic Theory argues that a major theme in the IDW Sonic comic books is free will. And I must say, having read the comics I didn’t make that connection, but then again, you’re talking about the guy who didn’t know Hamlet was contemplating suicide when he says “to be or not to be”, so… there’s that. Sonic Theory has a point. The theme of free will isn’t slammed in the audience’s face in a way that you cannot miss it, but now having had it pointed out, I can’t stop seeing it. I honestly want to do a deep dive on that theme using all the characters (yes, I’m a Sonic nerd, where have you been?).

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Black Sheep of 2000’s Fantasy looks at the three theatrical movies that came out in 2005, 2008 and 2010 (The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe; Prince Caspian; The Voyage of the Dawn Treader) and how they fit into the fantasy saturation that really kicked off in the 2000s. Comparing the films to the contemporaries of their time gives the review an interesting angle. While I don’t really agree with The Thrifty Typewriter’s takes, frankly it has more to do with the fact that I have at least a basic grasp of the spiritual tones of the stories and he doesn’t. His perspective is drawn from taking into account the media landscape the movies were being released into.

These two seemingly unrelated things do in fact share a common thread I’d like to tug on. They showcase how an underrated determiner of what the audience’s takeaway(s) of a story/character is the individual’s perspective. My main takeaways from the Sonic the Hedgehog IDW comics are the themes of friendship and teamwork. I tend to see The Chronicles of Narnia movies by comparing them to the books and the Christian themes that C.S. Lewis tried to get across. But these YouTube reviewers saw different things, probably based on their own perspectives and life experiences.

“Art is subjective”. I used to balk at the very idea of it. If you had a differing take on a book/movie/video game, well then you were just wrong. And if you were to imply that there were multiple different themes that could be taken from said media, depending on how you approached it, well that was just plain silly. The themes are the themes, and they are plainly universal, regardless of your perspective.

But now… I wonder if the themes one takes away from a piece of art are indeed subjective, because of our human flaws and brokenness. Perhaps we are incapable of perfectly getting across themes and stories, which then leaves cracks where the audience can fill in with their own personal life experience and theology.

And by God’s grace, He makes it so that imperfect stories told by imperfect humans can have a richness of meaning. Maybe even beyond what the creator intended.