Pleasure, after all —
"the performance of pleasure — is in essence perfectly immoral." (Baudrillard)
Thus Kael's intellectual journey comes to an end here — at a point, that is to say, an immense distance ahead of our modern pseudo-intellectual videogame artfags. For Kael, at least, had the courage for her instincts (which in every living thing are constantly screaming out for pleasure), despite not being able to dialectically justify them — a courage which the artfags lack to such a degree that they've gone as far as to convince themselves that art does not need to be enjoyable — that it does not have to be "fun". Worse: They are claiming something even more absurd: that art, and even more so great art, is not even supposed to be fun. What they would like with all their might to convince us of, what they expend all their energy, cunning and ingenuity to prove (which is why they have none left to pour into real problems), is that
"we're getting art for our money when we haven't even had a good time". (Kael)
For Kael here simply takes for granted that the purpose of art is to give pleasure. Pleasure, as far she is concerned, is a prerequisite, an absolute minimum requirement for her to consider anything art — and she was far from alone in espousing this quaint notion. Didn't Stendhal, the nineteenth century's greatest connoisseur of art, describe beauty as "a promise of happiness"? Didn't he faint from pleasure at the sight of Florence's artistic treasures, in what later became known as history's first recorded case of Stendhal Syndrome? (One should not, by the way, confound the cause of Stendhal's fainting with that of the American exchange students — relatives of the game journalists and pseudo-intellectuals, no doubt — who every year descend on Florence by the thousands, stumbling drunkenly along and passing out in the city's deserted sidewalks every day between midnight and 6 am.)
The artfags, then, have somehow managed to convince themselves that art is not supposed to give pleasure — or at least not necessarily so; that, at any rate, the question of whether art gives or does not give pleasure, or perhaps even gives displeasure, is an entirely subsidiary one — perhaps even irrelevant. And our question now, as we attempt to psychoanalyze them and descend, as it were, into their souls is: how did they acquire this unfathomably absurd notion?
One has to always keep in mind the kind of people we are discussing. Kael is a genuine intellectual, the real deal — every line she ever wrote betrays it — her reviews and essays sizzle with perspicacity and wit: there's not a single pseudo-intellectual bone in her entire body. She simply refuses to allow anyone to tell her "what is good for her". If she's not enjoying herself she is not enjoying herself, and you can take your "art" and stick it up your ass.