Unearthing the Manuscript

It's been a few years since I wrote "The Kaliser Canon," that earnest attempt by my eighteen-year-old self to grapple with artistic hierarchies through the lens of Casablanca, Portal 2, and—somewhat inexplicably—Toontown Online. Reading it now produces that peculiar mixture of fondness and mortification that only one's past writing can evoke. Yet beneath its occasionally clumsy prose (still here) and youthful certainty (also still here) lurks something worth revisiting: the distinction between greatness and canonical status.

There's something profoundly disorienting about confronting your past self on the page—a literary form of time travel where the traveler and the visited occupy the same consciousness yet remain irreconcilably separate. Reading "The Kaliser Canon" feels like entering a familiar room where all the furniture has been rearranged according to a logic I both recognize and find utterly foreign. My writing, overwrought then and now, seems to have a nearby expiration date when I react to it sourly.

Absolute Cinema Art

First, we need a working definition of art itself—the most contentious of categories. My teenage self might have defaulted to some variation of "I know it when I see it," but this is insufficient.

Whatever I deem "art" inevitably reveals more about my own cultural positioning than any inherent quality in the object itself.

Here's my broad take: Art is any human creation that operates as a container for cultural meaning beyond its utilitarian function. This definition intentionally avoids qualitative judgment; art isn't necessarily good art. A mechanical pencil's engineering is primarily utilitarian, though it may incorporate aesthetic elements. The drawing it produces, however, primarily generates meaning.

Even this distinction isn't perfect. At what point might a mechanical pencil transcend its utilitarian purpose to become art? Perhaps when it's displayed in a museum case, removed from function. Or when it's lovingly crafted by an artisan with materials chosen not just for durability but for beauty. Or when it becomes the subject of a drawing itself, depicted with such precision that it forces contemplation of everyday objects we typically overlook.

Meanwhile, the drawing—even one hastily sketched during a boring meeting—operates primarily within the realm of meaning generation. It exists not to accomplish a physical task but to represent, express, or convey. Even a terrible drawing fulfills this fundamental criterion of art. Perhaps this is my not-so-concealed attempt to somehow justify my plain stick-figure sticky notes as art.

Revisiting My Criteria for Greatness (and My Footnote Addiction)

My younger self wrote with surprising clarity about what makes art "great":

"To be considered great, art must have a resolute identity. Identity in art is its unique vision enacted through consistent style and theme, purpose, and self-awareness."

I was onto something when discussing "resolute identity" and "command of expression" as criteria for greatness. I'll group these phrases into another pretentious sounding term: artistic coherence—the sense that a work knows what it's attempting and succeeds on its own terms—still forms the core of my aesthetic judgments.

What's fascinating (and slightly mortifying) is how the footnotes in my original essay often contained more interesting content than the main text. Take this gem from footnote #1:

"There's a risk to profit-seeking works that the dollar overrules the artistic vision. This seems to happen most frequently in franchises, sequeled titles, and generally within industry giants. Marvel movies in the film industry, the Grand Theft Auto franchise for video games - two victims of this."

Ah yes, nothing says "I have nuanced artistic opinions" quite like an eighteen-year-old dunking on Marvel and GTA. Though I can't help but note that current-me would absolutely still make this argument, just with dressed-up phrasing and probably three additional paragraphs lamenting the state of corporate art. Some things never change.

I can at least appreciate how I separated greatness from canonical status. "Greatness impresses. Canon influences and inspires," I wrote, with an accidental clarity that exceeded my actual understanding. Toontown wasn't great, but it was unquestionably canonical to my personal development.

The essay continued with a discussion of craft:

"The composition of a work of art, the harmony between all of its components, is paramount to achieving greatness."

There's unexamined tension in this passage between romantic and classical conceptions of artistic value. The emphasis on "command" and "mastery" reflects a classical tradition that privileges technical skill and formal control. Yet the notion of a message to be "accurately conveyed" suggests a romantic view of art as expression of interior states or meanings.

The absence of further scrutiny into this tension is a convenient omission by former me; my proposition sounds compelling superficially yet is arguably contradictory without clearer definition. The imperative of technical mastery might contradict the imperative of authentic expression when the latter requires breaking established rules. Some of the most significant artistic innovations emerge precisely when expressive needs exceed available techniques, forcing creative ruptures in what constitutes "craft."

I'm particularly amused by footnote #3, where I wrote with dramatic flourish:

"I say this with the risk of coming across as malevolent, but the overly-sweet 'you're still alive! I thought you were dead!' trope is among my most hated. Let there be turmoil!"

Good lord. "Let there be turmoil" could have been my teenage motto, after "it's probably fine". I still appreciate works not afraid to take some emotional risks, but nothing quite captures the essence of adolescent artistic sensibilities like demanding more suffering in your entertainment while you enjoy the relative comfort of your parents' home. I might as well have added "Down with happy endings! I'm deep because I prefer misery!"

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Run-On Sentences

I had an undue preference for the sharp and clear in place of the blurry; I'd rather an artist casting a harsh fluorescent, light instead of a warm, shadow-inducing one. Really, I insisted on brevity as an aesthetic virtue:

"The other component of composition is brevity. There is elegance in brevity. Every word uttered, every stroke of a paintbrush must have a purpose... Brevity is translating the identity behind every thought and arranging them into a concise, digestible medium for the audience."

A statement immediately followed by one of the most gloriously overlong footnotes in the entire essay:

"I find this to be where a lot of media, especially ones meant to be interacted with over periods of time (film, video games, plays, etc.) fall short. There is a disappointing abundance of filler that does not advance character development or plot and lacks purpose. Movies afflicted with a tired formula, rely on superfluous scenes to pad the limited plot, reveal the ending early, or worse a combination of the three, end up with me falling asleep (the list of sleep-inducing movies is growing…). Pointing out Mission Impossible: Fallout and Avengers: Endgame as perpetrators."

The irony of writing a sprawling footnote about the virtue of brevity while calling out "superfluous scenes" in blockbuster movies is not lost on current-me. It's like penning a manifesto against manifestos.

One formative literary encounter, Lois Lowry's The Giver, led to a lasting appreciation of the novel's concept of "precision of language." In Lowry's dystopia, language is regulated to eliminate ambiguity—citizens are corrected for saying they're "starving" when they merely mean "hungry." What begins as a pursuit of clarity becomes a mechanism of control, a way to limit not just expression but thought itself. Although I didn't wish for the dystopian application, the phrase "precision of language" embedded itself into my mind and manifested throughout my writing (or so I thought!). Now, I realize flourish, hyperbole, and excess are all legitimate and impactful tools of expression, to limit them outside the context of say, technical documentation, invites a cold sterility.

The tension between precision and freedom has become central to my artistic philosophy. The mechanical pencil serves as an apt metaphor here—it offers exactness, consistency, and control, yet these very qualities can become constraints. True mastery involves knowing when precision serves expression and when it hinders it, when to press firmly with the mechanical pencil's reliable point and when to deliberately smudge the line with your finger.

My teenage self's emphasis on brevity and purpose wasn't wrong, but it failed to acknowledge the expressive potential in deliberate imprecision. My footnotes, with their rambling excursions away from the main text, understood this better than I did—they were the spaces where my thinking could breathe, where precision could momentarily give way to exploration. And honestly, they're the most engaging part of the essay.

Brevity isn't inherently virtuous. Some artistic visions require expansiveness, repetition, or even deliberate excess. Think of Monet's water lilies series, where the same subject is painted dozens of times. Or consider novels like Infinite Jest (a fellow footnote aficionado), where the sheer volume is part of the artistic intent.

My footnote attacking "filler" in movies betrays this narrowness of vision:

"I find this to be where a lot of media, especially ones meant to be interacted with over periods of time (film, video games, plays, etc) fall short. There is a disappointing abundance of filler that does not advance character development or plot and lacks purpose."

What I failed to understand was that not all art is exclusively narrative-driven. What I dismissed as "filler" might serve other vital functions—establishing mood, exploring themes, creating rhythmic structures, or simply allowing space for contemplation. My appreciation for brevity has evolved into an appreciation for expressive integrity—elements that contribute to the artistic vision, whether that requires brevity or grandeur—rather than literal concision.

Canon as Architecture of Influence

Here's where my thinking has evolved most significantly. The canon isn't simply a collection of great works, nor is it merely what has influenced me personally (though my teenage intuition about influence was heading in the right direction).

"Influence is the separator of greatness and canon, and what allows the two to exist independently. A great work need not be influential. A canonical work must."

I find this to be one of the most insightful distinctions in the essay, separating aesthetic quality from cultural impact in a pretty satisfying way. This framework, certainly intentionally, accommodates works like Toontown Online—a game my teenage self correctly assessed as "mediocre at best" yet unquestionably canonical to my personal development.

Canon is better understood as an architecture of influence—a network of works that shape how subsequent art is created, received, and evaluated. Canonical works aren't just influential; they reshape the conditions of possibility for what comes after them.

Casablanca isn't canonical merely because it's great (though it is), nor because it influenced me personally (though it did). It's canonical because it reconstituted the grammar of romantic drama in cinema, establishing patterns that subsequent filmmakers would either follow or deliberately subvert.

Similarly, Portal 2 isn't canonical merely because it introduced me to gaming's artistic potential, but because it fundamentally altered the language of puzzle design and narrative integration, creating a before-and-after moment in game development.

The Personal Canon as Development Marker

What's emerged most clearly from this excavation of my younger writing is how canonical works function as developmental markers. These works don't just impress us aesthetically; they fundamentally alter our relationship to entire domains of experience.

My teenage self concluded his essay with surprising insight:

"What all three examples have in common is that they signaled the beginning of something new. Casablanca, the appreciation of art in film. Portal 2, the appreciation of art in video games. Toontown, my entry point to the digital world."

This developmental synchronicity—the special significance works acquire when they arrive at pivotal moments in our intellectual or emotional development—explains why certain works become personally canonical regardless of their objective quality. The works that matter most to us aren't necessarily the "best" by objective criteria; they're the ones that arrive at precisely the right moment to catalyze our development.

In Defense of Good Ol' Banjo Wonderslam

The most charming aspect of my original essay was its insistence on including Toontown Online in my personal canon despite frankly acknowledging its mediocrity:

"Toontown is not a great game. Mediocre at best... This game has an incomplete identity... Yet after this bashing, it still has a reserved place in my personal canon."

I then followed this with perhaps the most endearing footnote in the entire document, a half-hearted defense of children's media:

"This doesn't necessarily mean that the game can't be great, but realistically games intended for children are much less likely to have the same ambitious vision as others."

While I understand the intent, my footnote has the energy of someone saying "I'm not prejudiced against children's games, but..." right before expressing exactly that prejudice.

Nevertheless, this willingness to embrace the tension between objective quality and personal significance reveals a critical sophistication I didn't fully appreciate at the time. The inclusion of Toontown wasn't just nostalgic indulgence but an early recognition that our most formative cultural encounters often have as much to do with timing as with inherent quality.

And let's not forget the immortal closing line of that section:

"My username as I selected at five years old, Good Ol' Banjo Wonderslam, lives on."

I have to hand it to five-year-old me—that's still an absolutely fantastic username. Some creative decisions age better than long-winded and unnecessary analyses.

The Value of Imperfect (Frame)works

Rereading "The Kaliser Canon" reminds me that our earliest attempts at cultural taxonomy aren't just embarrassing artifacts of intellectual immaturity but necessary scaffolding for more sophisticated understanding. The frameworks we build and then outgrow aren't failures but essential developmental stages—like the preliminary sketches that precede a finished drawing.

This perspective helps me approach my earlier critical frameworks with more generosity (without sacrificing the occasional necessary recoil). The limitations of "The Kaliser Canon" weren't simply failures of insight but reflections of where I was in my own critical development—the reexamination in this piece will be due for its own dismantling in a few years for the same reason.

I often find myself trying to make a final, definitive piece that wholly represents my intent. I consider imaginary critics who tear apart everything I write and attack it for its lack of clarity, focus, anything. There's also an irrational fear that anything I write is irretractable and that I have to express all my thoughts, perfectly, the first time. Even in this piece I struggled to keep each section from turning into a separate spinoff essay. While self-critique undoubtedly helps you refine and revise your way into something good, sometimes, you begrudgingly have to admit "good enough" if you ever want to move on. I'm glad that I wrote "The Kaliser Canon" and didn't let it be paralyzed by this fear. So what if I don't agree with it anymore?

I started writing this piece with an intent to reflect and poke fun at my slightly less immature writings, but as clichéd as it comes across, there's a more valuable insight from this exercise than canon or greatness, but about the nature of critical development itself—how we build frameworks, test them against experience, revise them when they fail, and occasionally discard them entirely. This process isn't just how we evaluate art; it's how we construct ourselves as thinking beings. So often, in our writing and our taxonomies, it's the edge cases that are the most worth discussing; the margins of our thinking are more fertile than the standard rank-and-file. End pretentious sidebar.

My teenage self concluded that "Greatness impresses. Canon influences and inspires." I'd add: "And articulating the difference shapes the articulator." The frameworks we build to understand culture don't just describe our experience; they form it. Which makes them worth revisiting, even—perhaps especially—when they make us cringe.