Chapter Text
Are morally bad artworks bad art?
It’s not that Bruce hates Aesthetics, exactly. It’s more that he hates the people he has to be around for it.
The lecture hall is small - it’s a third-year course and the demand is limited. He’d hoped it would be something of a respite from the rest of his classes, trumped-up elitist assholes who had to get a word in edgeways or they’d simply die. He has not found that to be the case. Instead everyone here has an opinion, and everyone has to be loud about it. Almost everyone, at least. There’s one other boy in the class who seems to suffer a similar kind of social awkwardness, though perhaps not as noticeably as Bruce. He has his own problems with the other student, though, with his constant glares and the way his eyes seem to pick at him and pull him apart from behind his glasses. Like a puzzle, but not one he enjoys.
So maybe Bruce does kind of hate Aesthetics.
He types out a half-hearted answer about autonomism onto his laptop and waits for his name to be called, waits to (awkwardly) spit out some kind of a response, just to prove he’d actually read the paper. Why they have to go through this charade every week he isn’t sure. He’d hoped it was just going to be an introductory thing but, well - it’s the hope that kills you, as they say.
Except it’s different, this time. The other boy, the quiet one, stares at him the whole time he’s speaking, grimacing when he’s done. His eyes should be magnified behind his glasses but instead they’re charcoal-dark and beady, like Bruce has done something to piss him off. More so than usual, at least.
“So - so you think art and ethics are what, autonomous realms of value?” the boy asks, like he’s spitting out something putrid. In all honesty Bruce hadn’t really thought that hard about it - hadn’t had the energy, the motivation, to do anything more than assemble some trite reply that just about answered the question without having to put in any particular effort. But the other boy is angry.
“Sure,” Bruce says, quietly. “There’s art with no ethical viewpoint, pure orchestral music, so if the art has value at all it can’t be ethical value, right? Art qua art… it’s beholden to universally applicable standards. Those can’t be ethical.”
“You’re just quoting literature,” the boy says, stiffly.
Bruce doesn’t correct him - what is there to correct?
“Orchestral music it’s - it’s still morally evaluable, there’s context, intent. All art is an action and all actions have moral weight. You can’t - there’s no divorcing it from that.”
“Okay,” Bruce says, surprising even himself when he responds. “But you can experience a piece of orchestral music without knowledge of its intent or context.” It’s not like he’s particularly attached to this line of reasoning, not like he even really disagrees with the boy, but - something about the situation makes him want to keep talking. “Your experience of the art, the - that iteration of the piece of art, how is that morally weighted?”
“By the way you read into it,” he says, “by the things you impose upon the art by the action of engaging with it.”
And then the boy quiets, turns away, goes still. Their lecturer looks baffled, mumbles something about ‘thank you for your contribution, boys’ and moves on to the next person, more than happy to proffer their own insights. Bruce’s mind continues to race.
The boy is smart, scarily so, smarter than Bruce, which isn’t self-deprecation so much as realism. At the very least he understands Aesthetics better. Bruce majored in Philosophy largely because Alfred suggested it - something about his sense of righteousness, his want to do good, developing his moral code. And he does enjoy it, when he’s working alone or writing an essay. It’s interacting with people that he hates. And it’s not like Aesthetics is really all that relevant to what he wants to do.
The rest of the class passes without incident - the other boy barely looks up from his laptop, torn-up nails picking away at the stickers littering its surface, faded so badly Bruce can’t even make out what they’re supposed to be. Bruce stares.
It takes him about half the lecture to remember the boy's name. Edward, he thinks, turning it over and over again in his head like it might reveal something to him if only he considers it for long enough. Whatever that thing is remains elusive.
When they file out of the lecture hall half an hour later Bruce almost wants to stop Edward, to ask him why he was suddenly so combative, why he cared so much about what was essentially just a memorisation exercise. He doesn’t know how he’d approach it even if he wasn’t aware of how weird it would be of him to do so. He was bad at social interaction, he struggled to piece together what acting naturally even was. But he knew that it would be strange. That he had no good reason to approach him at all.
Bruce had hoped that his years at university would have developed his social skills some. Instead it feels like it’s just further alienated him - no one else seems to struggle the way he does, to have to puzzle out those invisible lines, those ever-elusive social expectations. Intangible things that he’s never quite managed to grasp. He tries to smile at his lecturer as he leaves, before he realises she’s too busy staring at the papers in front of her to even notice his exit. It dies on his face.
Bruce is silent when he enters the library. He’s always silent navigating the school, a shadow, a barely-there presence making as few ripples as he can. He’d thought Edward was the same, until he saw him sitting at the front desk, poring over his laptop again.
Edward glances up briefly like he barely intends to acknowledge Bruce’s entrance, before he recognises who he is and his gaze settles on him, predatory.
“Here to brush up on your philosophy?” Edward asks, voice hushed but smug.
“Something like that,” Bruce says, once the shock of being addressed dies down.
Edward squints for a second, before clicking away at his laptop. He doesn’t glance at Bruce as he reads from the screen.
“Try Gaut,” he says. “ The Ethical Criticism of Art. Or Lillehammer.”
“I - thank you?” Bruce responds, more a question than a statement. Edward seems unbothered, doesn’t glance back at him, just nods. Fidgets slightly with the army surplus-looking jacket he’s wearing like he’s searching for something.
They don’t speak again, and after an uncomfortable moment of silence Bruce heads to the cloakroom to deposit his coat. When he sits down at the desk, it takes him a long, long time to open his laptop. And when he does, it’s merely to search up the book Edward recommended. Just to sate his curiosity.
By the time their next lecture rolls around Bruce has read up on ethicism far more than he’d ever been intending to. And he has to admit, he sees where Edward was coming from, now. ‘ The ethical assessment of attitudes manifested by works of art is a legitimate aspect of the aesthetic evaluation of those works, such that, if a work manifests ethically reprehensible attitudes, it is to that extent aesthetically defective.’ That was the core thesis, at least. He still doesn’t fully understand why Edward cares so much, whether he’s just this passionate, whether it’s just philosophy, just aesthetics. But it is compelling. It makes Bruce want to do more - he’s always found himself moved by people with that kind of fervour for something . That it’s a moral passion is - well. Especially moving. He’s a sucker for someone with convictions.
He still doesn’t like the guy, doesn’t understand him enough to even begin to figure out how he would like him, but he’s intrigued, he wants to know more wants - wants to say the kind of things that so angered him in the first place, just to watch him respond. He should feel more guilty about that than he does, maybe.
So when their lecturer asks Edward about his opinion for a second time, Bruce waits for a pause in the conversation to interrupt. It’s a kind of heart-wrenching anxiety that compels him, the need for the boy’s attention (he still doesn’t understand why ) scrabbling at his throat with claws, fighting desperately against the sheer terror at the attention, the acknowledgement, the fact that he’s interrupting . He thought he was over the fear, that the medication was enough, but something about the nature of academics has taken to proving him wrong time and time again. It never really stops.
“What about works that are good because of their violation of our moral code?” Bruce asks, voice raspy from disuse.
Edward seems stunned by the interruption - their lecturer even more so. Neither responds immediately, but after a second of silence Edward rushes in like he’s trying to fill the empty air.
“Take Juliette,” Edward says, something in his eyes glinting, though Bruce can’t quite make out what. “Sade. Assuming you’re taking it as manifesting approval of Juliette’s actions, then the aesthetic merit of the work overall is marred by the aesthetic defect that is the novel’s espousal of her attitudes.”
“Now who’s just quoting literature,” Bruce murmurs, so quiet he wouldn’t have known if Edward had heard it, if it weren’t for the way he shifted in his seat. “Isn’t it the fact that the work is manifesting that approval part of what makes it aesthetically valuable? That it indulges our curiosity?”
“That’s not an aesthetic interest,” Edward says. “If you’re interested in torture porn that’s on you, but that doesn’t mean endorsing it is an aesthetic virtue.”
Bruce struggles to find his words. and the lecturer takes this as her chance to interrupt them a second time, cutting them both off and announcing something about having a very limited amount of time to lecture so if they could keep any more peer debates to outside of lessons that would be much appreciated. Bruce nods his assent, staring at Edward and hoping the boy will stare back. He doesn’t - back upright and fingers tapping away at his keyboard with some kind of nervous energy. Bruce wonders why. He’d hardly seemed nervous before.
It’s when Bruce is leaving the lesson that he’s confronted, always the last student, trailing out after everyone else is long-gone. Edward was loitering in the staircase outside the lecture hall, shifting angrily from one foot to another - all Bruce is able to note before Edward realises he’s there.
“I was trying to help you,” Edward hisses, shoving his laptop bag against Bruce’s chest and glaring at him from behind the smeared lenses of his glasses, eyes barely a smudge. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised though - it’s not like you got here because of your academic ability is it?”
Bruce’s rabbit-thumping heart stills at that.
“What do you mean?” he asks, because he knows the other boy is angry, incandescently so, but he doesn’t understand why, why he’d imply Bruce was there for any other reason than skill alone if not merely to wrench a dagger deeper. Everyone knows about Bruce’s parents. And Edward isn’t stupid.
“Don’t play dumb,” Edward says. “It’s not a good look for you. Your parents - it’s not like you ever needed to try, is it?” The not like the rest of us is implied, but Bruce hears it nonetheless.
Bruce is bad with eye-contact, but right now, something glowing hot in his chest, it’s easy to stare the other boy down.
“Don’t talk about my parents,” he says.
“Sore spot, is it?” Edward replies, evidently thrilled. “I mean I’d figured, it’s the only bad thing that’s ever happened to you, isn’t it?”
“What’s your problem with me?” Bruce asks. “Philosophy’s meant for debating. It’s part of the subject.”
“My problem with you is that you don’t know what you’re talking about. That you’re just like every other rich kid here, thinking you can just waltz in and treat class like a joke because you paid your way in. That you don’t have to try. Do you know how hard I had to try to get here?”
Bruce shrugs, avoiding eye contact, his fingers twitch like he wants to reach up and push Edward away, but he doesn’t want to anger him any further. His arms stay heavy at his sides instead.
“I didn’t pay my way in,” he says. “I got good grades.”
“Because you were homeschooled? That doesn’t count. Try actually working at something for once in your life.”
“I worked -”
“No,” Edward says, coldly. “You didn’t.”
And then he leaves Bruce standing there, pressure suddenly removed from his chest. He feels the absence like something lost.