Why must film delight in making us feel stupid?

‘What did the rampant chimp have to do with any of it?’ I squawked in bewildered disappointment to a friend at the end of Nope, the long-awaited third film from Oscar-winning writer-director Jordan Peele. I had hastened in great excitement to see Nope on the first day of its cinema release, hoping for a work that would rival Peele’s sparkling debut Get Out in its idiosyncratic mash-up of razor-sharp social commentary and horror. Instead, I paid £14.20 to sit through 130 minutes of barely explained peril that were resolved in a manner that was even less clear. Peele, I concluded sadly, had crossed over to the dark side of artists who appear to believe that it is fashionable to be incomprehensible.

This is a sadly pernicious disease that spreads across all art forms and afflicts creatives who attain a certain level of prestige in their fields. Those who are starting out are compelled to be crisp and sharp in their vision, but as acclaim and fame grows, bagginess sets in. (And excessive length often comes as a corollary. Witness the past decade-plus of work from Mike Leigh: every film would have benefited from at least half an hour lopped from the running time.) In this rarefied atmosphere of cultural celebrity there appear to be fewer people with sufficient status to demand greater clarity of the artist in question and thus the problem perpetuates. Look at each new film from Christopher Nolan, which wears as a badge of honour the fact that no one understands the plot. Why is this seen as a good thing? Why do audiences not rise up and lament this absurd emperor’s-new-clothes situation? Why, in short, have we been brainwashed to collude in our own bewilderment?

No one, of course, likes to appear stupid, and when we have invested time, money and emotion in an artist’s career we are rightly prepared to cut them some slack. Yet we arts lovers know deep down the difference between not concentrating fully due to feeling tired and being presented with a piece of work that hasn’t got the skill to explain itself properly. Whether we have the courage to air our views out loud is another matter, as no one wants to run the risk of appearing ‘uncool’ by questioning the received cultural orthodoxy. Maybe, we niggle at ourselves, someone cleverer than us is fully au fait with what is going on.

I, however, have had enough of being made to feel stupid by artforms that I love. Film is by no means the only culprit; too much television labours under the misapprehension that incomprehensible equals quality. By all means build up plot, character and suspense gradually, but please do not muddle this with wilfully withholding crucial information. If viewers must take themselves to internet forums afterwards to decipher the plot, the show has not been a success. Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat’s televisual reboot of Sherlock is a case in point: lauded initially for its bracing cleverness and the thrilling intellectual workout it gave viewers, it subsequently progressed to clever-clever and thence to downright smug at the confusion it was spreading. Lesser names would not have been allowed to get away with this, but because of its star quality – Benedict Cumberbatch! Andrew Scott! – all was forgiven. Except not in my house.

Theatre also likes to join in this unholy party of bafflement from time to time, almost always in the form of work from playwrights experienced and talented enough to know better. I still wince at a memory from years ago, when Tom Stoppard’s play The Invention of Love, about poet/classicist A. E. Housman, premiered at the National Theatre. Along came a ‘joke’ about a split gerundive; the audience chuckled merrily and I wondered how many people had sufficient Latin to find this reference truly hilarious. I have a degree in Latin and can tell you that the idea of a split gerundive is about as mirthful as a rainy day in February. So why this performative demonstration of amused would-be erudition? Because Stoppard is a prestige playwright, so best to go with the flow rather than sit there sulking. (I was amused to learn subsequently that when the production played in New York, audiences were provided with a 30-page booklet to bring them up to speed on all the references. Is this drama, or is it torture?)

In our fiercely egalitarian age, surely this game of confuse-the-audience is an unwanted relic from past times, from an unedifying hierarchy of intellectual snobbery? A simple solution could provide a fix: show each new film or drama to a couple of interested punters before general release and iron out any wrinkles of confusion in this way. There is no chance that the rampant chimp in Nope would have passed this test and Jordan Peele fans would be feeling a whole lot cheerier now.