Today’s guest post is by Jason Konopinski
One of my wife's favorite movies is "Ten Things I Hate About You". Starring Julia Stiles, the late Heath Ledger, and a young Joseph Gordon-Levitt, the film is a modern day adaptation of Shakespeare's "The Taming of the Shrew".
The opening scenes offers a glimpse into the social interactions of high school personality types — the apish football players roam the halls with cheerleaders hanging off their arms; the science nerds debate one another in the corner of the cafeteria away from the judgemental stares of the popular kids; the stoners kick around a hackysack.
And then there are the artists, purposefully removed from this social interaction, lost in themselves and quietly observing this world go by.
This scene — and others like it, played out in countless popular films — reinforces cultural stereotypes and argues that a relationship between creativity, artistic expression, and rejection exists.
For creative-minded folks, reconciling rejection is often a tightrope walk. One of the great myths of those doing creative work is the necessity of isolation. The logic goes something like this: In order for the artist to do his or her most innovative and transformative work, they have to eschew "the world" and march defiantly in their own direction. Certainly, it worked for J.D. Salinger. His self-imposed isolation because the stuff of literary legend and fans yearned for more. His last published work? "Hapworth 16, 1924", a novella published in the New Yorker.
Rejection happens. The short story that you were just sure was going to turn heads come back with a pink slip. The article you submitted to a prominent print publication, carefully researched and outlined, gets the Dear John treatment. "There's no place for this in our publication right now," they say. It can really wear down even the most seasoned creative professional.
In the August 2013 issue of the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Sharon Kim, Lynne Vincent and Jack Goncalo probe those topics at length, suggesting that creative innovation can be linked to social rejection; in other words, social conformity makes people less creative because belonging to a group often means subscribing to a certain worldview and set of beliefs. Perspectives that cut against that worldview (i.e. creative acts of rebellion) become acts of disobedience.
Just four days before her death, Janis Joplin gave her final interview with Howard Smith of the Village Voice. It was a deeply personal conversation about the role of rejection in creativity, revealing the character of a performer who, despite her gruff and cocksure stage presence, still felt the sting of words and public opinion. Her reflections on making good art when everything seems stacked against you teaches us all a little about our own humanity, insecurities, and how doing creative work can be incredibly painful.
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