The Myth of Purposefulness: How Success Retroactively Justifies Creative Choices
- Oct 16, 2024
- 3 min read
When a creative work becomes wildly successful, a peculiar human instinct kicks in: we scramble to rationalize every detail as part of a masterstroke. It's as if success demands an explanation so cohesive that no creative choice could possibly have been arbitrary, accidental, or even a mistake. This is a psychological trap that quietly governs much of how we analyze art, music, television, and even business success. It is not about what really happened but about our deep need to explain why it happened.
Once something reaches cultural acclaim, critics and fans alike begin retroactively stitching a narrative where each creative decision is essential to the work's brilliance. The set design, the cinematography, the editing quirks—suddenly, they were all crucial. This is a phenomenon known in psychology as "retrospective coherence," where people impose order and intentionality on past events because the outcome is known.
A classic example is the mockumentary filming style used in television shows like The Office. The shaky camera, quick zooms, and erratic framing were presented as deliberate efforts to create intimacy and awkward realism. But many viewers found these choices distracting or even nauseating. Still, because the show was massively successful, the filming style is now widely praised as an ingenious part of its charm. The question worth asking is: if The Office had used smooth, steady cinematography, would its core audience have loved it any less? And would the shaky camera be viewed as such an indispensable ingredient if the show had failed? Probably not.
This isn't to say that all creative choices are meaningless or unintentional. Often, creators do make purposeful decisions. But purposefulness does not automatically equate to necessity, nor does it mean the audience wouldn't have embraced the work if those elements were different or absent. Sometimes, success amplifies the legend of a project, and suddenly even its limitations or quirks are elevated to genius status.
Consider the classic "garage band" myth. A rough, unpolished sound is often described as authentic and essential to the band's appeal, but if the band hadn't succeeded, those same qualities would likely be dismissed as amateur mistakes. In business, think of product design quirks that become beloved features in retrospect, when in reality they were often accidents, shortcuts, or compromises made under pressure.
Why do we do this? Humans crave clean, satisfying stories. We want to believe that good things happen for clear reasons. Randomness is unsettling. Coincidence feels cheap. Success needs to feel earned, structured, explainable. So we reverse-engineer intentionality onto the past, assigning brilliance to every pixel, sound, and edit.
Understanding this mental habit is freeing. It reminds us to separate what actually contributed to a creative work's success from what we just think contributed because we're seeing it in hindsight. It invites us to ask: would the story, the product, or the song still resonate without that quirky detail we're so quick to glorify? Maybe the work was simply good. Maybe the other stuff was just noise.
The challenge is to resist the pull of retrospective coherence and instead embrace a more nuanced view: that sometimes success is a blend of good ideas, lucky timing, solid execution, and yes, a few mistakes along the way that didn't matter nearly as much as we claim they did.
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