The Mystery Box: The McGuffin Theory of Emplotment

This is now officially the Cy Twombly thread.

I don't know that it really applies so much but I do agree that mystery is what keeps us watching. The more series you have, the more you build up suspense so that the resolution is inevitably a let down. However having a mystery in the background does add atmosphere- e.g. The X Files and question of what happened to Mulder's sister. It acts as the driving force for the character and creates the paranoid feeling around establishment. However there are enough self-contained stories going on that we accept not finding out the answer for seven years.

Is that right?

And if so, why argue at all? If there is no such thing as being right, then there is no such thing as being wrong either.
It that... ...right?

In a cosmic sense and a legal sense, it is certainly true that artists need not do anything. Artists don't even need to make products. On the other hand, if we're talking about making artifacts that please audiences, then it turns out that there are, in fact, detectable patterns we may discern and use as rules of thumb.

I am speaking of what stories need to do to work for popular audiences. And my claim here of "need" was quite mild. A story does need, minimally, a "beginning," a "middle," and an "end" which are all of good quality, hanging together to form a whole. I don't see anything controversial in that statement.
No, but a good song should together as a whole. Stairway works as a "whole." Moreover, the song has a beginning, middle, and end which are of good quality. Would you prefer that the end of the song were not of good quality?
I am minimally speaking of those films which have the function and purpose of offering a narrative. Once you enter into narrative, there are narrative rules. Also, we should note that documentaries are also presented in narrative form (i.e., they are presented as stories), so it is curious that you mark a distinction here.

Random footage from a RING camera or telescopic observatory scanning the night sky might also offered up as a film in some film festival and this offering would probably not (not by necessity, but by the likelihood of contingency) make for a very good commercial film precisely for lacking a beginning, middle, and end that fit together in telling some story with a point and themes.

JJ, however, isn't simply talking about how to make conceptual art pieces, but how to tell good stories. JJ's Ted Talk discloses his stance about narrative. These are his rules of story telling. This is how he makes a commercial project for popular consumption. In his mind, a conventional story (i.e., narrative), only needs to be propelled by shiny mysteries with payoffs not really mattering (i.e., the view that emplotment doesn't really matter).

If we were to take your ruthlessly austere stance, we would argue that even JJ is demanding too much of artists in creating this sense of mystery. How dare he say we need a mystery!
If the rules have value, then they also carry the weight of expectation which reflects obligation (e.g., good artists know which rules they can break, they serve as default expectations which frame "violations" in a manner which makes them coherent, they carry a stamp of typicality which offers an example to follow).

Again, your notion of "obligation" is ambiguous. There is no legal or metaphysical obligation for an artist to do anything. If, however, you are attempting to tell a story via a commercial film purposed to entertain audiences and thereby derive profit, then you are going to find that, relative to those goals, there are minimal rules of story telling that should be observed.
And the existence of "free jazz" does not mean that there are not detectable patterns governing the structure of pop songs.
Everyone is interested in these designations. Indeed, you are very exercised at thought that I have a "bad" set of designations regarding art.
Who cares? You're gesturing at a brittle absolutism, a straw target, at best.

Some people like raping and murdering, however, this does not mean that societies are compelled to shrug and "not judge rape" negatively on the basis that some people rather enjoy raping. We can objectively frown at rape and murder even if we do not find that it is absolutely the case that everyone disapproves of it.

Moreover, even if we disagree about particular cases being successes or failures, we will have much wider agreements about what movies should do, about believing that a conventional narrative should have a beginning, middle, and an end, all of which of as good a quality which can be produced and which all fit together as a whole.

A film designed to entertain should entertain. A film that aims to tell a story should have a point. A narrative should take us on a journey. That journey (beginning, middle, and end) will need to feel fitting (bringing in minimal requirements of emplotment). To say this is not dogmatic or restrictive, but rather to observe the obvious. I merely take exception to JJ denying emplotment as a concern in his pursuit of bottomless mystery-making and his action films that barely stay one step ahead of their plot-holes.
You're confusing an appetitive claim with formal properties here. Liking or not liking the taste of ice cream is subjective. A story needing to hang together (fidelity and coherence), on the other hand, is a feature to which humans objectively respond to in a positive manner.
By your own analysis, we might find both statements to be unacceptable or acceptable. No one is really right or wrong, after all. And who is to say that his music is noisy? No doubt, we might invoke your absolutist standard and find people who would deny his music is noisy, thereby, refuting the description.

My only argument would be with some musical JJ Abrams who would give a speech in which he claimed that making music has nothing to do with notes at all, but merely the expectation of notes being played, the possibility of music. And indeed, we might to defend our musical JJ by noting concept pieces like John Cage's 4'33" contain no notes at all.

However, if we consider that such a musical JJ is offering advice to aspiring composers about how to make good popular music, it would be asinine to endorse the idea that we should hold the idea of actually playing notes in contempt (as JJ shows with regard to emplotment). "Not playing note" because the "mystery is all that matters" is not good productive advice for aspiring artists, nor does it reveal to consumers of music "how songs work" and "what makes them tick."