Cracker: Wallywood
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Oh, and:
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Blearggh!!!
Aw, cmon. One of the better kids films. Some pretty heavy duty concepts for...what was I? 7?
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hordes of students scrambling at my door all day.
Well for Christ's sake man. Let them out!
Well, I have plastered over the claw marks and hosed down the floor. Only two left in our foyer, currently watching a re-screening of a rather bonkers Japanese movie Fine,Totally Fine (2009).
Has anyone else seen Taika Waititi's Boy yet? I was rather disappointed with it but I would be interested in other responses as I am currently attempting to set up an interview with him, for an Aust mag.
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Everyone has one song that they'd hold people down and make them listen to: this is mine.
I could never arrive at the final one, but this would be right up there. There's no video, apart from a cheesy shortened version, but this is the only place I can find the audio. Listen out for the Stevie Wonder moment.
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Someone may be a car enthusiast, and have a favourite car. They may not have a specific reason, or they may have a set of reasons that ultimately add up to: it just is – it has that X-factor. That’s a preference; it’s the “best car” for him, but has no particular objective value.
But if he were given two cars to choose from, an economical and fairly roomy sedan and a drag racer, he could tell you which was one the best car for a drag race. And the best car would actually be the best car – it wouldn’t just be best in his opinion. Quality judgements are often subjective if you have no context, just preference. But things quickly become less subjective once a context is introduced, which I think is what Philip and 3410 might be getting at.I think Gio covered this one off fairly well, but I'll add my 2c.
A few years ago, when I was in my early-20's, I had a long conversation with my teenage cousin about whether Terminator 1 or Terminator 2 was the 'better' film. I was arguing for T1, because it aligned more closely with things I thought were important: originality, tone, scripting, intelligence. He was arguing for T2 because it had more of what was important to him: explosions, shiny things, better special effects.
At the time, both of us would have dismissed Citizen Kane out of hand. I mean, really, it's in black and white, grandad!
From an older and more experienced* perspective, if pushed, i'd probably say that Citizen Kane deserves pretty much all the praise that's lavished on it. It's a great film.
Now, your (teenage) car enthusiast may go for the Evo7 over the People Carrier, but his priorities are going to change significantly as his life changes. He's going to start caring about luggage space, economy, reliability as he gets older.
So sure, he's going to be able to tell you what the best car for a drag race is. But in a few years time he may not be all that interested in drag racing.
As someone pointed out a few pages ago, we arrive at judgements of what is 'good' or 'bad' by an overall consensus. And those judgements are going to be affected by how the question is framed.
Is this route for a new road 'good', or 'bad'? Or possibly that's the wrong question to ask - maybe we need to reframe the question and ask whether we need a road or a light railway? And as a society we employ experts not only to provide answers but to frame the questions.
Now, I have a lot of sympathy for the people who view the fuss made over 'Avatar' and 'The Matrix' with bemusement and horror, because it seems that daring to point out that not only is the emperor naked, but he's not particularly well-hung either, can elicit something of a ferocious overreaction.
*I deliberately didn't use the word 'sophisticated' here, because it carries a lot of negative freight with it in this context.
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A wake-up call for McTVNZ:
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3410,
A few years ago, when I was in my early-20's, I had a long conversation with my teenage cousin about whether Terminator 1 or Terminator 2 was the 'better' film. I was arguing for T1, because it aligned more closely with things I thought were important: originality, tone, scripting, intelligence. He was arguing for T2 because it had more of what was important to him: explosions, shiny things, better special effects.
I guess it would be terribly old-fashioned to consider 'false consciousness'.
As someone pointed out a few pages ago, we arrive at judgements of what is 'good' or 'bad' by an overall consensus.
Not me, buddy. I can think for myself. ;) The way you put it, there's no difference between 'good' and 'popular', is there? (genuine question.)
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As someone pointed out a few pages ago, we arrive at judgements of what is 'good' or 'bad' by an overall consensus.
There's critical consensus and there's popular consensus. Critical consensus tells you that the world's film critics keep voting for Citizen Kane. Popular consensus, or at least the IMDB version of it, tells you that The Shawshank Redemption is the best movie ever and that Citizen Kane is worse than LOTR: Two Towers. But you don't get Shawshank -- a film whose cult appeal I've never understood -- on the BFI list. Not one critic voted for it.
Similarly, if you polled the world's book critics you wouldn't get a list that looks like the Whitcoulls top 100.
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A few years ago, when I was in my early-20's, I had a long conversation with my teenage cousin about whether Terminator 1 or Terminator 2 was the 'better' film. I was arguing for T1, because it aligned more closely with things I thought were important: originality
Science fiction author Harlan Ellison sued James Cameron, claiming that the film was plagiarized from the two "The Outer Limits" (1963) episodes that Ellison wrote, namely "The Outer Limits: Soldier (#2.1)" (1964) and "The Outer Limits: Demon with a Glass Hand (#2.5)" (1964). The concept of "Skynet" could also have been borrowed from an Ellison short story called "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream." The suit was settled out of court and newer prints of the film acknowledge Ellison.
Quote from IMDB.com
The strange thing about this discussion is no one is actually linking to full length versions of the films being discussed. It's just another long ad for google owned bootlegger site youtube.com. FTA.
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Science fiction author Harlan Ellison sued James Cameron, claiming that the film was plagiarized from the two "The Outer Limits" (1963) episodes that Ellison wrote, namely "The Outer Limits: Soldier (#2.1)" (1964) and "The Outer Limits: Demon with a Glass Hand (#2.5)" (1964).
Must hunt those down. Be interesting to see what and how much Cameron, er, borrowed.
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As someone pointed out a few pages ago, we arrive at judgements of what is 'good' or 'bad' by an overall consensus.
Not me, buddy. I can think for myself. ;)
Allow me to rephrase: society and subsets thereof arrive at...
The way you put it, there's no difference between 'good' and 'popular', is there? (genuine question.)
Ah, but popular amongst what set or subset? Critics or general public? Teenaged boys or parents of teenaged boys?
I personally don't think tax cuts are a 'good' thing. But they do appear to be terribly popular.
And apparently even critics are allowed to change their mind on a week-to-week basis.
I'm a very different person from the teenage theatregoer who found Peter Shaffer's Equus the most thrilling of plays, and who could never understand why Chekhov's Three Sisters didn't just get on a train to Moscow. There are some playwrights – Chekhov and Beckett among them – who I think you can only truly appreciate once you've experienced the compromises and disappointments of adult life.
I remember feeling almost exactly this on reading 'never let me go'. And subsequently reading a review on Amazon which more or less said 'we had to read this as part of english at school, and I don't understand it, therefore it's rubbish'. Well, of course you don't, because you're at school, and you haven't yet 'experienced the compromises and disappointments of adult life'. Which is what the entire bloody book is about.
If I'd read it as a teen, I'd probably feel the same way. Reading it as an adult, I thought it was excellent. So is it a good book, or a bad book?
I guess it would be terribly old-fashioned to consider 'false consciousness'.
Well, we did start talking about The Matrix, after all. But you might have to expand on that one.
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So is it a good book, or a bad book?
Looking at its accolades, at that Wikipedia page, you would have to say it is a good book. But not one a teenager could as easily grasp. What this entire argument has boiled down is whether there is such a thing as quality independent of personal taste. And of course there is.
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3410 I overtrump your old-fashions. IIRC Aristotle expresses a view on this. He was of the mind that ethics IS politics. Where disagreement on norms happens, whether they be aesthetic or ethical, the only resolution is a political process. Can't remember (my Aristotle is weak, I blame an extremely boring lecturer for killing my interest in the man) if he had a favored process, or if he simply pointed out advantages and disadvantages of the various systems that he had come across, obviously including democracy and various kinds of oligarchy. Maybe he was just being careful, didn't want Philip of Macedon to cut his head off for saying that monarchy is shitty, and didn't want to get his school shut down by demagogues if he said democracy was crap, too.
I see this as ultimately solipsistic. Not something that can be proved or disproved, but something that I resist at an intellectual level for reasons that could in themselves mostly boil down to aesthetic choices. Something about 'consensus on beauty' gives me the shits.
But, and I think this is part of what Gio is saying, the process of discussing beauty/value/goodness is very important. It can help people to see it, and to understand each other. I guess if I have any reservations about that, it's about when those discussions start losing those good aspects and turn the other way. Once the camps have divided, and all the points have been made, and there is no resolution, I tend to see the whole thing as having stagnated and turned into something else, a cheerleading exercise trying to change people's minds through methods that aren't progressive - like boring them to death, or getting enough hot babes to dance for your cause. That is why I made my rather disparaging "desperate bitching" comment. It was probably the wrong thing to do, perhaps some new points were coming up, rather than just new ways of making the old points. And perhaps even new ways of making the old points are worth hearing. Furthermore, there are people who might have simply entered the debate fresh, who are entitled to partake of it every bit as much as we're allowed to have this discussion, even though it is probably the 500 billionth time it has been had in human history.
In my defense, I think that pointing out that debate has stagnated to cheerleading is also worth doing sometimes. Perhaps people hadn't noticed.
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What this entire argument has boiled down is whether there is such a thing as quality independent of personal taste. And of course there is.
Of course, you say?
From where I sit, you've only established that the value judgments of critics differ from those of the general public. But that tells me nothing about inherent quality. Critics are simply a subset of the public that is trained to formulate judgments on certain formal aspects of a film or book etc. I appreciate that this training is valuable, but it's still a form of taste, however sophisticated.
A work of art has no quality without people apprehending it (if humanity was suddenly annihilated, the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel would immediately cease to have any formal and aesthetic characteristics). And people's perceptions and value judgments of those qualities differ. So where does this independence from personal taste come from?
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What this entire argument has boiled down is whether there is such a thing as quality independent of personal taste. And of course there is.
So is there quality independent of group taste?
If so, give me a set of objective tools so I can start measuring stuff.
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3410,
Ah, but popular amongst what set or subset? Critics or general public? Teenaged boys or parents of teenaged boys?
Whatever the relevant subset, if I'm a member of that subset and disagree with the consensus, what does that entail?
But you might have to expand on that one.
Should you give equal weight to an uninformed or misinformed opinion as you would to an informed one? (If so, why? / If not, why not?).
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I appreciate that this training is valuable, but it's still a form of taste, however sophisticated.
I would argue that critical judgment is actually about more than taste; that trained critic you refer to can appreciate a film or a book or a piece of music as well-made without personally liking it. He or she is likely to be better at doing that than the general public due to the very training you talk about.
If you got 10 art critics to assess Richard Taylor's rugby sculpture, they would likely dismiss it as kitsch, as bad art. If 10 people off the street assessed it, their judgements are likely to be less harsh. Which group is right?
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Should you give equal weight to an uninformed or misinformed opinion as you would to an informed one? (If so, why? / If not, why not?).
Depends on the context. In an election, yes. When attempting ascertain what the mysterious growing lump in your armpit is, no.
if I'm a member of that subset and disagree with the consensus, what does that entail?
Nothing. It's a free world.
Or have I misunderstood the question?
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3410,
if humanity was suddenly annihilated, the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel would immediately cease to have any formal and aesthetic characteristics
Likewise would a saw cease to have any purpose if there were no one left to use it, but until then it does. I don't take meaning to be absolutely absolute - like Lennon said, nothing is real - but...
If you'll forgive me, there seems a relatively short route between "Well... who's to say what's 'right' and 'wrong' in this modern world?" and - sorry - fascism.
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If you got 10 art critics to assess Richard Taylor's rugby sculpture, they would likely dismiss it as kitsch, as bad art. If 10 people off the street assessed it, their judgements are likely to be less harsh. Which group is right?
Both. You can't be wrong about taste, can you? Perhaps a better question would be: in deciding whether to commission or not the work, should the council listen to, say, a poll of residents, or a committee of critics? And I would suggest that's not an easy question to answer either. You'd think that perhaps the critics would choose works that stand the test of time better, but then you look at history and it's littered with artists and artworks that weren't well regarded at all by contemporary critics (as opposed to the public) and are now considered masterpieces. Besides, perhaps the residents are more legitimate stakeholders.
As for the BFI vs. the imdb lists of best films, again, I can't see a disparity of objective value nor a problem. They're different lists produced by different categories of people. They are both interesting and useful. They tell us nothing about objective value because there is no such thing.
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3410,
Depends on the context. In an election, yes. When attempting ascertain what the mysterious growing lump in your armpit is, no.
(If so, why? / If not, why not?).
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there seems a relatively short route between "Well... who's to say what's 'right' and 'wrong' in this modern world?" and - sorry - fascism.
Although perhaps the key difference is that the fascists wouldn't allow the debate to take place.
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If you'll forgive me, there seems a relatively short route between "Well... who's to say what's 'right' and 'wrong' in this modern world?" and - sorry - fascism.
Except for the very small detail that Fascism is predicated exactly on forbidding whole categories of people to have a say on what's right and wrong.
ETA: or, what Rich said.
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(If so, why? / If not, why not?).
By asking the question, you have provided the answer.
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3410,
By asking the question, you have provided the answer.
I mean, you're calling for different treatment of the two situations. I'm asking, what is the basis for the difference? (Don't just say "different context"; I mean the actual basis).
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