Burn wrote:If you're depressed over a movie, you might wanna take a step back and re-analyse your priorities in life.
More like depressed over the mentality of people who prefer to shut their brains off and accept the lowest common denominator because expecting more gets you labelled as an elitist snob.
I enjoy watching creative works. So if it gets hard to find creative works that are thoughtful and well-crafted because no one cares about quality (and thus creative types have no incentive to do better), then yes, it can get depressing.
Caelus wrote:Breaking art down quantitatively reduces it to meaningless data, so really, quantitative research regarding art at anything other than the neurological level is absurd.
But, that said, with out quantitative, controlled, experimental research to support our conclusion, nothing we "know" about art is actually certain, and no one can be considered more correct in their opinions than anyone else.
There, that's the sort of explanation I was looking for. Now why you feel the way you do makes much more sense.
I disagree, of course.
There are lots of things that are all or mostly qualitive that still have standards of good/bad. The softer sciences come to mind off-hand (psychology, anthropology, sociology, etc.)
Or how about say, love, which is probably the least quantative thing there is? Let's say we have a guy who gets into his first relationship. And let's say the woman is terrible to him: verbally abuses him, talks about him behind his back, stingy with her affections, spends all his money, etc. But he's genuinely happy with her, because he's in a relationship and she loves him, and he's no longer lonely!
Now, most people would consider that to be bad love and try to intervene and get him away from her. But someone with your attitude would probably argue that since he's happy, it's good love for him, and therefore they have no right to force their personal quality judgements on him.
Now, let's further say that he ends up leaving her anyway for whatever reason. He dates more people down the road, but these girls are actually nice to him and treat him well. And one day he finally ends up with a girl who's kind, affectionate, respects him, all the things we usually associate with "good" love. And he'll probably look back and realize how horrible that first relationship was because of the way she treated him; it's just that at the time he didn't have enough experience to know there was better.
Now, that's obviously a much more serious subject matter than what we have here, but the underlying principle is the same. Someone may think ROTF is a good movie based on their limited understanding of movies. But eventually they study filmmaking, and watch many more movies to analyze them, and see movies that are much better than ROTF. Then, armed with more experience they look back and realize that ROTF actually wasn't a good movie, it's just that they didn't have enough knowledge to draw from at the time.
They may still
enjoy the movie, of course, as cool cars, explosions, and hot women will always have a certain appeal. But as we learn more over time, we realize that earlier quality judgments based on incomplete knowledge/experience were wrong.
And
that is what Ebert was getting at in his article.
Caelus wrote:Yeah... scientific research that yields purely observational, correlational, and qualitative results is bad science. You can't draw hard conclusions from it. Good enough for Cosmo maybe, but it doesn't get the space shuttle in orbit.
Thanks for pointing out that the rigor applied by members of your field is at its best on par with that applied in my field at its worst.
Uh... what kind of science are you studying then? I mean, the scientific method consists of observing things (...observational, obviously), coming up with a hypothesis that is a possible explanation for why the things you observed are the way they are (correlational), doing more tests to see if the results match the ones your hypothesis predicts you'll get (more observational), and then judging your hypothesis' quality based on how well it does or doesn't fit (qualitive). And then later on someone may find out that there's a theory that seems to fit the (observational) data better than your theory did (qualitive & correlational).
Caelus wrote:By your definition of quality, a definition which is contingent on an inflated estimation of that definition's validity.
Is this really that hard to understand?
Well, yes, seeing as how it's not "my" definition of quality. Plus, you still haven't addressed my example by explaining how a well-crafted movie suddenly becomes bad in quality merely because the subject matter isn't my cup of tea, something that comes down entirely to personal tastes.
Caelus wrote:Furthermore, you still haven't provided me with any evidence of solid conclusions, hard facts which define or describe artistic quality based on methodologically sound research. Nothing that establishes that the grounds for analysis, the basis for distinguishing between good and bad can be definitively tied to real properties of the art.
Because it's not like I can provide a handful of links that provide a comprehensive list of all criteria for good/bad creative work. Since you claim to have studied creative craft, you are therefore aware that there are thousands of books, essays, analyses, classes, etc. on the many different aspects of the many different creative arts. Just go to your library, go to the creative arts section, and dig in.
If you absolutely need a namedrop, I suggest "How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy" by Orson Scott Card as something related to Transformers (in the sense that TF is scifi, though it's not specifically mentioned, plus it gives good analyses for writing in general) as merely a good place to start out of thousands of possibilities.
Caelus wrote:First, agreeing that there were a lot of mistakes doesn't equate to agreeing to a holistic judgment of the movie's quality.
It at the very least equates to the fact that even people who liked the movie recognize that there are standards outside of personal tastes/enjoyment that compared to which certain things can even be considered mistakes.
Caelus wrote:Second, individuals who like a movie, but seem compelled to deem it "bad" in spite of this are likely using the same fractured definition of artistic quality you are, the same definition I reject.
And there are lots of people who reject that the Earth is round or that we landed on the moon... point? Just because you personally reject a definition doesn't mean that the definition is actually incorrect.
Caelus wrote:All that tells you is everyone in a similar group of people was measuring the same thing. It does not tell you what they were measuring, or how valid their measurement is.
Most critics whose reviews I read are very thorough in explaining what they're measuring in terms of quality and why those measurements are valid in terms of standards for good quality creativity.
Caelus wrote:Also, you aren't using a random sample, so obviously your results are going to be wildly skewed.
That's like saying that if I want to know about the effectiveness of something like angioplasty surgery, my sample and results are flawed because I only asked people educated in the procedure instead of also asking people who know little to nothing about it.
Caelus wrote:Just because you are making two separate judgments and calling one "quality" doesn't make you objective.
It makes the quality judgment objective. If quality were subjective, then my definition of good/bad would always match up with my personal tastes and biases, because there would be no gauge beyond those personal preferences to look at.
In contrast, you're the one who can't divorce his personal tastes from quality, implying things like "Because I enjoy cool cars, hot women, and explosions, anything that contains only those must therefore be good quality creativity."
Caelus wrote:Not necessarily. You are making subjective evaluations, but you refuse to acknowledge it, and so continue to endorse faulty definitions of quality even when logic refutes the validity of those definitions.
You haven't given me any logic that refutes the validity of those definitions, merely that you personally reject any evidence of their validity.
Plus... let me put it this way. Rotten Tomatoes lists 213 reviews. On top of that there's however many TF fans on this board and elsewhere. Even the ones who've liked it have identified many of the same flaws and problems. Doesn't it kind of make more sense to realize there's standards for good/bad quality, rather than thinking that a few hundred people from all different countries, states, and cultures have somehow all managed to have similar personal tastes on what makes for good quality? And that's just looking at ROTF, let alone creative work in general.
Caelus wrote:1) There are no objective criteria for creative work, as evidenced by your failure to cite research which logically and quantitatively defines and validates the criteria used.
*points again to the creative arts of any library or bookstore*
There's thousands of books that talk about various techniques, including, yes, some hard data on what visual or narrative effects they produce. Go pick any one whose cover tickles your fancy.
Not to mention, for instance, the whole point of something like test screenings, for instance, is to check and see if people laugh in the right places, cry in the right places, etc. Or advertisers who put out different kinds of ads on the web and then gather data on which ones draw the most mouse clicks and purchases. Etc. Etc.
Basically, if you can't deal with liking something that's poor quality without feeling insulted or ego-bruised, I'm afraid that's entirely your own problem. Trying to claim there's no such thing as quality in entertainment to justify the matter is just eye-twitching to those of us who have studied the creative arts. It also makes me hope that people like you who refuse to educate themselves on creativity and/or be critical and thoughtful about quality are in the minority.
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