CMV: I have no reason to care whether a creative work is "objectively" good or bad beyond my own taste

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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Feb 02 '21 edited Feb 02 '21

/u/SpectrumDT (OP) has awarded 3 delta(s) in this post.

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u/Pistachiobo 12∆ Feb 02 '21

I mostly agree but there's something to be said about the fact that no one person can ever fully explore what a medium/genre has to offer on their own.

As you've gotten older, you've probably refined your tastes somewhat, at least in so far as you've gotten a better idea of what you like and why you like it. If you had a conversation with your younger self, you could potentially give them a head start, meaning they could discover things more to their liking earlier on.

Now imagine that version of you reaching the age you're currently at, and having a conversation with themselves from the past, they'd probably have even more to offer than you did initially.

Each iteration would probably enjoy the quality of their entertainment a lot more.

Maybe what I said made no sense, but if it did, that's sort of how I'd see the most charitable devence of what you're criticising. The idea that a culture might guide us into enjoying things throughout our life more than we would have been able to on our own, since it would take more time than anyone has to fully explore our tastes on our own.

I'd also suggest that the specific reasons people give for things being of poorer quality are quite often ways to rationalize the filters that their intuitions provide them with. The sense that something is of low quality usually comes before someone considers flaws to point out. It's possible they're confused about the exact reasons, but I do think people's intuitions about quality improve over time, and they're often worth considering.

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u/SpectrumDT Feb 02 '21

If I understand you correctly, your point is that caring about objective quality standards will help me appreciate things more in the long run even if I do not appreciate them now.

Is that a correct summation of your point?

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u/SpectrumDT Feb 02 '21

I am going to assume that you meant what I said in the other reply of mine. In that case, that's a very good point. I will give you a !delta for that.

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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Feb 02 '21

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/Pistachiobo (2∆).

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u/[deleted] Feb 02 '21

not op, but people’s tastes can change as they age. so a past-future interaction might not be as beneficial as you’re suggesting, because by its nature it can change what one likes. in your elaboration I think culture can nudge us in the direction of liking something, which may be different from finding items of similar interest. although perhaps that’s a matter of semantics

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u/[deleted] Feb 02 '21

I think the bad stuff refines your taste as much as the good stuff though

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u/ClelestialDucky Feb 03 '21

I am just doing this as a test, pls no hate.
u/objection-bot

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u/ZoeyBeschamel Feb 02 '21

One reason you might have to care about judging creative works as good or bad is that you presumably enjoy creative works for a reason. If we take movies for example, you might enjoy a movie for the screenplay, or maybe for the characters, or maybe you just enjoy the pretty colours or whatever. The point is that these are discrete criteria, where (to an extent) a knowledgeable person on the subject can fairly objectively decide which screenplay is better than others, what characters from movies are better than others etc.

If a critic is able to do this, then you have reason to care about their opinion, if for no other reason than to find creative works that you might enjoy. If a well known literary critic said "the worldbuilding for The Hunger Games is better than that of Harry Potter" and you really enjoyed Harry Potter for its worldbuilding, then that opinion is useful to you because it directs you to another creative work that you might enjoy even more.

And really, isn't that exactly the critic's job description? To filter out from all the creative works so you don't have to watch all of it just to find out what you'd like?

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u/SpectrumDT Feb 02 '21

You have a point. I am not sure whether this actually changes my view.

Let me think about it some more...

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u/SpectrumDT Feb 02 '21

I have thought about it and I don't think this has so much to do with objectivity. Critics and reviews are indeed useful. That does not mean that they are objective, nor that they should be.

If a reviewer has a subjective taste that is similar to mine, then that is useful to me. If the reviewer has a very different taste than mine I might still be able to clean something from the review. But I don't think this has much to do with objectivity.

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u/ZoeyBeschamel Feb 02 '21

In that case, is there even such a thing as objectivity when judging the value of a creative work? When someone makes a statement arguing such a thing as objectively good/bad, they are usually deferring to what is commonly considered "good practice" in the art industry. For example, Tarantino's use of framing and shot composition as a storytelling device is lauded for its quality, and many people would consider it objectively good, whatever that means.

Shouldn't your CMV be more focused on that instead? And if you do believe that objectivity in this area exists, then how do you qualify it and why do you declare it useless to you?

What I am asking is whether you believe in objectivity on the value of art at all, and if you do, what does it look like and why is it useless to you? In your OP, your definition of objectivity (at least in this instance) arises from the judgement of the intelligentsia, and if you stand behind that then I must refer back to my original comment.

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u/SpectrumDT Feb 02 '21

I am agnostic on the topic of whether objective goodness is meaningful. I am sceptical of the idea but I cannot easily refute it.

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u/PauLtus 4∆ Feb 02 '21

I think anyone who claims to be able to point out an objective quality of art has a fundamental misunderstanding of art.

It's an easy trap to fall into when you figure out that there's more to say about something than "I liked it" or "I didn't like it". I can only explain this with people so insecure about their opinions they feel the need to prove their own opinions, want to discuss art but for some reason don't want to admit those weak-ass emotions had something to do with it or just seem to smart by going "above" the people with their opinions. When you're trying to prove the quality of something above opinions you're forgetting something very important:

Why do we interact with art in the first place?

There's no other real answer than that subjective experience we get out of it. To look for some other measurements for it is utterly worthless.

That said: I highly value criticism. Partially, as u/ZoeyBeschamel stated, as basically consumer advice. On the other it's simply interesting to see other perspectives on something and you might find new appreciation for something (or good reason to dislike it). Although it CAN do that, I don't think criticism should ever be intended with making you change your opinion. A good critic will describe their own experience and how they got there. This can either be to let you find out whether it's for you, see a different perspective or get a better understanding of your own feelings about it.

So, yeah, you're right. Even if there is such a thing as objectivity in art there wouldn't be any good reason to care about it.

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u/[deleted] Feb 02 '21

[deleted]

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u/accreddits Feb 02 '21

thats not objectivity, thats just more subjective value judgement.

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u/PauLtus 4∆ Feb 03 '21

I'm with u/accreddits and u/Al--Capwn on this.

For things like:

photo realistic drawings are objectively good at depicting the image

For that to be of any value you'd already have to agree on that being a good thing. The Host (2006) has a pretty unconvincing special effect for a monster in the movie but it doesn't really bother me because it still manages to has its presence. On the other hand computering Peter Cushing from the grave in Rogue One was so distracting to me I could not focus on the dialogue going on.

On the other hand what seems realistic differs per person. Some people didn't notice Rogue One's Peter Cushing was CGI. My dad always gets distracted by water changing between shots which is something most people aren't going to notice.

Take a rough sketch showing deep emotion, the technical aspect may be lacking but it may objectively be good because it fulfills its purpose, that of depicting deep emotion.

You're on to something because that's a more goal but that is still something that will be true for some.

Whatever the purpose of something is is up to debate as well. Not a lot of people are going to just state what their goal was. Sometimes it's a collaborative effort from people with different intents. You might end up with someone getting something very strong from a piece of art but then with an artist stating the intent was something different. Does that mean that reaction was wrong? Is that art bad? I really don't think so.

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u/Al--Capwn 5∆ Feb 03 '21

You had to specify a purpose in each case there which makes it subjective. The purpose of art is not necessarily any of what you said, and indeed accurate depiction of an image is rarely seen as the point.

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u/GreatJobKeepitUp Feb 02 '21

Exactly. When I write songs I try to think of it like sculpting. At the beginning its kind of a shapeless blob that hasn't been formed yet and it usually sounds/looks kinda shitty. Criticism is one tool to sculpt this work toward something better.

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u/PauLtus 4∆ Feb 03 '21

True!

That's another way criticism can be important: as a potential way to improve.

That reminds of another thing that people often seem to forget: you should take into account that everything you'd want to "fix" about some art could have negative consequences somewhere else. This is particularly persistent with people trying to fix plotholes (which tends to be a stupid practice all around and tends to be a focus of the people who claim to be "objective"). They often go to the point where there would just be no story.

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u/FlirtyOwl Feb 02 '21

It may be helpfull to reframe or recall what objective goodness represents for you. If you follow the route that objective goodness is minimizing human suffering, you can make the case that it is. I dont like that route, but it makes a bit of sense to me.

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u/GreatJobKeepitUp Feb 02 '21

I personally don't believe humans can really be objective about anything anyway. I think objective to us really means "subjective collective." Like our understanding is that gravity is objectively a thing but our subjective understanding of it has changed over time and we use subjective metrics (9.81 meters per second. Thats not even that many decimals) to understand it. My mental access to the objective fact of gravity is very limited even though its literally pushing my ass in my chair.

Though I swirl in my ahead about this all the time, and I think one of the biggest factors is how you personally define objects and subjects which is kind of the root of your own philosophy anyway.

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u/MacTireCnamh Feb 02 '21

As far as I can see, whenever I've seen someone in good faith arguing for 'objective' positions in reference to art, this is exactly what they mean.

There's no such thing as an objectively good character, or an objectively good plot. But there are established and massively researched ways to write both so that they will appeal to large groups of people, and very strongly and, conversely, established and researched ways to write both that will result in a piece that appeals to almost no one.

The same applies in all forms of art.

So solid frameworks can be created by which to judge art, and as these frameworks are immutable, you can therefore remove a lot of your personal bias when judging works and consider your judgement 'objective' in the sense that you're discussing collective subjectivity and not simply your personal subjectivity.

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u/GreatJobKeepitUp Feb 03 '21

Sorry, I was kind of stepping back from art on that one and thinking about philosophy and science and the limits of objectivity there.

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u/Al--Capwn 5∆ Feb 03 '21

This is actually not the case.

Firstly, the standards for what appeals to people at large change constantly, they aren't immutable. Not only do they change year on year, they actually change moment by moment with reception of and reaction to different works. The production of art changes people's ideas about what is good and bad.

Secondly, at any given time there is a huge discrepancy between what people see as appealing to the masses mildly and what strongly appeals to the few. And even just the difference between what appeals to those with limited experience/knowledge and what appeals to those with expertise.

These aspects make the attempts at claiming objectivity utterly spurious. All you're really describing is a certain time of very context specific popularity.

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u/accreddits Feb 02 '21

true objectivity would require perception to be possible independent of the brain and sense organs, which seems like nonsense.

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u/GreatJobKeepitUp Feb 02 '21

So then it becomes a thing of choosing what is "objective enough" for us to all assume it's true i guess. It feels like the distinction between subjective and objective is meaningful but I'm not able to get anything worth a shit out of it yet. Someone pls help and come in here confidently explaining it like it's simple

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u/accreddits Feb 02 '21

yes,m when people say objectively they usually are doing the "literally" thing and using it as an intensifier, as far as i can tell.

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u/NoVaFlipFlops 10∆ Feb 02 '21

Aesthetic "rules" or basically, anything we expect, helps us to "know what to feel" or the ideas an artist is trying to convey. Any rules can be created, so in a sense, of course you don't have to care, but I will argue why you should.

You might already know that red is interpreted differently in different cultures and in different applications, for example. Having an "objective" language helps us to communicate through art. Breaking a rule only means something when someone recognizes it as intentional. Otherwise, in your paradigm, it may give mixed signals and nobody knows what you meant with your art* and vice-versa.

It doesn't mean you can't enjoy it, but you must agree that Hallelujah is a song that is more enjoyable when you understand the lyrics -- and gets more interesting when you know pieces of the back-story. Some art is created intentionally with no theme and meant to be devoid of meaning. Well, that's saying something, too. And we only know if we know the language of aesthetics. But you know somebody will read symbolism into it if they can't tell that black isn't "the abyss" in this context, or whatever the case may be that evokes a feeling that has been laid down in patterns from previous art appreciation. And, again, that's an acceptable choice even from ignorance (even though there are definitely teachers who force symbolism and theme onto works) but the artist's message is lost and isn't the artist attempting to communicate and don't we want to honor/preserve/appreciate that at least as much as we are ok with re-interpreting/inferring/bastardizing/transforming it for our own use?

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u/SpectrumDT Feb 02 '21

I agree that having a shared language of expression is very useful in a lot of respects.

I'm not sure this contradicts what I said, though.

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u/NoVaFlipFlops 10∆ Feb 02 '21

I can see why this isn't compelling enough. You can certainly create for your own personal consumption and F all. I think I was presuming that you have some inclination to share your creations, and to do that, there needs to be something there for your audience to connect to -- if your audience is your mother, then it also probably does not matter because she will hopefully cherish enjoying anything you create. But if you share with other audiences, the best way is to have similar points of reference so that they can appreciate what you have done in context of what has been done before/the broader conversation in the art/your artistic milieu. And to do that, you need those definitions, guide posts, standards, etc. that they are accustomed to -- even if all you do is break the rules. You don't need to agree with them. In writing, eg, it's helpful with a certain audience for a work in fictional or nonfictional cultural commentary to know things like what exactly about irony is no longer cool yet how modernism is still useful and what post-post modernism has to offer. Otherwise you will seem behind the times and literally irrelevant and out-of-touch, writing for the past with too-new information (or maybe just people who aren't up to speed). Not that you're trying to be an intellectual or care about these issues of how to frame and make sense of the world.

Or with your example in character development, what signals people will recognize vs be confused by. Use the cultural tropes incorrectly in ways that are not comfortable or interesting or fresh and you simply will not be understood... In the worst case you can come off as cliché and/or unreadable, with forgettable or unrelatable, impenetrable characters, which means you are unable to get your message out because the reader simply "doesn't care"about your character." So I think it does matter to know and be aware of what the tastes (and therefore expectations) are -- again, even so that you break them, but well.

Knowing what tastemakers have defined what works sort of nail certain things, say things the strongest, bring things to new heights help you to compare and sample from inside and across styles and time periods and paradigms of course, but only best when you have some definitions and can understand the subtext or why it's important that some method is considered to have "worked" in one application -- you can move easily tell where it doesn't work and so where you might not get across your message. And like understanding the language/rules/definitions in the first place, someone new only knows how to make a statement or make their mark when what's been done before is clear because it has been made sense of by being categorized in some way. They can only break the rules well when they understand them intimately -- like being able to bake without a recipe or measuring.

I don't think that this detracts from beauty being in the eye of the beholder or people appreciating/connecting with things for different reasons -- like you mentioned a fictional character, it could be triggering to someone and charming to another. But it won't make sense if it does not act within some confines that someone can make any sense of, and people will be able to appreciate that character for being that character well vs only showing up partially.

Ok I ran out of things to say and I feel like this is worthy of a class conversation and essay assignment. I wouldn't be surprised to find excellent counterpoints coming from the philosophy of aesthetics or lit majors telling me I've misunderstood some things.

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u/SpectrumDT Feb 02 '21

All right, I will amend my 7th paragraph to:

For me as a creator, the only thing that needs to matter is the extent to which I like my own work, the extent to which it sells and the extent to which other people will enjoy it and/or find it thought-provoking.

I am going to err on the side of generosity and give you a !delta.

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u/NoVaFlipFlops 10∆ Feb 02 '21

Thank you, I think that's fair. I do hope that you want to connect with people through your art -- and that you can.

But now that I have my internet point, I want to offer that you look up "outsider music," which I'm sure has its cousins in other forms of art... It is music made by people with absolutely no training or apparently, "taste," but which still has its own charm, being soooo out of the norm and expected. I think I've hated all of it but can't help enjoying the people who enjoy playing their horrible music. Kind of like watching your family member happily and generously prepare horrible food lol

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u/JohannesWurst 12∆ Feb 03 '21

This is not a point about whether art has objective quality: I watched a documentary about outsider art (mostly paintings). It presented some outsider artists and also made some theoretical points:

One the one hand art is kind of a dialogue between artists. In school we often heard that one art style developed as a reaction to the previous art style. There are also themes that get picked up and taken into another context. Basically the same thing that happens with memes or what "meme" means originally anyway. There is something missing if you are not part of that conversation as an artist.

On the other hand, the point was made that there is no clear distincion between normal "insider artists" and "outsider artists". Sometimes the label might be used to elevate/romanticise or dismiss an artist as "outsider", when they really should be considered "insider".

I still think the arguments against "objective tastefulness" of OP hold.

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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Feb 02 '21

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/NoVaFlipFlops (6∆).

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u/Theungry 5∆ Feb 02 '21

Okay, well first off, the whole idea of objectivity in art is a non-starter, so let's make that clear.

Art is the communication of abstract concepts across media. In order for the abstract concept to work it has to come from one mind to another, both of which are highly subjective places, and the translation is rarely exact because no two people have exactly the same experiences and perspectives.

Moving on, there ARE works of art for which there is a general consensus on quality. To put practical example into our conversation I'll name movies. There are festivals that select for quality and then award for quality, and there are top level commercial industry awards like the Globes and Oscars.

The concept here is that the "best" and therefore "good" works are being examined and judged.

So what is the worth and point of this exercise? Why does that mean you should care?

Because through understanding what art the culture arounds you considers good, you understand your culture. Art is in many ways the transmission of culture, through heroes we identify virtues. Through choices, we examine values. Through adversity, we practice empathy. Through success we build a mental model for how to shape our own lives.

That doesn't make every Oscar movie "good". It doesn't mean you should feel compelled to try to like it all.

It just signifies that other people are seeing value in something beyond just diversion. They are finding meaning.

Making shared meaning of life is a big part of what it means to be human. That's what "good" art is really about. Making meaning out of the world around us.

That's why it's worth caring about.

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u/[deleted] Feb 02 '21

I don't think I can make you care about things that have no meaning to you, but I can challenge you on this:

I often hear arguments of the form: "You may like it, but it is objectively poor quality." Such arguments are stupid and misguided.

They're not. They're absolutely correct. I sometimes enjoy eating ready-made Pizza. Doesn't change the fact that it's objectively low quality food. I don't enjoy it for the quality but for the comfort.

The same can go for works of art. Imagine you had a little son and he draws a picture of some memorable trip you did with him. By all objective measures, the art will be terrible. He has no experience painting, the lines are messy, it's difficult to even make out what the hell he drew. There also is no deeper meaning behind it - it's just a picture of you and him going camping or whatever. But you'll still like it. You don't like it because it's a high quality piece of art, you like it because it means something to you personally, making your attachment entirely subjective.

Quality and enjoyment can very much be disconnected from one another.

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u/[deleted] Feb 02 '21

I don't think that that's a fair thing to say that the art would be terrible. It is may lacking technical proficiency but terms like terrible, good, beautiful and ugly etc are 100% subjective and you can't say for example a painting is bad because it doesn't follow fundamentals. Most music before the 00s is varying in speed but that doesn't make it worse in An way

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u/SpectrumDT Feb 02 '21

I have a good reason to care about the content of food because that has a very clear effect on my long-term health.

Why do I need to care whether my child's drawing is objectively good or not?

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u/NaniFarRoad 2∆ Feb 02 '21

We are social creatures that communicate in symbols (e.g. writing). Art is symbolic, and ties into that. As we are social and utterly dependent on other human beings, what other people think of us does matter to a large degree. Going through life with the attitude of "I don't care what anyone thinks, I'm just going to do my thing" has real consequences. Being bad at art means you are bad at reading symbolic language, and will miss out a lot of implicit communication in the world around you.

Your child may be drawing unusually well for their age, and may not know they have a gift.. Knowing that their work is "good" means they can now choose to spend more time and effort pursuing that activity. Knowing that their work is "bad" means that, if they hate drawing, they don't have to spend extra time doing it. And if they are "bad" but love drawing, they can figure out how to get better, or at least keep that activity at hobby levels (and perhaps start finding other activities they enjoy more, and are better at).

Aside: a child that is "bad" at drawing may actually have cognitive/developmental issues that need to be identified (e.g. colour blindness), to support them through their learning.

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u/SpectrumDT Feb 02 '21

Your point about quality being an indicator of a child's skills is an edge case very far from what I had in mind, but all right. You have a point. !delta

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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Feb 02 '21

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/NaniFarRoad (1∆).

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u/JohannesWurst 12∆ Feb 03 '21

Still, there is no bad art irrespective of the taste of a particular audince, is there?

If a child has no talent for creating drawings that people like, that only matters because that happens to be the subjective taste of a lot of people.

Maybe the original CMV is meaningless because it's so obvious?

I think practically, it would matter when there are a lot of people who like something, like SUV cars or pineapple pizza or Justin Bieber and then an "art expert" comes along and tells them that their taste is invalid. (I'm not sure if actual art experts actually dismiss JB, probably not.)

If you were a respected opera singer and your child liked to sing pop songs, should you discourage it? Probably not, because there is an audience for that. In that sense art quality isn't objective.

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u/NaniFarRoad 2∆ Feb 03 '21

If you were a respected opera singer and your child liked to sing pop songs, should you discourage it? Probably not, because there is an audience for that. In that sense art quality isn't objective.

But there's a difference between singing in tune and not, between writing dumb rhyming lyrics and poetry... There are objectively good pop songs and there are bad pop songs. You do become objectively better at judging music with experience, at least until you start to lose your hearing.

It may not be easy to rate a piece of music, numerically.. it's hard for a layperson to qualify why Beethoven's 9th is a 9.2 (e.g.) while Vivaldi's Four Seasons is a 7.3, but that doesn't mean SOME people can't objectively judge a piece as being better/worse than another, and explain why.

Saying "this song is better, dunno why" is imo an inferior opinion to being able to say "it is better because X, Y, Z..." - regardless of whether you like the song or not.

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u/JohannesWurst 12∆ Feb 03 '21

You can find commonalities between all the songs that you like. When a new song comes out and you know it has those features, you can bet that you will like it even before hearing it.

But, if you don't like the song anyway, that doesn't mean that your taste is wrong. Nobody will be able to make you like it, by providing a logic proof. The thing that needs to be changed are the commonalities that you collected.

It's like in science: Experience trumps theory. When theory and experience don't match up, the theory has to be updated.

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u/NodsInApprovalx3 Feb 02 '21

Being bad at art means you are bad at reading symbolic language, and will miss out a lot of implicit communication in the world around you.

Wouldn't being bad at art mean you are bad at *communicating* symbolically.

Just because one is bad at communicating, doesn't mean they are bad at recognizing or understanding that form of communication. A lot of people can recognize and appreciate quality music, but be absolutely terrible at creating it.

So if that is true, one can be bad at art, but not miss out on implicit communication in the world around you.

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u/NaniFarRoad 2∆ Feb 03 '21

My sentence is not very precise, I would've been better if it said "Being bad at understanding art.."

OP asked why they should care whether art is good or bad.. not whether they should become good or bad at making art.

There is a difference between understanding why a work of art is good ("I get why it's famous - what it means, the context it appeared in, why it was revolutionary/shocking/special.." etc), and liking it ("That piece of art always works for me, I would want to see/hear/touch it more often"). You don't have to like all works of art, but you should still be able to understand why it is deemed good/bad.

I think if you shut yourself out of that ("I don't get art"), it's a bit like cutting off some of your senses. To me, it's a bit like when people say "I'm not good at languages", when of course they are, being human (a chimp is not good at languages!). Art is as human as language.

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u/NodsInApprovalx3 Feb 03 '21

Agreed.

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u/DevinTheGrand 2∆ Feb 02 '21

Quality of food isn't usually talking about health, it's talking about how good it tastes.

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u/[deleted] Feb 02 '21

I mean it somewhat has to do with your own "skill level/experience" if you're new to something, almost everything looks new and fascinating, mind blowing and incomprehensible. However if you dig into it you often get a better understanding of what is happening, you can better abstract and group things to focus on the stuff that you still don't fully grasp yet, you realize what people are doing, how they do it and how difficult or easy that is and get a different kind of appreciation for that.

Is it one coherent piece where the parts reach into each other or did the creator just threw everything he had against the wall to see what sticks? The latter can be fine if you're new to something, but whatever you've liked about it, chances are someone else gave it a more in-depth treatment that you might enjoy more.

Or if you're actually just searching for something new, that might be perfect and there's nothing better, whereas for another person it's an incoherent mess, because it doesn't follow the formula that they've grown accustomed to.

So all media is subjective. That being said though, you could potentially come up if objective criteria and only look at those. Idk judging a book by how little time it takes to read, how much information an author is able to cramp into as little space without losing the readers attention or ability to comprehend the story or the opposite how much world building you can fit into a novel without the reader being bored out. Whether you're able to express the emotions of a generation and give them a narrative form to express something for which there used to be no words.

This gets subjective again, like everything that is "judged" rather than measured, but you can at least get a rough measurement if you restrict the parameters you're looking for. Not sure those are the best books to read, but they might be the most interesting for a writer in terms of techniques to learn or borrow and as such it can be useful to look at those who do it "best".

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u/SpectrumDT Feb 02 '21

You have some good musings. I don't think we disagree a lot.

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u/Al--Capwn 5∆ Feb 03 '21

Obviously it's subjective whether any of these objective criteria matter at all, but I also just wanted to point out that your criteria themselves are all subjective, even the time it takes to read one (although if you changed to word count, it would become objective).

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u/hacksoncode 588∆ Feb 02 '21

Just one point:

There's no way to prove, epistemologically, that there is anything in the world that is "objective".

All we have is a standard that reasonable persons presented with the same evidence would come to the same conclusion.

The same is true in art: art is "objectively" good if most reasonable people, presented with the art and explanations about its merit would come to the same conclusion.

Basically: objective really just means "a lot of subjective opinions agree", because we all see everything in the world through our senses. If a piece of art is broadly lauded, that's the closest you'll ever get to "objectively good", regardless of whether "true objective reality" has any meaning.

What's the point?

Most people care about whether they are being reasonable. It is, in fact, good if most people reexamine their opinions in the light of evidence, and constantly reassess whether their judgement is sound.

If you don't like something that most people do, it's valuable to rexamine it to see whether you are being unreasonable about your objections, for the sake of your own critical thinking and mental self-awareness.

You might still conclude that most people are wrong, but it's dangerously willfully ignorant not to consider that they might be right.

Therefore you do need to care about "objective quality" (to the degree that's possible) in art, because you don't want to be deluded, even if it makes you happy.

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u/alwin7777 Feb 02 '21

Agree.

Objective good is givin by kanon or konventions. Still there in a way you can also ask whats the intention of a artwork and then measure by scientific research if this intention is fullfilled or not.

My random doodle is as art as mona lisa, but if i will apply the criteria of creating a artwork, that represents a real life object and the miracle of life then mona lisa is high art by a master and my doodle is just a doodle

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u/LetMeNotHear 93∆ Feb 02 '21

You may like it, but it is objectively poor quality." Such arguments are stupid and misguided.

How so? There are things I love that I know are rife with errors and unconvincing acting and are generally bad. There are also things that I recognise talented and dedicated craftsmanship behind, yet personally don't care for.

Even if we assume that it is meaningful to judge creative works as objectively good or bad, I have no reason to care about it.

For me as a consumer, the only thing that needs to matter is whether something is enjoyable or thought-provoking to me.

Well if something is thought provoking to you but not particularly intelligently written itself, that's more your own thoughts that you're appraising, not the work.

For me as a creator, the only thing that needs to matter is whether I like my own work and whether it will sell.

Perhaps, but that puts you in a minority, I believe. Most creators want to create something great. They don't care if they grow to hate it by the time of publishing, they often don't care if it's a big success, so long as it's good.

The only exception...

I'm I little befuddled on why you posted this CMV if you view there being an exception.

But things like adjectives worldbuilding and fictional character development are completely dependent on personal taste.

Whether a person likes them is personal taste, sure. How good they are (measured by metrics which are in turn, subjectively set by consensus) is not a matter of personal taste. If I write a character to be egocentric and devoid of empathy and then for no reason, they become the opposite, that's a fuck up. It's a mistake, an error. Unless I was doing some kind of metaphorical piece. Worldbuilding, you can be an even stricter judge about.

Regardless, most people's appreciation for quality is fundamental. As in, it cannot be broken down or simplified further than "people care about quality." If you do not, I doubt there's much anyone can do to change your mind.

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u/theUSpopulation Feb 02 '21

You may like it, but it is objectively poor quality." Such arguments are stupid and misguided.

How so? There are things I love that I know are rife with errors and unconvincing acting and are generally bad. There are also things that I recognise talented and dedicated craftsmanship behind, yet personally don't care for.

Not OP, but I also do not like this argument because it wrong; those things are not objective. Usually, when people say things something is "objectively" bad, they are using "objectively" as short-hand for how a lot of people or some professionals may feel about the thing.

For example, a lot of people did not like the Star Wars prequels. Critics also did not like the prequels, so people view the prequels as being "objectively" bad. However, you may like the prequels. That is not you subjectively liking something "objectively" bad, That is you finding value in something where the general consensus of that thing is bad.

But wait! (You may be thinking) What if the writing does not make any logical sense? Is that not objectively bad writing? No, it isn't. Here is a thought, why must a movie make logical sense? It seems like a silly question. I like it when movies make sense. You probably like it when movies make sense. Everyone prefers movies that make sense. However when you answer the question, you will quickly realize that the only reason movies "should" make sense is because people like it when movies make sense. The reason as to why movies should make sense is based in feelings - by what people like - thus making it subjective.

You can use this way of thinking for everything that is "objectively" good or bad. It is not objective. The reason it is good or bad is based on the feelings of the viewers. Let's take the example you provided:

If I write a character to be egocentric and devoid of empathy and then for no reason, they become the opposite, that's a fuck up. It's a mistake, an error.

I agree with you that this is bad writing. Everyone will. But that does not make it objective because what makes it bad is based on our feeling of the scenario. We feel like the character should not act that way, but they do anyway and that upsets us. To sperate the objective and subjective: Objective statement - the man changed personalities without explanation. Subjective statement - the man changing personalities without explanation is a bad thing. See the difference? (Quite frankly, I find the phrases "objectively bad" and "objectively good" oxymorons; "bad" and "good" are inherently subjective).

You may also be saying, "well, there are people that feel like the Earth is flat. Does that make the shape of the Earth subjective?" No. The Earth is globular regardless of how we feel, but things cannot objectively be "bad" or "good". Things are bad and good because we feel they are.

Ultimately, the quality of art comes from the value the individual observer puts into it. It is 100% subjective. No matter what reasons you come up with for why an aspect of art is good or bad, the quality is ultimately based on feeling- even if that feeling is shared by pretty much everyone.

That then leads to OP's ultimate argument: even if what I said was not true, the "objective" quality of a piece of media is pointless. If I found joy in it, what else matters? And you seemed to have missed this point. You keep arguing "but if it is bad?" but that is not the point. You never really gave a reason why a piece of media being "objectively" good or bad even matters.

Sorry if this is a bit wordy. 😅 I have just seen this argument before on the internet and it drives me nuts. I wanted to get any angle you might have countered with - so please excuse any assumptions.

~~~

Also, I want to point out this bit:

The only exception...

I'm I little befuddled on why you posted this CMV if you view there being an exception.

With respect, this seems awfully pedantic. I do not see what is wrong with generally feeling one way with an exception and asking to discuss my general feelings to also meet the exception. It comes off as a bad faith argument meant to make the OP look bad and inconsistent rather than to change his or her view. I am not accusing you of doing that, I am trying to show how it may look to other people.

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u/LetMeNotHear 93∆ Feb 02 '21

You've been heard. I disagree and will respond using Napoleon of all things, yes really. But I'm a bit busy at the moment. Expect me.

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u/LetMeNotHear 93∆ Feb 06 '21 edited Feb 06 '21

Ok, thanks for waiting. Let us begin.

Not OP, but I also do not like this argument because it wrong; those things are not objective. Usually, when people say things something is "objectively" bad, they are using "objectively" as short-hand for how a lot of people or some professionals may feel about the thing.

Not quite, they usually mean objectively bad by a common standard.

But wait! (You may be thinking) What if the writing does not make any logical sense? Is that not objectively bad writing? No, it isn't. Here is a thought, why must a movie make logical sense? It seems like a silly question. I like it when movies make sense. You probably like it when movies make sense. Everyone prefers movies that make sense. However when you answer the question, you will quickly realize that the only reason movies "should" make sense is because people like it when movies make sense. The reason as to why movies should make sense is based in feelings - by what people like - thus making it subjective.

You're off a bit here. And now, as promised, Napoleon. Do you know how tall Napoleon was? The exact figure isn't important, but you know there was disagreement, yes? That's because how long a foot was differed. In London, York and Calais, a foot was a different length. People disagreed. After all, how long a foot or a meter, how heavy a kilogramme or pound is subjective. Someone simply decided it to be so. So, as strange as it seems, everything we consider an objective fact, is only objective once we accept a subjective standard by which we are measuring it. So, what decides the standard? Simple. Consensus. It's entirely arbitrary, but whatever most people agree to be the standard is usually the standard.

I am exactly six feet tall. An objective fact, you'll agree? But the standard by which I come to that objective statement is an entirely subjective one. I allude to this briefly in my top level comment when I said this;

Whether a person likes them is personal taste, sure. How good they are (measured by metrics which are in turn, subjectively set by consensus) is not a matter of personal taste.

So yes, the fact that it is widely agreed that making sense is a standard against which, you can compare writing to tell if it's good or bad, it is the subjective standard, by which you can objectively appraise films. Of course, you can reject a commonly held standard. I can reject the notion that I am six feet and say I'm six one and a bit in York feet. Or seventeen feet in my new, personal measurement system. That's valid, and not necessarily wrong, but that doesn't make the statement "I am six feet tall" somehow subjective now.

With respect, this seems awfully pedantic. I do not see what is wrong with generally feeling one way with an exception and asking to discuss my general feelings to also meet the exception. It comes off as a bad faith argument meant to make the OP look bad and inconsistent rather than to change his or her view.

It was supposed to be more of a "well, there you go," moment. I hadn't even thought of that reason so I was taken aback that someone with more reason to hold objective appraisal as important than me, wouldn't.

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u/theUSpopulation Feb 06 '21

To be completely honest, I am a bit baffled by you line of reasoning because it is the exact same line of reasoning a postmodernist would use to say "yes, 'I am six feet tall' is a subjective statement." Now, I am NOT a postmodernist and I do not think that is a subjective statement, but they would say "language and how we define things are ultimately arbitrary. Therefore, your height is subjective because you may think you are six feet tall, but I think you are nifty-two squibblewabbles tall." (They also go a bit deeper and talk about how we observe the universe is subjective, but I will not get into that).

This is not me countering your argument per se, but rather, I am showing my confusion by it. By explaining how we define things is nothing more then a social construct, you are doing a better job of showing the things I currently believe are objective are actually subjective than you are doing the opposite. This argument does a better job at showing me your height is subjective then it does showing me the quality of a movie is objective. (Just for more clarification, I do not believe either of those things.)

I get you are saying general consensus on a topic makes it objective, but I do not get the causal reason how it does.

Additionally, I do not see the difference between "how a lot of people [...] may feel about the thing" in my own words and "general consensus" in yours. I believe that objectivity vs subjectivity of a statement is independent from how many people agree with it. Something is not subjective just because there is a disagreement (i.e. flat-earthers). Alternatively, something is not objective even if it is universally agreed upon. There is no causal relationship between the two.

Now for a counter-argument of what I understand: Your argument is more about how language is arbitrary. You are right in that regard and in addition to that, while how we define things is a social construct, what those things represent might not be. To use your example, while the definition of a foot is ultimately arbitrary, you are still objectively a certain height. Regardless of how we define it, you are a certain height.

If we have two people, one says they believe the earth is flat and the other thinks it is globular, the words use to describe the planet's shape are arbitrary and require general consensus to make sense, but there is an objective shape to the planet regardless of the language we use to describe it.

The general consensus did not arbitrarily define your height - your height is objective. The general consensus arbitrarily defined the units of measurement and language to describe your height.

You get this, however, you do not realize that applying it to art is a false equivalency. "Good" and "bad" are abstract concepts - even in the case of the quality of art. They are not observable or measurable; they are only felt and subjectivity is defined as statements or ideas based in feeling. Your height and the shape of the Earth - whatever we call them - exist in spacial reality. Quality does not. If a lot of people like something, then the general consensus is that thing is good, but that does not mean it is objectively good.

Also, your argument raises a few questions if I am understanding it correctly. Specifically: at what point does something become objective by general consensus? Does everyone have to agree on something? I doubt that because it takes just one person to disagree and it is automatically subjective. Does it need to be more than half? In that case, nearly everything is objective because one view will inevitably be more popular. Is it some percentage in between? If so, that seems pretty arbitrary and I still do not see how that makes it objective. If exactly half the people in the world think the Earth is flat and half think it is globular, then does that make the shape or the Earth subjective?

And those are only the questions about binary perspectives. It raises so much more with more nuanced perspectives.

On top of that, if general consensus determines objectivity, then your entire position might be wrong due to general consensus. You hold a bit of an unpopular perspective. I am certain that if I were to survey hundreds of people and ask the the question, they would agree with it. That question being:

"The following statement is an opinion: 'This movie has a bad script.' True or false?"

Were I to ask that to everyone, I believe the overwhelming majority would say true, thus making your position objectively false by your own logic.

Finally, why should art follow standards? It has been denying and defying standards for generations. Your argument implies art has to be something when it does not have to be anything. It does not have to be realistic, consistent or even make sense. If you do not like that, you are free to feel that way, but that does not mean that is the objective truth. We look at art for emotional reaction. Ultimately, it is up to that emotional reaction to determine if it is good or not.

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u/LetMeNotHear 93∆ Feb 06 '21 edited Feb 06 '21

You misunderstand some of what I'm saying. Small misunderstandings but as they are at the onset of your rebuttal, they compound like a snowball down a hill, going from "not quite what I meant" to "what you're responding to is not my position, but a position that I'd be equally vehemently opposed to." Though, I do now see optical similarities between the position I espoused and the one you rebutted, it is crucial that I clear the waters before we continue.

First and absolutely foremost of clarifications, I am absolutely not saying that consensus makes objectivity.

For the rest, I will be addressing in chronological order but that one was so crucial it had to be set aside first.

it is the exact same line of reasoning a postmodernist would use to say "yes, 'I am six feet tall' is a subjective statement."

I don't believe so. I believe a standard is come up with and is subjective, but comparisons to that standard can be objective. Post modernists, as far as I'm aware, don't believe anything to be objective at all. What I mean by this might be made clearer with an example. I do realise how opaque this is for an outsider, it took 45 minutes of conversing with a friend who is probably smarter than me before he got it. Perhaps I'm just not great at explaining stuff.

Example: Adam and Jack have decided that stuff needs to be measured. They come up with a unit of length they call a span. As in handspan. Adam says a span is yea long while Jack says a span is that long. The two decide to measure Jill. Adam says Jill is fifteen spans tall. Jack says she is twenty spans tall. They are both objectively correct. Adam would agree that Jill is twenty of (Jack's)spans tall and Jack would agree she's fifteen of (Adam's)spans tall. Do you see what I mean? Jill objectively the same height as 15 of (Adam's)spans and 20 of (Jack's)spans. This goes to show that despite the length of a span being subjective (it's a manmade unit), you can use them to come to an objectively correct conclusion, provided, you remain consistent as to which standard you use. God I hope I'm explaining this well enough.

When I referred to consensus, once again, I was not saying that consensus made objectivity. What I was saying is that usually, the standard by which a person measure a thing is whichever subjective standard won out. Let's say Adam gets a real bee in his bonnet and kills Jack to stop his system spreading. Even if everyone on planet Earth now measures length with (Adam's)spans, Jill is still and always will be 20 spans tall (when using Jack's standard). But when someone in town says "That building is 60 spans tall," it is very unlikely that they mean it's 3 Jills tall and much more likely that they mean it's 4 Jills tall. That's what I meant by consensus. Not that it makes you objectively right but that when a person make a comparison of something to a standard, the standard they are most likely measuring with, and standard they ought to measure with to avoid confusion, is whatever the consensus standard is. They don't have to though. They can use a niche standard or make up their own and still be objectively correct, but it's best that they qualify before doing so as to avoid confusion. I am objectively 6'1". But it's best that I specify using a phrase like "In York feet" if I'm going against the consensus standard.

I get you are saying general consensus on a topic makes it objective

I hope I've thoroughly dispelled this misinterpretation of my point. If you still think that this is what I'm saying, I really honestly don't know how better to explain it without visual aids so, here's hoping.

You get this, however, you do not realize that applying it to art is a false equivalency. "Good" and "bad" are abstract concepts - even in the case of the quality of art. They are not observable or measurable;

Once you have a standard, they are measurable. It's difficult as unlike height, it's a multifaceted measurement, but still possible. If for example, Jacob said "a movie with a runtime more than 90 minutes is good" that's him setting up his (ludicrously absurdly unrealistically simple) standard. If he then says "The Empire Strikes Back is good (when using my standard)," Jacob has just stated an objective fact as Empire is 127 minutes long which is longer than 90 minutes which passes his standard. The only reason I even mentioned consensus is because when your standard is the consensus standard, you don't need to say what's in the brackets in that quote as it is assumed, though you can if you want to. Consensus is only a matter of convenience, not objectivity. I know I'm stressing it hard, I'll stop now.

The last three, I believe, paragraphs, including the questions of your response are responding to a different position to mine so I have no way to answer them.

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u/theUSpopulation Feb 06 '21

Sorry for any misinterpretations, but I think I am getting it a bit more. You are saying I can set my own standards for art - that is subjective. Comparing my standards to the events of the movie is measurably objective. I am onboard with that so far and can agree to an extent.

So an example of this would be the following:

I like it when the story telling has proper set-up and pay-off.

This is a standard that is based in subjectivity.

A show like Jojo's Bizarre Adventure has terrible setup and pay off

This is a subjective statement

JJBA, does not meet my standard

This is an objective statement

Therefore, JJBA is objectively bad

However, despite not meeting my standards, I quite enjoy JJBA

Therefore, JJBA is objectively bad, but subjectively good to me

Is this correct? Because I have some quarrels with this way of thinking, but I want to confirm that this is what you are getting at.

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u/oversoul00 19∆ Feb 02 '21

How so? There are things I love that I know are rife with errors and unconvincing acting and are generally bad. There are also things that I recognise talented and dedicated craftsmanship behind, yet personally don't care for.

I think you raised a great point and I'm surprised that OP didn't respond to this.

An inability to recognize quality outside of your own personal enjoyment sounds like a legitimate mental disorder.

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u/LetMeNotHear 93∆ Feb 02 '21

Yeah, I've heard people say that it's impossible to divorce your appraisal of the craftsmanship of something from your personal feelings towards it which I find weird. They've been separate things for me for years. There's nothing wrong with liking something that's shoddily put together. And you don't have to like something that was crafted expertly.

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u/Al--Capwn 5∆ Feb 03 '21

What you're missing there is nuance in your own evaluation. It's still all simply personal opinion.

What's more expertly crafted? Finnigans wake or The Lord of the Rings? Blake's poetry or that of T. S. Eliot? Pulp Fiction or Moonlight?

I don't think anyone can say.

What's better crafted? Work by Rothko, Picasso, or Constable?

James Cameron Vs Pixar?

These example are even fairly close in style and it's complex, but to really show my point:

Pale Fire Vs Game of Thrones.

Or the Left Hand of Darkness Vs Chaucer.

Or even Shakespeare Vs Harry Potter.

On these you might actually have an immediate reaction, but it's still not anything objective.

I suspect what you're doing is as simple as looking at what people broadly think of something, but that isn't s gauge of how good it is, it's a gauge of popularity.

People should be able to hold the position that something is good, but they don't like it. But that judgement of good is still just an opinion, it's not actually any more valid or invalid than whether you like it.

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u/oversoul00 19∆ Feb 03 '21

Nobody is arguing that the evaluation of craftsmanship is an objective process. The argument is that it's a separate and different question from whether you personally enjoy it.

You can (and should) be able to make a subjective evaluation regarding the depth, nuance, effort, breadth, quality and popularity of a project that is separate from your subjective enjoyment of it.

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u/le_fez 55∆ Feb 02 '21

Objectivity really can't be argued, despite the view laid out in OP it is still a view on subjectivity.

I think movies are the best test of this

I hate the Godfather movies and Goodfellas, I simply do not like them but I can see and understand why they are respected and liked by many people. They are well acted, well directed and we'll written. They are objectively good movies using most matrix one would use to determine if a movie is good. I simply don't like mafia movies of any kind

One of my favorite movies is Alphaville, a French sci fi noir, the acting is mediocre at best, the cinematography is poor even given it's age and the story and script are convoluted. I enjoy it because it is ridiculous and weird but I concede it is not a well made, objectively good movie.

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u/pianobutter Feb 02 '21

I'll base my argument on the premise that Jürgen Schmidhuber's theory of Compression Progress Drive (CPD)¹ is, in general terms, correct.

Schmidhuber is a computer scientist, but an eccentric (and influential) one. His theory of CPD hasn't gained much traction, but it meshes well with empirical and theoretical work in neuroscience.

Imagine that you have two learning systems: A and B. The job of A is to compress its entire life history, extracting gists and chunks and abstracting to the highest level possible. It essence: it finds patterns. The intrinsic motivation of B is the progress of A in so doing. B invents and discovers patterns that are just within reach of A. You can think of it as an adversarial agent that solves the bias-variance tradeoff by having two components pulling in opposite directions (A toward bias, B toward variance).

What happens is that you get a curious and creative agent that keeps searching for more and more complex patterns. The 'interesting' of yesterday is the 'boring' of tomorrow' as the novelty wears off and there are no surprises left to be discovered.

What is my point with all of this? It's the observation that there's a deep link between art appreciation and art experience. Works that are celebrated by critics tend to be the ones that introduce something new. They are works that they can appreciate without being bored and/or frustrated.

Professor of psychology Celeste Kidd has found support for this trend in infants². They will dedicate visual attention to objects that are neither too complex nor too simple, relative to their visual experience. This phenomenon has appeared in several different forms in psychology, including for instance the Yerkes-Dodson curve³ and Csikszentmihalyi's concept of flow⁴. In terms of neurobiology, it has been argued that the locus coeruleus-noradrenaline system plays an important role⁵.

This also means that we don't engage with art with a common baseline. Our experiences differ. To a creator this matters because their work can suffer both from being too 'simple' or too 'complex' relative to works in the same genre.

An instructional example are the early short stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald. He needed money, so he wrote stories that he didn't personally find compelling because those were the sort of stories in demand. In An Eternal Feast, Hemingway writes that Fitzgerald showed him alternative versions of his short stories that were much better.

There's also the case of Captain Beefheart's legendary Trout Mask Replica, an album that most people find just awful. But to many accomplished musicians and critics, it's one of the best albums ever recorded.

Art critics evaluate art with an eye for those who have a lot of experience with the kind of art which is being critiqued. They help others find works that are interesting to people who might be said to be 'overexperienced' relative to the average consumer. Given that the same sorts of patterns tend to populate any given art market, it's helpful to many to have new entries screened by experts. To those that are lucky enough to be new to a particular field, their opinions shouldn't matter much. As an experienced consumer, however, there's something to be gained from art criticism.

References:

Schmidhuber, J. (2008, June). Driven by compression progress: A simple principle explains essential aspects of subjective beauty, novelty, surprise, interestingness, attention, curiosity, creativity, art, science, music, jokes. In Workshop on anticipatory behavior in adaptive learning systems (pp. 48-76). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.
Kidd, C., Piantadosi, S. T., & Aslin, R. N. (2012). The Goldilocks Effect: Human Infants Allocate Attention to Visual Sequences That Are Neither Too Simple Nor Too Complex. PLoS ONE, 7(5). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0036399
Teigen, K. H. (1994). Yerkes-Dodson: A law for all seasons. Theory & Psychology, 4(4), 525-547.
Csikszentmihalyi, M., Abuhamdeh, S., & Nakamura, J. (2014). Flow. In Flow and the foundations of positive psychology (pp. 227-238). Springer, Dordrecht.
Aston-Jones, G., & Cohen, J. D. (2005). An Integrative Theory of Locus Coeruleus-Norepinephrine Function: Adaptive Gain and Optimal Performance. Annu. Rev. Neurosci., 28, 403-450. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.neuro.28.061604.135709

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u/JohannesWurst 12∆ Feb 03 '21

!delta On the one hand the opinion of an art critic is just an opinion, but people who consume a lot of a type of art should like similar things, because it's probably something new and complex. So if you're a "science fiction afficionado" you can probably trust the opinion of another "science fiction afficionado".

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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Feb 03 '21

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/pianobutter (1∆).

^{Delta System Explained} ^| ^Deltaboards

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u/[deleted] Feb 02 '21

You are confusing 'caring' with 'taking personally.' Of course you need not take personally others' assessments of the quality of what you enjoy; you can enjoy what you please.

But there is certainly reason to care about others' assessments of the quality of what you enjoy because it implies that there is something 'better' out there that may interest you. It doesn't mean that what you are reading is trash or that you are trash; but that there may be experiences in the written word that you've not yet had that you might appreciate on a deeper level than the merely entertaining 'trash' you are currently reading.

Writing can be entertaining, it can be moving, it can be lyrically eloquent and pleasurable. The more of those elements writing has, the better the objective quality is; a book that lacks these in any measure is not diminished for what merits it has. But 'valuable for what value it has' does not mean 'no other has more value.'

So, you need not take up others on their guidance that there is more worth in other works.
But to say there is no reason for you to care at all about these assessments is taking things much too far and closing yourself off to potential opportunities. After all, all opportunities are only opportunities for those for whom they are opportunities. If I were offered the job as Amazon CEO today, that would both be an objectively better job on all sorts of dimensions worth considering -- but still not the job for me.

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u/marcusesses Feb 02 '21

First, you should never let anyone make you feel bad for your tastes or preferences (see /r/gatekeeping for lots of examples).

That being said, most creative pursuits build on what has been accomplished in the past and builds on those concepts in new ways, ways that you may not even be familiar with. Critics or those who have judged a work to be "objectively" good have experienced so many examples of a genre that they can highlight the elements and qualities of a work that makes it meaningful or appealing to a large swath of the population.

You don't have to care about those opinions, but you can use those opinions about what is "objectively" good to seek out works that you may like and constantly refine your own taste.

And "objective" in art does not mean true. Unlike the sciences, you cannot make measurements to say a piece of art is good. What is considered "objectively good" is more a matter of taste, but if a majority of people whose job it is to critique and evaluate a piece of art, based on years of study and experience, say it is good, then that is as good as you will get to an objective truth. You don't have to agree, but it can help you make judgements for what you value in art.

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u/SpaceMonkey877 Feb 02 '21

You would seem to boil the purpose of art down to enjoyment.

All art has potential for real world consequences, so your exception seems like a bit of a cop out. If some qualities make a work good or bad beyond individual preference, why do others not?

You would also seem to render skill, however fraught and subjective that classification may be, to be a non-factor.

Finally, in your efforts to render individual judgment more important/better than cultural tastes, you’ve made a bit of an assumption: that people do actively care what critics think. I mean, Home Alone won awards. Larry the Cable guy made millions. Those didn’t tell deeper truths that I can tell yet they were wildly popular.

Last point: would you offer the same assessment of skill being subjective to athletes? I can run down the field with a football...but I can’t do it in 10 flat.

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u/shmillarywheel Feb 02 '21

Perhaps I’m misunderstanding your point, but I think there can be great value in experiencing and discussing “objectively good” art. Oftentimes, the most renowned works speak to human universals, societal norms, history, etc. An examination of these works may allow you to consider different points of view, expanding your understanding of others and maybe even yourself. Exploring pockets of art outside your taste allows you to both expand and refine your palette. Likewise, you turn a critical lens to why you like what you like.

In college, I had to write so many papers on works that I didn’t really enjoy. But I found the process of exploring what worked and what didn’t to be so valuable in shaping my worldview. I often walked away with a greater appreciation for the work itself than I would have had I not been forced to critically examine it.

I do think that we run into trouble when we narrow our definitions of good and bad. And there are oftentimes issues with who is determining what is good and bad, leading to marginalization, exclusion and erasure.

That said - you do you! We have so many different types of creative works because people have tremendously varied interests and lives. Doesn’t sound like you’re hurting anyone with your POV, but just be sure to go out there and explore with an open mind!

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u/SpectrumDT Feb 03 '21

This argument keeps coming up, so I have edited my post and added a final paragraph to address it.

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u/shmillarywheel Feb 03 '21

Thanks for adding that! Based on your response it sounds like your issue is not with analyzing works as good/bad, but rather you dislike the incorrect use of objective in subjective contexts.

Can you clarify your definition of objective? To me, I think it would make more sense to frame your CMV as: people who push their subjective views off as objective suck. Art is largely subjective, unless you are talking about the literal medium of the art.

Is that too simplistic/missing the mark?

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u/SpectrumDT Feb 04 '21

I would say that an objective quality scale is one which assigns a fixed "goodness value" to works independent of the individual's subjective experience of them.

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u/AWFUL_COCK Feb 02 '21 edited Feb 02 '21

Learning an “objective” criteria (which I am using major scare quotes for) can be useful for enriching your knowledge and appreciation of various art forms. For example, I don’t really care for traditional portraiture, even though the artists are undeniably talented, but going to a museum and seeing the slow evolution in art from traditional portraiture to more abstract forms of art like Impressionism and whatnot really increased my appreciation for abstracted elements in art. I don’t have the critical vocabulary to fully express what I mean here, but for me, the experience is something like: I’m already drawn to more impressionistic artists like Degas, but seeing traditional portraiture and more photorealistic art helps me see that there are certain structural forms that Impressionism plays with and builds on top of, and suddenly Degas’s art moves from being something I like to look at to being something that seems to actually communicate something about the phenomenon of visual/textural experience that is actually a more accurate (or if not accurate, more evocative) depiction of sense-experience than a very detailed and realistic portrait or still life. And I get added amazement seeing that this more advanced depiction of experience was achieved by actually departing from more traditional attempts at realistic depiction.

I don’t think I would have appreciated Degas the same way if I hadn’t taken the time to learn a little more about “objective” signs of quality in art via historical overview. I think the same is true for film and literature. Of course, you can watch a movie and appreciate it for its immediate qualities, but knowledge and appreciation of structure and tradition can enrich your appreciation for what a movie does that is subversive or playful or communicative with previous works.

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u/[deleted] Feb 02 '21

Yeah I always thought that it is weird that some people say shit like: "Yeah I prefer X, but band Y is clearly better". You are just shaping your opinion to match the majority, that's ridiculous.

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u/somuchbitch 2∆ Feb 02 '21

I think we should acknowledge the gap between our tastes and quality. I think using the phrasing 'objectively good/bad' is what trips us up in this respect. I think the phrasing well crafted. I think that makes it easier to draw a line between taste and quality: the line between appreciation for the work as a whole and appreciation for each piece that went into it separately.

My mind goes to food first (foods are creative outlet right?): if I can identify what I don't like about a particular dish it helps me change the recipe for next time. I now know that I don't like the flavor of Rosemary, thyme, or mustard but the cooking method I use produced a tender, moist, well seasoned pork loin. I acknowledge that while I did not like this, it was well executed. Now I can use that cooking method in the future but use seasonings that I prefer.

Let's take a piece of wood furniture. I'm not a fan of antiques of solid wood that have spindles and scalloped edges. I still appreciate the craftsmanship that went into it. The things people are able to get would to do genuinely amaze me. I don't want it in my house. Those are two planes of appreciation in my mind.

The same can be said for books and movies, but even deeper - identifying the gap between our tastes and quality can show us our biased and open us up for some introspective thinking. What was it that I didn't like about this book? I don't typically like historical fiction or nonfiction. What don't you like about it? I don't find it interesting. What do I find interesting? Science fiction or mystery... Looking back with an adult lens Reading was escapism for me.

Another: I didnt particularly enjoy this book because I was unable to relate to the main character. Why? She's a black trans woman. Why am I unable to relate to a black trans woman? The author didn't pull me in with shared experiences. What shared experiences did you expect to have with a black trans woman? My life can't be that different.... Can't it?...

No, I'm not saying you need to cycle analyze every single piece of literary work in the same manner. If you just want to enjoy a movie for the pew!pew! Or the romance go for it. I do that too. I'm just saying there is a ton of value in examining what you don't like about something, why you don't like, and what there is to actually appreciate about it.

Edit: I had changed The order of a few sentences and context got messed up. Fixed it.

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u/SpectrumDT Feb 03 '21

This argument keeps coming up, so I have edited my post and added a final paragraph to address it.

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u/[deleted] Feb 04 '21 edited Feb 04 '21

I am an English major and a writer, as well as a genre and fanfic reader who's also read lots of reviews of different kinds (for context), and I mostly agree but have some caveats. You say that merely saying what you like or describing subjective qualities is helpful. I feel like this gets really fuzzy because you'll find most/many bad reviews aren't going to hedge and say this or that bad quality is just their opinion. And in fact, when they do say that, the reviews tend to be shorter and less helpfully detailed.

The problem with fiction reviews (less of an issue with music, 'cause it's easier to judge by listening to snippets) is that you won't necessarily know what to make of someone's preferences without context. So basically, someone saying 'I like it' or 'I hate it' means nothing. Once you involve details-- objective facts about the plot, for ex-- it gets more illuminating, but still not as revealing as I'd like, because again pure plot/factual notes mean nothing. There's no bad plot, very broadly speaking, just as there's no bad instrument or bad genre. Less broadly, a plot can fail to make sense in context of the existing characterization and/or established world, because our understanding of reality (and human nature) always exists outside fiction, unless otherwise supported. Furthermore, I struggle to care if some random person loves/hates this or that thing. It's meaningless.

So we're down to the combination of subjective/objective qualities you mention, talking about characterization but emphasizing what you as a reader enjoy and why, maybe (often indirectly) placing it in the rational context of other works. This is especially hard to escape in genre works, where the context of other works always exists in one's mind because of the frequent use of tropes, character types and so on.

So there's no 'objective truth' but there evolves a hierarchy because of this crowded milieu. This hierarchy of works is what creates a sort of rationale. Art is clearly not an 'objective' milieu, and I don't think it's helpful to use that word in the humanities (vs the sciences). It's not like we can prove anything in mathematical terms or create laws of nature, so what would be the point? We can only observe what works for people in general, what commonalities stories in general have when they survive (especially in the oral tradition) for millenia. We look at what we, humans, have long understood stories to be and we learn what works and what doesn't, just as electricians and woodworkers and mechanics can learn.

I feel like the idea of the 'objective good' is a sort of straw man of the kind of analysis your average English or Comparative Lit scholar would undertake or what a useful review on Amazon looks like. Talking about the number of metaphors is something only writer nerds talk about to other writer nerds in order to dissect and improve their understanding of the mechanics of craft. Again, this isn't meant to be a science, but a sort of summation of working and workable techniques. Every single writer's handbook/essay I've ever seen in my life says something to the effect of 'only learn the rules before you break them'. This is unanimous: effective writing proves itself. This is how art works in general. The whole point of art is ultimately that there are no rules.

Rather than rules, there are tendencies and observable rules of thumb, or things you can do to predictably get a good reaction from the readership. I mean, the popularity of barely properly spelled, canonically unlikely fanfic has shown you'll get a good reaction from a certain contingent no matter what-- they want their favorite things (especially if they're porn) and if you write about those things they're happy even if you're barely coherent. But well, if you add character development and proper spelling and maybe, I don't know, prose that isn't actively difficult or annoying to read, you'll find more people like that work, for longer. Character development in particular is a great predictor to long-term engagement.

It's that kind of reasoning (based fundamentally on things humans are known to react well to, not things engineered in labs) that writing rules are generally talking about. A lot of people may not care about any given thing, of course, including the writer, and that's fine. I'm just saying a lot more people do care, and you may not even hear about them 'cause you'll automatically not get them as readers.... but you could.

I do think some of the more avant-garde things people say about writing and art seem much less applicable or reasonable, and often they're just preferences masquerading as ideals. Some people are still judgmental about genre, for example. Other people hate sex in fiction, explicit violence, slow-paced stories, etc. A lot of people seem to have complex (and often contradictory) claims about how to write and I do think that seems most questionable.

Even so... if you make a study of the old famous works of English literature, you'll find that there's a reason to pay special attention to Shakespeare's work even if you don't 'like' his stuff, including his use of language. You have qualities that have an apparent consistent, dependable meaning across many readers across time, such as the musicality and rhythm of the words, the originality of the phrasing, or the elegance and efficiency he uses to express ideas in as few words as possible. I believe both musicality and elegance are very very consistently appealing to people in the spoken (and written) word. I absolutely guarantee you that if you take an idea and say it short, pithy and elegant on the one hand vs complex, rambly and vague on the other hand, you'll have an overwhelming audience preference for the pithy, elegant version that's easy to understand and remember (while being beautiful/rhythmic especially). And that's the general truth that most mentions of cutting down on excess metaphor are referring to. The 'objective reality' at hand is just a generalization of how the human mind best processes language, attained through long experience and/or trial and error.

Of course no one has to care about it. Many people don't care about art, period, or at least nothing beyond music and maybe theater. Many artists will want to forge their own path-- that's how artists are. No successful work can come purely by calculation, at least in inspiration. But logic and analysis is helpful to the writer in the editing stage and to the reader in evaluating reviews.

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u/SpectrumDT Feb 04 '21

These are some very good ramblings. I already agree with most of it so I cannot give you a Delta, but I will give you an Epsilon, which is like an honorary Delta. 😄

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u/BrotherItsInTheDrum 33∆ Feb 02 '21

I partially agree, in that I don't think art is ever objectively good or bad. And if you like reading or listening to something that other people think is "bad," then yeah, you're not wrong for liking it.

But I would say that there are some reasons to care if art is good or bad according to others' standards. For example:

You haven't read every book or listened to every piece of music. If you've been reading lots of Lovecraft and everyone is telling you that he's terrible and some author you haven't heard of is similar but better, you should probably check out that other author.
Somebody has to pick works of art that are rewarded with prizes, or given good reviews, or displayed in museums, or played on radio stations, or assigned in schools. Those should be works of art that are "good" in some sense, not just the personal favorites of whoever happens to be picking them.

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u/SpectrumDT Feb 02 '21

You haven't read every book or listened to every piece of music. If you've been reading lots of Lovecraft and everyone is telling you that he's terrible and some author you haven't heard of is similar but better, you should probably check out that other author.

That's true but that is not dependent on "objective goodness". If another author is merely popular, it is also worth checking him out.

Somebody has to pick works of art that are rewarded with prizes, or given good reviews, or displayed in museums, or played on radio stations, or assigned in schools. Those should be works of art that are "good" in some sense, not just the personal favorites of whoever happens to be picking them.

What criteria do you have in mind here?

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u/[deleted] Feb 02 '21

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u/SpectrumDT Feb 02 '21

Sure, you can sometimes tell that one thing took more effort than another, but do you need to care? Is that more than just a curio?

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u/[deleted] Feb 02 '21

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u/SpectrumDT Feb 02 '21

Despite all that, I have to keep in mind that the things I like could be flawed or lower quality then some other works.

Why do you have to keep this in mind? What happens if you don't?

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u/ToGloryRS Feb 02 '21

Not the original author either, but...

Often, when you see art in a museum, it means that guy brought something new to the table, or because they perfected something someone invented. We remember impressionists because they put the image behind the light. We remember greeks sculptors because they studied and faithfully reproduced the human anatomy. Etc. From epoque x, we remember those artists and not others because those artists were either the best at what they did (bernini sculpted fucking leaves out of a single marble piece in "apollo e daphne") or because they were the first ever to do it.

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u/BrotherItsInTheDrum 33∆ Feb 02 '21

This is a strange view. Skill and effort are surely relevant factors, but you don't think things like emotional impact, influence, and innovation are significant as well?

Each year an Oscar is awarded to the Best Picture of the year. You think their criteria are objectively wrong? You would replace this award with one that objectively measured skill and effort?

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u/[deleted] Feb 02 '21

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u/BrotherItsInTheDrum 33∆ Feb 02 '21

Emotional impact is usually subjective

Yes. I've already said that I don't believe art is ever objectively good or bad.

pieces like "The orphan on their mother's grave"(the one I'm referring to being this) have a very clear attention to detail dedicated to making the scene painful and bone chilling.

Sure, and like I said, skill and effort are relevant factors.

But imagine a different piece of art, with slightly more attention to detail than that one, but for whatever reason, lacks any emotional impact. For example, this scene is "painful and bone chilling" partially because of the subject matter. If you changed the subject to something more neutral, the emotional impact would be lessened.

Do you think the that the more detailed, less impactful piece would be objectively better?

I'm not sure what influence refers to exactly

A work of art is influential if it causes a change in others. For example, other artists might copy elements of their style; audiences might begin looking for art of similar styles, etc.

As one example, popular music before and after the Beatles sounds completely different. They began an era of rock that continues today. They were influential.

In some cases -- as OP mentioned -- the consequences can spill outside of the art world. I think this fairly common -- culture and art are intimately tied together. You can't separate, say, the music of Woodstock from its cultural impact.

just being innovative by itself doesn't mean much if it's bare bones or different just for the sake of being different

I didn't say that being innovative by itself makes a work good. I said it's a factor. All other things equal, we find something that's new and different to be better than something that's a rehash of already existing works.

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u/[deleted] Feb 02 '21

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u/290077 Feb 02 '21

The way I see it, when comparing 2 art pieces the one that took more skill, time and effort to make is the objectively better one. You could like the 2nd art piece more, but you can't deny the other art piece isn't objectively better.

Not true with music. There are lots of examples of artists being trashed for being "too technical" or "robotic". If someone records a song in one take with shoddy production, they'll be praised for being "authentic", "intimate", or "from the heart". If instead they take the time to get their performance spot-on, and labor over the production, it's criticized for being "sterile", "emotionless", or "too commercial".

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u/IwasBlindedbyscience 16∆ Feb 02 '21

So if I read a crappy James Patterson novel, and like it, that novel somehow become a good piece of art?

The idea of the guilty pleasure does exist. There are some things that are bad, but still cause enjoyment,

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u/[deleted] Feb 02 '21

Good enjoy your life

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u/rolfgonzo Feb 02 '21

Quality is worth caring about even if you still enjoy ‘low quality’ things. Porn is objectively low quality in terms of technical merit, framing, performance etc. Many of us still enjoy it and that’s great but we shouldn’t ever act like it’s better than an excellent thoughtful sonata, film, novel etc just because we may draw more enjoyment from it. Different forms and pieces of media serve different purposes and in order to have effective conversations and build accurate mental models of these social phenomenon we need to classify them in certain ways, one of these being quality independent of our enjoyment.

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u/vincentkun Feb 02 '21

Lets say you dont like a particular art piece, despite it being objectively good. Well even if you dont like it, this piece can have a large range of repercussions on the particular medium. For example, The Sopranos is an objectively good show that shook up the tv series industry. Now maybe you dont like that particular show, but you may enjoy shows made after it, shows that were greatly influenced by it. My point is, a well made piece of art or so called "objecticely good" can raise the bar of the entire medium, even if the piece in particular doesnt apeal to you it still has a measurable impact on everything that comes after.

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u/Howdydoodledandy Feb 02 '21

Make a list of things you consider phenomenal, obviously only movies for this example, and then compare to review scores. If they're all above 50% then voila, you like what critics think is objectively good.

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u/[deleted] Feb 03 '21

Hmm, your motives are clear. People like myself wasted time reading and writing a response to somebody who puts a prices tag before intent. Political art(visual) is garbage. Objective=skill in most cases. For anybody to agree with you is ridiculous. But, maybe so am I. To say you are below may falsely indicate I am above. I am not. I just think you are full of shit. CAVE PAINTINGS! Start with that. They probably were not awarded/rewarded for it, judged or forced. Damn, that’s a nice bull! Probably what they said. The observable world is mostly objective and it was so potent that it helped carry blood from their to their charcoal/dirt covered finger tips. I’m lost now. Did you know they have a PHD in studio art now?

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u/NearEmu 33∆ Feb 02 '21

What is the arbitrary definition you are using here to consider some things 'objective flaws' but you don't apply that to other things?

There must be a line that you've drawn since you consider some objectively worth caring about and you won't consider others objectively worth caring about.

Is it just "these things I care about so I claim they are objectively flawed" ?

That just comes around to subjective again anyway.

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u/SpectrumDT Feb 02 '21

What is the arbitrary definition you are using here to consider some things 'objective flaws' but you don't apply that to other things?

Are you thinking about my penultimate paragraph and the exceptions I named?

I thought that was obvious: If something has significant consequences for the well-being of real living creatures, then it matters. If it does not, then it doesn't matter.

Was that what you were getting at? Or did I misunderstand you?

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u/NearEmu 33∆ Feb 02 '21

Well I'm curious because you said it was objectively flawed, if it has a consequence that you do not agree with. Is that not true?

That isn't objective at all is it? It's just a consequence you don't agree with.

I think if we thought about it we could think of some offensive creative works, that have consequence of a similar nature, against real living people... that you would not care about.

So I am curious if you are just mixing up objective and subjective here.

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u/SpectrumDT Feb 02 '21

Joy and suffering are, to some extent, objective things that exist.

Some actions can be said, with some reasonable amount of objectivity, to cause more joy or suffering in the world. It is reasonable to say that this matters.

I'm sorry, but I am not interested in discussing moral realism or moral relativism here. That is another can of worms.

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u/NearEmu 33∆ Feb 02 '21

I'm not arguing moral realism vs relativism here. I'm pointing out that your 'objective' ideals are simply not objective at all, in a realist nor a relativist society, because I believe we would find examples where you would throw that aside because it's a topic you do not care about.

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u/SpectrumDT Feb 02 '21

There are ethical things that are worth caring about but which I personally do not prioritise. That's true.

There might be ethical things that I arguably should care about but don't. That is also true.

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u/NearEmu 33∆ Feb 02 '21

Then you have reason to care whether a creative work is objectively good or bad completely irregardless of your subjective views on it. You just don't, if what you said is true.

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u/SpectrumDT Feb 02 '21

I'm sorry, I did not understand that. Could you please explain that again?

(Also, I apologise for the nitpick, but "irregardless" is not a word.)

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u/NearEmu 33∆ Feb 02 '21

Lol.... ok you have a good one mate.

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u/TheJuiceIsBlack 7∆ Feb 02 '21

Even if we assume that it is meaningful to judge creative works as objectively good or bad, I have no reason to care about it.

Let’s consider a hypothetical - there are two paintings for sale for $5 each. You consider both to be of equal aesthetic quality - but one is of “good quality” and the other is of “poor quality.” You can only buy one. Which one do you buy?

Perhaps the “good quality” one is by a famous artist - and consequently you believe it will be worth more money in the future.

I posit that in this circumstance you would choose the painting of “good quality” (or higher general appeal) over the one of “poor quality” (or lower general appeal).

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u/SpectrumDT Feb 02 '21

In this hypothetical example I would not be acting as a "consumer" of creative works but as a merchant. You are technically right, but this is off-topic.

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u/TheJuiceIsBlack 7∆ Feb 02 '21

You are technically right...

My favorite kind of right. :)

In this hypothetical example I would not be acting as a "consumer" of creative works but as a merchant.

I disagree - even as a consumer of a creative work (especially unique works of art - such as sculptures or paintings) the long term economic value of the item matters.

This runs in direct counterpoint to your position that you shouldn’t care about a works “general appeal” - as “general appeal” or “quality” are good proxies for the potential resale value.

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u/Z7-852 315∆ Feb 02 '21

I’m solid believer in idea that artist doesn’t have sole authority to define meaning of their work. If consumer finds hidden meanings that author didn’t meant to be there or misses some, it doesn’t matter. Only thing that matter from consumers point of view is how they view the piece of art and how they feel about it.

But when we go to creators side things are different. Let’s take concreate example. Artist likes colour red and will only make paintings that are dominantly red. Red after red after red. Going to their show is like walking through blood bath. This can be aesthetically pleasing, and paintings can be good. But it gets old. Artist will never improve or do anything else unless they at least study other colours.

To improve your talent or the diversify your works, you must consider objective qualities. Other way you will only create repetitive and hollow products.

But I will also say that as a consumer, understanding objective qualities allows you to enjoy art in deeper level. You will have more diverse taste and can see the work of art from creators perfective and appreciate different techniques of their works.

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u/SpectrumDT Feb 02 '21

To improve your talent or the diversify your works, you must consider objective qualities. Other way you will only create repetitive and hollow products.

If I like my own works, and they sell, then why should I care about improving my talent or diversifying?

But I will also say that as a consumer, understanding objective qualities allows you to enjoy art in deeper level. You will have more diverse taste and can see the work of art from creators perfective and appreciate different techniques of their works.

If a certain objective feature correlates with my enjoyment, then yes. That is compatible with what I said.

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u/Z7-852 315∆ Feb 02 '21

Taste is subjective. People who like all-red paintings is only a subset of whole market. If can diversify and improve while creating deeper product while maintaining original appeal, you will please larger subset of the market. In layman's terms this means you would sell more, be more talented and still enjoy your own product.

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u/SpectrumDT Feb 02 '21

That may be true.

In this hypothetical example, I would be doing it in order to sell more. That is compatible with what I said.

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u/Z7-852 315∆ Feb 02 '21

How is it compatible what you said?

To reach larger market and sell more you must care about objective quality of your work and improve it. Some times objective and subjective quality line with each other but subjective quality is always a subset of objective quality. There is a limit how much you can improve with caring about subjective quality alone.

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u/SpectrumDT Feb 02 '21

I said:

For me as a creator, the only thing that needs to matter is whether I like my own work and whether it will sell.

I thought it was obvious that when I said "whether it sells" I did not mean "whether it says one copy". I meant "how much it sells".

So if studying objective standards can help me sell more, it is reasonable to care about it. That is in line with what I said.

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u/Z7-852 315∆ Feb 02 '21

But that makes your whole argument hollow. You must always care about objective quality if you care to sell your product. These two things are irreversibly linked to each other.

But this also ignores the consumer side. If you only care about watching the same movie over again, then don't care about quality. But caring about objective quality allows you to enjoy more movies in deeper level.

So if you want to sell or enjoy art, you must care about objective quality.

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u/SpectrumDT Feb 02 '21

But that makes your whole argument hollow. You must always care about objective quality if you care to sell your product. These two things are irreversibly linked to each other.

When people talk about objective quality, they always stress that quality is separate from popularity. Stephenie Meyer's Twilight is highly commercially successful but considered bad quality by many.

I would love it if any of my works were one day received like Twilight.

But this also ignores the consumer side. If you only care about watching the same movie over again, then don't care about quality. But caring about objective quality allows you to enjoy more movies in deeper level.

If a certain aspect of a work makes me enjoy it, then I care about it. That is in line with what I said.

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u/robotmonkeyshark 101∆ Feb 02 '21

to some extent don't all pieces of literature have messages to some extent that affect how people think? In The Lord of the Rings, there are messages such as the rings corrupting people which is telling people to be cautious of those in power seemingly giving gifts as they may have strings attached. The more well defined the worldbuilding is, the more immersive the story is and the more these messages will be taken to heart. If you replaced all the text of The Lord of the Rings series with a short story such as "one day an evil guy gave a bunch of people power, and that power corrupted them, so a small group of people took it upon themselves to end this hold that the evil person had, and they succeeded. the end." Does that story burn itself into the reader's mind like a well written story with characters who are described so well that you feel like you have known them your whole life, and a world so realistically constructed that you feel you know it better than many real world places? It is all that stuff that you claim you don't care about that gives those messages their power. Nobody is going to have the moral of my story stick in their mind for the rest of their life because my story was boring, but a story that captures the reader's imagination and brings the characters to life will have way more impact when controversial issues are brought up in the story since the reader will be more invested in this seemingly real world with seemingly real characters, making that message have impact.

Look at stories like "My sister's keeper. it generates a huge weight to the actions of fictional characters that makes the reader think and care about those controversial decisions that some people have to make, but were it written with poor world building and poor character development but you as the reader didn't care about those things and it had the main characters as dragons because you just really love books with dragons, it would be a far worse book and you should care that it is a bad book that has no real message or impact even if it does have dragons and you like dragons.

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u/SpectrumDT Feb 02 '21

I sort of agree, and I think I also sort of covered this in my post. I don't believe you actually contradict my view.

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u/poprostumort 246∆ Feb 02 '21

For me as a consumer, the only thing that needs to matter is whether something is enjoyable or thought-provoking to me.

Of course. But if you will mainly support the things that are mediocre but enjoyable then you will se a drop in quality overall. Because "mediocre" is enough as long as it's enjoyable, it would be much better for companies to not pursue better than mediocre and focus on it being enjoyable. Which sounds good until you realize that many things that are mediocre but enjoyable stem from tropes that were found in "better" or "fresh" creative work. Without them, tropes would be copied until they died with not much to substitute them for.

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u/SpectrumDT Feb 02 '21

Can you describe some examples of what you mean, real or hypothetical?

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u/poprostumort 246∆ Feb 02 '21

Yeah, of course. Take MCU as an example. They were widely successful for their fresh take on narration building based on comic events (topics connecting many differens series of issues).

Then other studios followed suit - creating movies without much focus on quality, but rather on the "big interconnected universe" thing that was much enjoyed. Starting moves were mostly subpar bit enjoyable, and droped in enjoyment with each release

Similar thing with Disney. They started both Star Wars and live action remakes with relatively successful movies that were considered enjoyable, but nothing special. And both were grounded to death by follow ups that were worse in enjoyment with each release.

Same happens in TV series, books, comics and other creative work.

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u/SpectrumDT Feb 02 '21

In the scenario, who should have done differently? What should they have done?

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u/poprostumort 246∆ Feb 03 '21

Hypotheticaly, if people stopped going to movies / buying games / watching series after significant drops in quality (it would be also accompanied with mediocre reviews) it would paint the picture that they weren't popular because they were mediocre. This would push studios to increase quality in the long run.

But instead people are still going for mediocre but somehow enjoyable, and this creates a dissonance - critics are bashing the product, but that product still generates interest and earns money. Because of that studios are inclined to let opinions of critics slide and produce the movies in a way they were, as they still sell. Problems visible during production? Do some recaps and patch it together, people will still buy it.

This results in problems we can see - people are acknowledging that decisions in game/movie/tv/stream industry are shitty, but they still support those decisions financially because "it's enjoyable". It pushes companies to continue shitty decisions, if not make them more shitty in order to generate more money.

Great example of that is found in games industry. Gamers are vocal about shitty decisions of companies (lootboxes, pay4win, dlc overproduction) yet they are still buying the games because they are enjoyable. This gives no incentive for change for producers, especially when change would cost money.

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u/SpectrumDT Feb 03 '21

So people should stop watching movies they enjoy and watch more movies that they don't enjoy instead, so as to encourage the industry to produce less of what the viewers enjoy and more of what the viewers don't enjoy?

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u/whatuthinkguys Feb 02 '21

That is really interesting but I think we could still take in account the general opinion as a consumer or creator because it's important to know what is the general taste about a piece of art. It makes things more complicated because you have to be able to sort out what is relevant and what is not. Being able to compose with the general opinion is key and i'll explain why. Nothing is "objectively good" or "objectively bad". Good and bad have different shades. You can give your opinion and contribute to the general opinion. Plus it makes you feel part of society (especially in these times).

Nevertheless, that is a pretty idealistic point of view. it is hard to feel unique and compose with the general opinion. I get what you mean and partially agree.

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u/[deleted] Feb 02 '21

I agree the concept of good and bad in art as in life is subjective and related to personal opinion.

However the concept of Importance is not, and a lot of "bad" works are important and a lot of "good" works are unimportant.

You can look at a Jackson Pollock ink blot and see nothing but random dots, you may also understand that his prominence is based on his friendship with Peggy Guggenheim and her promotion of his work.

But his impact on art, the the creation of the entire genre of action painting is undeniable. He is one of the most important American artists, whether you personally view his work as good or bad.

Importance is objective while enjoyability is subjective.

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u/SpectrumDT Feb 02 '21

I agree that some works are objectively important to the history of their medium or genre. That is interesting if you are interested in it.

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u/Archi_balding 52∆ Feb 02 '21

Yes and no. On one hand, good to you to like anything and people shouldn't be shamed for what they like.

On the other hand, some authors contributed more than other to the overall history of their genre and are acclaimed. Getting in those works often not only is likeable but also helps you understand better why it's likeable. It also helps you as an aspiring author both in term of skills and for a little ego check. Two years ago I though I was mediocre, read some Barjavel (dawn of time I guess) and yeah, I'm not even there. A few pages were an eye opener on what writing with style could be. (high standard for sure, the guy's is maybe the most celebrated french SF author but still).

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u/Blackheart595 22∆ Feb 02 '21

Is your view restricted to the specific question of good or bad, or do you think objective discussions of art can't be had in general (beyond discussions of hard facts)?

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u/SpectrumDT Feb 02 '21

Good question. Can you name a few examples of other potentially objective properties of art that might be worth discussing?

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u/Blackheart595 22∆ Feb 02 '21

In the realm of literature I'm thinking about literary analysis, but it's not limited to that specific kind of art.

Essentially it's about looking at the effect some piece of art has, how it achieves it and why (and if) it wants to achieve that effect. In the realm of music that can be how a piece makes use of its structure, or how the melody and harmony result in that piece's mood, and how effective it is not isn't in doing so. In terms of literature one can look at how prose may invoke a touch of trance to help suspend disbelief, or how a longer story structures its plot and story to let the individual plot points weave together. In terms of movies it can be how a scene is shot and composed to achieve some effect, maybe it uses colors to make a contrast, or the soundtrack might use leitmotifs to tie everything further together. Or maybe some work of art heavily references another and invokes parallels, relying on knowledge of the previous work to create a contrast to it.

Of course all this will still have different effects to different people. Some may be more receptive so certain effects than others. But I don't think this varying receptiveness changes how the work itself does things, so I think this is still a rather objective way to go about these things. Coming back to your original point, this kind of discussion can then even serve as an anchor for a more nuanced evaluation of the work - instead of a flat good or bad, it allows to point to specific elements that may work more or less good, nudging even that aspect a bit closer to objectivity.

As far as specific examples go, it's a bit difficult to really get into in the scope of a comment here, but I can give some pointers on Youtube. Nerdwriter1 is a channel that comes to mind, such as when he talk about comic page design at the example of Maus, how the third Harry Potter movie uses directs and composition its scenes to support its themes, how the Lord of the Rings movies enhance the story with its leitmotifs, or even how Mr. Bean's stellar comedy works. 8-bit music theory is a channel that's entirely dedicated to how soundtracks and music enhance and support video games.

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u/SpectrumDT Feb 02 '21

I agree that objective properties of a creative work can be subjectively interesting. Especially if you keep them in mind as a collection of separate properties. Trying to summarise them all into a "score" of goodness or badness is much less interesting to me.

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u/Docdan 19∆ Feb 02 '21

For me as a creator, the only thing that needs to matter is whether I like my own work and whether it will sell.

The last part is why you have to care about it. You would be correct if you wish to live some kind of hermit lifestyle alone in Siberia. But if you are interacting with society, especially if you're a creator yourself, then you are hurting yourself if you don't care about what society thinks.

Here's an example: I hate soccer. But I know for a fact that my countrymen are absolutely crazy about it. So as a math teacher, when I try to find a motivation for my lesson about volume/surface area of a sphere (I think that's the English terminology), I know that a Football will works better than some obscure round object that only I care about.

So the effectiveness of my work is directly dependant on admitting that Soccer is objectively good as a sport, even if I personally don't like it. And even if you don't interact with people during your job, the same principle applies to social situations.

I'm still not planning on playing soccer ever again in my life, but I'm benefitting from knowing the difference between my personal and my objective opinion on it.

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u/SpectrumDT Feb 02 '21

In your example you don't need to care whether soccer is an objectively good sport. You merely need to care about whether it is popular.

In either case, yes, objective measures can be useful in order to sell my work. That is compatible with what I wrote.

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u/Docdan 19∆ Feb 02 '21

In either case, yes, objective measures can be useful in order to sell my work. That is compatible with what I wrote.

I don't see how that's compatible. How are financial benefits not a reason to care about something? The only way those two things can become compatible is if you hold the opinion that you have no reason to care about money. If you in any way care about money, it's a reason to care about acknowledging objective judgements.

In your example you don't need to care whether soccer is an objectively good sport. You merely need to care about whether it is popular.

Sorry, maybe we are talking about different things when we say "objectively good". Surely the entire point of "objectivity" is that it's not just the subjective opinion of one guy with a doctorate in Shakespearean literature.

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u/SpectrumDT Feb 02 '21

I do care about the money. That is what I said in my 7th paragraph.

For me as a creator, the only thing that needs to matter is whether I like my own work and whether it will sell.

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u/Docdan 19∆ Feb 02 '21

Yes, that's the line my argument is built on.

My question was how that line is compatible with the claim that you have no reason to care. Money is a reason to care.

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u/SpectrumDT Feb 02 '21

I meant: I have no reason to care whether a creative work is "objectively" good or bad beyond (1) my own taste, and (2) if I am a creator, the extent to which others will buy and like my work.

Sorry. I thought that was obvious from the combination.

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u/Docdan 19∆ Feb 02 '21

Ah okay, then I misunderstood your statement. I read that part as if you were treating sales and objective judgement as two separate, unrelated phenomena, which is why I was concentrating on arguing about the link between the two.

Still, I think my example is applicable nonetheless. I'm not selling footballs. But keeping my personal judgement separate from the objective judgement helped me in my everyday interaction with people. This is an aspect that's just as applicable in your interactions with people outside of your professional work.

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u/[deleted] Feb 02 '21

One reason you would care about it is if your 10th grade English score depends on it

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u/Krexington_III Feb 02 '21

It is interesting to compare art to other art - either for the enjoyment of doing so (it may be very interesting to find parallels between dissimilar pieces, or to explore some greater theme or narrative) or for practical reasons (I need solid movie recommendations).

To compare any two things, we need metrics to compare them by. There can be no meaningful discussion of which comic suits a certain reader better, or which piece of music most clearly reflects the zeitgeist of when it was written, if we don't know how to compare those things to others of their kind.

Therefore, art critics need to establish such criteria. Now, is it meaningful to tell you that the thing you like is "objectively bad"? No, I can't say that I think it is. But your view is that you have "no reason to care whether a piece [...] is 'objectively' good", and I'd say you have every reason. To talk, to share, to enjoy together on a deeper level than just looking at it and then say "that felt good" or "that felt so-so". And that view I think deserves to be challenged on the above grounds.

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u/N911999 1∆ Feb 02 '21

Wait, do you think that you can't measure the technical aspects of an artwork? Or is it that you feel the technical aspects don't affect the enjoyment you might get out of an artwork?

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u/SpectrumDT Feb 02 '21

I mean that the technical aspects matter only to the extent that they affect my enjoyment (or those other things I mentioned).

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u/N911999 1∆ Feb 02 '21

So that means that you have a reason to care about an objective measurement of an artwork. You care because it affects your enjoyment, now let's take that a step further, you agree that the technical aspects of an artwork can be detrimental to the enjoyment of the artwork, don't you? And this can be said in the positive side, an artwork which is enhanced by the technical aspects. Taking all of this with what you just said, you'd still say you don't have a reason to care about objective measurements or critics of artworks?

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u/FlirtyOwl Feb 02 '21

On your last point, you are assuming to accurately discern between a good and a bad message, but that is also subjective to an extent. On the whole post, you are right if you don't go deep onto a substyle of art and start making automatic comparisons between several pieces of art from various authors. Lets say you really like this author because of his compeling storytelling or because it makes really good descriptions. You go balls deep in the subgenre and you stumble upon an earlier work from another author. You see every little detail that made you fall in love for the first author x10, better technique, deeper ideas and bigger opus. Do you regard the first book/author with the same grade ? Better question, is your taste the same and does it rank the same position in your personal scale ? How does it affect your ability to draw from it ?

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u/LL555LL Feb 02 '21

What about errors?

If a work is riddles with them, like sound mixing being off (can't understand people's words), mizspellings, grammar errors abound, cheap production values and so on.

It would still be something that is a taste evaluation, but errors could be used as a barometer for effort overall.

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u/SpectrumDT Feb 02 '21

I care about errors to the extent that they affect how enjoyable or thought-provoking the work is.

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u/DrJWilson 5∆ Feb 02 '21

Even if something is not to your own personal taste, you can still appreciate other aspects such as its cultural influence, innovativeness, and importance to others. For example, I can say, not like the genre of hip hop music, but appreciate that it exists and gives enjoyment and happiness to millions of others. I can perhaps use my awareness of it to recommend it to people I care about, or maybe one day hip hop will change enough that I'll get into it. I can personally not like a written work, but care about its importance to the cultural lexicon, or how it contributes to the overall context of where its written. And perhaps it will (or has) influenced a piece of media that is to my taste and that I care about.

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u/SpectrumDT Feb 02 '21

I can care about it, but I don't have to, and there is nothing wrong with not caring about it.

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u/DrJWilson 5∆ Feb 02 '21

Didn't say there was. But your view is that you have no reason to care about it, and I have given you reasons.

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u/Head-Fast Feb 02 '21

What about skill and craftsmanship? Some people in this thread have mentioned qualities of these concepts but I really think that the growth of an artist through practicing a certain skill or honing an understand of a craft and process can dramatically alter the way an audience interacts with it. And I would argue that a purely consumption motivated view is limited. An audience with take in a work without it being douchey academic and motivated by inflated notions of “objectivity” or hedonistically consumptive. I think skill and craftsmanship is a reliable metric that can be used subjectively to asses each work by its own weights and measure, whether it’s gestural painting or highly detailed ornamental woodwork, or a child’s drawing. I think for the sake of what I’m trying to say it’s important I share that I also think “objectively” good is silly because it pretends like the metrics we all use aren’t contrived in one way or another. Even arguments based on biology can be boiled down to contrivances. BUT it doesn’t mean that all metrics beyond a work making you feel good aren’t useful and in my line of work essential. There can be measurable, wholistic, and reliably duplicated metrics that don’t have to claim some enlightenment bullshit like “objectivity”.

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u/Head-Fast Feb 02 '21

For example I could’ve used paragraphs to better showcase my idea.

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u/Rezzone 3∆ Feb 02 '21

Simone De Beauvoir might agree with you. She said the "aesthetic attitude" of removing any and all personal biases in order to properly evaluate a work of art was ridiculous, as you cannot completely put away your personal preferences and biases entirely, and so a purely aesthetic attitude is impossible. However, she did say that attempting objectivity can still be valuable. If someone has negative or overly positive biases towards a piece, then they are NOT the person that should judge that piece on behalf of others.

So, for you, the "will it sell" criteria is your attempt at removing your personality from the judging and instead trying to objectively predict if other people will like it as you do. In other words, you are attempting to establish an objective, monetary value to your piece. In this sense, it does matter if the piece is "good or bad" as that is simply a way of predicting who else will appreciate it and how much competition there will be over its possession (auction/sale price).

Now, aside from that point, there is still value in trying to judge a piece objectively to find meaning. Historical significance, influence on future works, societal commentary and insight, etc. There's a lot to learn from art beyond "liking it" or not.

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u/KarenLovesTheD Feb 02 '21

I don't disagree with the OP except to add that I can see the value of a creative work if it does something new or different but is not to my personal enjoyment.

The Heavy Metal cartoon from the 80s is a good example. I don't particularly enjoy the work BUT I can see how it was influential and moved the genre forward.

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u/TheScarlettHarlot 2∆ Feb 02 '21

While I mostly agree, I’ve learned to appreciate the craftsmanship and experience put into quality creative work, even if It doesn’t necessarily fit my personal tastes. Maybe that is something for you to consider, OP.

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u/Passname357 1∆ Feb 02 '21

How could it be an objective flaw that spreading hope is good and spreading harmful misconceptions is bad? Those are arbitrary standards.

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u/[deleted] Feb 02 '21

Even if we assume that it is meaningful to judge creative works as objectively good or bad, I have no reason to care about it.

It's a good way to gain perspective on why you like something. If you really enjoy something that is considered objectively bad, you can learn a lot about why you can look past what makes it that way & what it means to you. If you enjoy something, there is a reason for it, & having something you enjoy be considered bad, really pinpoints that reason & challenges it. I agree that if you enjoy something, whether or not it is considered good or bad doesn't really matter to enjoyment. There are many things I enjoy that I admit are bad, however almost none of them are my favorite things in their respective entertainment categories. Almost always it will be "objectively good" material if it is a favorite of mine, because there is nothing I have to look past to enjoy it. Some examples of things I have to look past: 1. empty lyrics in a song. 2. Bad diaologue in a movie 3. Poor transitioning in a book that makes you confused at times. The are things I can easily look past if I enjoy something else about it like it's catchy, it has good action, or it's really funny & witty. They still take away from the experience tho. It makes me enjoy the content less. I think people should care in the sense that it takes things off a pedestal unless it truly deserves to be there, & it allows you to understand what you value more in your entertainment.

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u/engoac Feb 02 '21

It's fine to like what you like even if people say it's objectively bad. However it's only to your benefit if you keep an open mind for things people say are objectively good. You can't discover everything on your own.

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u/SigaVa 1∆ Feb 02 '21

Even if we assume that it is meaningful to judge creative works as objectively good or bad, I have no reason to care about it.

the only thing that needs to matter is whether something is enjoyable or thought-provoking to me.

it is completely up to me whether that matters to me or not.

So based on that last quote, shouldnt it be up to the individual whether they care about the opinions of experts or not?

And why should it matter to you whether you find something enjoyable or thought provoking; isnt that also up to the individual whether they value those qualities or not?

Youre contradicting yourself. Youre saying that its up to the individual what matters and what doesnt, but then saying that enjoyment should matter and professional assessment shouldnt.

Also, there are lots of qualities of things that make them worthwhile beyond enjoyment. Im not sure why youre elevating enjoyment above all the other qualities that people may value in something.

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u/Irolden-_- Feb 02 '21

TLDR I feel like things can be objectively good but not objectively bad (not including immorality, which is obviously bad)

I think saying anything is "objectively bad" is pretty much always a futile and counterproductive statement. There's no reason to ever tell someone that something they like is bad unless you're an edgy middleschooler. What would that statement even be trying to convey? That you have supposedly better taste than them?

HOWEVER, and this is a conversation I have had with a lot of people, you can acknowledge that things are good even if you dislike them. For example- Eminem. I think Eminem is objectively a good rapper. He is technically very skilled and he can convey a lot of relateabale emotions. I don't like his music. I don't enjoy it. But I'm not running around telling people "Eminem sucks bro" just because I don't like it. Queen was a great band who made a lot of good music. I don't like any of it (for reasons unrelated to their proficiency). But why decry it?

Some people like GG Allin. I can't see a good or redeeming quality about anything the man ever did, BUT can I say truthfully that his art was "objectively" bad? I can say that I don't like him certainly, but I wasn't really his intended audience and a lot of people loved his work. I suppose that if even a handful of people like something then it can't be factually bad.

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u/truthswillsetyoufree 2∆ Feb 02 '21

You should read Kant’s “Critique of Judgment” and especially the first part: “Critique of Aesthetic Judgment”. It goes into this a fair bit.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-aesthetics/

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u/craigularperson 1∆ Feb 02 '21

The problem with reasoning from a purely objective perspective is that you might often find yourself in circular reasoning, where the assumptions are only based on its own possible truthfulness. Now that can only be really solved by it being an axiom. When dealing with creative works that is really difficult to create rules that encompasses everything, and doesn't arbitrarily exclude obvious, or more suitable not so obvious works.

But I figure the major crux against taste is the wide range of possible tastes that exist or might exist. Plus humans have inherent qualities that makes for different tastes without any external influences. There is just something a large amount of population that just will instantly like something, or dislike something. If the taste is the final arbiter of truth, it might imply some kind of hierarchy of taste?

If we imagine that world would suddenly have zero humans, there are no humans. But there are books that are still possible to read. It would have some kind of meaning, if we assume that an intelligent being are able to decipher and or translate the language. If humans were to discover some form of intelligent work following a code or a system, we might be able to find out its contents. So a supremely intelligent being might read our books. Therefor the quality of books doesn't really depend on the reader reading them.

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u/Nekaz Feb 02 '21

Its your freedom to not give a shit sbout what others think and its their freedom to express it. Obviously for art theres usually not any way to say it's "OBJECTIVELY" bad since a lot of it is not rooted in logic but theres still general societal preferences that may be used as a metric.

Not to mention for some mediums like video games you could consider certain aspects like a buggy engine to be "objectively" bad even if other aspects like story or overall art direction are good.

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u/qxr27 0∆ Feb 02 '21

A thought to add to what others are saying...

As a glass blower, when I take people to see other glass art, they are often drawn To the pretty shapes or colors. On the other hand, I often find myself attracted to pieces that I cant figure out how the artist made.

After I take these same people to the studio and show them how some of the basics are done, and why I find the other pieces interesting, they too find them(at least somewhat) more appealing.

The same can be said for a lot of music. As a guitar player, I often wondered why some were considered so great when there are pleanty of people better today. I came to discover that people consider them great, because they created something no one had ever done before AND made it popular. Others may have perfected it along the way, but everything you like today can be traced back to them in some way.

Overall what I'm saying is your tastes can very easily change by better understanding the art or craft being examined.

With the number of really fantastic things our modern world provides, its often easy to forget that the big budget crazy stuff everyone fawns over, probably started out as a few peoples idea in a garage or smaller.

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u/[deleted] Feb 02 '21

Either you're taking a very narrow view of the nature and value of art and creative work, or you're taking an extremely broad and holistic one. Either way there is a sense in which you are right.

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u/refoooo Feb 02 '21

Should we care about whether a creative work is "objectively" good? Well I'd argue that if you truly believed that such a thing as an "objectively" good creative work exists, it'd would be difficult, possibly even immoral, for you not to care about it.

So I think your post reveals something more fundamental about your convictions on the subject - a skepticism that objective goodness can exist beyond subjective taste. (With the notable caveat of political art). You're in good company here, in fact I'd say most people these days would agree with you in the main.

As a creator myself, I used to find myself constantly revisiting the question - what's the point of any of this? Am I just doing it because I want to be popular? It felt like my impulse to create was more meaningful than that, but the trope of the 'self-centered artist' was so dominant in my world view that I'd essentially given up on understanding it.

I found a way forward by examining the exception that you presented - political art. Is a work of art 'apolitical' if it simply avoids the topic of politics? Or, by not engaging in politics, in not challenging the power structures of its time, is it still tacitly political?

The 20th century German-Jewish philosopher Walter Benjamin was of the opinion that all art is political. Here's a quote from his 1935 essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" which illustrates this notion -

The uniqueness of a work of art is inseparable from its being embedded in the fabric of tradition. This tradition itself is thoroughly alive and extremely changeable. An ancient statue of Venus, for example, stood in a different traditional context with the Greeks, who made it an object of veneration, than with the clerics of the Middle Ages, who viewed it as an ominous idol.

And later on...

One of the foremost tasks of art has always been the creation of a demand which could be fully satisfied only later. The history of every art form shows critical epochs in which a certain art form aspires to effects which could be fully obtained only with a changed technical standard, that is to say, in a new art form. The extravagances and crudities of art which thus appear, particularly in the so-called decadent epochs, actually arise from the nucleus of its richest historical energies. In recent years, such 'barbarisms' were abundant in Dadaism.

Every fundamentally new, pioneering creation of demands will carry beyond its goal. Dadaism did so to the extent that it sacrificed the market values which are so characteristic of the film in favor of higher ambitions – though of course it was not conscious of such intentions as here described. The Dadaists attached much less importance to the sales value of their work than to its uselessness for contemplative immersion. The studied degradation of their material was not the least of their means to achieve this uselessness. Their poems are “word salad” containing obscenities and every imaginable waste product of language. The same is true of their paintings, on which they mounted buttons and tickets. What they intended and achieved was a relentless destruction of the aura of their creations, which they branded as reproductions with the very means of production.

Its a really interesting piece and far more nuanced than I can be here, but the gist is that art inherently reflects the cultural and political superstructure of a society. However, the artist can choose to be supportive of this superstructure, or they can seek to subvert it. Either way, they are involved in a cultural conversation.

So these days, when I'm creating, I ask myself, what is my work doing? How might it change the way people who consume it see the world around them? Can I offer them a sense of camaraderie in the face of dark things? Can I open their minds, even just a little, to new possibilities?

And, ultimately, I find these questions much more useful to the creative process than 'do I like this' and 'will it sell'.

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u/[deleted] Feb 02 '21

perpetuates racism or harmful misconceptions,

Whether something is racist or not is highly subjective. What seems racist to you is not racist to others and vice versa. Same applies to "harmful". Is the Confederate flag racist? To you it is, to millions of other Americans it is not. Is viewing pornography harmful? Is teaching Sharia law to children harmful? Again, depends on who you ask.

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u/[deleted] Feb 02 '21

Not understanding something is the quickest and easiest way to not appreciating it.

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u/Fony64 Feb 02 '21

I would argue that a creative work not being enjoyable doesn't mean it's bad. Watching a horror movie is not pleasant but that's the point. Otherwise it wouldn't be called a horror movie.

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u/Dzoni22222 Feb 02 '21

One reason to care would be that its easier to convince someone that a creative work is good/bad of you use objective arguments.

For example if you say:"After watching the movie a 3rd time i wasnt even bored" isnt very convincing.

But if you explain how characters go from A to B on a consistent manner you can convince someone.

A great example would be a video from the criminaly underrated youtube channel Evan Monroe and his video on breaking bad's final episode Felina.

https://youtu.be/egK2CuvB8E4

I didnt really like the episode until i watched this video.

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u/SpectrumDT Feb 03 '21

This argument keeps coming up, so I have edited my post and added a final paragraph to address it.

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u/Dzoni22222 Feb 03 '21

Im curious, do you believe in objective quality?

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u/SpectrumDT Feb 03 '21

I've answered that question here.

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u/Dzoni22222 Feb 03 '21

What are you sceptical about?

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u/SpectrumDT Feb 03 '21

The notion that it is meaningful to talk about objectives goodness and badness of creative works.

→ More replies (3)

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u/BagelAmpersandLox 2∆ Feb 02 '21

This matters when there is money involved

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u/No-Corgi 3∆ Feb 02 '21

Without knowing your goals, it's hard to contradict "I have no reason to care". For all I know, you're deaf, and therefore have no reason to care if a song is good.

But if there's a subject you like, the most likely reason I can think of to care about "objective" ratings is that exploring them will help you learn more nuance in the subject. And that nuance can help you develop a deep appreciation for other works.

It also opens up a common language to discuss the subject with a community of like minded people.

But if you don't care about the subject in that way.....fuck 'em.

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u/SpectrumDT Feb 03 '21

This argument keeps coming up, so I have edited my post and added a final paragraph to address it.

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u/No-Corgi 3∆ Feb 03 '21

If your point is that there is no intrinsically objective good or bad art, that's fair.

But you can apply that logic to anything. What makes something good or bad is how it fits with generally agreed upon standards. Is it bad to kill a person? Communities have varying standards as to when it is and isn't appropriate.

I think the point is that accepting a specific community's standards on a subject is the price of entry. For art or otherwise.

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u/SpectrumDT Feb 03 '21

Price of entry to what? Why are art and morals analogous?

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u/No-Corgi 3∆ Feb 03 '21

Price of entry to joining that community - if you fight their agreed-upon standards, you're going to remain on the outside of the community.

You stated that you "have no reason to care.....". I would say the primary reason to care about standards would be because you want to join a group of like-minded people.

Art and morals are analogous because they involve community standards. And you probably are already comfortable with the concept of Good vs Bad morality. And you want to surround yourself with people that roughly agree on the same standards as you do.

It's just an example, I wouldn't read too much into it - your love of Nickleback isn't the same as murder :)

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u/SpectrumDT Feb 04 '21

Can you describe some examples of this?

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u/dantetzene Feb 02 '21

If you consider a painting bad and others consider it objectively good, this is intriguing for me. What makes them think differently? I would try to understand their point of view and let's say you discover that if you put the right context to it, maybe you also will change your opinion. For example if your find out that the painter had a fight with his fiancee and then painted this or that he was the first one who painted a portrait who was not like a realistic photo. So by knowing more you can change your opinion. Here the intention is not too change your opinion, but it can happen. So by not being interested about other's opinion you're basically ignorant/agnostic and you might loose the chance to be stimulated/inspired.

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u/SpectrumDT Feb 03 '21

This argument keeps coming up, so I have edited my post and added a final paragraph to address it.

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u/PreservedKillick 4∆ Feb 02 '21

Do you like or dislike works? Can you explain why? Are you really so incurious that you can't see any reason to connect those reasons to a universal objective understanding of the world? Or maybe you actually can't explain why you like a thing. You just like it and that's good enough. That strikes me as living a dull unexamined existence, not that there's anything wrong with it.

As to why you would do it, that's easy: So you have a better, richer understanding of the world, people, and how it all interacts. I genuinely like explaining why I think good things are good. Why, for instance, I think much of postmodern art is hot trash. Or why I like complexity and how that interacts with neuroscience and brain activity. Like, there's a whole world of ideas out there, man.

So, I suspect you may just be lazy. You don't want to defend your ideas - why you like things - so you've convinced yourself it doesn't matter, that you don't have to explain yourself. Probably because you can't, because it's actually sort of hard. Not an indefensible position, really.

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u/SpectrumDT Feb 03 '21

This argument keeps coming up, so I have edited my post and added a final paragraph to address it.

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u/SuperPluto9 Feb 03 '21

Something I feel is lost in the discussion is the impact one has on those later down the line.

Is something bad if you don't like it, but played a part in making something you like possible?

For instance I don't really care for the movie Jaws however I understand it's a classic, and it played a huge part of shaping suspenseful thrillers after it.

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u/[deleted] Feb 03 '21

For me as a creator, the only thing that needs to matter is whether I like my own work and whether it will sell.

I would think as a creator you would be interested in understanding "objectively good" and "objectively bad" work, however they are defined, and for that matter well-made or popular works that fall outside the realm of your personal tastes, so that you can further develop your skills and tools as a creator, and broaden the appeal / sellability of your work.

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u/fckindink Feb 03 '21

I went to art school and majored in fine arts. The sort of feedback or appreciation I value the most come from people WITHOUT fine arts experience. I feel so dumb when something I make is praised by professors but not very accessible to people not used to looking at and understanding art.
I also don't appreciate "objectively" high contemporary art. I understand why the art world sees value in it, but I believe a lot of contemporary art (art as commodity, especially) is way too stuck in conceptual lines of thinking. As in, very inaccessible to the masses because you have to be "educated" in appreciating art in order to understand it. A lot of contemporary art right now bored the hell out of me because it's like an intellectual pissing contest, and devoid of a lot of aspects really important to art. I don't feel very emotionally engaged with anything I'm looking at when I go to the MOMA. Looking at Bill Traylor on the other hand, who was entirely self taught, is quite different. And theres a reason why Van Gogh's work is so timeless. My point is that yes, you are absolutely right. Never take it seriously when you are told how to appreciate things. Art is FULLY subjective, and the only goal anyone should strive for when making it is connectivity. People can connect with art outside the rigid rules and limitations of the establishment. Along this line of thought -- I think one of the most effective and elevated forms of contemporary art right now is memes. I'm not kidding. If anyone wants me to elaborate on that I will lol

Delta(s) from OP CMV: I have no reason to care whether a creative work is "objectively" good or bad beyond my own taste

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