Disdain for new fantasy

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

There are objective qualities in most art that can be judged as 'good' or 'bad'. These are from hundreds of years of the art form developing, and whether you agree with them or not...they exist. Its from an academic end of things, which I know not all people like, but that doesn't change the fact of its existence.

Now, these objective qualities do not make the art ITSELF objective. There are certain qualities that can be 'good' or 'bad' in a piece of art, but in the end, it is STILL subjective as a whole. Also, depending on how elements are used, good can become bad and bad can become good.

Really, its all a headache. The truth, though, is that while there are objective qualities to judge art by, in the end, the overall piece is subjective. I'm going to do something I don't like to do here and generalize: There is nothing anywhere that is considered universally bad.

 

[hong]

Needless to say, I love Nifft with all of my body, including my pee-pee.

 

[Raven Crowking]

There is nothing anywhere that is considered universally bad.

Except my singing.......

 

[Geron Raveneye]

No, I just have less disconnect between "topics" than most people. One, just one mind you, of the issues I have with the notion of "art is objective" is that with any given piece of art many people are going to like it/enjoy it/consider it to be good, while others wont/don't/consider it bad. In your philosophy, as I understand it, the people who consider an obectively "bad" work to be "good" are objectively wrong in their opinion, and it tends to follow, therefore, in some way deficient wether its in knowledge, intelligence, or "taste". I disagree with this conclusion.

See this I just cant wrap my mind around. Taste is of course subjective...but when talking about art, so is quality. Therefore, in art, taste and quality are both going to be different even with respect to the same work, as applied by different people.

Unless your willing to accept the notion that some peoples opinions are simply "wrong"

But it does mean you cannot, or should not try to say someones experience or opinion of a work is incorrect. That someone is wrong to consider a work "good" because according to the "experts" its "bad"

You know, I think those quotes above are a good indicator why you have a problem to wrap your mind around the whole matter. You seem to assume that any kind of "objective" (yeah, quotation marks, since being objective is an art even in science ) judgement on the quality of a piece of art instantly applies to the individual taste as well.

Let me tell you one thing...it only does if you let it. And any "art critic" who hasn't understood that little tidbit of reality is on the best course to become very much ignored when he tries to stuff his concept of "good" and "bad" art down everybody's throat, judging those who like "bad" art to have "bad taste" "ignorant minds" or other choice adjectives.

You have the conscious choice of accepting any kind of objective judgement and shape your tastes to it, or refuse it and go with your own gut feelings. Nobody can really take that from you. It doesn't apply to art (as in "artificially created by humans") alone.

Some crystals, for example, are very "bad" crystals because they are impure, grew in different directions, etc. Yet, they still can (and oftentimes ARE) very pretty. That doesn't make somebody who enjoys looking at such crystals an ignorant, or somebody with bad taste in crystals.
And by the way, crystals are one of nature's biggest arts.

Same goes for food. There's an art to cooking...and a science in food. Yet liking something like fast food doesn't mean you must have bad tastes in food, or must be ignorant in the inherent qualities of food and its preparation.

Individual tastes and objective judgements of quality are not connected. People try to change that, but that only leads to a lot of snobism, elitism and aggression.

On a tangent...I'd like to point out that just as food isn't just there to "be enjoyed", so isn't art. Art has a lot of different reasons to be produced, not simply to "be enjoyed". That is one stance where, even though I usually go by it for myself too, I have to disagree on a wider scope, simply because that narrows art down to something to be consumed, which it isn't. Being enjoyed is a nice side-effect, and by now a lot of art has been developed as pure consumer art, true, but that's not the only motivation from which art springs, and it would degrade that artwork to view it only as "comsumer art".

All in my opinion, of course, make of it what you like.

 

[Merlion]

There are objective qualities in most art that can be judged as 'good' or 'bad'. These are from hundreds of years of the art form developing, and whether you agree with them or not...they exist. Its from an academic end of things, which I know not all people like, but that doesn't change the fact of its existence.

Now, these objective qualities do not make the art ITSELF objective. There are certain qualities that can be 'good' or 'bad' in a piece of art, but in the end, it is STILL subjective as a whole. Also, depending on how elements are used, good can become bad and bad can become good.

Really, its all a headache. The truth, though, is that while there are objective qualities to judge art by, in the end, the overall piece is subjective. I'm going to do something I don't like to do here and generalize: There is nothing anywhere that is considered universally bad.

Really this just about sums up what I've been saying, or at least a great deal of it. Especially the bit about objective qualities...I do think there are such, or at least nearly objective qualities, ones almost everyone can agree on. But as you say, the overall work is always still subjective.

And the last part especially is a lot of my main point. There can really be no universal bad in art...unless of course your willing to say some peoples opinions/feelings dont count. Which is part of why this issue gets me a bit riled. I know most don't mean it that way, but the final conclusion of the "objectively bad art" idea is basically that some peoples opinions arent valid, for one reason or other, to one degree or other.

 

[Merlion]

Individual tastes and objective judgements of quality are not connected. People try to change that, but that only leads to a lot of snobism, elitism and aggression.

Its a logic thing. Logically, if a piece of art is objectively bad, then anyone who sees it as good is incorrect/their opinion isnt valid.

But either way, as you say, wether they are connected or not many people, most of them in the "objectively bad art" "camp" seem to feel that they are.

Read Ankh's and my last posts tho. Like I said in there, art may have some elements to which objective or near objective standards can be applied...but in the end, the work as a whole can only be judged subjectively.

 

[Hussar]

And the last part especially is a lot of my main point. There can really be no universal bad in art...unless of course your willing to say some peoples opinions/feelings dont count. Which is part of why this issue gets me a bit riled. I know most don't mean it that way, but the final conclusion of the "objectively bad art" idea is basically that some peoples opinions arent valid, for one reason or other, to one degree or other.

Y'know what? I've got no problems in saying that some people's opinions are less valid than others. Some people are less educated about a work for example. Some people judge things, like anime for example, based on a very small biased sample. Doesn't make their opinion (Anime sucks) wrong for them.

However, should I give someone's opinion whose sole exposure to the genre is Hentai Tentacle porn the same weight as someone who has watched a wide range of anime? I don't think so. I think I'll give more weight to the informed opinion.

To skirt the politics rules on the board a bit, I'd give more weight to reporting which isn't blatantly biased in one direction over one that is. The same goes for trying to say that all art criticism is subjective. It is largely subjective. However, there are definite objective elements we can discuss.

The more free form the art style, the more difficult it becomes, but, it's still not impossible. Take Star Wars again. You say that some people think the movie is wonderful. I'm one of them. However, "wonderful" doesn't tell us anything other than "I liked it." "I liked it" is one of the least informative critique's we can make because, well, who the Hell am I and why should my personal taste matter to you?

However, we can discuss objective elements such as acting (or lack thereof), writing, originality, plot, pacing, cinematography, sound, etc. These are all criteria which can be looked at in a fairly objective way. The acting in Star Wars is bad. There's no other way to put it. It's just bad. The acting in Episode 3 is even worse. Bad leaves out perfectly good words like "Wooden" and "unbelievable". I just don't care that Annakin is having problems, because the acting is so bad.

Compare the acting in, say, Star Wars to Casablanca or Gone With the Wind. I mean, there's just no comparison. It's objectively better and anyone with a modicum of experience with movies will tell you the same.

Yes, if someone sees a bad work as good, they're wrong. That doesn't stop them from liking it, but, liking something doesn't make it good.

 

[Geron Raveneye]

Its a logic thing. Logically, if a piece of art is objectively bad, then anyone who sees it as good is incorrect/their opinion isnt valid.

But either way, as you say, wether they are connected or not many people, most of them in the "objectively bad art" "camp" seem to feel that they are.

Read Ankh's and my last posts tho. Like I said in there, art may have some elements to which objective or near objective standards can be applied...but in the end, the work as a whole can only be judged subjectively.

Heh, did read them, and I'll simply take them as I see them...that it is possible to judge something as (for example) "good jazz", "good impressionism" or "bad bauhaus" on objective criteria, but that the overall label of "good" or "bad" can only be assigned by the individual experiencing it.

To which I agree.

So basically, something can be good or bad "Sword & Sorcery" fiction according to a list of criteria on that genre, and a scale of quality of the author's craftmanship (which is easier to evaluate than the quality of the genre criteria, if I dare say so), but it's simply not possible to blanket-judge fantasy as bad literature. Which is just as well. And goes for anime, too.

And that "logic thing" only applies if somebody who uses the same set of objective criteria as you arrives at a completely opposite judgement. Then it's time to check the criteria for usefulness in judging something in the first place.

If somebody comes up to me (like a friend likes to do very often) and gives me a long list of reasons why some movie I pretty much like sucks, I simply shrug and tell him that we're simply using completely different yardsticks, that I can understand and even agree to some of his points and judgements, but that they don't apply to why I like the movie, and hence his judgement has no value for me. It's really as easy as that. Also works every time in making him puff up quite a bit before deflating.

 

[Merlion]

However, should I give someone's opinion whose sole exposure to the genre is Hentai Tentacle porn the same weight as someone who has watched a wide range of anime? I don't think so. I think I'll give more weight to the informed opinion

I agree, and I should have made this distinction more clear. I have been speaking of opinions of specific works. What your speaking of here is an opinion of a whole catagory or genre, and I agree with you in those cases that an opinion formed about a whole catagory based on very limited or nonexistant experience is not a very useful opinion.

And that goes regardless of the nature of the limited experience. Someone who's only ever seen Eva or Outlaw Star can have a valid opinion about those works, but can't really form a meaningful opinion of anime as a whole just from that. Positive or negative.

The same goes for trying to say that all art criticism is subjective. It is largely subjective. However, there are definite objective elements we can discuss.

Agreed. However, even those elements do have some degree of subjectivity. But they are as close to being objective as anything in art gets.

Yes, if someone sees a bad work as good, they're wrong. .

And here I have to disagree. As discussed above, the final judgement of a work as a whole is still subjective in the end, even though elements of it can be judged in an objective or near objective way.

 

[Merlion]

So basically, something can be good or bad "Sword & Sorcery" fiction according to a list of criteria on that genre, and a scale of quality of the author's craftmanship (which is easier to evaluate than the quality of the genre criteria, if I dare say so), but it's simply not possible to blanket-judge fantasy as bad literature

I'd say its also not possible to judge that specific work as objectively good or bad, as a whole. Elements of it yes, the whole not so much.

If somebody comes up to me (like a friend likes to do very often) and gives me a long list of reasons why some movie I pretty much like sucks, I simply shrug and tell him that we're simply using completely different yardsticks

Yes, because the yardsticks themselves are subjective, in the context of whole works. Most people tend to use the same criteria for certain specific aspects of a work, but the final judgement of the whole work is subjective.