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Re: a few things

Hi,

> The way I see it, all the things you are saying are equal.  A person can not
> like the film *and* think it bad, because everyone has subjective definitions
> of what good and bad are.  Not everyone has take a film study class and can
> use a pre-determined set of rules to say that due to form or design, a
> certain film is bad or good.

Then I'm not sure you've understood my question, since this is only echoing
back *part* of what I said.  I don't disagree with this statement.  My question
on top of this was whether or not those pre-determined rules are themselves
subjective; whether to say "it is a bad film" (or song, or poem, or any
artwork) is the same kind of statement as "the film is shot in black and
white".  I.e., a claim about the property of the *film*, *independent* of the
observer.  Or whether "it's a bad film" is more like "I don't like it" hidden
behind a smoke screen of post-hoc justifications?  I.e., it's not
intellectually honest to even *say* "it's a bad film", because there's no way
to determine good or bad as an intrinsic property of the film, independent of
observer.

My own personal opinion is that I think one can apply at least partially
objective criteria to film as an art form by which one can say if a film is bad
or good, regardless of whether one liked it or not.  It's more of a continuum
than a pure two-state system, and there may be several axes (a film could have
a lousy script but great performances, or a great cinematographer but horrible
editing), but I think it can be done, and I find it frustrating when people
imply because they didn't understand something, *it*'s confusing, or because
they were bored, the *movie* was boring, as if their subjective reaction
defined the objective character of the film.  Just a pet peeve of mine; like
the pseudo-science crackpots who think that because *they* don't understand
quantum mechanics or general relativity, it must be wrong.

> For most people, watching films is a form of entertainment and most folks
> don't apply a rigorous set of rules to the subject matter when sitting back
> and enjoying themselves.

Then they are sheep, not people.  Before anyone yells at me for being elitist,
I'm only saying that *in* that moment, when people shut off their brain for
"entertainment", they become sheep.  I'm not implying it's necessarily a
permanent character trait.  They can turn their brains back on again.
Nevertheless, I do think people are more vulnerable to manipulation when their
brains are off.  I'm weird, though, I enjoy myself by engaging my brain, not
disconnecting it.  "Sitting back and enjoying myself", in a hollywood
blockbuster kind of way, usually just makes me bored and tired.  Life's too
short.

> So, I say (for me at least) it seems that people *can* make the distinction
> that they did not like a film because they thought it was bad.  After all,
> aren't the most base human judgements "good" and "bad"?

To quote Frankenstein's monster "Fire *bad*"!  :-) ;-)  But this wasn't really
my question; see above.

> I don't know of anyone who has laid out a set of guidelines stating that if a
> film falls into "this" category is is bad, or "that" category is is good.

Well, you do now.  :-)

Yours sincerely,
-- 
Don Smith                          Robotic Optical Transient Search Experiment
donaldas at umich_edu                                http://xte.mit.edu/~dasmith/

"There are two kinds of people: those who divide people into two groups, and 
those who don't"
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