Well, the blog restart seemed pretty short-lived, didn’t it? Sorry
about that. I’ve had various distractions to deal with, and maybe A Secular Age
is proving too much for me after all. So rather than wait till I’m
ready to post about that again, I figured I’d go into something lighter.
After all, my blog used to be about more than one thing!
Recently on Facebook, Eve Tushnet posted a link to her article on a book called The Artificial Silk Girl, with some basic comment like “I read The Artificial Silk Girl.” The first comment on it was from some reader who asked “Is it good?”
Of course, the obvious answer to that is READ THE DAMN REVIEW, but it’s also possible that the reader actually did read it but didn’t see a direct answer to the question. There’s no score, no grade, no commandment to run out and buy it. And I know from personal experience that a lot of people don’t have the patience for anything else. The comment, in fact, sent me hurtling back in time to the early 1990s, when I was working at a movie theater counter. If I had a dollar for every time a customer showed up and asked, “What’s that movie about? Is it good?” I would probably have been able to pay for grad school up front. It was an early lesson for me in how different other people’s consumer behavior is from my own, because it had never occurred to me before then to ask a random college student working at a movie theater to basically pick out my movie for me.
I guess some people may have misunderstood the business model of a movie theater — this was an upscale suburb, and maybe they were used to going to restaurants and clothing stores where the staff was specifically trained to help them choose what to buy. Believe me, that was not the case with us — we worked for minimum wage and knew no more about movies than the next person. But what really flummoxed me was how many people still seemed to believe that goodness is an objective fact about a movie, which could therefore be stated in one yes/no answer. I don’t think you need an education in postmodern theory to know about personal taste, and I also don’t think that recognizing it means throwing out artistic standards. The trouble is that a cultural canon takes quite a while to form — hence the cliche about great artists not being recognized in their time — so appealing to transcendent standards of Art isn’t really going to tell this person whether this newly released movie is a good way to spend a Saturday night.
A movie industry worker who goes by the pseudonym Film Crit Hulk has written some interesting articles on this subject, particularly one from last year called What Makes A Movie Good? It is, I admit, overly long and you have to get used to his gimmick (semi-imitating the voice of the Incredible Hulk), but I like his overall point that subjectivity of response isn’t a problem to be overcome in film viewing/discussion, but actually part of what makes it meaningful:
Because even a lot of experienced filmgoers don’t understand why they reacted to movies the way the did. Elsewhere in the essay Hulk mentions that people keep getting distracted by the “tangible details” of movies, and I certainly experienced that one too. I remember when people used to ask about one movie that was playing at our theater, Muriel’s Wedding, a colleague would respond by asking, “Do you like ABBA?” Now, I saw Muriel’s Wedding and I can see how if you absolutely hate ABBA that would be a problem, but otherwise that doesn’t have much to do with whether you’d enjoy the movie — the heroine’s favorite band could just as well have been someone else, and nothing would have changed. More recently, I remember trying to convince a friend that just because he liked Shakespeare in Love didn’t mean he was going to like Anonymous, because the two movies have nothing in common except that they both have to do with the creation of Shakespeare’s plays. (He saw it anyway, and still sounded befuddled as to why he didn’t like it as much.)
So actually, it can take a long acquaintance to be able to guess whether a person is going to like a particular movie/book/whatever. I’m still frequently surprised by Eve, and we’ve been talking and blogging about this stuff for ten years. And I’m still sometimes surprised by myself, even though the acquaintance is far longer.
Recently on Facebook, Eve Tushnet posted a link to her article on a book called The Artificial Silk Girl, with some basic comment like “I read The Artificial Silk Girl.” The first comment on it was from some reader who asked “Is it good?”
Of course, the obvious answer to that is READ THE DAMN REVIEW, but it’s also possible that the reader actually did read it but didn’t see a direct answer to the question. There’s no score, no grade, no commandment to run out and buy it. And I know from personal experience that a lot of people don’t have the patience for anything else. The comment, in fact, sent me hurtling back in time to the early 1990s, when I was working at a movie theater counter. If I had a dollar for every time a customer showed up and asked, “What’s that movie about? Is it good?” I would probably have been able to pay for grad school up front. It was an early lesson for me in how different other people’s consumer behavior is from my own, because it had never occurred to me before then to ask a random college student working at a movie theater to basically pick out my movie for me.
I guess some people may have misunderstood the business model of a movie theater — this was an upscale suburb, and maybe they were used to going to restaurants and clothing stores where the staff was specifically trained to help them choose what to buy. Believe me, that was not the case with us — we worked for minimum wage and knew no more about movies than the next person. But what really flummoxed me was how many people still seemed to believe that goodness is an objective fact about a movie, which could therefore be stated in one yes/no answer. I don’t think you need an education in postmodern theory to know about personal taste, and I also don’t think that recognizing it means throwing out artistic standards. The trouble is that a cultural canon takes quite a while to form — hence the cliche about great artists not being recognized in their time — so appealing to transcendent standards of Art isn’t really going to tell this person whether this newly released movie is a good way to spend a Saturday night.
A movie industry worker who goes by the pseudonym Film Crit Hulk has written some interesting articles on this subject, particularly one from last year called What Makes A Movie Good? It is, I admit, overly long and you have to get used to his gimmick (semi-imitating the voice of the Incredible Hulk), but I like his overall point that subjectivity of response isn’t a problem to be overcome in film viewing/discussion, but actually part of what makes it meaningful:
A LONG TIME AGO (WHEN HULK WAS A YOUNGER HULK), HULK USED TO GET PRETTY ANGRY WITH THE AMERICAN MOVIE-GOER.
HULK WOULD RAGE AGAINST THEIR STUPIDITY. “HOW COULD THEY LOVE TITANIC SO MUCH!?!?!?! L.A. CONFIDENTIAL IS ONE OF THE BEST MOVIES HULK HAS EVER SEEN! WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH THEM?!?!? HULK SMAAAAAASH!!!!!” AND SO ON. HULK JUST WANTED TO IMPOSE THE WILL OF WHAT WAS LIKED AND NOT LIKED. HULK WANTED PEOPLE TO SEE THE PROVERBIAL LIGHT. HULK WANTED EVERYONE TO LIKE THE SAME KIND OF MOVIES AND SUPPORT THEM SO THAT THE INDUSTRY WOULD COME AROUND AND KEEP MAKING MORE OF THOSE GREAT MOVIES. AND WHEN HULK GOT TIRED OF SMASHING LIKE THIS? WHEN HULK GOT BEAT DOWN BY WHAT HULK PERCEIVED TO BE POOR TASTE? A FUNNY THING HAPPENED… HULK ACTUALLY LEARNED MORE ABOUT FILMMAKING MORE THAN HULK EVER THOUGHT POSSIBLE.
AND THAT’S BECAUSE HULK STOPPED JUDGING AND HULK STARTING LISTENING. WHEN PEOPLE LIKED A MOVIE HULK’S FIRST QUESTION BECAME: “WHY? WHAT DID YOU CONNECT WITH?” THIS IS NOT SOME CYNICAL APPROPRIATION OF BEING LIKE “HEY, WHAT ARE DEM KIDS INTO? LET’S MAKE MORE OF THOSE!” THIS WAS ABOUT CURIOSITY. AND IT WAS A CURIOSITY THAT HAD LITTLE TO DO WITH BUSINESS OR MARKETING OR ANY OF THE THINGS WE IDENTIFY WITH GENERAL AUDIENCE MOVIE INTEREST (ALTHOUGH BUSINESS/MARKETING OBVIOUSLY A FACTOR IN OUR OPENING WEEKEND-OBSESSED CULTURE). HULK SIMPLY TALKING ABOUT THE KIND OF MOVIES THAT RESONATE AND PEOPLE THINK ARE ACTUALLY GOOD. THE MOVIES THAT TEND TO DO WELL THROUGH THE WEEKS AND HAVE WORD OF MOUTH. THE MOVIES THAT INFECT THE CULTURE AND PEOPLE THINK ARE GOOD. YES, THAT DOES INCLUDE MOVIES LIKE TITANIC.
AND INVESTIGATING HOW PEOPLE (OTHER THAN HULK) ACTUALLY WATCHED MOVIES, IT SUDDENLY SET HULK DOWN THE PATH OF ACTUAL UNDERSTANDING. ALL THOSE CONCEPTS HULK KNEW ABOUT SUDDENLY MADE MORE SENSE THAN EVER: CONFLICT. DRAMA. EMPATHY. THE BASICS AND HEART OF CONVENTIONAL STORYTELLING. AGAIN, THIS ISN’T SOME CYNICAL APPROPRIATION OF THESE DEVICES. IF ANYTHING, IT SEEMED THE KINDS OF MOVIES THAT SUCCEEDED ONLY CONFIRMED THAT THIS HUMANE UNDERSTANDING OF STORY AND THE PURPOSE OF ART HAD TO BE GENUINE. SINCERE MOVIES PLAYED BETTER THAN ANYTHING.Listening is, I think, what people are trying to circumvent when they ask, “Is it good?” Because as Hulk indicates here, listening doesn’t just mean trying to understand other people’s headspace, it means trying to understand our own. That is, when you listen this way you come to see that your love for your favorite movies doesn’t just reveal your excellent taste (because those movies are objectively good), but reveals something about who you are and where you’re coming from. And only when you have that self-awareness are you really going to be very good at guessing which unseen movies you’re going to enjoy.
Because even a lot of experienced filmgoers don’t understand why they reacted to movies the way the did. Elsewhere in the essay Hulk mentions that people keep getting distracted by the “tangible details” of movies, and I certainly experienced that one too. I remember when people used to ask about one movie that was playing at our theater, Muriel’s Wedding, a colleague would respond by asking, “Do you like ABBA?” Now, I saw Muriel’s Wedding and I can see how if you absolutely hate ABBA that would be a problem, but otherwise that doesn’t have much to do with whether you’d enjoy the movie — the heroine’s favorite band could just as well have been someone else, and nothing would have changed. More recently, I remember trying to convince a friend that just because he liked Shakespeare in Love didn’t mean he was going to like Anonymous, because the two movies have nothing in common except that they both have to do with the creation of Shakespeare’s plays. (He saw it anyway, and still sounded befuddled as to why he didn’t like it as much.)
So actually, it can take a long acquaintance to be able to guess whether a person is going to like a particular movie/book/whatever. I’m still frequently surprised by Eve, and we’ve been talking and blogging about this stuff for ten years. And I’m still sometimes surprised by myself, even though the acquaintance is far longer.
