When you give a rating for a piece of media do you rate it based off of your personal enjoyment or the objective quality?
Personal enjoyment of media
Objective quality
See ResultsDon’t say both I know you fuckers lean more one way than the other I just need to know which one is what I’m supposed to do
A poll of what’s most common to do isn’t gonna tell you what you should do…
But also, what even would be meant by “i think the objective quality is good”?
How could that have a different meaning from “I enjoyed it”?
I mean. I rate Tron (1982) higher than Tron (Legacy). I suppose I can imagine a viewpoint where one makes that decision while also believing Legacy has better “objective quality.”
After all, Legacy has more polished cinematography, more advanced special effects, a neater plotline that feels “symmetrical” in terms of both the pacing and the little references that call back to earlier points in the story.
And yet, to me, this doesn’t feel like better quality. It feels like comparing the aesthetics of a Ferrari to the aesthetics of a Dali painting.
I like paintings more than cars. I like when you can see the little imperfections in a piece of art, and work them into your own interpretation.
I like when a story is a little chaotic, like real life, and not every line and frame is forced to have a Purpose in the Structure of it all. (And some of that really does feel forced to me, in Legacy, I’m sorry to say. Nothing feels forced to me in ‘82.)
I don’t know. I think personal enjoyment is the same thing as quality, tbh.
I know there’s not a concrete answer of what /should/ be done like there’s truly not a correct choice, I just cannot figure out what most people are typically doing
On objective quality vs personal enjoyment, one example I can think of from my own life is Asteroid City. I’m pretty sure that movie counts as objectively good, but I did not enjoy watching it at all. It felt like how the color yellow looks emotionally to me. Just kind of blaring, can be pretty, but headache inducing and not something I’d like to subject myself to in my own home, but I can understand why a lot of people enjoyed watching it and I can look at the reasons they give for positive reviews and agree/have those same thoughts when watching it, but the personal enjoyment just isn’t there
At the same time, I have an anime series I heavily enjoy, that I do not wish to name out of embarrassment. I do not think the plot is good, I do not think the characters are well written, I think the story is rushed, most of the jokes don’t land and the ones that do aren’t strong, I truly cannot figure out what I like it about it besides the fact my brain goes “yeah let’s watch this one right now that’ll be comforting”
One of my father’s favorite movies is The Master of Disguise. I think most people could agree that movie is objectively bad. There are people who watch it to make fun of it and that’s where their enjoyment of it comes from, but my father finds it to be a good movie with no irony to his appreciation of it. (Good on him for not letting the haters get to him)
Thank you for giving a well thought out response. I understand I am likely overthinking and just have trouble finding the words to express my own opinions on media. I feel like I’m asking someone if they think they could change their favorite food based around the appreciation for the technical skill gone into the dish.
I feel like I just have a rotten tomatoes audience vs critic score competition happening in my head whenever I try to review anything.
objective is subjective
Hmm, yeah.
I see what you mean– I agree that there is a general idea of some things being indicators of objective quality (such as “it required lots of well-practiced skill,” “it took lots of work,” “it avoided these things that we generally agree are mistakes/flaws”)
and I think part of why I hesitate to call that “objective” is because not everyone agrees that those things always make a work “good”
…and those who don’t, cannot be proven “wrong” by looking up the truth in some reliable resource of facts
I admit that it’s kind of an unusual thing about me, that I will pretty much only use the word “objective” about facts, like “what year was it filmed” or “who acted in the movie” …not value judgments about how good something was
but even if we all agreed on a general idea of “objective quality,” I’d still say “personal enjoyment” is the thing you should rate on
because objective quality, if it existed, would be objective, and therefore would not require ratings from the audience. It would be like asking you to write a review consisting solely of things like “what year was it filmed; who acted in it.”
so yeah. What you said. Objective is subjective.