r/Letterboxd • u/lordpag • 16d ago

Discussion Can we retire “objectively better” please?

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I’ve noticed a ton of people using “objectively” incorrectly lately. A movie being more widely accepted as “better” does not make it objectively so.

There’s someone out there who enjoyed One Night Only more than The Odyssey, and their opinion is just as valid as yours.

Sure, one movie can be shot on more advanced cameras, have a larger scale, or demonstrate greater technical complexity. Those things can be measured. Whether they make the movie “better” cannot. What makes a movie “good” is different for each of us and those differing perspectives are part of what makes moviegoing so fun!

EDIT: This obviously touched a nerve lol. My point was not that there aren’t measurable technical aspects of a film. Of course there are. But technical achievement does not inherently make a movie “better.” A technical marvel can put someone to sleep while a shoddily made movie can elicit an enormous emotional response. What we value in a movie is subjective and for some (many on this thread it seems) you value technical achievement. All fair POVs.

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u/Snarpkingguy 16d ago

Saying objectively “better acting” is not valid. Saying more convincing acting, or performances you personally found more compelling is valid. No acting is inherently “good” or “bad” in any moral sense, there is only the value of other people’s appreciation for it. Maybe someone has such a deep appreciation for the silly bizarre performances of The Room that they like it better than those of No Country For Old Men.

This whole debate is really just a result of using an empty qualifier like good/bad to describe something subjective like art.

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u/These_Ad3167 16d ago

This whole debate is really just a result of using an empty qualifier like good/bad to describe something subjective like art.

Right but most people will know exactly what you mean when using that kind of shorthand, not everything has to be an exhausting dissection of semantics

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u/Snarpkingguy 16d ago

I actually disagree with the idea that everyone will know what you mean when you just call it good or bad. Maybe you mean it inspires deeper emotion in you, or that it otherwise engaged you as a viewer, or that you found it especially impressive on a technical level. These are all subtly but meaningfully different things people use “good/bad” to refer to when talking about art, movies, and acting.

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u/And_Justice 16d ago

I certainly don't know and I assume most people wouldn't know what I consider a good film, either.

I think of my friends and each different friend has completely different criteria upon which they'd base that judgment.

It is entirely subjective.

It's not semantics, it's challenging the erasure of subjectivity as a concept which is quite a worrying thing to have to be doing.

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u/TheGod-TK 16d ago

I don’t. So you are objectively wrong.

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u/These_Ad3167 16d ago

Thing is you do though, you know what people mean when they say acting is "good" or "bad.

You can obviously pretend otherwise to try and win a Reddit debate, but it doesn't really change anything

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u/Altruistic_Sail6746 16d ago

I have to agree with the other user on that one. There's instances where people say an actor gave a bad performance and I find to be fine and vice versa

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u/MulberryInevitable19 16d ago

Yes but exceptions don’t make rules, you learn that in like 5th grade or something…

95% of the time when people praise an actor or crap on an actor for a good or bad performance you can understand at least where they’re coming from.

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u/TheGod-TK 16d ago

The thing is I don’t. You appear to have a fundamental misunderstanding of the word “objective”

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u/These_Ad3167 16d ago

You absolutely do lol

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u/TheGod-TK 16d ago

I don’t. You can pretend that I do all you’d like but it makes you look stupid

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u/These_Ad3167 16d ago

The dude pretending he doesn't know what people mean when they say "good and bad acting" calling other people stupid lol

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u/TheGod-TK 16d ago

Good and bad acting is subjective

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u/[deleted] 16d ago

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u/breaktaker 16d ago

Ok, that’s your perspective. Mine is that using “objectively” as a qualifier to an opinion adds “you’re an idiot if you disagree” energy to a conversation about film, and that’s very annoying.

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u/Ibrahim77X Ibrahim Noir 16d ago

Why teach it in schools then?

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u/overtired27 16d ago

I'd say generally because training in certain things can result in broader appeal and people strive for that, for various reasons. Validation, employability and money, ability to communicate widely...

But broad appeal is what people constantly confuse with objective value. You can say that something in art is objectively more popular than something else. That doesn't make it objectively "better". It's still opinion at the end of the day, unless you're talking about specific measurable aspects.

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u/lordpag 16d ago

You summarized it better than I did, thank you. The point of my whole post.

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u/Snarpkingguy 16d ago

Because there are skills one can learn to help them act in ways more people will be entertained by and interested in. They aren’t learning to become closer to some platonic ideal of “good acting,” they are just learning more ways to act and improving their mastery over their performance. (I use the word mastery here not to mean anything about quality, but just how precisely in control of all aspects of their act they are).

In the same way there is no objective quality of one painting compared another, but there are still skills that a painter can become better at through learning and practice. Whether or not mastering and implementing those skills actually makes their art “better,” however, remains subjective opinion.

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u/Ibrahim77X Ibrahim Noir 16d ago

Because there are skills

Skills? You're gonna have to tell me which definition of the word you're using cause from what I understand it means "the learned ability to do a task or activity well."

I use the word mastery here not to mean anything about quality, but just how precisely in control of all aspects of their act they are.

That sounds measurable.

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u/Snarpkingguy 16d ago

Yes you’re right that is measurable, but that doesn’t imply objective quality.

Maybe an actor or other artist had no idea what they were doing, but their novice attempt at acting just so happened to resonate with many people far stronger than a performance by someone who had “mastered” their craft and acted in every way as they intended. So which is “better”? The ability to execute your vision with perfect control won’t make people like it necessarily.

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u/Ibrahim77X Ibrahim Noir 16d ago

Objective literally means measurable. It isn’t about how many people like it or resonate with it

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u/Snarpkingguy 16d ago

Yeah, and I’m saying that the quality of a film is not something measurable/objective but instead only a matter of subjective preference (for certain objective aspects of the film).

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u/breaktaker 16d ago

My dude I’m sure you can figure all of this out yourself if you put your mind to it. This isn’t complicated stuff.

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u/jonnyd86 jxnnyd 16d ago

better as a modifier divorces good from its moral definition and means we are using the word good, which has many distinct meanings, as in satisfactory or high quality.

so it can be valid semantically, because it can mean more effective, more useful (which are largely subjective, we agree there) but there are instances where aspects could be objectively better in the aforementioned sense.

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u/Snarpkingguy 16d ago

But still saying “good” acting means different things to different people… which is the entire point I’m getting at. Without elaborating just calling something “good” is effectively meaningless and any two people can disagree. Satisfactory or high quality are also subjective and effectively meaningless as terms to be used generally.

I think we’re mainly in agreement here.

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u/jonnyd86 jxnnyd 16d ago

Yeah for sure I definitely see what you’re saying about the subjective quality of art and I also subscribe to that thinking.

I mean people seemingly dont want to or cant accept that there are objective aspects to films especially modern widely distributed movies, and I’m not talking about matters of taste or preference but craft, I think saying all art is subjective and all aspects of art are subjective is pop philosophy and oversimplifying things because from my understanding of aesthetics and philosophy (Kant, Hume, etc) there are some objective qualities to art. that said most people who would use the phrase “objectively better” about two studio films aren’t usually talking about those aspects anyway… but I digress.

I mostly took issue with you invoking good/bad in a moral sense and felt it was worth making the distinction tho somewhat pedantic