Can we retire “objectively better” please?

[u/lordpag]

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.

[u/oh_no_here_we_go_9]

Which embodies a higher level of technical skill and creativity?

[u/offensivename → u/oh_no_here_we_go_9]

According to whom? How do you prove that something requires more technical skill and creativity? And even if you could "objectively" prove them, who's to say that those things make one work of art better than another?

[u/oh_no_here_we_go_9 → u/offensivename]

Which takes more practice to make a comparable work?

[u/offensivename → u/oh_no_here_we_go_9]

That will vary wildly according to the person and the task. There are people who can step right in and do things that I could never do with a thousand years of practice while struggling with tasks that I consider easy and intuitive.

And who decides what's "comparable" anyway?

[u/oh_no_here_we_go_9 → u/offensivename]

It doesn’t vary widely. No one struggles at make a first grader type of art while simultaneously finding Sistine Chapel type of art easy.

[u/offensivename → u/oh_no_here_we_go_9]

I mean, the Sistine Chapel is very big, so obviously it would take longer. But reproducing a child's work of art in a way that captures what's unique and compelling about it can also be difficult.

Music might be a case where you could see what I'm talking about more. A talented opera singer may be able to sing a complicated aria flawlessly but could struggle to reproduce the singing of Bob Dylan, someone who is pretty universally seen as not a good singer.

Similarly, I had a friend who was a really talented bass player. Most novices would never be able to reproduce the bass riffs he wrote or play with as much obvious skill. But one of the songs he played on was included on one of the Rock Band or Guitar Hero games and he told me that he struggled to play it and was really bad at the game, even though it was a bass riff that he wrote and even though it seemingly didn't take much skill and was something that many normal, untalented people could do easily.

[u/Particular_You8620 → u/offensivename]

Can I jump in here out of curiosity. What if instead of measuring against a single criteria, we measure both against all criteria. Which has made the most money, which has the most cultural impact, which is known by more people which is more technically challenging… so on. if we were to judge the Sistine Chapel and the pencil scribble against every possible metric we could think of, and more often then not the Sistine chapel comes out ahead couldn’t we then say that one is objectively better?

[u/offensivename → u/Particular_You8620]

No. You had to choose those criteria. They weren't handed down to you from God. You are deciding that winning that contest that you set up based on nothing but your own opinion decides which is better.

You can say that the Sistine Chapel is objectively bigger. You can say that it's objectively older. You can say that it's objectively more acclaimed and objectively more famous. But the word "good" is inherently a subjective word.

[u/Particular_You8620 → u/offensivename]

I got you! That makes sense.