#if you're a creative - don't take everything critics say strictly to heart as objective fact

[highfantasy-soul]

I think a trend that started awhile back, but I'm seeing more and more lately, is destroying our ability to engage with art. I'm sure I've already posted something similar, but as it keeps showing up around me, I need to fuss about it again.

The trend of "X thing is bad, actually" is just.... in my opinion, twisting media criticism into something it really shouldn't be.

Once we start couching our opinions on art as fact, suddenly media consumption becomes a 'what is the right thought to have about this art' rather than 'what did I think/feel about this art'.

It's assuming that there is a universally 'correct' way to view art - and by extension, an incorrect way. It is setting up the idea that you can never change your opinion about a piece of art - or at least, if you do change your opinion, then that means past you was just factually incorrect about how the art made them feel/what they got from the piece of art.

It's saying art is a science and you can 'solve the equation' in a wrong way. In that same vein, that there is only one way 'good' art can be made.

I think about a video hbomberguy did awhile back (holy shit, just looked it up and it was 6 years ago) about BBC Sherlock and how he spend almost 2 hours trying to convince the viewer that "Sherlock is Garbage" but really, what he was doing was saying "This is the way I like Sherlock Holmes stories to go and BBC didn't do that, therefore, it is objectively bad." He started with a premise of "Good Sherlock Holmes stories don't focus on Sherlock" and then for 2 hours went over how the BBC version did focus on Sherlock Holmes as a character. But....he never convinced me of his premise, he just stated it as though it was fact and then 'proved' that unsubstantiated claim.

This leads to people learning about media criticism to start thinking that their personal preferences are actually hard and fast rules stories MUST follow, or else it's bad. If the premise of his video had rather been "I think the strongest Sherlock stories are ones where he isn't the focus" then great. But he didn't. He couched his opinion on what makes a good Sherlock story as fact rather than opinion.

That's why I'm so careful when critiquing things (which I love to do!) to always explain why I feel the way I do - as an opinion, not a fact of storytelling.

I used to be part of a writing group that I had to leave because of their obsessive adherence to 'the hero's journey'. The foundation of all their critiques/feedback to submitted writing was "how can we force this into the story format I've decided is the ONLY correct story format?" Cut to years later, and the image of the napkin with the plot outline of every Marvel/Hollywood movie makes the rounds as a critique of all stories feeling the same. Yeah, that's the 'Hero's Journey'. It's a very popular plot structure and if it becomes the ONLY plot structure, some will find that stories that follow it become stale.

A 'good' critique is not "That means the Hero's Journey is bad, actually" or "Stories that don't follow the Hero's Journey are bad, actually". Both options couch the creation of art in objective forms - one way is bad, the other good. There is room for personal taste and nuance in these conversations. People aren't "liking bad art" because they still enjoy stories that follow that common structure and people aren't "liking bad art" when they enjoy things that DON'T follow that structure.

I think people need to really come back to remembering that art is subjective. You can dislike it - and interrogate why you dislike it. But that doesn't mean the art is objectively bad.

And yes, this even includes movies like "The Room" that are held up as 'terrible' pieces of art. People aren't wrong for enjoying them in a genuine way - they aren't wrong for seeing something in them.

I personally, really enjoyed the movie Cats. Like, honest to god, I ENJOYED IT! I thought it was GOOD. I got something out of it! If you didn't, fantastic - no one is making you like it. But all the things others claimed it 'failed' at, I personally didn't think it did. I found it succeeded. Because art is an individual experience.

We destroy individuality when we condense art into only being acceptable in one form to the exclusion of others. I guess I have a base dislike of using the term 'bad' to describe art as a whole because, yet again, art is subjective.

Of course you can personally think a piece of art is bad for a myriad of different reasons - but the blending of 'fact' vs 'opinion' just grinds my gears and makes it so so hard for me in the artistic space. There will always be someone who thinks your art is 'objectively bad' and you need to do it in 'this particular way' or else you've failed.

Don't listen to them. Even if they're loud. Even if they've gotten ten thousand likes on their post.

Sure, figure out where the opinion is in there - what they were expecting and didn't get - but you don't have to agree with their base premise. You don't have to agree that "The best Sherlock stories don't focus on him" or "The Hero's Journey is the only good plot structure/is a terrible plot structure".

Figure out the opinion couched as fact and decide for yourself if you hold that opinion or don't.

With pessimism around art and an almost compulsive objection of genuine emotion at an all-time high, being earnest is hard. It's easier to pretend to be better than everyone and dislike things professionally for 'objective' reasons. It's hard to embrace the messy art of storytelling and acknowledge that the way we view something might not be the only way to view it. It might be hard to accept that we don't have to be 'right', we can simply have an opinion that others disagree with - and they're right too.

Just...remember to be self-aware of your criticisms and don't position yourself above anyone else because of it. You aren't the supreme knower of storytelling no matter how many courses you've taken or books you've read or movies you've watched. Your opinion about art is still just that - your opinion.