The Art of Criticism 4: Aesthetic Value

"The fetish for Technicolor and the fetish for widescreen are two different fetishes that often combine in the mind and heart of the cinephile. Like peanut butter and chocolate, they're two great tastes that taste great together. Among other things, they provide fodder for argument about technical minutiae the likes of which could conceivably make a NASA engineer's head spin." -Glenn Kenny, The Auteurs Notebook

Glenn Kenny really hits the nail on the head of something that has been bothering me for a while. Is my preference for long takes, garish colors, technicolor, and B&W nothing more than fetish? Put another way, are there objective reasons for my aesthetic taste? This all came to a head last night while I watched the excellent Battleship Potemkin (1925) and I realized that I was seeing the origin of so many of the techniques (particularly editing) that would later be put to use in so many films. It was like I could look back over the many movies I've seen and, out of the corner of my eye, see the progression of technique laid out in all its complexity.

The thing was though, in that fleeting glimpse of the technique behind the art, I feel like I have lost the art. But had I ever had it? Historically, aesthetics is one of those branches of philosophy where the least progress has been made. Maybe my problem lies in how closely I equate beauty and art. Beauty for me has always been mysterious, something I haven't been able to penetrate in the slightest. This might sound like it should result in some sort of psychological or broad scientific solution: that I am predisposed to my aesthetic tastes by a combination of behavioral traits inherited at birth and experiences picked up over my lifetime. This answer, while at least partially correct, provides no satisfying answer. I want art to be a mystery (why do I write about it?), I want beauty to be elusive (why do I spend so much time judging it?), and I want movies to be an experience (why do I gravitate towards films which challenge my brain and not my 'gut'?). 

What began as an attempt to seriously look into aesthetic taste has devolved into self-analysis and maybe that's an answer in itself. The highly personal nature of aesthetic taste precludes it from objective discussion. What can be discussed is what is on the screen, not what we perceive. To do more might just take away what it is that draws people (me) to the movies.