...All the same, if you say you dislike "The Godfather" or "Shawshank," I can't say you're wrong. The one thing you can never be wrong about is your own opinion. It's when you start giving your reasons that you lay yourself open. Many years ago there was a critic in Chicago who said "The Valachi Papers" was a better film than "The Godfather." "Phil," I told him, "film criticism is a matter of subjective opinion. Only rarely does it stray into objective fact. When you said 'The Valachi Papers' was better than 'The Godfather,' that was an error of objective fact." -Roger EbertAll the recent bellyaching about Inception has again led many to criticize those reviewers who gave the film a negative review. This, of course, has opened up a whole can of worms about the value of the film reviewer (often incorrectly equated with a critic), of having dissenting opinions, and what qualifies as a valid opinion. Roger Ebert gives a nice little defense of his profession (above). Yet, I can't help feeling as if he's dancing around the solutions. He's certainly right when he states, "film criticism is a matter of subjective opinion." The problem though is when he tries to bring objectivity into the equation. Briefly, objectivity is "mind-independent" or free from any judgments made by an entity. This excludes Science, Religion, Literature, Film, etc, etc. The only things it doesn't necessarily exclude are Mathematics and Philosophy, the only fields where actual "discoveries" are made (not "inventions"). Basically, I point this out in reference to Ebert's quote from above, "only rarely does it stray into objective fact." What exactly is an "objective fact" and how is it different from a fact (and what does this have to do with anything?)? I'll tell you:
Posts
