Let’s not get Fact confused with Truth. If it’s Truth you’re interested in, the philosophy class is down the hall or whatever Dr. Jones said.
I think the people I work with have terrible taste in music. I think they don’t know the difference between good music and bad music because they haven’t really considered what makes a piece of music worthwhile or meaningful or “good”. Or maybe they haven’t been exposed to enough music to have had transcendent moments which make them realize “wow, this is an achievement.”
I don’t really know what’s behind their taste in music. Maybe they have a different reason for listening to music altogether than I do. To me, it sounds like they just put on some generic crap that they can pretty much ignore while they scroll social media for memes or whatever it is they do.
So if their relationship to the medium has an entirely different purpose and meaning than mine, I can’t expect them to understand why I think their music is crap and why the music I like is superior in every way. These people have probably never bought a piece of physical media, never purchased an album by an artist they like. They just put on a curated playlist of whatever and maybe press the heart button when they hear something that temporarily relieves the anxiety of having to be incessantly processing information.
Maybe, regarding cinema, some people have a completely superficial relationship to the medium and want something that merely looks cool, or seems like it’s interesting or emotionally affecting or “good”.
Maybe some people are more interested in consuming content for its novelty and then immediately moving onto the next disposable crap dangled in front of them by an algorithm. Isn’t that how it should ideally work these days if consumers behave the way they’re trained?
What’s driving the creation of “content” is not the same as what inspired great works of art. Maybe that’s why all we get are sequels, reboots and remakes: there is measurable data on the “success” and “viability” of those projects and the people with the money will be able to make big gains on their investments.
Maybe we should work on drawing a distinction between art and content instead of the subjective/objective thing or trying to pin down “truth”.