Vaderisnothayden said:
Which is what you are doing now, with your "Vaderisnothayden's view is incorrect and zombie84's view is correct and any view of art the disagrees with zombie's is that of "deluded elitists convinced they know better than others just because they don't enjoy certain things"". People regularly feel their views are correct and opposing ones are incorrect. If they didn't they couldn't believe in their opinions. Get used to it.
This is the pot calling the kettle black. My stance is that everyone is entitled to their opinion, your stance is:everyone is really wrong and I am not. That's what is absurd, what is offensive. Of course I disagree with that. Can you not see why this would piss people off? Holding yourself as Knower of Truth, and everyone's elses feelings and views as misguided falsities? Maybe you shouldn't be totally invalidating everyone else while situating yourself as the only valid opinion if you don't want any flak. I am not stating every view I hold is the absolute truth but simply indicating that this particular view of your is quite arrogant and presumptuous on your part, aside from its demonstratable inaccuracy. I know when people debate movies, people assume they are "correct" in as much as they hold certain beliefs and argue for the merit of them, but most people have the grace to admit that this is their opinion and yours is yours and it all depends on the viewer, most people don't have the gall to look down and say "well, your opinon is your own, but there is actually only one truth and I am the one who knows it." That's the difference you have made. People debating the merit of their beliefs for being "correct" itself demonstrates the subjectivity of perception, which you deny exists in the first place.
Again you attribute to me views I do not hold and assume I'm arguing things I'm not arguing.
If you are going to write off all historical stylizations while exempting the previous moment from this, it certainly is what your attitude has suggested and indicated.
Well you seem to think the critic industry is pointless anyway. There is only The One Truth of Zombie84 and the critics are all "deluded elitists" or whatever.
This is patently different from your view, which doesn't even leave room for debate because everyone can simply be "Wrong" if you say they are, in the end. I think the critic industry is a very interesting and important one, in fact I work in the Cinema Studies department at University of Toronto, I just don't think any one view is inherantly True, beyond our own views. If one view was true, we wouldn't need critics, just this one Art Jesus to lead the way and tell us why we are all mistaken, despite our actual preferences and feelings that disagree. This reminds me of a very Stalinist stance actually.
Actually, what you're arguing is that everybody is wrong except for zombie84. Everybody who thinks any work of art is better or worse and that it's not all subjective (which includes most critics and academics dealing with the arts, plus a whole host of other people) -all those people- are wrong and zombie84 is right, and because of that they're probably all "deluded elitists" and immature idiot egomaniacs.
I don't think all art is equal, I just recognize that it's my opinion and that others may have a different view, and that I'm not inherantly better than them simply because we disagree. That's the fatal flaw that you've failed to realise. You conflate opinion with fact, but it's only a fact if it is your opinion, and that's the true mark of arrogance. But nice try to turn it around and make it about me and my "narrow-mindedness." It's the equivalent to saying people who don't accept Neo-Nazi's are narrow-minded haters. Come on. In as much as I oppose a view that dismisses everyone else as really being wrong and yourself as the only one with the self-appointed capability to dictate the truth of what is personal taste, then yes, I suppose you could say that this is discriminatory.
All I've done is dared to have my own view, dared to have confidence in my own view, dared to hold to my view when an individual or individuals have told me my view is wrong, and dared to hold to to my view despite the fact that the majority among a certain group disagree with me
What you've dared to do, actually, is present your opinion as fact, while writing off everyone else as having "just opinions," misguided views of the real truth of the matter that only you or an imagined elite is privy to.
From that I deduce that you must be very much a the-individual-must-submit-to-the-majority/independent-thought-is-bad type of person
Because that was totally what my point was. You really don't get it.
In the past I have noted to myself some faults in the thinking in The Secret History of Star Wars, such a tendency to overly quickly dismiss opposing evidence and to build theories on insufficient evidence, but I kept quiet about it, because the book is a great store of Star Wars info despite those problems
I am not above criticism, if you think my work has faults I am more than open to constructive criticism.
On the other hand, this argument started because you didn't feel Wrath of Khan was very good. Fine. But since you believe in One Truth when it comes to art, that means that you must be correct, or else you are wrong. When it was pointed out that there is wide preference against your view, you must therefore defend your ego, because as far as you are concerned it's not just an opinion, it's fact:
-When it was pointed out that most people feel that WOK is the best and STV the worst you accused that they are just herd-thinkers, without qualifying this. Since it's unfalsifiable in the first place, it becomes unfounded paranoia since you can subject any popular work you disagree with as herd-thinkers without having to qualify it.
-When it was pointed out that STIV is considered better than STV, you accused that it was because 80s trends were crappy and that if it was re-shown today it wouldn't be successful, indicating that people at the time didn't really have valid opinions, but now would. Which writes off historical trends in art. Which makes sense if you don't believe in subjectivity. Aside from the fact that people have been re-watching it and maintaining more or less the same view.
-When you made the same accusation to STII, it was pointed out that a great many fans weren't even alive when it was released because of its age, and therefore the movie wasn't acccepted "at the time" because they weren't there, but accepted it in relatively modern times. This tied into the fact that there was no re-evaluation going on in the first place, as you surmised there ought to be. Which is again unfounded paranoia--people would really hate the film if only they could watch it outside of 1982, even though two generations since then have been born and doing the same thing. This is the "nostalgia" argument that prequel people use against OT fans, even though there are a million films people love as a kid that they think are crappy when they grow up.
-This would then feed back into the herd-thinking mentality, I must assume, they like the film because it's popular, bringing us in a nice circular loop to your first point. You know they only like it because its popular because you say you do. You have to, because it's the only way you can be Correct, and you must be Correct because you don't believe in relative views.
You leave us only with a convoluted maze of unfounded and unsubstantiated accusations passed off as material fact. Whatever you say becomes objective fact, simply because you believe it to be, and even if you can't prove it. And your opinions become fact while others remain just opinions, because you believe that only you are correct.
Or it could have gone like this:
-I think STV is better than STII. Just didn't do anything for me, never understood why people think it is so great. But to each his own.
Because in the end, that's all your argument came down to anyway!