4 ms·

What is it with people trying to quantify and categorize art? Yes this scene is significant for both the history of cinema and artistically and I personally lov

What is it with people trying to quantify and categorize art? Yes this scene is significant for both the history of cinema and artistically and I personally love it as well, but the quest of defining "the greatest scene" or "the best film of all time" just screams pure naïveté to me and I honestly don't understand why people would ask such questions?!

notafraudster 4y ago
I tend to just manually translate "best", "greatest", etc. into "A great" in my head, and then it's just a love letter to an awesome scene. Which this is!
- e1g 4y ago
  Another excellent hack is to mentally prefix “I think “ in front of almost everything people say. “[I think] Democrats/republicans are idiots!”, “[I think] Micro-services/monolith is the best!”, “[I think] This PR is good/bad” “I love you” is a tricky one.
  - ge96 4y ago
    [I think] I love you [I think]
    - dylan604 4y ago
      'When you respond to me the first and last words out of your mouth are "I think"' just doesn't resonate the same
    - athenot 4y ago
      "...today"
  - corrral 4y ago
    "I think" can usually be inferred from context and isn't needed, but bad or adversarial (hard to tell the difference) reading & online forums have encouraged everyone to write worse, in order to defend against flames from poor readers and assholes. You have to try to cover every stupid way your words could be read if you don't want other posters to pounce on you, like by throwing "I think" in front of things that are obviously opinion or otherwise not being advanced as absolute, indisputable truth. [EDIT] Point is, yes, making that assumption is a normal part of ordinary communication outside the "well akshually" Web.
parhamn 4y ago
It's fun? This sort of comparison is very common in sports too and makes for some of the best discussions around the subject's legacy and the history of the sport. Sure, unknowables are unknowables. But many Lebron v Jordan v Wilt discussions are full of gems and help relive their legacies.
- blowski 4y ago
  To be fair, I don't understand it in sports either. Would Brazil 1970 beat Spain 2008 or Man Utd 1999? Since we can't accurately predict the results of real games, it seems irrelevant to predict the results of hypothetical ones. I know people enjoy it, but it's not for me.
  - jagrsw 4y ago
    You didn't want to hear this answer :) but most 2008 football teams would beat their typical modern-day opponents - ie. their 1970 versions. Players are being noticed much earlier now (pro training starts much much earlier, and from a wider pool of talent), and also modern players are (mostly) saints in terms of maintaining their fitness ("healthy food" based in individual medical testing, no alcohol/smoking/drugs - and tested regularly for this) - while as for the 70's players - it's full of stories of late-night partying.
    - jahnu 4y ago
      Even up to the mid to late 90s for soccer
  - stinkytaco 4y ago
    > Would Brazil 1970 beat Spain 2008 No. Spain 2008-2012 may be the best overall international team of all time. Too organized even for the front five of Brazil. > Man Utd 1999 Yes. Good team, but a lot of things broke their way that season and they were defensively somewhat weak. Though Schmeichel was one of the first goalies to be very good with the ball at his feet, so that may give an advantage in the modern game. I think the exercise is fun partially because it makes us ask questions about the game, how it's changed and where it's going. To answer this question you need to think about the modern tactical game, the backpass rule, how players have changed and all the other factors that make me interested in a game. In the same way evaluating movies makes me think about the context of a movie and how it was made rather than just a pure evaluation of its "quality".
antiterra 4y ago
Quantifying and categorizing is one of the great human pursuits, sometimes to disastrous end. However, with the sheer volume of creative works that exist, curation can help us find an exceptional needle in a haystack. This is why this kind of clickbait resonates. This is part of why we want things like the Academy Awards to be objective & authoritative, when they are neither. The real value is in the argument for art, the argument for beauty. Someone says, “sure grape juice is fine, but try this wine,” and they are making an argument that the initially off-putting flavors and lack of sweetness aren’t a bad thing. The ultimate judge is you, however. You are the person who can decide if the scene in Apocalypto where they have to jump over the waterfall provides a better or more useful artistic experience to a scene in The Godfather. And then, you can change your mind, or not.
corrral 4y ago
I think it falls naturally out of trying to recommend greats to people—at some point you need an, "OK but if you are only going to watch one of these, it should be this one...." Not objective, sure, and not authoritative. On a ranked list of, say, 500 great films, what's the difference between 100 and 101? Probably not much and the ordering of them's basically arbitrary... but if you're only going to watch 100 of those 500, it likely is a better idea to watch 1-100 than 401-500. Some truth does fall out of the rankings, especially if you factor in more than one person's opinions. Keep seeing the same few movies near the tops of lists, then they're probably damn good.
allenu 4y ago
I’ve been thinking about this recently because so many trending topics on twitter are about “the greatest band” or “best film of 198x” or whatever. I think if I were younger, I would be excited by such discussions, but now it seems silly. My conclusion was that it’s a sort of fun game (young) people play as it feels like you’re shaping culture by debating the greatness of works of art or artists.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
js2 4y ago
> What is it with people trying to quantify and categorize art? What is it with people leaving controversial rhetorical comments? It spawns discussion. Which really, is the whole point of art.
- yakshaving_jgt 4y ago
  > It spawns discussion. Which really, is the whole point of art. Arguably not. My understanding is the only purpose of art is to be art. Ars Gratia Artis.
  - bananarchist 4y ago
    The saddest art is that which is undiscussed, for it has inspired nothing, evoked nothing, changed nothing, _created_ nothing.
simonh 4y ago
If the result is a discussion thread as informative, insightful and thought provoking as this one, IMHO it's all good.

notafraudster 4y ago

I tend to just manually translate "best", "greatest", etc. into "A great" in my head, and then it's just a love letter to an awesome scene. Which this is!

e1g 4y ago
Another excellent hack is to mentally prefix “I think “ in front of almost everything people say. “[I think] Democrats/republicans are idiots!”, “[I think] Micro-services/monolith is the best!”, “[I think] This PR is good/bad” “I love you” is a tricky one.
- ge96 4y ago
  [I think] I love you [I think]
  - dylan604 4y ago
    'When you respond to me the first and last words out of your mouth are "I think"' just doesn't resonate the same
  - athenot 4y ago
    "...today"
- corrral 4y ago
  "I think" can usually be inferred from context and isn't needed, but bad or adversarial (hard to tell the difference) reading & online forums have encouraged everyone to write worse, in order to defend against flames from poor readers and assholes. You have to try to cover every stupid way your words could be read if you don't want other posters to pounce on you, like by throwing "I think" in front of things that are obviously opinion or otherwise not being advanced as absolute, indisputable truth. [EDIT] Point is, yes, making that assumption is a normal part of ordinary communication outside the "well akshually" Web.

parhamn 4y ago

It's fun? This sort of comparison is very common in sports too and makes for some of the best discussions around the subject's legacy and the history of the sport. Sure, unknowables are unknowables. But many Lebron v Jordan v Wilt discussions are full of gems and help relive their legacies.

blowski 4y ago
To be fair, I don't understand it in sports either. Would Brazil 1970 beat Spain 2008 or Man Utd 1999? Since we can't accurately predict the results of real games, it seems irrelevant to predict the results of hypothetical ones. I know people enjoy it, but it's not for me.
- jagrsw 4y ago
  You didn't want to hear this answer :) but most 2008 football teams would beat their typical modern-day opponents - ie. their 1970 versions. Players are being noticed much earlier now (pro training starts much much earlier, and from a wider pool of talent), and also modern players are (mostly) saints in terms of maintaining their fitness ("healthy food" based in individual medical testing, no alcohol/smoking/drugs - and tested regularly for this) - while as for the 70's players - it's full of stories of late-night partying.
  - jahnu 4y ago
    Even up to the mid to late 90s for soccer
- stinkytaco 4y ago
  > Would Brazil 1970 beat Spain 2008 No. Spain 2008-2012 may be the best overall international team of all time. Too organized even for the front five of Brazil. > Man Utd 1999 Yes. Good team, but a lot of things broke their way that season and they were defensively somewhat weak. Though Schmeichel was one of the first goalies to be very good with the ball at his feet, so that may give an advantage in the modern game. I think the exercise is fun partially because it makes us ask questions about the game, how it's changed and where it's going. To answer this question you need to think about the modern tactical game, the backpass rule, how players have changed and all the other factors that make me interested in a game. In the same way evaluating movies makes me think about the context of a movie and how it was made rather than just a pure evaluation of its "quality".

antiterra 4y ago

Quantifying and categorizing is one of the great human pursuits, sometimes to disastrous end. However, with the sheer volume of creative works that exist, curation can help us find an exceptional needle in a haystack. This is why this kind of clickbait resonates. This is part of why we want things like the Academy Awards to be objective & authoritative, when they are neither. The real value is in the argument for art, the argument for beauty. Someone says, “sure grape juice is fine, but try this wine,” and they are making an argument that the initially off-putting flavors and lack of sweetness aren’t a bad thing. The ultimate judge is you, however. You are the person who can decide if the scene in Apocalypto where they have to jump over the waterfall provides a better or more useful artistic experience to a scene in The Godfather. And then, you can change your mind, or not.

corrral 4y ago

I think it falls naturally out of trying to recommend greats to people—at some point you need an, "OK but if you are only going to watch one of these, it should be this one...." Not objective, sure, and not authoritative. On a ranked list of, say, 500 great films, what's the difference between 100 and 101? Probably not much and the ordering of them's basically arbitrary... but if you're only going to watch 100 of those 500, it likely is a better idea to watch 1-100 than 401-500. Some truth does fall out of the rankings, especially if you factor in more than one person's opinions. Keep seeing the same few movies near the tops of lists, then they're probably damn good.

allenu 4y ago

I’ve been thinking about this recently because so many trending topics on twitter are about “the greatest band” or “best film of 198x” or whatever. I think if I were younger, I would be excited by such discussions, but now it seems silly. My conclusion was that it’s a sort of fun game (young) people play as it feels like you’re shaping culture by debating the greatness of works of art or artists.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

js2 4y ago

> What is it with people trying to quantify and categorize art? What is it with people leaving controversial rhetorical comments? It spawns discussion. Which really, is the whole point of art.

yakshaving_jgt 4y ago
> It spawns discussion. Which really, is the whole point of art. Arguably not. My understanding is the only purpose of art is to be art. Ars Gratia Artis.
- bananarchist 4y ago
  The saddest art is that which is undiscussed, for it has inspired nothing, evoked nothing, changed nothing, _created_ nothing.

simonh 4y ago

If the result is a discussion thread as informative, insightful and thought provoking as this one, IMHO it's all good.