Does objective "quality" exist in entertainment?

[Kyng]

We'll often hear people arguing about how 'good' or 'bad' a particular piece of entertainment is. Sometimes, the neutrals in these debates will point out that taste is subjective - and, therefore, there's no objective way to assess these works as either 'good' or 'bad'. However, this doesn't seem entirely satisfactory - so, can we do better than this?

YouTube user Shadiversity explores this question in the following 39-minute video essay:



Due to the sheer length of this video, I'm going to summarise his main points here:

• The only objective way to assess how 'good' or 'bad' any creative work is is to ask "How well does it fulfil its stated goals?". For example, let's suppose the Queen commissioned a sculptor to create a statue of herself outside Buckingham Palace. An objective way to assess how good or bad this statue is would be to ask, "Does it look like the Queen?".
  
  
• The above is true, even if the stated goals are subjective in nature. For example, if I commissioned an artist to paint a picture for me, the goal would be "Create something that Kyng finds personally appealing". My favourite colour is green - and so, all else being equal, I'm going to find a green picture more appealing than a blue one or a yellow one.
  
  
• In the case of works of entertainment (such as movies, TV shows, and books), the goal is to entertain its target audience. This means, for example, that when a reviewer assesses a new Star Wars movie, they need to answer the question, "Will the Star Wars target audience(s) find this entertaining?".
  
  
• Different target audiences want different things, and any reviewer will need to take this into account. For example, the Star Wars target audience cares much less about realism than the Gravity target audience - and, this should be reflected in reviews of both movies. (However, the Star Wars target audience tends to care a lot about consistency with the canon established in previous movies - and I think this is something that many critics didn't pick up on!!!)
  
  
• Sometimes, the same movie will have multiple target audiences. For example, Star Wars movies are pitched both at casual movie-goers, and at the hard-core Star Wars fan base; these two audiences will be entertained by quite different things. Another controversial example that Shad brought up in his video was Twilight, which attracted vampire enthusiasts and teen-girl romance enthusiasts. Twilight did a very poor job of appealing to the former group, and attracted a lot of hatred online because of it (including from people who had never even read the books or seen the movies, and were just bandwaggoning ). However, it did a far better job of appealing to the latter group, and has attracted many defenders among that group (NOTE: I am not a teen-girl romance enthusiast, so I'm not talking from personal experience here!!!)
  
  
• To make things more complicated... the same target audience can be entertained by several different things, some of them contradictory. To illustrate, let's return to the "painting for me" example from my second point: in addition to liking green, I like trains, and I like historical accuracy. This means that, if the artist paints me a green Union Pacific Big Boy, I might not like it: for historical accuracy, it would need to be black! (Or, in works of entertainment, a common example is realism: people tend to like realistic things over unrealistic things... except that realistic things frequently aren't entertaining. For example, you'll rarely (if ever) see a wholly realistic siege in a war movie, simply because realistic sieges are boring to watch: they tend to involve standing around outside the city or castle for days on end, waiting for the inhabitants to either surrender or starve!)
  
  
• By this standard, there's really no such thing as a 'perfect' piece of entertainment that pleases everyone. People have different tastes and different standards (many of the contradictory), to the point where any piece of entertainment that tries to please everybody will probably end up pleasing nobody. The best any creator can do is recognise the things their target audience enjoys (e.g. consistency, writing quality, humour) - and, if these conflict with one another, recognise where one area needs to be sacrificed to make the work more entertaining in another area.
  

I appreciate that, even in 39 minutes, Shad's video was only able to scratch the surface of this deep and complex topic of discussion - and, my summary was only able to scratch the surface of what that 39-minute video had to offer . So, if you have any of your own views to add, then by all means go ahead and share them!

[Moonshroom]

To make things more complicated... the same target audience can be entertained by several different things, some of them contradictory. To illustrate, let's return to the "painting for me" example from my second point: in addition to liking green, I like trains, and I like historical accuracy. This means that, if the artist paints me a green Union Pacific Big Boy, I might not like it: for historical accuracy, it would need to be black! (Or, in works of entertainment, a common example is realism: people tend to like realistic things over unrealistic things... except that realistic things frequently aren't entertaining. For example, you'll rarely (if ever) see a wholly realistic siege in a war movie, simply because realistic sieges are boring to watch: they tend to involve standing around outside the city or castle for days on end, waiting for the inhabitants to either surrender or starve!)

God damn it.

Way of working in trains on everything xD

But actually, if well-done, a siege can be the most entertaining thing to watch and doesn't have to drag on for too long (only enough to hit a movie's expected runtime). Sieges aren't as much about the enemy as they are as one's dwindling psyche under those circumstances and you can bet those make for interesting watches... but even if that's not your thing, my favorite war movie ever is about a bunch of guys in a submarine for five hours and it's the most engaging thing ever, because it's portrayed realistically to the point of making you feel like you are one more among the crew, sitting on your bunk bed under the sea and waiting to attack and Allied convoy.

That movie is oftenly regarded as both the best submarine film ever made and the best war film ever created.

My point is, entertainment doesn't have to undercut realism, but be a channel for which the later can flow.

[Lurkerish Allsorts]

The answer is yes, I need only point one to Birdemic (used to be free on youtube), any movie by Neil Breen, "The Room" by Tommy Wiseau along with his "TV show" "Neighbors".

These movies are only enjoyed ironically (so bad its good) as they fail in special effects, story, acting and, in cases such as Breen and Wiseau seem to lack any ability for self awareness.

These examples are so bottom of the barrow in objectify bad they underflow the "score" back in to "good"

One could also most mock busters from The Asylum also fit here, with bad effects, bad writing and, bad acting.

Then you have the case of Dingo pictures, whose animation, Voice acting, and so much other things are bad.

[Kyng]

To make things more complicated... the same target audience can be entertained by several different things, some of them contradictory. To illustrate, let's return to the "painting for me" example from my second point: in addition to liking green, I like trains, and I like historical accuracy. This means that, if the artist paints me a green Union Pacific Big Boy, I might not like it: for historical accuracy, it would need to be black! (Or, in works of entertainment, a common example is realism: people tend to like realistic things over unrealistic things... except that realistic things frequently aren't entertaining. For example, you'll rarely (if ever) see a wholly realistic siege in a war movie, simply because realistic sieges are boring to watch: they tend to involve standing around outside the city or castle for days on end, waiting for the inhabitants to either surrender or starve!)

God damn it.

Way of working in trains on everything xD

But actually, if well-done, a siege can be the most entertaining thing to watch and doesn't have to drag on for too long (only enough to hit a movie's expected runtime). Sieges aren't as much about the enemy as they are as one's dwindling psyche under those circumstances and you can bet those make for interesting watches... but even if that's not your thing, my favorite war movie ever is about a bunch of guys in a submarine for five hours and it's the most engaging thing ever, because it's portrayed realistically to the point of making you feel like you are one more among the crew, sitting on your bunk bed under the sea and waiting to attack and Allied convoy.

That movie is oftenly regarded as both the best submarine film ever made and the best war film ever created.

My point is, entertainment doesn't have to undercut realism, but be a channel for which the later can flow.

Sorry about the trains !

Anyway, that's a valid point about the 'psychological' angle of a realistic siege. If done well, then I expect it could be targeted at an audience that enjoys that sort of thing. However, it'd still be a bit of a niche audience - so, in blockbusters intended for mass appeal, we'll probably be forever stuck with sieges where the castle is stormed immediately (even though this was usually a last-resort act of desperation in real life, particularly in the Middle Ages)

The answer is yes, I need only point one to Birdemic (used to be free on youtube), any movie by Neil Breen, "The Room" by Tommy Wiseau along with his "TV show" "Neighbors".

These movies are only enjoyed ironically (so bad its good) as they fail in special effects, story, acting and, in cases such as Breen and Wiseau seem to lack any ability for self awareness.

These examples are so bottom of the barrow in objectify bad they underflow the "score" back in to "good"

One could also most mock busters from The Asylum also fit here, with bad effects, bad writing and, bad acting.

Then you have the case of Dingo pictures, whose animation, Voice acting, and so much other things are bad.

Yeah, those shows all fail at appealing to their intended target audience - and they're only enjoyed ironically, in the "So bad it's good" sense .

Still, this does raise a question. Let's suppose somebody creates a "terrible" movie on purpose, with the express intention of appealing to the "so-bad-it's-good" audience. If we're measuring "objective quality" in terms of entertainment value to the target audience, and this movie succeeds at entertaining its target audience... then, does that make it a 'good' movie ?

[Lurkerish Allsorts]

To make things more complicated... the same target audience can be entertained by several different things, some of them contradictory. To illustrate, let's return to the "painting for me" example from my second point: in addition to liking green, I like trains, and I like historical accuracy. This means that, if the artist paints me a green Union Pacific Big Boy, I might not like it: for historical accuracy, it would need to be black! (Or, in works of entertainment, a common example is realism: people tend to like realistic things over unrealistic things... except that realistic things frequently aren't entertaining. For example, you'll rarely (if ever) see a wholly realistic siege in a war movie, simply because realistic sieges are boring to watch: they tend to involve standing around outside the city or castle for days on end, waiting for the inhabitants to either surrender or starve!)

God damn it.

Way of working in trains on everything xD

But actually, if well-done, a siege can be the most entertaining thing to watch and doesn't have to drag on for too long (only enough to hit a movie's expected runtime). Sieges aren't as much about the enemy as they are as one's dwindling psyche under those circumstances and you can bet those make for interesting watches... but even if that's not your thing, my favorite war movie ever is about a bunch of guys in a submarine for five hours and it's the most engaging thing ever, because it's portrayed realistically to the point of making you feel like you are one more among the crew, sitting on your bunk bed under the sea and waiting to attack and Allied convoy.

That movie is oftenly regarded as both the best submarine film ever made and the best war film ever created.

My point is, entertainment doesn't have to undercut realism, but be a channel for which the later can flow.

Sorry about the trains !

Anyway, that's a valid point about the 'psychological' angle of a realistic siege. If done well, then I expect it could be targeted at an audience that enjoys that sort of thing. However, it'd still be a bit of a niche audience - so, in blockbusters intended for mass appeal, we'll probably be forever stuck with sieges where the castle is stormed immediately (even though this was usually a last-resort act of desperation in real life, particularly in the Middle Ages)

The answer is yes, I need only point one to Birdemic (used to be free on youtube), any movie by Neil Breen, "The Room" by Tommy Wiseau along with his "TV show" "Neighbors".

These movies are only enjoyed ironically (so bad its good) as they fail in special effects, story, acting and, in cases such as Breen and Wiseau seem to lack any ability for self awareness.

These examples are so bottom of the barrow in objectify bad they underflow the "score" back in to "good"

One could also most mock busters from The Asylum also fit here, with bad effects, bad writing and, bad acting.

Then you have the case of Dingo pictures, whose animation, Voice acting, and so much other things are bad.

Yeah, those shows all fail at appealing to their intended target audience - and they're only enjoyed ironically, in the "So bad it's good" sense .

Still, this does raise a question. Let's suppose somebody creates a "terrible" movie on purpose, with the express intention of appealing to the "so-bad-it's-good" audience. If we're measuring "objective quality" in terms of entertainment value to the target audience, and this movie succeeds at entertaining its target audience... then, does that make it a 'good' movie ?

No because 99.99% of the time if you are self aware enough to make a "So bad its good movie" it fails to meet that mark. It either is just a horrible mess or in met with indifference because nothing from it stands out.

On steam there is a game called Bad Rats, its regarded as a "So bad its good" game, and with it being often really cheap it was a meme to gift the game to others. The dev of Bad Rates though they could cash in on this by making Bad Rats 2 in the same vein, and it utterly failed and is regarded as just bad or with indifference at least at time of release.

[Kyng]

God damn it.

Way of working in trains on everything xD

But actually, if well-done, a siege can be the most entertaining thing to watch and doesn't have to drag on for too long (only enough to hit a movie's expected runtime). Sieges aren't as much about the enemy as they are as one's dwindling psyche under those circumstances and you can bet those make for interesting watches... but even if that's not your thing, my favorite war movie ever is about a bunch of guys in a submarine for five hours and it's the most engaging thing ever, because it's portrayed realistically to the point of making you feel like you are one more among the crew, sitting on your bunk bed under the sea and waiting to attack and Allied convoy.

That movie is oftenly regarded as both the best submarine film ever made and the best war film ever created.

My point is, entertainment doesn't have to undercut realism, but be a channel for which the later can flow.

Sorry about the trains !

Anyway, that's a valid point about the 'psychological' angle of a realistic siege. If done well, then I expect it could be targeted at an audience that enjoys that sort of thing. However, it'd still be a bit of a niche audience - so, in blockbusters intended for mass appeal, we'll probably be forever stuck with sieges where the castle is stormed immediately (even though this was usually a last-resort act of desperation in real life, particularly in the Middle Ages)

The answer is yes, I need only point one to Birdemic (used to be free on youtube), any movie by Neil Breen, "The Room" by Tommy Wiseau along with his "TV show" "Neighbors".

These movies are only enjoyed ironically (so bad its good) as they fail in special effects, story, acting and, in cases such as Breen and Wiseau seem to lack any ability for self awareness.

These examples are so bottom of the barrow in objectify bad they underflow the "score" back in to "good"

One could also most mock busters from The Asylum also fit here, with bad effects, bad writing and, bad acting.

Then you have the case of Dingo pictures, whose animation, Voice acting, and so much other things are bad.

Yeah, those shows all fail at appealing to their intended target audience - and they're only enjoyed ironically, in the "So bad it's good" sense .

Still, this does raise a question. Let's suppose somebody creates a "terrible" movie on purpose, with the express intention of appealing to the "so-bad-it's-good" audience. If we're measuring "objective quality" in terms of entertainment value to the target audience, and this movie succeeds at entertaining its target audience... then, does that make it a 'good' movie ?

No because 99.99% of the time if you are self aware enough to make a "So bad its good movie" it fails to meet that mark. It either is just a horrible mess or in met with indifference because nothing from it stands out.

On steam there is a game called Bad Rats, its regarded as a "So bad its good" game, and with it being often really cheap it was a meme to gift the game to others. The dev of Bad Rates though they could cash in on this by making Bad Rats 2 in the same vein, and it utterly failed and is regarded as just bad or with indifference at least at time of release.

I agree that "So bad it's good" is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to manufacture. So far, all of the examples I've seen have been 'organic' ones, where somebody tried to entertain a different audience and failed badly at it. However, just because nobody's succeeded at manufacturing it doesn't mean it's impossible: it could just be that we've yet to figure out how to do it .

So, will we ever see that? I suspect that the best argument for the 'No' side would be something along the lines of "For much of this audience, the entertainment value comes from the fact that they tried and failed to create a serious work in another field - and, if it turns out they were trying to make a 'so bad it's good' work on purpose, then that would ruin it".

Now, for another point entirely: Shad discussed TV shows and movies quite a lot in his video, but one area he didn't really get into was music. Can the two sides of the "Old vs. new music" debate use this to show that music from their preferred era is objectively better, rather than just more appealing to their personal tastes and/or nostalgia? (For example, perhaps one side tends to have objectively more meaningful lyrics; however, if the other side's music was made to entertain an audience that cares less about meaningful lyrics, then does this even matter from an "objective quality" point of view?)

[Nick]

Now, for another point entirely: Shad discussed TV shows and movies quite a lot in his video, but one area he didn't really get into was music. Can the two sides of the "Old vs. new music" debate use this to show that music from their preferred era is objectively better, rather than just more appealing to their personal tastes and/or nostalgia? (For example, perhaps one side tends to have objectively more meaningful lyrics; however, if the other side's music was made to entertain an audience that cares less about meaningful lyrics, then does this even matter from an "objective quality" point of view?)

I was thinking about how best to respond to the possible differences between music and TV shows and movies, but I keep finding myself running into the same issue - the problem of defining a universally accepted measure of quality, one that can be superimposed onto a quantitative scale without loss of information.

A common theme in the above discussion is trying to properly define the target audience - that which satisfies one audience may displease another; who's correct? It's hard to say any group's values are correct without also invalidating another group's values. But we don't want to invalidate anyone's experiences, that makes it sound as if someone's value judgements are "incorrect" somehow.

Of course, different people value different things, which is why in reviews we may often see different aspects of media getting different ratings. In the example of a video game, "story" might get 4/5, and "gameplay" may get 1/5. In doing so, we're implicitly signaling the type of game it is, not necessarily proclaiming the game to be bad or good (although we may also do that, usually with additional qualifications however).

To answer the larger question: no, I do not think objective quality will exist in every context, particularly in entertainment media. Instead, what we have in many of these cases, is a series of imperfect, but useful, approximations of objective qualities in order to more easily compare and contrast our own value judgements. This is still highly functional.

I suppose it's possible that as we grow to understand our own psychology with regards to enjoyment, conceivably we could come across a singular unifying concept which all forms of pleasure have in common - if so, this would become our end-all scale of objective experience that would accommodate all preferences (with entertainment, anyway). This seems a distant possibility, if at all.

I realize that's not the most revolutionary stance ever conceived, but it's what I've got, lol.

[Kyng]

Now, for another point entirely: Shad discussed TV shows and movies quite a lot in his video, but one area he didn't really get into was music. Can the two sides of the "Old vs. new music" debate use this to show that music from their preferred era is objectively better, rather than just more appealing to their personal tastes and/or nostalgia? (For example, perhaps one side tends to have objectively more meaningful lyrics; however, if the other side's music was made to entertain an audience that cares less about meaningful lyrics, then does this even matter from an "objective quality" point of view?)

I was thinking about how best to respond to the possible differences between music and TV shows and movies, but I keep finding myself running into the same issue - the problem of defining a universally accepted measure of quality, one that can be superimposed onto a quantitative scale without loss of information.

A common theme in the above discussion is trying to properly define the target audience - that which satisfies one audience may displease another; who's correct? It's hard to say any group's values are correct without also invalidating another group's values. But we don't want to invalidate anyone's experiences, that makes it sound as if someone's value judgements are "incorrect" somehow.

Of course, different people value different things, which is why in reviews we may often see different aspects of media getting different ratings. In the example of a video game, "story" might get 4/5, and "gameplay" may get 1/5. In doing so, we're implicitly signaling the type of game it is, not necessarily proclaiming the game to be bad or good (although we may also do that, usually with additional qualifications however).

To answer the larger question: no, I do not think objective quality will exist in every context, particularly in entertainment media. Instead, what we have in many of these cases, is a series of imperfect, but useful, approximations of objective qualities in order to more easily compare and contrast our own value judgements. This is still highly functional.

I suppose it's possible that as we grow to understand our own psychology with regards to enjoyment, conceivably we could come across a singular unifying concept which all forms of pleasure have in common - if so, this would become our end-all scale of objective experience that would accommodate all preferences (with entertainment, anyway). This seems a distant possibility, if at all.

I realize that's not the most revolutionary stance ever conceived, but it's what I've got, lol.

Interesting point of view. Sorry I didn't reply earlier: I simply forgot about this thread until now!

Pretty much the only thing I would say is in response to the point about "different target audience". In that case, I think the 'quality' of the work should be judged according to how well it appeals to the creator's intended target audience (or audiences). For example, let's suppose somebody sets out to create a sci-fi work, but it ends up being too scientifically-implausible to appeal to the sci-fi audience... however, it ends up being enjoyed by fantasy fans. In my opinion, the work's ability to appeal to fantasy fans would not save it: appealing to the fantasy audience was never the creator's goal, and the creator's apparent success at appealing to them has to be regarded as an accident. On the other hand, if the creator had intended to appeal both to fantasy fans and to more serious sci-fi fans, but had only succeeded at one of those goals... then, I think it would be fair to say "It's a good work of fantasy, but not a good work of science fiction".

Of course, this is a bit problematic. Unless the creator outright states ahead of time what their intentions were, you can never really be sure. In the case where their sci-fi ended up being enjoyed by the fantasy audience, but not the sci-fi audience, the creator can just come out and say "This was meant to be a work of fantasy". They'd be lying; however, unless they'd already marketed it as a work of serious sci-fi prior to making that statement, we'd never know they were lying.

Finally, there's the further problem of the audience not necessarily knowing what the creator's intentions are to begin with (and thus, placing themselves within the incorrect 'target audience'). For example, when I was at university, I saw the Will Smith comedy Wild Wild West. I enjoyed it - but only because I had assumed it was a spoof or a parody, and I was judging it through that lens. When I later discovered that it wasn't a parody, and it was a serious attempt at creating comedy, I cringed so hard - both at the movie, and at myself .