Eh, personal taste is a thing. Not every film is going to resonate with everyone, even if there’s some pretty impressive or neat shit going on at some level, and that’s ok.
Do think it’s worth giving most movies a shot though, for no other reason than you can have a discussion around “I thought it sucked, and here’s why.”
Example: I love Eraserhead, Tetsuo: The Iron Man, Pink Flamingos save exactly one scene, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and All That Jazz. I also completely understand the grounds on which someone else would say any of these suck badly, and welcome their contribution to the conversation.
As I once said, drunk, to some university student waiting for a bus outside a bar across the street from a movie theatre, who had just watched Un Chien Andalou: “You can appreciate the cultural value of a piece of art and still not like it. Don’t just feign praise because others do, you’re allowed to just straight up not like things, and the opposite is true too.”
Not necessarily across all avenues. People often have friends in their lives that have a different opinion on some topics.
Personally, most of the time I find it’s how that difference of opinion is delivered that creates that exclusion - where it’s very easy to take, say, “this movie sucks, and here’s why I think that” as “you suck for liking this movie”.
Then of course there’s topics where that difference of opinion isn’t as trivial and delivery isn’t really the problem, but that’s a different conversation.
I’m not talking about individual relationships, I’m talking about community/group acceptance.
there is always more nuance and grace between people one on one, but in larger groups, that gets eliminated and your acceptance is largely a product of your ‘loyalty’ to orthodox belief-set of the group.
IME it’s less about delivery than how directly you are challenging the shared sacred belief around which the group identity is formed.
and ironically, often people who are cool one on one about something, are not cool in a group setting. plenty of my friends will denounce people ‘like x or don’t like x’ but then privately say admit the opposite is true of themselves to me personally. But one has to ‘keep up appearances’. You have to pretend to enjoy something for the sake of social expediency.
Just like at funerals nobody says anything bad about someone, even if they were a terrible person who did horrible things. There is a social contract at play that you only remember the good things about the person.
Eh… I’ve definitely seen what you describe borne out, but I’ve also seen cases where the contrarian/outlier is afforded a special status within that group. Not 100% sure how to account for that (aside from the specific nature of the contrarianism not really challenging the specific shared sacred belief involved?).
Edit: Noted that this comment was before the edit with additional discussion points, haven’t integrated those into this response but am reading for consideration.
Eh, personal taste is a thing. Not every film is going to resonate with everyone, even if there’s some pretty impressive or neat shit going on at some level, and that’s ok.
Do think it’s worth giving most movies a shot though, for no other reason than you can have a discussion around “I thought it sucked, and here’s why.”
Example: I love Eraserhead, Tetsuo: The Iron Man, Pink Flamingos save exactly one scene, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and All That Jazz. I also completely understand the grounds on which someone else would say any of these suck badly, and welcome their contribution to the conversation.
As I once said, drunk, to some university student waiting for a bus outside a bar across the street from a movie theatre, who had just watched Un Chien Andalou: “You can appreciate the cultural value of a piece of art and still not like it. Don’t just feign praise because others do, you’re allowed to just straight up not like things, and the opposite is true too.”
people want social acceptance though, so they do, and will feign praise.
fastest way to be socially excluded in life is to have strong and distinct opinions from your peers.
Not necessarily across all avenues. People often have friends in their lives that have a different opinion on some topics.
Personally, most of the time I find it’s how that difference of opinion is delivered that creates that exclusion - where it’s very easy to take, say, “this movie sucks, and here’s why I think that” as “you suck for liking this movie”.
Then of course there’s topics where that difference of opinion isn’t as trivial and delivery isn’t really the problem, but that’s a different conversation.
I’m not talking about individual relationships, I’m talking about community/group acceptance.
there is always more nuance and grace between people one on one, but in larger groups, that gets eliminated and your acceptance is largely a product of your ‘loyalty’ to orthodox belief-set of the group.
IME it’s less about delivery than how directly you are challenging the shared sacred belief around which the group identity is formed.
and ironically, often people who are cool one on one about something, are not cool in a group setting. plenty of my friends will denounce people ‘like x or don’t like x’ but then privately say admit the opposite is true of themselves to me personally. But one has to ‘keep up appearances’. You have to pretend to enjoy something for the sake of social expediency.
Just like at funerals nobody says anything bad about someone, even if they were a terrible person who did horrible things. There is a social contract at play that you only remember the good things about the person.
Eh… I’ve definitely seen what you describe borne out, but I’ve also seen cases where the contrarian/outlier is afforded a special status within that group. Not 100% sure how to account for that (aside from the specific nature of the contrarianism not really challenging the specific shared sacred belief involved?).
Edit: Noted that this comment was before the edit with additional discussion points, haven’t integrated those into this response but am reading for consideration.
Where I live people don’t tolerate contrarianism… but yeah some other cultures or places might.
Even in academia, contrarianism got you ostracized. It was a role only allowed for the ‘elder statesman’ of the group to perform.