aesthetics

[wufwugy]

If aesthetics was 100% subjective, it would mean that there are no commonalities. It would mean Linda Cardellini isn't hotter than Kathy Bates because everybody would have an opinion that is completely their own and samples of opinions wouldn't present significant sensibilities beyond others.

But this is clearly not the case. There are clearly many ways in which humans agree on aesthetics. Everything from sensibilities on facial patterns to nature scenes, from theatrical presentations to literary illustrations. The entire ~2500 year history of theatrical entertainment has more similarities in aesthetic qualities than differences, irrespective of medium differences from stage to cinema. Oedipus The King and The Wire are both Greek tragedies, yet were created 2500 years apart in vastly different cultures using as different of media forms as have existed in civilization, but they both play by the same principles of plot, character, theme, music, etc. They share more commonalities of aesthetics than they do differences.

The question is to what degree and in what ways aesthetics is objective/subjective. When I say that the Batmans have shitty female characters, it's because the Batmans have demonstrably shitty female characters according to how well the female characters evoke any array of emotional and intellectual responses from the audience. I'm not even arguing for unrealistic portrayals of female characters being aesthetically bad. The comic genre demands that female characters fit a certain archetype and phenotype, and comic writers that have strayed from them have learned why they can't stray from them and remain successful. But within the genre's sensibilities towards female characters, there is still great aesthetic potential. They play pivotal roles and elicit specific and strong reactions from the audiences. But the Batman women didn't do this. Not only were they not good characters according to what comics think of as good female characters, but they were even worse characters according to what other genres think of as good characters. The Batman women were nothing other than the Hollywoodized embellishment of flashy spectacle, vapid attributes and motivations catering to male audiences stuck in a society drenched by sexual puritanism.

This doesn't mean that people aren't allowed to like them and think they're good. People are capable of thinking The Wire sucked, but they're also capable of being wrong. The confusion is that people think aesthetics is simply opinion, but the truth is that aesthetics is a branch of philosophy dealing with what beauty is

Kaylee had more reason to be who she was in the world of Firefly in just one episode than Maranda, Cabbagepatch Face, and Batchick had in the entire trilogy.

[surviva316]

If aesthetics was 100% subjective . . .

The biggest problem with this post is that it uses a very very loose definition of objectivity, and it makes the common problem of lumping inherent value in with intrinsic value (even though they're closer to being opposites than they are to being the same thing).

I'll start by saying that opening with a comparison of hotness in women in a post primarily about movie aesthetics is a really bad place to start. There are very obvious reasons why there is a lot of inherent value in things like women's beauty and cuisine and so forth--namely, humans' main hard-wiring throughout the course of evolution has been honed by fucking women who are good at baring children and eating food that gives you enough energy to stave starvation. The drive to have sex and to eat sugary/fatty foods are extremely different from the drive of being entertained, intellectually stimulated and emotionally affected--namely, the former drive is much more independent from subjectivity. Having sex with healthy women, with fewer discernible physical flaws, with big mammary glands, and hips that can sustain child baring is much more of a science than an art. Hell, screwing the right women could be optimized through statistical analysis and would be more-or-less independent of compatibility with given subjects.

Anyway, I know that your only point was to demonstrate that there is at least some objectivity to aesthetics (which is a complete logical fallacy to get to your eventual conclusion, but whatever I'll let that slide for now), but even that fails. This gets to the difference between inherent value and intrinsic value. The value of screwing healthy women is first-level instrumental, but it's still instrumental: we want to screw healthy women BECAUSE it is instrumental to perpetuating your genetic thread through bearing healthy children. It's not a value unto itself; it's just useful to us, so a lot of people share that value. It is still subjective, though, because I can't imagine that ants give a shit whether they're crawling across Kathy Bates or Linda Cardellini. This may seems like a mere technicality or something because who cares what ants/aliens/inanimate objects/etc. like and don't like, but it becomes important when we're dealing with inherent values that have varying priorities. Again, this is why comparing to women's beauty is bad because every human holds the values of sex and food as top priorities, but the values we get out of movies is vastly more variable from human to human).

While we're on the subject, it might as well be pointed out that even female beauty is in the eye of the beholder from culture-to-culture in a lot of ways. Shakespeare's sonnets include a lot of “universally” good traits like fair skin and round figures, whereas our society prefers tanned and angular features in a face. And that's just comparing one Western culture to basically the same Western culture a couple centuries later. China loved to bind women's feet and the entire East loved pocket-sized women. I know that your only point was to say that it's at least somewhat non-subjective, but all of the commonalities basically boil down to the inherent value of not having sex with lepers.

I know I just spent a lot of time on something that was only meant to be a setup for larger point, but I think that breaking down the differences sets up the discussion for movie aesthetics well. I'll put everything else in a different post because this is getting long.

[wufwugy]

I used the hot/ugly woman example as an obvious point that demonstrates objectivity in aesthetics exists

[surviva316]

I used the hot/ugly woman example as an obvious point that demonstrates objectivity in aesthetics exists

I addressed that, in fact using that almost word-for-word wording:

Anyway, I know that your only point was to demonstrate that there is at least some objectivity to aesthetics (which is a complete logical fallacy to get to your eventual conclusion, but whatever I'll let that slide for now), but even that fails. This gets to the difference between inherent value and intrinsic value. The value of screwing healthy women is first-level instrumental, but it's still instrumental: we want to screw healthy women BECAUSE it is instrumental to perpetuating your genetic thread through bearing healthy children. It's not a value unto itself; it's just useful to us, so a lot of people share that value. It is still subjective, though, because I can't imagine that ants give a shit whether they're crawling across Kathy Bates or Linda Cardellini. This may seems like a mere technicality or something because who cares what ants/aliens/inanimate objects/etc. like and don't like, but it becomes important when we're dealing with inherent values that have varying priorities. Again, this is why comparing to women's beauty is bad because every human holds the values of sex and food as top priorities, but the values we get out of movies is vastly more variable from human to human).