Objective Criticism is Pointless (and Impossible!)

"I prefer a reviewer to be objective in their criticisms."

There's little else I hate hearing. Okay... there are some things that are worse (maybe a lot of things), but I need to make one thing clear as day -- there is no such thing as "objective criticism."

Have people covered this topic before? Yes. Do I care? No. I have too many things to say about it.

A little while ago, I got a text from my friend, asking, "What is a review? Of a game, movie, book, etc. Can you define for me?"

I said yes, of course. Who couldn't?

What I replied back was, and I quote, "A review is an oversight of the overall product, it's faults, and its triumphs, as a way of communicating to others the value as perceived by the reviewer."

I asked him why he wanted this from me and he told me that he was in a debate with his friend about how entertainment reviews (in this case, video games) should be handled. His friend said that all reviews should be "objective," and should detail the objective faults and achievements of the product (game).

I sighed. 

This biggest issue with this type of thinking is the fallacy that any single product has an established, impartial value. This is false. Write this down, kids -- value can only be determined by the standards of the people who obtain and distribute the product, how they utilize it, and what it means to them. All of these things are inherently subjective matters.

A good example of this is how our currency works. Our United States dollar is backed by nothing. Nothing. It used to have an equivalence in value to gold, with the paper dollar functioning sort of like an IOU. It was meant to represent the promise of gold in exchange for goods, and now that we aren't on the gold standard any longer, all that paper we have in our wallets is exactly what it looks like. Just paper. 

This system is able to work because our culture functions on the trade and circulation of product for currency. We assigned value to the money based on how we valued gold, and we only really ever valued gold based on preformed assumptions about it's magic power and rarity long long ago. So in a sense, our money was never truly worth anything.

And that's just it -- nothing is. Nature does not produce "worth" -- worth is something that is perceived. To put it simply, if you have long hair, then hair ties are likely worth something to you because you can use them. If you have short hair, then, well, why would you need a hair tie? The same can be said about literally anything. How many times have you thought to yourself, "I don't want that, that isn't useful to me." It's important to remember that whatever that "thing" was, it's useful to someone else. Now, how many times have you thought "I want that. No... I need it." This works both ways, people.

Taking this into account, we can understand better how human art functions. Art is intrinsically a human creation. Anything produced by people from external resources can be considered art. Therefore, art is very much a consequence of culture, and the people creating the art -- Pablo Picasso made grotesque, strangely-angled paintings that reflected his emotional well-being (or lack thereof). Fransisco Goya created The Black Paintings after years of conflict in his home country and suffering from deafness. Today they're still widely revered and respected as forms of the highest art. However, they still came from subjective sources. Objectively, all these paintings are, are chemicals and compounds mixed onto a canvas in patterns that resemble imagery. We project meaning onto it because the artist designed it that way. This means that the standards with which we judge the art do not exist innately -- they were conceived in our minds. 

My friend said this to me on the topic of music snobs; "If you go to a different culture and hear their music, you'd probably be shocked at how strange it sounds, and it could be hard to appreciate it. But to them, your own culture's music would be just as weird." 

Yet that culture's music is what they listen to. It's what they create, and what they see value in. It has no objective value, only objective traits. Those traits could be dependency on deer-hide drums, or choir chanting and the jawbone. Does that make it bad? Likewise, does autotune have any less value than acoustic guitar? Or are they simply different traits?

No art can actually, objectively, fail at presentation, because we judge presentation by our own preconceived, individual standards. These things don't grow on trees -- we have to think them up. They change over time because they come from our culture, which is fluid. What was acceptable in film thirty years ago doesn't reflect how we think of the medium today. The same can be said for how it will look in the future as well. So if I were to sit here and give you an "objective" review of a video game, I would give you;

1. The name of the game and the plot synopsis 

2. The gameplay mechanics

3. The type of graphics, age rating, and estimated playtime

4. The name of the studio that created it

None of that is my opinion. It would be pure fact. 

But it wouldn't be a review, or any type of criticism. Criticism has to involve a level of deeper thought, some kind of critical thinking...

However, as we know, the critical thought would be entirely based around our own subjective standards, expectations, and tastes. So, any criticisms we come up with would be creations of our own projection, and therefore don't reflect an objective truth about the thing we've criticized -- only that it appeals to us for various reasons, or not.

This is not to say we shouldn't ever have standards -- heavens, no. I just want people to understand that there is no "good" or "bad" piece of art or entertainment. It may be that way to you, and for the ease of communication, it usually makes more sense to refer to it as such. But until you can prove to me that character development is inherently less important that setting, I'm going to keep the opinion I have now.

Thank you for staying with me through this rant, if you did. As always, keep watching, keep writing, and most importantly, keep reading.