There is no such thing as bad literature

>The framing is terrible
Subjective standard

>the cuts are disorienting
Subjective standard

>the story is cliché and predictable
Subjective standard

>there are 25 GIGANTIC plotholes
Subjective standard

>The decisions didn't make any sense
Subjective standard

>The dialogue was forced, some of the scenes where so obviously dubbed over that the mouth didn't even move when they spoke
Subjective standard

Those are all reasons why YOU wouldn't like the movie. A reasonable person would, after telling their own opinion, ask the casual viewer what they liked about the movie. Then the casual viewer might give some of their subjective reasons for liking the movie.

Well obviously, subjective quality it's a property of the qualifier and not of the product.

>The framing is terrible
Subjective standard
Wrong. Framing can be objectively bad, as it has an objective goal: To draw the viewers attention towards or away from something as well as having a certain pleasing or displeasing (depending on what you want to emote) effect on the viewer.
If you want to draw the viewers eye to an object, but film it in a way that does not do that, or barely has the object in focus/the picture you have objective bad framing

>the cuts are disorienting
Subjective standard
Again, proven fact. example: In a lot of these cheap modern action flicks you have way too many cuts in order to hide stunt-doubles and the fact that actors are not actual super heroes who can do 20 flips a minute, this often leads to jumpy, disorientating cuts that kill any sense of flow. Again like I said before: You might say "oh but I don't mind it" but that doesn't mean that it is not there, and that doesn't mean that it is not a bad thing, It just means you don't give a fuck. Also, not everyone can be oldboy: youtube.com/watch?v=VwIIDzrVVdc (sadly)

>the story is cliché and predictable
Subjective standard
Once again I wouldn't say so. You can actively measure how often certain story elements have been in Films in the last [Insert random amount of years you want to measure it by] and can therefore scientifcally say how "cliché" certain developments are. one example I personally fucking loathe is the "third act misunderstanding" A situation where Person A. overhears Person B saying something, but they don't hear the whole conversation or otherwise misinterpret what was said and now we'll spend 15-20 minutes with A and B hating each other before eventually they find out: Oooh it was something else entirely and you do still love me! when the non-issue could be solved by them just fucking talking for one god damn minute.
Point is: "Tropes" such as these happen again and again and if used wrong can make the film objectively worse. I'm not saying everything has to be 100% original, but certain scenarios have been played to death, and there is no point in seing batmans parents death for the 50th fucking time, if it doesn't add anything new or interesting or an unique look on it.

>there are 25 GIGANTIC plotholes
Subjective standard
>The decisions didn't make any sense
Subjective standard
Nah. mang. Nah. If something establishes certain "in-universe" rules and then doesn't follow them, then.. you know what? I'm tired and gonna take a nap.

Because that preposession is actually wrong and crap.

The fact that you consider them standards at all is subjective. I could tell you that a book is bad if the average word is less than 6 characters. That's measurable, but you'd rightfully say ask why the fuck does that matter at all. Same with your standards. Not everyone would agree that good framing makes a good movie. It's a subjective standard.

I came here to say 'welcome to hell', but, revealing the last line of your post by clicking it, I see you're already well acclimated.

Golden Mean, Overtone series, Monomyth. The list goes on

haha thanks fello memer! le funny website thanks us for our presence *tip

I'm taking this and using it on crit thread posters.

youre welcome!

Here's a terrible modern action scene for comparison.
youtu.be/LMdfj62iC_g

>black guy gets punched down
>cuts to him on the ground
>when it cuts back to bucky he is 3/4's of the way up the stairs
>for around 4 frames you see a black flash zip past the screen, this is the black guy getting up and going to intercept him apparently
>the next cut is from the behind of the black guy running, when he jumps though you see he is now actually above bucky and coming at him from the complete reverse angle

I would like to present the longest piece of fiction based literature not only in the western catalogue, but in the history of man.

fanfiction.net/s/4112682/1/The-Subspace-Emissary-s-Worlds-Conquest

We've got an armchair nihilist in the house.

I'm not sure if I miscounted because it's FUCKING fast, but I counted 52 cuts total in that 1 minute clip.

the 'best literature' is actually anime
Veeky Forums really doesn't understand literary form.

There's no such thing as "objectively bad". Proof is that Milk and Honey here is considered an oozing piece of shit (and we're so right), but it became worldwide famous and very apreciated by females, members of the LGBT community and men who want to fuck by looking "deep" to a female, I guess.
Since there's no possible way to tell if any opinion is worth more than any other, we can't really express objective judgments about anything.
Then we could also say that to express an objective judgment is to make an axiom, and I think we all know that theoretically axioms are impossible to make (see Munchausen Trilemma)

Everything is objectively terrible. We just delude ourselves into thinking some things are good in order to cope with it.

I believe that appreciation of a work of art depends on knowledge. Two people whose knowledge is wildly different will have wildly different opinions on a piece of music. For example, a person who has listened to a lot of music has a different opinion from a person who has listened to very little music (but it doesn't have to be "quantity", it could just be different kinds of music). Therefore, knowledge determines what you like and what you don't like. To a large extent, the "emotion" that music makes you feel depend on what you know (not on the music itself, which is simply a vibration that resonates with your brain's circuits). My experience is that people who have similar knowledge have remarkably similar opinions.

Very often, the "opinion" of a person is simply a reflection of what that person has listened to. The more a person knows, the more likely that her "opinion" is truly "her" opinion. The less a person knows, the more likely that her "opinion" is simply a reflection of whatever marketing/publicity she has been exposed to as she grew up.

If I had to come up with a "theory of musical appreciation", I would probably quote one of the philosophers who influenced me: Abhinavagupta. This Indian thinker (who lived around the year 1000) first formulated a theory that in my opinion is simple and elegant: experiencing the flavor of a work of art requires not only that the work evoke an emotional response, but also that the "experiencer" possess the aesthetic skills required to respond in an appropriate way. The experience of appreciating a work of art is a process of exchange: the artist provides the work of art to be experienced and the "experiencer" provides his aesthetic skills. The appreciation (i.e., the emotional response generated in the experiencer) is not an absolute value: it depends on the aesthetic skills of the experiencer. Those "aesthetic skills" are mostly derived from "knowledge".

ok hol up hol up milk & honey is tite tho

>certain scenarios have been played to death, and there is no point in seing batmans parents death for the 50th fucking time, if it doesn't add anything new or interesting or an unique look on it.
Whether something is played to death or not entirely depends on your own experience. Someone who only watched one Batman movie won't find it as boring as someone who followed the shit for decades. Just like the things that seems new for you are overused for someone else with more experience.

maybe "in the hood"

have you been watching rick and morty too fellow redditor? le funny show haha xD

>in b4 objective morality

>People often disagree about what is good or bad.
>Therefore, there's not rational way to adjudicate between good and bad.
When will this non-sequitor end?

Don't get caught up in this word objective. Objective is a divisive word. All people can ever mean when they use it w/r/t taste is that any specific artistic culture tends to grow a set of standards, and within the culture people tend to be able to agree upon and recognize these standards.

Not to be condescending, but I think that this is all easier to understand when you spend some time reading the canon. You
realize that some books do have quality w/r/t the books that came before, even if they have no objective quality per se.

If you frame it like this, you avoid pitfalls like Basically, quality is only worth discussing if we're discussing it among people who share approximately the same cultural pool of knowledge as us. This is as close to objectivity as we can get.

>Basically, quality is only worth discussing if we're discussing it among people who share approximately the same cultural pool of knowledge as us. This is as close to objectivity as we can get.
But that's not objectivity in any sense, unless you believe those standards are objectively correct. There are legitimately people who believe that a statement like "Ulysses is a bad book" is as false as stating something like "The Earth is flat".

There are not people like that. If there are then you could easily talk then down to a position that's more reasonable. Like, "'Ulysses is a bad book with respect to the Western canon' is as false as stating 'The earth is flat.'"

>some of the scenes where so obviously dubbed over that the mouth didn't even move when they spoke
well fuck Fellini then

The problem with this "everything is subjective" stuff is that it implies a degree of skepticism nobody seriously believes. You don't either: you do still have the category of 'literature', although you do not differentiate within this category. How do you distinguish 'literature' from used toilet paper if everything is subjective?

The earth is flat, you idiot.

>Everything is subjective
No it's not some things aren't up for interpretation outside of being a lunatic.

>There is no such thing as bad literature
Im sorry, bud. People can totally like what they like, but refusing to accept that some writing is just shite is ridiculous.
>people have different tastes
Lets talk about literal taste and content.

Cheeseburger
>Taste: Pretty damn tasty in most peoples opinion, including my own, but some people don't like the taste.
>Content: Unhealthy, hard to digest, doesn't do a very good job of being fuel for your body.

See how they're different? If someone told me they don't eat cheeseburgers because they're unhealthy, I wouldn't argue "No, there's no such thing as unhealthy food." I would say "Yup, I still like the taste though." Sort of the same with a book. It can be well written and boring as fuck and not fun to read and you hate it. It can be riveting, page turning, amazing, and written fucking terribly.

>So why do people waste breath and argue about whats good or bad?
Because people get the above shit confused. Like I love 1984, but I don't see your dislike of it as an attack on my ability to recognize good writing on a technical level.

>this is what STEMspergs tell themselves

>There is no thing as bad literature
>...
>pic related was shit tho

>this is how people who assume i'm a STEMfag talk

Why would a well written book be boring and not fun to read? That's like saying a well built phone that doesn't work.

'muh science' makes you a STEMsperg.

It's long seemed to me that the people who argue that standards are subjective actually have a more absolutist sense of criteria than those they argue against/strawman. The subjectivity people think that either something must absolutely, 100% be proven true, or else it's just a subjective standard, whereas those who want to judge quality acknowledge gradations of quality or allow room for debate. Note that the subjectivity people always shut down argument with the simply truth that all things are subjective; absolutism is always a way to shut down argument.

tl;dr: relativism is closet absolutism

Not all people find enjoyment from the same things. I'm not a fan of fantasy books and they bore the shit out of me, it doesn't mean every single one is terribly written trash.

what the fuck are you talking about?

So much about objectivity then.

The subjectivity of the aesthetic experience does not imply the non-objectivity of the worth or quality of the object being judged.

Furthermore, even if you suppose all taste is absolutely subjective, that still does not leave you off the hook, for two reasons...

''My pleasure in beauty is therefore like a gift to the object, which is in turn a gift offered to me. In this respect, it resembles the pleasure that people experience in the company of their friends. Like the pleasure of friendship, the pleasure in beauty is curious: it aims to understand its object, and to value what it finds. Hence it tends towards a judgment of its own validity. And like every rational judgment this one makes implicit appeal to the community of rational beings. You express your judgment not as a private opinion but as a binding verdict that would be agreed by all rational beings just so long as they did what I am doing, and put their own interests aside. ( Scruton)

There's also Hume's argument ; even if taste is subjective, character is not, and taste reflects the character of the one who holds such taste (and naturally, character matters).

i believe that is the joke.

even if we agree that there is no such thing as bad literature, there must still be the spectrum of good since all can't be the same level of good

You're right, user. Now that the intellectually inferior mob is literate everything has become subjective. In the past literature had to meet a certain threshold of quality, now even garbage-tier lit is enjoyed by many.

unfortunately true, I don't like looking down on the mob but when I reed their reviews I have no choice but look at them as such

> character is not
Because?

A lot of the stuff from the past that this board and most critics are crazy about, was labeled as garbage in its time. Pretty much all Shakespeare works and Les Miserables are the obvious examples but even Ulysses got shit on by other authors.

If there is no good and bad, why should there be different levels of good?

The entire topic is fucking idiotic and just a variation of "red is better than blue" or vice versa.

>What is morality

inb4 morality is relative

No serious philosopher believes this.

Morality only got objective elements when you connect it to biology and then it's usually very basics stuff.

has*

''Morality only got objective elements when you connect it to biology and then it's usually very basics stuff.''

Nonsense. Says who?

user, it's obvious you're not very well read. It's also obvious you're stuck in physicalist logic with your ''muh measurable objectivity meme''

I'd suggest reading some works on aesthetic before making a thread like this ; and also properly refuting the answer given to you in this thread.

What are you talking about? There are tons of serious philosophers who believe in moral antirealism.

How? You can recognize the quality in something and not like it, just like you can like something that you recognize lacks quality. I'm not very well versed in literature so I'll use film for examples. I absolutely fucking love gone fishin' despite knowing that it's a piece of garbage. On the flip side, as many times as I've seen it and as much of a masterpiece The Godfather is I don't like it. It's pretty much as close to perfection as we'll ever get in film, perfect pacing, utilizes Chekhovs gun, great acting, and one of the few movies with a sequel that surpasses it, and it just isn't for me. There absolutely is objectivity, you just have to realize that there are ways to judge something you like or dislike without taste affecting your critique. What you can't determine is an exact numerical list of high quality through low quality because that is where subjectivity comes into play. There is no way to solve the debate of which is better, Casablanca or Citizen Kane, only to determine that they're both high quality.
TL;DR you're a mong if you believe quality is entirely subjective.

>Says who?
Basic logic. If you're not "stuck" in physicalist logic, any kind of discussion becomes babble about nothing.

>before making a thread like this ; and also properly refuting the answer given to you in this thread.
I am neither OP, nor saw any reasonable answers so far.

>I absolutely fucking love gone fishin' despite knowing that it's a piece of garbage
But it's not. If you love it, it's a great movie (at least for you), even if it executed certain elements worse than others.

>There is no way to solve the debate of which is better, Casablanca or Citizen Kane, only to determine that they're both high quality.
But this is ridiculous. Either there is an objective way to measure quality in art or there isn't. If there is a way to tell that A is good and B isn't, then there has to be a way to measure that C is good but worse than A, and since there isn't, goodbye objectivity.

At best you can measure single elements like framing since they have a purpose and one can tell whether they achieved it or not.

Also Godfather I pacing is ass. It's great in single scenes but movie itself is way too overloaded and slow at times. II did it a lot better, just while it's better in it's parts, there is still no way to tell whether it's a good movie or not because it's about the entire picture, which is subjective.

>But it's not. If you love it, it's a great movie (at least for you), even if it executed certain elements worse than others.
This is the stupidest fucking thing I've ever seen someone say here that they actually meant. Does that mean if someone loves The Room it instantly becomes a good movie? But before you answer keep in mind that no, it was not intended to be one of those "so bad it's good" movies which I will admit do have some sort of quality to it, even if the quality comes from the purposeful absolute lack of it.

No, you're mixing up objectivity with personal experience.
If I'm only ever awake during the night, Is it true when I say: "the existence of a sun is subjective, that it gets warmer during the day is subjective, that the sun creates light is subjective"?
No, They are objective facts, and so are the fact that some storylines are tired and overplayed to a degree that a large amount of people know exactly what will happen as it happened before and before and before.
As I said before: There might be a bunch of personal reasons why such things don't matter to you, all whole lot of reasons why you just don't care (a LOT of people enjoy watching mediocre shit) that doesn't mean it's not objectively bad or flawed, It just means that your personal tolerance is higher than the grade of awfulness of the work.

You wouldn't say twilight is an objectively good book. It's fucking trash, but it is really easy to self insert as the barely described awkward girl that for some reason every mythical super Adonis in a 20 mile radius falls in love with at first sight. So they overlook all the other flaws because they just want to enjoy the self insert fantasy of it.
Once again, see: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choice-supportive_bias

The degree to which you like something might be entirely subjective, but weather something is absolutely fucking terrible or not, can be entirely objective.

If it entertained someone, one way or another, obviously it was a good movie for them. Whether it executed different elements well is another question altogether.

If someone enjoyed 10 hours of paint drying, who the fuck are you to say that they didn't enjoy it, and if something brought someone enjoyment, how can it be bad? Maybe the pacing wasn't the best and the director overdid it with cut, and underdeveloped the characters but in the end it all doesn't matter for the big picture.

>They are objective facts
And completely different fucking things from the one discussed. Now try something like "it's warm" or "the light is bright" and that entirely depends on the person to a reasonable degree. 25° might be warm for you and hot for someone else while another person feels cold.

> that a large amount of people
So it does depend on the people after all? As someone who spent a lot time with story telling and works in the industry, 99% of movies and series got tired and overplayed storylines for me. For some kid just starting to watch shit, most will feel surprising and unique. Why should my experience have any bearing on how the kid perceives it?

>You wouldn't say twilight is an objectively good book.
Obviously not. It's objectively a book. Whether it's good or bad is up to each reader to decide.

>So they overlook all the other flaws because they just want to enjoy the self insert fantasy of it.
Which is what counts in the end. Why would flaws matter if someone loved every second of reading it?

>but weather something is absolutely fucking terrible or not, can be entirely objective
Based on what? Even with something like characters it's tricky to tell. Why are 2dimensional caricatures like in Twilight bad? They aren't too believable but if they achieved their purpose to give the reader joy, they can be hardly called bad. Good vs evil shit in LotR isn't realistic either but if the reader is looking for a simple world to escape into, they do the job better than realism would.

>if something brought someone enjoyment, how can it be bad?
"I enjoyed eating this shit sandwich and since I enjoyed it you can't call it bad." You truly don't understand how fucking retarded you are do you? Someone liking shitty things doesn't make the thing less shitty, it makes their taste more shitty.

It was clearly a good sandwich then. The question of health never came up nor wouldn't make sense in context of media.

>Now try something like "it's warm" or "the light is bright"
Easy. both temperature and light can be subjectively measured. The fact that it is warm, or bright can be established without a doubt. Now if it is TOO warm or not warm enough for a single person can be personal preference. But the fact that there is warmth is objective, if it is enough, or too much is subjective.
>So it does depend on the people after all?
No, I worded that badly. amount of people does not matter, but when thinking about that specific trope I just had in mind that a lot of people are annoyed by it. You are of course right that the quantity of people who are annoyed is irrelevant to the fact.
>Why should my experience have any bearing on how the kid perceives it
It doesn't. Like I said the personal experience and enjoyment is perfectly objective. But the fact that a lot of these stories are overplayed doesn't change because someone is ignorant of the fact. It means just that: "due to his ignorance of the matter he was not yet sick of it and enjoyed something despite its flaws"

>Obviously not. It's objectively a book. Whether it's good or bad is up to each reader to decide.
By that logic, "the brothers karamazov", "speaker for the dead", "the lord of the rings", "Harry Potter", "50 shades of grey" "[random fanfiction]" and every shit book every have exactly the same merit.
Nah nigga. some things are good, some are not.

>Why would flaws matter if someone loved every second of reading it?
They don't. If you enjoy it go for it. But your enjoyment of it doesn't mean there are no flaws. they are objectively still there, and if they add up it can be called an objectively bad work

>That last argument
basically what I just said the whole time. Something can be objectively bad, but still be enjoyed by people who don't care about the flaws.
to go literal: If you enjoy eating shit you enjoy eating shit. doesn't mean it isn't shit, just means that you are able to enjoy shit to some degree.

>The fact that it is warm, or bright can be established without a doubt.
These words are subjective, user. You can measure the temperature and get a number, not whether it's warm or cold.

>But the fact that a lot of these stories are overplayed doesn't change because someone is ignorant of the fact.
But almost ALL stories are overplayed with enough knowledge, so you do need to be ignorant of some, so it doesn't feel that way.

>every shit book every have exactly the same merit.
Merit is another more precise word that probably could be measured, specially if you specify it.

> they are objectively still there, and if they add up it can be called an objectively bad work
The first part is true. As for the second, how many flaws does one work need to count as bad? You can find fuckloads in works that are considered good by most.

>Something can be objectively bad, but still be enjoyed by people who don't care about the flaws.
This means it's not objectively bad, if there are people who don't find it bad.

>If you enjoy eating shit you enjoy eating shit. doesn't mean it isn't shit, just means that you are able to enjoy shit to some degree.
Whether it's shit or not is irrelevant. If the person enjoys the taste, it doesn't objectively taste bad. Just for most.
For something without a real purpose like art, the discussion doesn't make sense. It's the same as saying color X objectively looks better than color Y.

I'll give it to you, you're a crafty one, I didn't realize you were baiting until this post. You truly are a master baiter.

Enjoyment doesn't equal quality.

>it doesn't objectively taste bad
This wouldn't happen to be you would it?

>There is no such thing as bad literature
>people have different tastes

Therefore, some people think certain literature is bad. Therefore bad literature exists. Nice sophistry though

Illiterate.
'serious philosophers' today are dogmatists.
Biology is not objective, science is invalid nonsense.
>logic is rite becuz i ed so
Illiterate retard.

>everything is objectively terrible

except sex

>the value of literature is subjective
>so some people don't like some literature
>therefore literary value is objective and not subjective
was he serious when he made this post?

>"the brothers karamazov", "speaker for the dead", "the lord of the rings", "Harry Potter", "50 shades of grey" "[random fanfiction]"
If you don't mind me inserting myself I would like you to spell out as exactly as you can why they have objectively different value. Argument from intuition need not apply.

Being a fat ass is just as good as being fit. Longevity, virility, status, physical attraction, utility, etc. are universally valued by humanity's happiest people and will improve your life by every conceivable metric, but fuck it being a depressed loser is just as good, subjectively.
Jesus, what a worthless/pathetic outlook some of you people have.

>Since there's no possible way to tell if any opinion is worth more than any other
You really believe this?

You named things that often tied to biology and have absolutely no bearing on art.

Not him but assuming the person presents them logically coherent, it's correct. Obviously something like "I like X because I like/lit told me to like it" is an opinion not worth much.

When people say they like or dislike another person's work(s), you're meant to infer that they're acting on personal preference. Arguing against objective taste is a strawman in itself, and you're probably an idiot for suggesting that people are thinking in this way. Reviews and critiques are merely another way for the reviewer or writer to express their own views, and in so doing contribute to the flow of ideas. You idiot. It has rarely been a mere argument of whether something is merely good or bad; if it was, it was usually an off-the-cuff statement or meant in jest- you're the idiot if you took it seriously, and you're an even greater one if take criticism of your favourite writer as an attack on your person. You idiot.

>logic is good becuz i sed so
Fuck off, redditor

None of those things are good, redditor.

Logic isn't good or bad, it either exist or doesn't. Kinda like your shitposts.

It doesn't exist, redditor.

>if something brought someone enjoyment, how can it be bad?
I'm fairly certain rapists enjoy rape, does that mean it's not bad?

Certainly not for you.

For the rapist it isn't, if he has the means to avoid social, legal and psychological consequences.