Or your remark encapsulates the bizarre anti-elitism that marks American society.
Arguing taste is futile. I think Armaggedon was a great movie and one of my all time favorites. What is not opinion is that when movies like this smear these other flicks at the box office, that your taste is in the minority, not wrong, but not mainstream America either.
So basically those of who like Armageddon are too stupid to know it wasnt a good movie? Ellitism at it best, it appears.
What’s wrong with elitism?
Are you a relativist?
So the fact that people like a movie can not be taken as evidence it is a good movie??
What is a relativist? I am familiar with the term moral relativist, which I am not, but not the term relativist. If by relativist I believe that tastes, which have no moral signifigance, have…er…no moral significance, then yes.
Sure it’s evidence. But the evidence is proportional to the ability of the people in question to form a worthwhile opinion. The fact that people like a movie is evidence that it has something good–that is, something desirable–in it. But just what that “good” is may vary. It may be that the movie has a beautiful woman who exposes lots of skin. It may be that the movie has lots of good special effects. Are you seriously saying that people drawn to a movie for those reasons are to be taken as seriously as people who go to see the *Passion *because of its powerful portrayal of our Lord’s sufferings?
It is wrong to say that people can like a movie for unworthy reasons?
Brother, you’re living in a fantasy world. Most everyone I know was rooting for Munich, Capote or GNAGL.
I’m still waiting to hear why disagreeing with mainstream America is an issue, though.
A moral relativist is a relativist about morals–in other words, about moral goodness. In this case, you appear to be a relativist about beauty–about aesthetic goodness. You seem to think that beauty has no existence outside the eye of the beholder. Aesthetic relativism makes more ostensible sense than moral relativism, and I can see why you would hold the one and not the other. But ultimately I think the two are linked. Beauty, truth, and goodness are related. Relativize one and you weaken all three.
I think that’s heretical. To say that taste has no moral significance (I’m not claiming that all tastes have moral significance, at least not except insofar as all tastes are inextricably linked to every other aspect of a person) is to say that aesthetic beauty can be utterly separated from moral excellence. How can you say that without denying that both kinds of goodness are reflections of the indivisible goodness that is God?
I agree. They are different kinds of goodness but they are both good.
There are no boring films. There are only bored people. The question to ask is why are you bored by a particular movie? Is it because it fails to stimulate your intellect and will in fruitful ways? Or is it because you have failed to develop some particular virtue that would be required for you to appreciate the movie?
No one accepts as good what is pure evil, because pure evil does not exist. People accept some good in a disordered way. In many “mindless” films (again, I’m thinking of the Bond movies, because I find them very appealing and know that I shouldn’t) the good involved is very superficial and the disorder is very severe. Furthermore, the appeal is under the guard of our intellect–we know that Bond is not a good role model and furthermore we know that no real person is actually like that, so we think that we are safe. But our intellects and wills are being formed nonetheless. In a movie such as Cider House Rules (I use this rather than Brokeback Mountain because I have not seen the latter) we are being confronted with relatively believable characters in situations such as people might really face. We are learning to have compassion and charity for other sinners. This is a very great good. Yes, there is a challenge to the intellect, because the great evil of abortion is presented as a good (insofar as it’s ostensibly the compassionate choice in the situation described). But it is the sort of challenge that we need. We need to think realistically about how our principles affect people. We need to be forced to face the human cost of truth. This is not, all in all, an evil or demoralizing influence at all.
I am not going to pass any judgment on the movie specifically. I might well agree with you if I watched it all the way through. The fact that I found the bits I saw uninvolving no doubt says more about me than about the movie (as I suggested about movies that you find “boring”).
Abortion is pure evil
No, it’s not. It’s intrinsically evil. But the act may involve desires that have some good in them, although disordered. Cider House Rules is an excellent illustration of this.
It is not an issue to disagree and be in the minority opinion. But when the majority of Americans are accused of bad taste and just being wrong because of what they like, then that would be arrogant and elitist. I am not saying this is you, but I have heard this attitude all too often from the left coast.
I view someone as neither intelligent not dumb until they open their mouths and prove themselves one way or the other. Beleiving your (not you, whoever) beleifs should be imposed on secular entertainment, as a writer, is unfortunately one that will always push my buttons.
Abortion is pure evil. Rationalizing that somehow it can have good in it is intrinsically evil. If that is the message you took from Cider House Rules it makes the previously made point about how a well made movie can be “bad” if its makes one believe evil is good.
You are absolutely right. I often forget that we Neanderthal’s can also be arrogant in our position. Consider me corrected.
Perhaps we are using the term “pure evil” in different ways.
Way to ignore the parts of the post that don’t give you ammo there.