Ok, now I'm not looking to get into a lengthy debate about semantics, and you pretty much answered you're own queries to my comments. For the sake of waisted effort that could be spent watching more films, I'll refer to what you have said.
Now just to clarify, there are two points that we are talking about. Firstly, how I interpreted the phrase 'speak for yourself' in relation to your comments about the rating patterns of others. Secondly, the dangers of claiming a closeness to infallibility based upon qualification (degree). To this second point I just want to add that you shouldn't assume that you are nec. more qualified than anybody else you are speaking to unless you have intimate knowledge of education/insight/intellect. For example, I have studied Art, Music, Philosophy, Film & Photography.
Anyway, the first point;
While your comment concerning this film is indeed thoughtful, your preface sidesteps an unavoidable fact of life: no one ever truly speaks for another person, ad litem.
Firstly Ad Litem is a legal term that means exactly that, to legally speak for someone else, or on somebodies behalf. However, this is probably a semantic problem. The claim, as I interpreted it, was that you were 'speaking for others' in that you made claims about what other people were saying. Precisely, that;
the problem is that, unfortunately, most people rate movies based solely on a sense of nostalgia. Objectivity and artistic appreciation tend to play no part in their "assessments," if you can even call them that.
Here, you are making claims about other people, that they rate 'nostalgically' and lack 'objectivity and artistic appreciation', the phrase 'speak for yourself' is basically to inform you, not to tell me that I am rating nostalgically, or that I lack objectivity or artistic appreciation.
People may have similar opinions, but such similarity can only be identified once both parties have already spoken for themselves and expressed their individual opinions.
This is all well and good, when talking to somebody in person, where you can cross-examine opinions and motives, but on an IMDB forum? A forum post is not exactly going to reveal everything about a person.
Thus, no one person can ever speak for another without first being granted approval by the one being spoken for. Otherwise, such action could only be deemed falsification, or, at best, estimation.
Here you make the point for me, by claiming that people vote "nostalgically" and lack "objective and artistic appreciation", by "speaking for others", these claims, of yours, are false, or, at best, estimation. In other words, there was no need to say that people vote... because by your own estimation these propositions are usually false.
Secondly;
I'm speaking from the point of view of a film scholar.I speak for myself, with academic merit to support my opinions.
So, what is the basis for one opinion carrying more weight than another? I had assumed that my education in film studies would cause my opinion to carry more weight than someone who saw this film as a child and labelled it a masterpiece because it was new and different back then. Do you disagree with this assumption?
A film degree teaches you to study a film, understand historical relevance, analyse photography, sound, acting, story, editing etc. You learn words, like 'mise en scene', through which to communicate the language of film, write essays and perhaps make some short films. That's great, it's a fun course. But essentially, film language aside, you essentially train the muscle that reads and analyses film. To claim that somebody else, even a child, may not be better at that, with or without a degree, seems to be short sighted.
In your comment, you seem to be inferring that my degrees in film studies are irrelevant to my opinions. But, if that is true, shall we then dismiss all forms of institutionalized education as prolonged exercises in futility?
Your degree is relevant to you, your opinions, when shared, are all that matter to anybody else, in this sphere for sure. There's no need to try to inflate the importance of your opinions, if they're relevant, and people agree, then they'll read your comments, you don't need a degree in film studies to understand film. As to the usefulness of your degree in the world? Well, maybe you can get a job as film teacher or a film journalist, fun jobs, for sure. But if you're a film scholar, surely you want people to love film, and sure, you want people to love good films, great, recommend some. But one of the greatest things about existence is people's ability to love something, to become impassioned, inspired, and open minded through interacting with something. If this film does that for them then great, maybe you missed something.
I'll close with a para-phrasing of Jean Cocteau. Film can be many things, but at times and in a most wonderful way, film reminds us to be a child. A child sees a magic trick and believes it, a child stands still, mouth agape in wonder at the magic of cinema, film can be awe inspiring, transporting the viewer into an alternate reality. However, this can only be done by the viewer, the child. "I ask of you a little of this childlike simplicity" for it is only in giving up some of ourselves, to suspend dis-belief, that we can find ourselves in a place to be awe struck and again see the magic of cinema. Don't like film criticism/analysis get in the way of that, for you, or others.
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FilmScholar
11 years ago
You are a good writer, and you have presented your thoughts well, but I would like to point out that speaking for someone else and making an observation about the preferences of a group of people are two completely different things. I have simply done the latter, here. I do not claim to know why any individual person likes any given movie, until that person has stated such. Instead, I have looked at the broad spectrum of peoples' interest in film, as communicated on these IMDb forums, and I have recognized that most people do not care about mise-en-scène, cinematography, editing, sound design, screenwriting, film form, theory, analysis, history, comparative national cinema, or the economics of the film industry. They have no interest in when filmmaking was invented, no idea of what it takes to tell a story cinematically, and no clue of the average production budget for a modern Hollywood film. Do some research, ask some questions, and you'll find that most people like movies because they remind them of their youth. Even you, in your paraphrasing of Jean Cocteau, make this case. And that has been my case this whole time.
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