What the hell is Objectivity?

Hello, fellow Drinkers! I've been thinking quite a bit about how film criticism is done, especially the topic of objectivity, so I figured I'd offer up a few thoughts on it. Hopefully it makes sense, but who knows? 

Either way, let's find out. 

“This movie is objectively terrible.”

“This game is objectively great.”

“I’m objectively right about everything.”

If you’re a connoisseur of online movie reviewers, chances are you’ll have heard this kind of thing a hundred times over. It seems like everyone with a YouTube channel likes to bang on endlessly about how every aspect of what they do is objectively provable, how every movie or TV show or videogame can be boiled down to the sum of its logical components and objectively measured, like its some kind of academic science experiment.

But what the fuck does objectivity actually mean? Why do people keep talking about it so much? How does it function when it comes to reviewing an artistic work? And is it really the holy grail of film criticism, that can silence all rebuttals and nullify all other points of view to leave just the pure, cold, calculating facts of the matter?

Let’s find out together, shall we? Now I don’t believe in sugar-coating things, so I’m going to do my best to lay out my thoughts in plain terms, rather than getting bogged down in pseudo-philosophical bullshit that nobody can fucking understand. There’s more than enough of that on YouTube already, trust me.

So let’s get started.

First up, let’s consider what it actually means to be objective. Well, according to the Cambridge Dictionary, objectivity is defined as “Being based on facts and not influenced by personal beliefs or feelings.”

Well, the second part sounds easy enough, so let’s start with that. When reviewing a movie, it goes without saying that you should do your best to remove your own personal feelings from the equation, and focus on assessing the film fairly and honestly. For example, it’s no secret that I don’t particularly like Rian Johnson, both because of the creative decisions he made on The Last Jedi, and the way he responded to fan criticism of his movie.

As a result, it’s fair to say my personal dislike of the man could easily taint my view of any subsequent movies he makes. This creates a very obvious problem, because I’d no longer be reviewing them fairly or impartially. My reviews and opinions would be biased. That’s bad.

In order to stay objective, I’d be expected to ignore or at least reduce this negative bias as much as possible, and give credit where its due. So if Rian happens to produce an excellent movie at some point in his career, I’d be left with no choice but to heap well-deserved praise on it. Likewise, the same idea functions in reverse. You might have a favourite actor or director, so every time you see one of their movies, you WANT it to be good, and you subconsciously ignore or minimise anything that goes against that opinion. Either way, it’s the same problem – you’re lying, first to yourself and second to your audience.

Objectivity means being brutally honest with the conclusions you draw, even if you don’t like them.

Now this sounds lovely in theory, but is it actually possible in reality? Well, no. It isn’t. Not completely, at least. Human beings aren’t machines; we can’t reprogram our brains and switch off our personalities. Anyone who claims they can, is fucking lying to you. The best we can hope for, is to reduce our positive and negative biases as much as possible, so they don’t cloud our thinking too badly when it comes to dealing with… facts.

Which brings me neatly along to the first part of that dictionary definition. Objectivity is based around provable, verifiable facts. But what facts can you really glean from a movie review? The title? The runtime? The cast list? What do we actually have to work with here?

This is where you’ll probably start hearing the phrase ‘logical consistency’ quite a bit, because it’s what reviewers are kind of forced to fall back on in order to stay purely objective.

See, although a film or a TV show or whatever is technically a piece of art, fundamentally its a story. And like any story, it has different elements that have to work together to produce the end result. Just like a car engine, where there are lots of moving parts that have to move in just the right sequence for the engine to run properly. If there are faults in this machinery, then the performance starts to degrade. Rack up too many faults, or ones that are too severe, and the whole thing breaks down.

A good example of major faults in storytelling are plot holes - events which happen in the story, that either contradict stuff that’s already happened, or which could be resolved in an easy and obvious way, but aren’t. In either case, no explanation for why this happens is provided, or can be reasonably deduced by the average viewer.

As a really basic example, imagine a horror film where a group of characters get stranded in a remote location, and a terrifying monster picks them off one by one. Early in the movie, we’re shown one character on his phone to a friend, thus showing the audience that he owns a cell phone capable of calling people. But later, when the group comes under attack, he makes no attempt to call for help and the movie never explains why.

This is an example of a plot hole, because you’ve established a method by which a character could get himself and the others out of trouble, and it would make perfect sense for him to do it. But he doesn’t. Because if he did, the group would be rescued and the story would come to a premature and very disappointing end.

Plot holes are obviously a bad thing, because the more there are, the more the audience will start to question what’s going on, and realise the story doesn’t really make sense. Once this happens, their suspension of disbelief – ie. their ability to temporarily buy into what they’re seeing and believe its actually happening – will collapse, and the movie will cease to function.

So how could you improve on this? Well, one solution is to just say that the place where the movie takes place has no cell phone reception. You’ve now provided an explanation for why he doesn’t call for help. Congratulations, you’ve plugged up the plot hole. Of course, while this explanation plugs the hole, its far from perfect in a creative sense. In fact, it’s right up there with, “Let’s split up and look for Jimmy who went missing in the woods. We can cover more ground that way.”

It’s the kind of thing that’s been done a million times before, and its so cheesy, lazy and hackneyed that your audience will see it for exactly what it is. This setup has gone from being a plot hole to being a plot contrivance. It won’t do as much damage as a plot hole, but too many contrivances will make your story start to look dumb, simplistic and unimaginative. And just like before, your audience will find it harder and harder to suspend their disbelief, because its becoming increasingly obvious that the events taking place in your movie are being heavily reshaped to fit the needs of your script.

You NEED your characters to be isolated and unable to call for help so that the rest of the plot can happen, so you’re providing a bunch of lazy excuses for why this is happening, rather than taking the time to properly restructure your story and make this setup more believable.

The same idea applies to the characters in your story. For example, imagine a character that’s established early in your movie as having a crippling phobia of spiders. But then later in the film, they walk right through a web and a spider lands on their shoulder, and they brush it away without any concern. Again, this is an example of inconsistent writing, because the character is now behaving in a way that they shouldn’t, given what we know about them.

The cheapest, easiest and laziest way around this would be to have someone question how your character can do this when they’re supposedly afraid of spiders, and your character responding that, “I lied.” Your character has now gone from inconsistent to contrived. It’s not much of a step up, but its an improvement.

These are the kinds of problems with a script that are easy to spot, because usually all it takes is an eye for detail, and the ability to say “What if…”. Unfortunately, this is what a lot of online film criticism tends to fall back on – the relentless pursuit of logical flaws, plot holes and contrivances in the narrative. And don’t get me wrong, this kind of thing definitely has its place when it comes to assessing a film’s quality. Obviously you WANT a story and characters that make sense, that behave in a consistent way, and don’t keep breaking your immersion to question why any of this is happening. And it’s kind of satisfying to point out very obvious mistakes that the writers really should have spotted themselves.

The problem is that its all too easy to get hung up on this one aspect of a review, and pursue it to the point where its no longer helpful. Pointing out logical flaws in the writing encourages your audience to be more analytical in how they look at movies, and it can even help them understand how the various components of the story fit together. But going out of your way to find even the smallest inconsistency or flaw to complain about… well, at a certain point it crosses the line from legitimate criticism into the realm of nitpicking.

Also, its not something that can or even should be applied equally to every movie. For example, a thriller with a complex story and multi-layered characters very much depends on good, consistent writing, because that’s what people are there for. The immersion of the experience depends on crafting a tight, well thought-out screenplay, and that’s primarily what the movie should be judged on. So it definitely makes sense to apply your logical mind to it, and see if its watertight.

But what about other genres? Do they all demand the same level of analysis? Plenty of big budget action movies don’t have particularly tight or logically consistent stories, for a simple reason – they’re all about WHAT happens on screen, rather than how and why it happens. For example, you don’t watch the latest Fast and The Furious to get swept away by a mind-bending storyline that makes you re-evaluate the nature of existence. You’re there to see fast cars, beautiful people, exotic locations, and lots and lots of explosions. The script is just a means to facilitate those things.

In short, its entirely possible for a movie to have objectively bad writing, but still deliver an overall entertaining product, because its priorities are different. And so, my priorities as a reviewer would be different too. I wouldn’t assess The Silence of the Lambs based on the pacing and special effects of its action sequences, just like I wouldn’t judge the latest Fast and the Furious as harshly on the integrity and complexity of its story.

The other thing to keep in mind is the stuff that you can’t measure through logical analysis. The stuff that comes under the realm of… emotion. As I said earlier, movies are there to tell a story, but they’re also pieces of art. And like any piece of art, the aim is to get an emotional response from the audience.

Whether it’s the soundtrack, the performances, the cinematography or the overall tone of the film, all of these things are designed to make you feel a certain way. The problem is that emotional responses can vary wildly between different people, because we’re all wired in different ways. A scene that could reduce one person to tears, might make no impact whatsoever on a different person. They’ve both watched the same thing and understood it in the same way, but one felt an emotional response and the other didn’t.

So how does a critic get around this? How do you try to quantify something that’s inherently unquantifiable? This is where you have to fall back on experience, a solid understanding of similar scenes that worked in other movies, and maybe, just maybe, an element of good faith between you and your audience. Not that I expect people to automatically believe and agree with everything I say, but I also don’t feel like every single point I make has to be verified and backed up with a dozen pieces of evidence and examples. Otherwise every review I made would be hours long, take months to produce, and probably wouldn’t be very entertaining to watch.

Sometimes its enough to point out your own observations, explain why you felt that way, and then allow your audience to make up their own mind about it.

Basically I’m saying that when you’re reviewing a film, its useful to consider what exactly the film is setting out to do, and adjust the focus of your review accordingly. For example, if it’s a horror film, does it frighten or unsettle you? If it’s an action movie, does it thrill you? If it’s a comedy, does it make you laugh? If the answer to these questions is yes, then you’re probably looking at a fairly entertaining movie, even if some of the elements you can objectively assess aren’t as strong as they could be. Sometimes it really is possible to enjoy a film “For what it is.”

The point I’m making with all of this, is that objectivity in its broadest sense, is something I see as a kind of gold standard that any good critic should strive for (even if its not possible to fully reach it). You should always try to come at each new movie with an open mind, with as few biases and prejudices and hang-ups as possible, you should give credit where credit’s due, and point out writing flaws without being obsessive about them. In short, objectivity for me, is about fairness.

But objectivity, as important as it is, is still just one weapon in a reviewers arsenal. There are other, less logically quantifiable, elements to films that are important to take into account too. And if you neglect all of that, focussing entirely on the parts of a movie you can pick apart and logically prove to your audience, then I think you’re going to end up with an incomplete view of a film.

Anyway, that’s all I have to say about that. Go away now.