Reviews contain opinions, and yours might be different!
Some people take umbrage at the way critics write their reviews in such authoritative tones — and that umbrage is entirely misplaced.
I was reminded of this by a comment someone posted here recently:
The issue I have with MOST of the reviews is the same I have with nearly every review ever penned, stating ones opinion as fact, and that IS pompous.
It’s a familiar sentiment, echoed all over the Internet:
I never listen to critics or take them seriously. They like to pass their opinions as fact. Not everyone has the same taste/opinion, ergo their point sort of becomes moot. (Comment on a video-gaming site.)
(In other words, since many readers will have opinions different from the reviewer’s, the reviewer might as well not even bother writing his.)
Notice how rarely critics use words suggestive of how purely subjective their observations are. In fact, pop music critics typically write in the opposite way, stating opinion as presumptive fact whenever possible: “This album has several failings,” “He has never been more inspired,” etc. (Unsigned article, “14 Arguments for the Elimination of Pop Music Critics.”)
And I don’t like movie critics all that much. Mainly because many people treat their opinions as fact. (Someone’s blog.)
(That’s a particularly interesting one. Note that she doesn’t dislike critics for anything they’ve done — it’s people’s reaction to them that makes her not like them.)
From what I gather, the above-quoted people would be pacified if critics would just say “I think” or “in my opinion” more often in their reviews. The one about pop music critics says it specifically: The lack of those signal phrases suggests, to that reader, that the critic is trying to pass his opinions off as facts.
This sentiment indicates a failure to understand a basic element of good opinion-writing: If you keep saying “I think” or “in my opinion,” it makes your writing sound dull and amateurish. It makes it sound like a junior high school book report: “I thought it was a good book. In my opinion, the characters were very interesting.” Blah blah blah. Stating definitively, “The movie is a beautiful piece of work” as opposed to “I think the movie is a beautiful piece of work” isn’t pompous. It’s just GOOD WRITING. If your ninth-grade English teacher didn’t tell you that, she should have.
How could a critic possibly think his opinions are facts? That would require a fundamental misunderstanding of what the words “opinions” and “facts” mean. The very fact that a movie review is a “review” means, by definition, that it is someone’s opinion. That’s what a review is. If it weren’t composed primarily of opinions, it wouldn’t be a review. How is this unclear?
I think part of the problem is that movie critics (and critics of other media) often have official platforms from which to speak, while the ordinary moviegoer does not. The Internet has changed that somewhat, but there’s still a kind of separation between “official critics” (i.e., those who write for newspapers, magazines, or websites) and “ordinary people” (i.e., those who are confined to their blogs or Internet forums to state their opinions). In some people’s minds, the fact that a critic gets to publish his reviews in the New York Times somehow suggests that the critic is trying to pass his opinions off as incontrovertible facts — after all, the New York Times is a news-gathering source. But in truth, the critic is doing nothing of the kind. Yeah, more people will read his opinions than yours, and yeah, maybe that’s not fair. But they are still just opinions, and I assure you, the critic knows that. He writes authoritatively because that’s how good writers write, not because he believes it would be impossible to disagree with him.
It might help if you do a little mental exercise. As you read a review, mentally insert the phrase “in my opinion” before each sentence. It’s already there by implication — the fact that it’s labeled a “review” MEANS that it’s the reviewer’s opinion — but maybe it will go down more smoothly if you pretend the critic has actually spelled it out.
(P.S. Some critics are pompous, but it’s for other reasons.)
July 12th, 2007 at 12:26 pm
That’s just your opinion Eric, stop trying to be all high and mighty.
Heehee.
In all seriousness, I agree. I wouldn’t pay much attention to any critic who puts ‘in my opinion’ or ‘I think’ in front of everything. People say statements all the time that they believe is true, just like critics do. Most people never have their opinions in writing for all to read though, so it may never stand out to them.
July 12th, 2007 at 12:32 pm
Mst critics I know use words like beautiful, good, scary…all subjective terms. By definition those words depend on the reaction and opinion of the individual..am I involving too much logic when I should just be enjoying the funny letters?
July 12th, 2007 at 1:17 pm
All art forms elicit opinions out of people, but when it comes down to it, it doesn’t matter whether someone likes something or not. Whether we believe it or not, all art forms are a reflection of our culture and values. When something is beautiful, well crafted, or engaging, it doesn’t matter if I personally “like” it. The key is recognizing value and artistry in all things even if it isn’t in a “style” or “taste” that we like or agree with. Some amazing movies are movies I personally don’t “like” and that’s fine - it’s still an amazing movie. Others that I may “like” are terribly made movies, but that’s OK too because part of our modern culture likes crap, and just because I “like” it doesn’t mean it’s a good movie.
July 12th, 2007 at 1:56 pm
This was an issue that came up all the time during “peer editing” sessions in my various writing classes throughout junior high, high school, and college. I would repeatedly tell people to remove wishy-washy qualifying statements from their writing because they consistently weakened their arguments. It is not just better writing to state things authoritatively, it is better communication in all of its many forms. I can’t think of anything more annoying in conversation with someone than having to endure that person constantly qualifying everything they say as being “just an opinion.”
Here is a good rule of thumb: If you don’t have enough confidence in your opinion to state it authoritatively (or, to use the whiners’ terminology, “as thought it were fact”) then don’t bother to state it at all.
July 12th, 2007 at 2:38 pm
Eric skipped over one part of the original comment where the writer said:
“In addition to this a large number of the negative reviews either attack or insult those that enjoyed the film.”
When the criticisms extend outside of the film and berate the people watching it, that is when the critic comes across as the most pompous.
There’s a big difference between:
“I believe this is a bad film.”
“This is a bad film.”
and
“You are an idiot if you think this is a good film.”
July 12th, 2007 at 3:09 pm
“Stating definitively, “The movie is a beautiful piece of workâ€? as opposed to “I think the movie is a beautiful piece of workâ€? isn’t pompous. It’s just GOOD WRITING. If your ninth-grade English teacher didn’t tell you that, she should have.”
I don’t teach ninth grade, but I do teach English. Trust me: we try. They don’t listen.
In other news, one of my students plagiarized part of one of Eric’s reviews and turned it in! Whee!
July 12th, 2007 at 3:53 pm
Yeah, this is kind of like what happens to me when I post my thoughts on music on various message boards. People get all huffy because I state my opinion without explicitly saying “This is my opinion”. Well, duh, I wrote something, that means it’s my opinion. I’m going to link to your blog posting here, methinks, whenever that happens again.
July 12th, 2007 at 3:54 pm
I hope you beat her repeatedly. And let the others watch.
And I agree that making fun of film viewers simply because they have crappy taste in movies probably shouldn’t be part of a film reviewer’s review. If you state enough times that the film sucked, the point should get across well enough that those who saw it and enjoyed it saw and enjoyed a sucky film.
July 12th, 2007 at 4:17 pm
IMHO, I think that this blog is a pile of dung. /sarcasm
This reminds me of a time when a guy started yelling at me because I always state my opinions as if I thought they were true. Um… if I didn’t believe my own opinion, then it wouldn’t be my opinion!
July 12th, 2007 at 5:28 pm
I often review wrestling shows (The Weekly TV Shows…rating their story-line use, believability, and how the matches play out)…but that’s the breaks when you give your opinion on anything…you undoubtedly are going to piss someone off because they are so insecure that someone (Someone behind a FRICKIN’ computer screen) disagrees with them.
July 12th, 2007 at 6:33 pm
What I want to know is what Eric was doing on Kotaku. He’s on record for saying adult males shouldn’t still be playing videogames once they’ve reached the age of 30. (I jest, of course. I’m sure he Googled his way there.)
And for the way people feel about not being able to share their opinions the way a film/music/art critic can, Eric hit the nail on the head. I feel like that *almost every* time I read one of Eric’s masterfully-written reviews. As a hardcore (see: nerdy) film buff who loves nothing more, it is Eric’s writing that makes me aspire to be a film critic.
July 12th, 2007 at 8:12 pm
I don’t mind the opinions. Of course you have an opinion. You just saw a movie. Either you liked it or you didn’t.
What bothers me is when the reviewer gives the impression of having formed his opinion well before seeing the movie: “This is a movie by Michael Bay. It was thus foreordained that it would suck. Sure enough, it does!” That’s just unprofessional. It doesn’t matter how many sucky movies you think a director has produced. If you go in assuming his next one will suck without having seen it, you should hang up your movie-reviewer hat. (Ideally you wouldn’t even know who directed a movie before seeing it, though I don’t see that happening in real life any time soon.)
And no, I haven’t seen Transformers and therefore don’t have an opinion about how good it is or isn’t. I’m just disgusted by the number of critics who seem to have based their opinions about the movie on who its director was rather than on the merits of the movie itself.
(Incidentally, I did see _The Island_ and thought it was entertaining, which is what a movie is supposed to be. Not everything has to win an Oscar. I haven’t seen any other Michael Bay stuff, though.)
July 13th, 2007 at 11:51 am
I don’t see what’s wrong with insulting the audience. If something is really stupid yet people cheer it on, I think it is fair game for comments from a reviewer. And please, enough with this “if you haven’t seen it, you are not allowed an opinion” nonsense. By that reasoning, all films _must_ be box office successes, because you _must_ see it so you can have an opinion. How are we to vote with our dollars if we have to vote positive to have a negative opinion?
July 13th, 2007 at 11:59 am
Whome, having an opinion like “that movie looks like it’s probably bad” or “I don’t think I would enjoy that movie” is not the same as saying, categorically, “that movie sucks” when you haven’t actually seen it. it’s stupid to say definitely that a movie is bad (or good) if you haven’t seen it.
July 13th, 2007 at 1:14 pm
There are many movies I will simply never go see, and I feel I have a right to object strongly to their promotion to the public (torture porn, for example). I don’t have to put myself through the torture of watching it to have very strong opinions about it. I don’t have to say “well, it’s probably not good for children, but since I haven’t taken my kids to it, I don’t really know yet”. Rather I say that taking a child to a torture-porn movie is a form of child abuse, and I feel completely justified in my opinion.
July 13th, 2007 at 1:53 pm
I’m not sure if the internet age caused your problem, but it has brought you the solution. Just have Jeff code your site so that it prefixes “IMHO, ” onto every review or post automatically. Normal people like me despise overused messageboard phrases like this and read right over them. Hopefully it will cause the annoying ones to shut up.
July 13th, 2007 at 10:31 pm
Whome and David:
I do not have to see “Wild Hogs,” “Little Man,” “Epic Movie,” or “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 17″ to know that they suck. I mean, come on.