The highly subjective nature of rating films (1252 views, 15 replies)

Because anyone can rate a film, regardless of training, education, ability, age, etc, then whatever ends up aggregating as film ratings tends to be confusing.

If 10,000 people elect to participate in rating a film, yet 100,000 watched the film, then 10,000 have more power than 90,000 people. Does that make sense?

Most can't be bothered to rate a film. And by implication what happens is some aspect of the film either highly resonnated with the viewer(Gee this film is freakin' awesome!) or created massive antipathy (That director/actor/actress is a monster making subversive films...I'll poison the score!)

That means that you get wildly subjective responses in rating film.

Then some people actually worked on the film, and morally should not vote as they have extreme bias, but quietly vote (this happens all the time with one time imdb voting).

Then marketing firms "hire" interested parties and send them a free DVD and a restaurant credit to encourage them to vote, thus they feel obligated as they were paid and give the film a 10.0.
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Meanwhile a group on the internet may be very bigoted and all build a strategy to selectively give the film a 1.0 to ruin a career.

Then others have never actually done any artistic judging (like on a juried panel) and so have no qualifications to know how to vote.

Most people have never graded anyone. They never were educators, who have tests and papers and class evaluations and group projects with criteria. And so that evaluation has metrics. And so these are tallied and tested by the Bell Curve to ensure fairness. Then a score is generated.

Similarly when evaluating employees, companies have management at various levels then score employees to determine dead wood versus ones who should be promoted or dismissed.

Some critics are close friends with actors or directors. That relationship gives them access for exclusive interviews. If they rate the film low when 100 million dollars has been invested, it risks many powerful people in Hollywood. So then the reviewer has showed poor judgment in their eyes, killed the gold goose, their access is cut off, and they are left twisting in the wind.

This fosters extreme bias to promote films with glowing praise...even when a film was very badly executed with not much to praise. It takes a long time for a critic to gain followers as they have little artistic ability of their own.

Others like watching critics ruin others and so they intentionally give overly critical reviews just to trashtalk films. But that animosity gains them fans. That is very very ugly.
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Welcome the mob rule called the Internet. Fasten your seat belt and please keep your hands and feet inside the ride at all times.

It's my understanding, which certainly may be incorrect, that in the UK..all have a tax and that tax then is administered and divvied up into a variety of various BBC programs across many channels such to encourage artistic expression through many genres and show documentaries and period dramas (which face it are always a distortion of history, largely by leftists as artists tend to be leftists. And costumes and sets are ENORMOUSLY expenisive).

dosmovies.com/watch_tv_show/The_Fall....
This is a fantastic tv serialization that would be ruined if an American series. Here it is underplayed yet intense and a frightening depiction of a malevolent brilliant serial killer versus a police officer/detective who is a genius yet flawed character hunting him down.

Far later, the Rome TV series while excellent beyond HBO's wildest dreams, prematurely ended as the costs were STAGGERING to build large historically correct sets plus extremely high costume budgets.
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That actually plagued every Star Trek tv series.

There are benefits to this process. I have watched many BBC programs from Wales, Scotland, England, and Northern Ireland. That system creates stability and diversity that far exceeds what a small group of countries/regions could ordinarily produce.

We attempted that with NPR which has been an abysmal failure, extremely biased, often propaganda, with questional judgement on dividing up the limited money. Then gets WORSE as the idea was television minus commercials, which is a lie as programming gets funding from corporations and foundations influencing the nature of reality (actual majority and minority life versus wishful thinking).

If one studies media in serialized tv and film, once there were few channels and so limited programming. That means many millions watching limited shows and largely a captive audience that could not be demanding.

Cable tv in the late seventies began as reruns packaged to allow a new life and profitability and cult status beyond the ordinary length of a tv serialization. Films with small profits then gained new viewership. Americans were introduced to UK programming especially with serialized horror. Some samurai chambara and jidaigeki were available. Adult simulated erotica was available.

That led to films being available over and over and gaining cult status. Some films could fail at the box office, yet gain an audience in perpetuity on cable channels. This entirely facilitated the growth of horror films with microbudgets

Star Trek was immensely popular and allowed a series of films, and new serialization.

Real programming was tried on cable and failed and succeeded.

Reality tv began largely on MTV and spread across various genres.

Targeted niche programming was created.

And all this resulted in altering the rating of old shows and film, which formerly was reflective of cinema theaters, but then included cable plus movie channels, Laserdisc, Betamax, VHS, DVDs, streaming, etc.
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dosmovies.com/watch_movie/Blade_Runner....

This an internal link to Blade Runner.
44 people rated the film.
47,149 at least glanced at the information.
It is unknown how many streamed/downloaded it off-site.

Now what level of confidence do you have as a critical thinker that 44 people can evaluate a film versus that much larger number?

Mathematically that is 44/47,149 = rounded up is 0.001 voted.

If I am a critical thinker and seriously evaluating the statistical information, I would have zero confidence that the score is accurate as so few were part of the process and I have no idea how objective they were. Realistically maybe 5 were objective and the rest were subjective and using emotion and not really using aesthetics and qualifying their evaluation.

This community is a microcosm of film fans.

What is the macrocosm? A similar massive difference exists or actually if we are good critical thinkers, that number is even smaller, as a Hollywood film critics evaluates a film versus potentially a billion viewers.
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This is why it is difficult to determine the validity of film review and scores. The critic may be trained and so has more qualifications, but may be so different than the common people and their aesthetic viewpoints, that a miniscule number of film critics in effect decide the fate of billions of entertainment dollars. And so, this is why very odd aethetics affect filmmaking that are idiosyncratic and out of touch with the actual consumers.

Not to mention that nations have their own cultural beliefs that govern aesthetics as well.

Then are the folks then persuaded that what is represented is "beautiful" or "admirable" or "ethical"? That is part of the artists offering a prescriptive view of reality.
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I have zero interest in amending anything on the forum.

The rating of film is most often subjective not objective.

As such it isn't really "rating" anything!

This would be akin to taking votes to get grades while at university!

Votes could NEVER determine apptitude of students nor mastery!

The entire rationale for education is objective evaluation.

Likewise juried panels evaluate ART based on criteria and that is objective.

All artists aspire to provoke a personal response in the viewer. If they fail, then they accomplished nothing, just made an artistic statement instead of a sculpture, painting, or poem, or literature, or film.

So that is why viewers of art end up rating film as art inspires subjective response. That is the basis of Aesthetics in philosophy.

I have in essence "rated" 400 films but using subjective and objective evaluation. 90% are what I consider good to great films. There is little reason to objectively rate bad films which have little artistic value. ... The only reason to objectively rate bad films is when they do heinous things like dumb down the viewer or worse exploit women through rape (see Straw Dogs).
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