Verlander said:
TSED said:
I wonder how many of these opinions come from academically minded individuals. There is a huge difference in how, say, a Bachelor of English will dissect a narrative and how a layman will.
"Blade Runner," I must confess, is a movie I have never seen. "Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?", the novel by Dick on which it is based, I have read and quite enjoyed. The point of the novel is how it's a postcolonial piece. It's a critique on specific paradigms found at the time it was written. Many of the points it makes - particularly the anti-war sentiments coupled with a frustration and acknowledgement of the necessity of the police - ARE still culturally relevant. Once again, I know the movie has been altered substantially from the novel but I have not seen it.
Anyway, education is important to appreciate things. Some people complain that this exposure "ruins" literature for them; others find the exact opposite. The latter finds a way to vocalize their dislike of a work, and can now not only explain why they liked something, but they can find new interpretations to further their enjoyment.
This is not to dismiss pacing (I can't stand anything written between Pope and the Modernists, for example), but there's no nice way to say this. You don't like it because you don't get it.
Surely anything that requires education to enjoy would automatically be discounted, as it's appealing to a niche audience, and the majority of people cannot enjoy it? For example, I enjoy well written books on the history of art, as well as advanced documents on computer science, BUT I cannot expect others to enjoy the same things as they won't have the foundations to even approach the material.
What I'm saying, I guess, is that if something demands from the audience, it cannot complain when the section of the audience that cannot give treats it with disdain...
You recognize that these books are "well written" but you "cannot expect others to enjoy the same things." That's fine. I don't think any one's ever said something along the lines of "all classics are good and if you don't like them you are a BAD PERSON" (actually, ok, a few decades ago they were pretty strict on how lit theory worked...). There's a difference between proclaiming a personal dislike of something and proclaiming a failing of the work itself.
Notice the comments so far. A good deal of them have been "I didn't like it," and then a good deal of them have been "it sucked because of ______." Now, both of these opinion styles have merit, but they amusing work on opposite ends of the education spectrum. As anecdotal evidence, I don't know much swing jazz. When I hear swing jazz I like or dislike, I preface it with how it is merely my opinion. On the other hand, something I have a deep understanding and mastery of I will not describe with opinions. I will use concrete terms and support them with arguments whichever way it lies.
The problem is when this is reversed. If I walked into a debate on, let's say Image Comics (note that I have never read any of their works) and start saying that they suck
objectively, my opinion will be worthless. If I started talking about how I think that maybe
Neuromancer could possibly mean this one thing... Well, it'd sound like I didn't know what I was talking about. My analysis would be taken as an opinion instead of an educated and nuanced view point.
This being said, I'm still a hypocrite. I have very little knowledge over certain things (Twilight, most famous mallcore / metalcore bands, WoW - as examples) but I still speak as if I have deep insights and do not lace my sentences with the aforementioned weakening modifiers. I still have some knowledge, but in truth most of my knowledge comes from contrasting it with other comparable works. Hey - it's not my fault it sucks too much for me to bother with it.
