Great masterpieces... that suck!

[For.I.Am.Mad]

Where the Red Fern Grows. Required reading 'bout some dogs. The worst part was deciphering the Southern twang all the characters had. The fuck we had to read that for?

 

[Ilyak1986]

I hate A LOT of old things. Dunno why, and I can't say I'm biased since I don't even know they're old before I hate them. It's just one big coincidence.

I hate classic rock all the way through the obnoxious hair metal people like to play in Intro to Guitar classes. I also don't like classic metal (Megadeth, Motorhead, old Metallica, etc.). I like a lot of newer metal genres.

I hate old movies for their lack of...interesting things to do. I dunno, they're just boring.

If you've ever taken an AP English class, you'll learn that almost all of the classic books of "literary merit" run a dull gamut of the same themes. They're pretty much centered around the different types of conflict: person vs. person, person vs. self, person vs. society, which then divulge into relationship, political, ideological, etc. The fact that one AP prompt can be addressed by somewhere around 50 of these books is a testament to this. Plot's not important CUZ U SEID SUMTHNG PROFUND!

I do like Baroque classical music though. Much better than Romantic era stuff.

Most conflicts do boil down to those three (and i got the same handout) and i feel like maybe your opinion of the books is colored because that was explained like that. Sure some authors might have sat down to write a book exploring those themes, but most wrote a story that was meaningful that fit into one, two, or all three. That English handout exists because of the books not the other way around

My biggest issue is that they can get away with having sub-par plots so long as they say something interesting about something. One of the biggest examples contradicting my point is Candide, by Voltaire. It makes an obvious point, has a hilarious plot, and is short and sweet. I feel Candide embodies what books of literary merit should be. Also, The Stranger did a similar job, albeit with a far less interesting plot.

A lot of my hatred for these books comes from the fact that they're compulsory. The arguments for making them required readings are pretty much some variations of: "They're classics, you should learn them" and "It'll make you more well-read and therefore smarter". That's true, they'll probably make you smarter to some degree. Chess does that too. So does playing an instrument. Neither of these are required, however, because it's ridiculous to mandate something which should be considered a hobby. Reading should be something kept fun. Different people will have different reactions to different activities. It's ridiculous to expect everyone to enjoy it and even more ludicrous to force them to read these books.

Since I started taking these literature-based classes, I've not picked up a fiction book of my own desire. I've ultimately become desensitized to the most important question of reading: "is it interesting? My friends tend to feel the same way, which I think is the sad part.

/rant about AP English.

This. AP English was generally horrible. My last two years in English were terrible (Metamorphosis, the Stranger, Sun Also Rises, Great Gatsby, Ethan Frome, among other things...did sorta like Crime and Punishment but ended up Sparknotesing the last third because I just procrastinated too much). 1984 was worth the read though, especially because of all of the allusions to it these days in our daily lives.

That said, Les Mis, Count of Monte Cristo, were nice reads in tenth grade. Wuthering Heights was just *SHOOT ME NAO PLZKTHX*. Ugh. Dumb book.

Though in freshman year in HS...Odyssey, Ayn Rand's Anthem (I liked this one a lot, don't hate me for liking Ayn Rand), Sound of Waves, and the most epic of stories: 47 RONIN, BIATCHES! Now *THAT* book was just flat out amazing! A story about sheer badassery. Who doesn't like that?

 

[F-I-D-O]

Mafia (yes the original) It was decent, but not a good game in my opinion
Jane Eyre - Just bad, the story is a cliche in the modern day, and the writing is dry.
Other ones, but these stand out

 

[SantoUno]

TES III: Morrowind

Why people constantly bash Oblivion while simultaneously praise Morrowind as the better game will never become clear to me,

 

[Purple Shrimp]

Anything by Pink Floyd, the later work of the Beatles, and Radiohead. I know they are geniuses but I think as musicians they fail and produced some truly unlistenable music even if it was deep, meaningful and experimental.

but... but... The Dark Side of the Moon!

And The Wall, Sergant Pepper's and The White Album as well! Ah well I suppose everyone has different tastes.

sort of irrelevant but personally I don't regard Sergeant Pepper's as a late-period beatles album. imo that period starts with magical mystery tour (with Please Please Me to Beatles for Sale being early, and Help to Sergeant Pepper being mid)

edit

im not slaging you but its important to know the difference between something bein bad any you not likeing something the early bettles stuff was bad but after they stoped singing about the music became some of the best ever.

why is that? I love the early beatles stuff

 

[wrightguy0]

two Words, Wuthering Heights, i had to read it for english in high school, i had to, i didn't, good thing the teacher thought we were all retarded and spoon fed us the whole book, It's not a classic, it's not even good, it's a very disturbed young woman writing creepy stories about wanting emotionally distant men, so basically, it's twilight for your grandmother, reader personality insertion Blank-Slate Girl falls for emotionally retarded man, love triangle develops, emotionally retarded man runs off, she goes for someone else, the best thing is that no body gets a happy ending.

and for some reason the teacher loved this book and wanted us to love it

 

[Racecarlock]

To Kill a Mocking Bird and A Tree Grows In Brooklyn.

First off, there's the morals. Wow, racism is wrong and being poor in 1920s new york is hard? I HAD NO IDEA! These stories pretend to be deep, but really aren't. Which brings to my next point.

I agree these books have lost all timelessness that they once had, but if you have a good imagination and can put yourself in the right timeframe, they are exceptional books.

I do have a good imagination. I had been imagining space battles, entire planets dedicated to cloning fully trained and experienced yodas instantly, a varient of that colony ship from halo that can instantly clone fully trained Spartan IIs from essentially nothing, and a planet that's completely covered in an amusement park. I have imagination. The thing is, I don't want to imagine being these characters when I can already be essentially a god in my imagination. Plus, again, the events are not only random and unconnected, but unbelievably snore-worthy. Why would I imagine what it's like to live on a penny a day and imagine buying bread in 1920 when I could be an X-wing pilot? Why would I imagine attending a courtroom trial when riding a roller coaster is so much more exciting? At this point it doesn't matter how well written something is if it puts me to sleep, and you can't try to convince me that i've somehow misinterpreted my own opinion, so don't try. Please.

 

[4173]

I know it has been stated several times before but "Romeo and Juliet". The main characters know eachother for what? About 3 days, and Shakesphere expects us to believe they end up dying for eachother out of true love. Yeah right...

Sometimes, I feel like I'm the only person on Earth who knows what "episteme" means.

You are aware that ideas regarding love, courtship, marriage etc in the Renaissance were as different from today's as to be unrecognisable? Dante (who was married with children, btw) and Petrarch wrote their great works about one girl who looked at them once. That was the basis for some of the greatest collections of love poems ever written.

But sure, go on calling the characters from the 16th Century ridiculous because they do not conform to TODAY's notions about certain paradigms. I guess that your main point of criticism is that they didn't update their facebook status at some point.


This thread has made me facepalm so much, my glasses are liable to break soon.

Come now at least give me some credit... I DO realize that courting was quite different and is easy to see as ridiculous from the modern viewpoint, (dowerys, bethrothment, and such) but I must stand by my view point that even some characters in the play itself have. The view that Romeo and Juliet's relationship finds more foundation in lust than love. In the beginning of the story Romeo was in love with Rosaline and you know why he fell so hard for Juliet? Rosaline wanted to remain celebate! Romeo was distraught over this one little detail and became depressed over it, and his depression (Over Rosaline not putting out) is what led him to be so willing to sneak into the Capulet party where he met (and fell in "love" with) Juliet. If one observes this it becomes obious that Romeo is as fickle as the wind and thinking with the wrong head.

Next time you try to critize you should first analyze both sides, my dear Archangel.

You're right about those things, but I disagree with your conclusion. I don't think Shakespeare was trying to convince the audience they were in "true love."

 

[The Funslinger]

it wasn't "bad," exactly, but I feel if lord of the rings was published in today's book climate, it wouldn't sell. I found it a little vague, and not very exciting.

 

[Ih8pkmn]

Avatar, Avatar, fucking Avatar. Not the cartoon; the Cameron movie.
The story was cliched, there wasn't a single memorable line that you could say with a straight face ("I see you"? Really?), and the whole premise was just... kinda creepy in my opinion. The action scenes were ok, and the effects were awesome, but I like a good story.

Also, Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Unreadable. It's ok on screen, but on a page, I just want to go back in time and bludgeon Stevenson to death with a copy of Kidnapped.

 

[Koroviev]

Avatar, Avatar, fucking Avatar. Not the cartoon; the Cameron movie.
The story was cliched, there wasn't a single memorable line that you could say with a straight face ("I see you"? Really?), and the whole premise was just... kinda creepy in my opinion. The action scenes were ok, and the effects were awesome, but I like a good story.

Also, Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Unreadable. It's ok on screen, but on a page, I just want to go back in time and bludgeon Stevenson to death with a copy of Kidnapped.

While I find certain aspects of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde intriguing, I agree that it was written in a a rather unappealing manner, at least for the first part. Perhaps it is all right if you live in England and can make sense of the street names and what not, but such details generally just leave me out in the cold.

 

[sheah1]

Anything by Damien Hurst ever.

 

[Digikid]

Batman The Dark Knight.

Seriously though that movie was JUNK. There was not one good thing about it. The story sucked, the actors sucked, the movie JUST. PLAIN. SUCKED!!!

How anyone can call that a masterpiece of a movie astounds me.

 

[Ironic Pirate]

Lord of The Rings. Yes, I'm understand and appreciate it's influence, and how it lifted fantasy from dorky fairy tales to Serious Business, but his writing is terrible. I've seen less purple prose and ham handed dialogue in Twilight fan-fiction. Those books are denser than lead, and 99 percent of it is impossibly dull.

I mean, all the back-story is nice, but twenty pages of it between every interesting occurrence makes me want to rip the book into pieces.

 

[PorkChopXpress]

FF7, just can't stand it. In my opinion one of the worst in the franchise.

 

[M Rotter]

Thank you for saying this. There is a difference between disliking something and it being a bad piece of work. Do I like Jane Austen's books? Not particually but I can very much understand why they are considered to be held in the regard that they are. It frustrates me that people seem to be so used the fact that they are spoon fed things by the vast majority of video-games and crappy hollywood films that you sometimes have to do some work as well.

That said I fully appreciate that everyone have their own likes and dislikes I just wish that people would stop confusing them not liking something with it "sucking". On that note I think that Avatar and Bioshock are not worth the praise that they garner. I think that in retrospect Avatar will be seen for what it is, not sure about Bioshock though, think I just hate it.

God, finally, some sense. Kids today apparently do not know the difference between them not liking something (a lack of appreciation usually borne of lack of education), and something actually having no merit. It's such a ridiculous exaggeration of their own subjective view-point.

also i think the painting became famous because of michelangelo and why he painted it and the mystery behind all that jazz, probably why people ask what shes smiling about. It became famous that way and stayed famous because word of mouth (and, he's michelangelo). People say its ______ and so it is. Im not awed by it either really, i like his slaves to the rock much better (especially since theyre put in the hallway leading up to the David, so David is contemptuously mocking them with his freedom)

Um, Michelangelo Buonarroti and Leonardo da Vinci are two different people, my friend.

That said, I'm not a huge fan of the Gioconda/Mona Lisa, either. On the other side of the wall, there is a portrait by Titian which, in my opinion, is far superior.

derp well that was really stupid. Yeah i did know that...my minor is art history (even if it wasnt everyone should know that)...i just finished writing a paper involving michelangelo so he was on my brain. Thank you for correcting me

 

[jboking]

Ah yes the upgrade your plasmids options. Now they'll only be slightly less useless. Tell me which plasmid was your favorite? The one that stunned enemies but did no damage not that you could break cover and take advantage of his immobility because then his eight buddies will tear you apart before you can say "wrench damage bonus"? One of the two that do very little damage and don't even serve as a distraction? You'd think being swarmed by angry bees or on fire would be distracting, but no they're still perfectly able to keep shooting at you with near flawless accuracy from their bottomless magazines. Is it the one that's only useful against nitro splicers since they're the only ones with attacks you can catch? Or maybe it's the one that freezes enemies but has the same problems as the first one in addition to the fact that if you kill him like that you can't loot the corpse and he'll probablt thaw before then, and you can't damage his actual health anyway? Oh and Like I said in a later post, hacking is easy, unless it makes the board unwinnable as it often doesn, like when it surrounded the end point with two layers of alarms.

My favorite plasmids? Enrage, Hypnotize Big Daddy, Target dummy, Security bullseye, and Sonic boom. You know what all those have in common? They require strategy. They don't directly damage the opponent, they require that you actually survey the situation quickly and figure out what strategy to follow. I myself have completed a run-through of bioshock with my brother-in-law without firing a bullet. It may be harder than just running into any situation, guns blazing, and just expecting victory (which is just plain retarded to do in bioshock), but it was still damn effective.

Bioshock made you think about what you were doing. Success wasn't guaranteed and you had to understand how to utilize the powers given to you in order to come out on top. You apparently didn't know how to use your powers. That's fine, it's just a shame. With a little more imagination you could have enjoyed that game quite a bit.

Also, I never ran into an unwinnable board.

 

[M Rotter]

The level of idiocy in this thread is astounding. And these are the people who get their panties in a twist when Roger Ebert says something daft about video games while not even seeing the irony in somebody who doesn't know the difference between Mantegna and Della Francesca calling Leonardo "shit" because he prefers deviantart.

Canon exists for a reason, gentlemen. Somebody who says that, say, Faust "sucks" says WAY more about himself (and none of it very flattering) than about the quality of Goethe's work.

That said, OT: Ayn Rand. With an asterisk, since nobody who knows the first thing about literature considers her to be more than a megalomaniacal, autistic hack. But God, are there legions of retards who love her.

Just because there are foaming-at-the-mouth-fans who dont know the first thing about literature doesnt mean that she doesnt have anything to say. The mouth breathing masses like everything, it doesnt make what they like worthless.

Hahaha, oh wow.

Sorry for dredging up the same quote everyone else's already used to death by now, but Chuck Palahniuk said it best: You are not special. You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everyone else, and we are all part of the same compost pile.

This is the truth, and this is why Objectivism fails utterly and irredeemably. Objectivism is a philosophy that pretty much says anyone who believes in it is innately superior to everyone who doesn't. [That's how religions keep people hooked, did you know that?] Problem is, there's no such thing as being innately superior to somebody else. Especially not when the litmus test is based on whether or not you think Atlas Shrugged and/or The Fountainhead are great literature. And "superiority" is irrelevant anyway, because we live in societies, not as nomadic individuals. Try as we might to avoid one another, the fact remains that people are all stuck in this together, so being selfish does the individual more harm than good.

What Ayn Rand had to say was inherently worthless. It didn't take a slew of slobbering 80's douchebags to make it so.

what do you think she said?

Ooh--look at you, Mr. Smug Pseudointellectual. Say, by the way, did you know that "A = A" is not a valid premise for a logical proof? It's actually what's called a truism--something so staggeringly obvious that it goes without saying.

rar. I think that's just a superficial look at whats she's trying to get across though. I mean first off, for context, Ayn Rand grew up in Communist Russia, so it's basically a philosophy that's a counter to communism-her books that are set in that time period are a real life reinforcement of how the collective can be staggeringly degrading. And i dont think that the point is that if you "believe" in objectivism that you're innately superior to everyone else, but that having a strong sense of self in a society where we all are "stuck in this together" is what makes us superior naturally. Isnt that just about rising above mans basic herd instinct? I dont think its about excluding the collective, but understanding that you are an individual in a collective, and expecting man to rise to that by putting it on the moral high ground. Her other books besides the Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged explore other parts of that idea-which im sure me telling you that will make you rush right out and read them.

And i was just asking what they thought about it so as to actually have a conversation not a pissing match, so thank you for giving me something to go off of. I really do appreciate that you had am actual thought about the books rather than just "it sucks" And i suppose when someone, like you, has ascended beyond us pseudointellectuals, everything is a truism so i applaud you. Also, the point of my first post was just a comment on the whole attitude of the thread, i just happened to quote someone talking about ayn rand, i.e that just because there are slobbering fanboys about everything doesnt mean the work itself is worthless or without merit whether you like it or not-which i said because people were commenting that the books were worthless just because they didnt like them. And now since ive defended rand you can catalog me away as a fanboy. shrug

 

[Jabberwock xeno]

Most things.

Dante's inferno/puragotry/paradise and classical music are exceptions.

 

[M Rotter]

I hate A LOT of old things. Dunno why, and I can't say I'm biased since I don't even know they're old before I hate them. It's just one big coincidence.

I hate classic rock all the way through the obnoxious hair metal people like to play in Intro to Guitar classes. I also don't like classic metal (Megadeth, Motorhead, old Metallica, etc.). I like a lot of newer metal genres.

I hate old movies for their lack of...interesting things to do. I dunno, they're just boring.

If you've ever taken an AP English class, you'll learn that almost all of the classic books of "literary merit" run a dull gamut of the same themes. They're pretty much centered around the different types of conflict: person vs. person, person vs. self, person vs. society, which then divulge into relationship, political, ideological, etc. The fact that one AP prompt can be addressed by somewhere around 50 of these books is a testament to this. Plot's not important CUZ U SEID SUMTHNG PROFUND!

I do like Baroque classical music though. Much better than Romantic era stuff.

Most conflicts do boil down to those three (and i got the same handout) and i feel like maybe your opinion of the books is colored because that was explained like that. Sure some authors might have sat down to write a book exploring those themes, but most wrote a story that was meaningful that fit into one, two, or all three. That English handout exists because of the books not the other way around

My biggest issue is that they can get away with having sub-par plots so long as they say something interesting about something. One of the biggest examples contradicting my point is Candide, by Voltaire. It makes an obvious point, has a hilarious plot, and is short and sweet. I feel Candide embodies what books of literary merit should be. Also, The Stranger did a similar job, albeit with a far less interesting plot.

A lot of my hatred for these books comes from the fact that they're compulsory. The arguments for making them required readings are pretty much some variations of: "They're classics, you should learn them" and "It'll make you more well-read and therefore smarter". That's true, they'll probably make you smarter to some degree. Chess does that too. So does playing an instrument. Neither of these are required, however, because it's ridiculous to mandate something which should be considered a hobby. Reading should be something kept fun. Different people will have different reactions to different activities. It's ridiculous to expect everyone to enjoy it and even more ludicrous to force them to read these books.

Since I started taking these literature-based classes, I've not picked up a fiction book of my own desire. I've ultimately become desensitized to the most important question of reading: "is it interesting? My friends tend to feel the same way, which I think is the sad part.

/rant about AP English.

yeah its unfortunate (and ironic) that the school system takes the meaning out of the very thing theyre trying to teach us, just by teaching it. But i enjoyed every book i read for english (even though i hated assigned reading and just the general way it was taught-and fuck reading out loud in class, though i suppose its funny to see that some of your classmates cant read even in an AP enlgish class) because when reading the book i ignored whatever was being said about what we were supposed to find or learn. Even books whose message could be deemed irrelevant, learning about the context in which the book was written and then deciphering everything with that slant was really fun and a good brain exercise.