Concerning: Rating and Ranking
Everywhere we go in contemporary life, we are asked to rate our experiences of a restaurant, a shirt, a flight, a movie, or a book. When consumers have a super-abundance of choices, ratings are a marketing tool, providing a means to reassure us that we are spending our money or time wisely.
I’ve always wanted “art” to be spared such commercialism.
Think about it: “Thumbs Up” or “Thumbs Down” to Shakespeare, Rembrandt, or Beethoven? Isn’t the question absurd? FYI, “King Lear” has a 3.91 rating on Goodreads, quite a bit lower than Harry Potter #7, which clocks in at 4.62.
What criteria are readers using to rate the books they’ve read? I’ve noticed that clothing companies now ask specific questions about the quality of the fabric or trueness of fit. Yet even with a garment, I might like something edgy and bold whereas you want something subtle and classic. No one judges the shirt per se, but how well it corresponds to their personal taste and how much it flatters their shape. Standards of taste are never universal, but rather influenced by a myriad of social factors, and they change over time.
Even if we all understand that ratings will be subjective, I still feel uncomfortable with the practice vis-à-vis art. Who am I—who are you—to believe that our taste could or should be universal? In 1968 the Village Voice film critic Andrew Sarris ranked directors in The American Cinema: Directors and Directions. Fifty years later I’m still offended by his book, which was massively influential in film studies, wondering where Sarris got his chutzpah. Surely, he knew that his viewing exposure was limited: he’d hardly seen any movies (for instance) by women or African American directors, and for some reason he despised movies that engaged with social issues, lumping them all as “strained seriousness.” Sarris was (inevitably) a man of his time: he put D. W. Griffith in the Pantheon of film directors, whereas now many of us would put Griffith on trial.
“Humility” is not a prized quality amongst reviewers; to do their job they must assume the pose that they have seen/read enough to be able to form a reasonable judgment and guide their readers through infinite possibilities to more rewarding choices. Reviewers build up followings when enough readers find their judgments align with their own.
Perhaps crowd sourcing, which Rotten Tomatoes, for one, takes as its methodology, cancels out personal biases? I doubt it. Who are these professional critics that Tomatoes counts as experts? How diverse is their pool? Moreover, advertising budgets and brand name clout—not pure merit, however defined—have a lot to do with how many people pick up a book or watch a film, so some works attract larger or smaller crowds to begin with.
Let’s admit it: sometimes we want to actively promote a book. We want to do our mite to help a debut author by leaving reviews and a high rating. (I am very grateful to every person who has rated my efforts, and I know that in this hyper-commercial and competitive climate, ratings are golden.)
But especially for non-contemporary works, I suggest a radical hesitancy in front of art. How many times have you read or seen something, not liked it, but discovered on a second try that it thrills you? How many times have you watched a movie, felt uncomfortable, and then realized that the movie wasn’t addressed to you, but rather to spectators with more background in its cultural references?
Certainly, one can say, “X doesn’t appeal to me,” or “I found Y touching.” Everyone has a right to their reactions and comparing and explaining these reactions is a great way to start a fruitful discussion. But let’s not be dogmatic; let’s not pretend that our first gut response is an actual measure of objective merit. I shrink from the flippancy and hostility in the icons used to sum up reviews. Thumbs up/thumbs down seems more suitable to Gladiator than reasoned evaluation and thrown tomatoes—fresh or rotten—are just gross, as if by purchasing a ticket one also purchases the right to pummel people if we don’t feel entertained. Others have noticed that the “little man” icon, featuring a white, male, middle-aged audience member, makes uncomfortable assumptions.
Although stars are more neutral, I rarely fill in the stars on Goodreads. I don’t make lists of what I think are the greatest films of all time, nor do I rank works as better or lesser than others. Although I have opinions, I don’t engage with Oscar handicapping, Twitter questions, clickbait articles about the “best movies of the 80s” or the greatest epic fantasies.
This is my tiny stand against treating works of imagination on par with lemon squeezers or tennis socks.