Accounting for Taste 

T.K. McNeil

Arguments about perception have been going on for centuries. As has the phenomenon of people claiming that they have solved the problem and are therefore always right. On the other side are the people who maintain that opinions are like noses in that, barring a freak accident, everybody has one. The truth is, of course, somewhere in the middle. Critics are human and can make mistakes. Such as when they heaped praise on The Phantom Menace and jilted the original, Mel Brooks version of The Producers when they first came out. Though, to be fair, the majority of professional critics have experience, education and other background factors that give them better insight when it comes to judging a work. This can include amateur and self-published critics, such as those often found on the Internet. Folks like Lindsay Ellis and Kyle Kallgren who have degrees in film production and film theory respectively.

While all opinions are essentially subjective, there are things one can do to account for this. One of the easiest ways is to try and figure out what it is you like or otherwise about a particular work. Just saying that something ‘sucks’ is not terribly helpful. Pointing out that the characters seem bland and disengaged and/or that the plot is weak or slow or derivative, or even all of these which is referred to as a ‘hat trick’, is a lot more useful and generally more considered. Something else that can be done is to try as hard as possible to account for taste. Despite what the old saying might claim, it is possible to account for taste and not automatically assume that just because you do no like something that it is therefore intrinsically bad. A prime example of this thinking is when an adult criticizes a children’s movie for being ‘patronizing’ or ‘simplistic’. A reverse of this effect occurred with Neil Gaiman’s illustrated novel Coraline. Loved equally by readers and critics, adults and kids, there later emerged a trend  in which children could read the famously creepy book and be largely unscathed, while adults tended to sleep with the lights on. Gaiman’s own theory is that children see the book an an adventure story, while adults see the book as a story about a child in danger. Difference of perspective which cannot help but influence one’s reaction to the work.

The same principle can apply to genre. There are a lot of people who do not like Horror movies and this is fine. When it becomes a problem is when someone with a pre-existing prejudice against the genre is tasked with or chooses to see one and then pans it. It is hardly an unbiased opinion is it? It can be the same with music, Heavy Metal being one of the most unilaterally and baselessly hated genres going. Ask people why they do not like it and the responses vary, though "too loud" and "out of tune" are among the most common. As well as the most perplexing. The thing about loudness is a point but also one that could be made about Classical music. As fans of Beethoven and Rossini can attest. Hating on a Heavy Metal song for being loud is like describing a flower show and dismissing the flora on display as "bright" and "smelly". It is also not true that Metal bands are loud all the time. The notion that Heavy Metal is out of tune is just wrong. The majority of Metal bands use what is called drop-D tuning, in which the standard E tuning on a guitar is lowered to the next note. Add to this some distortion and the result is different than the standard sound, though done by recognized and legitimate methods. Similar to when a Blues guitarist uses an open tuning with a slide. Also, Folk Metal bands like Turisas and Alestorm do not tend to change tuning and have been known to do acoustic versions of their songs.

These tend to be liked more by non-Metal Heads, which is interesting because the only thing that have really changed is the swapping of electric instruments with distortion with acoustic instruments without distortion. Which is not to say that drop-D tuning and distortion are always detriments. Particularly if the equipment is decent and the player is skilled. 'Canon Rock' being a case-in-point.

Another important factor is intent, particularly in the case of comedy. There are people who love Monty Python and those who hate them. None of them are wrong. Humor is so subjective and personal there is no way to know what someone will like. Also, Python’s work is so absurdist and intentionally offensive that there is no way that everyone will like it and they seem to know that. All they want to do is make people laugh and a long as they can do that there is a point to their work existing and persisting. It is also the case with both spoof and satire. Judged only on the surface level classic films, books and musical acts would be universally trashed as silly, pointless and even a little confusing. Fortunately, most sane people know not to try and assess such works at face value there being very different purposes involved. The point of them is not to create a great and original piece of culture, though this can occasionally happen, but to poke fun at an aspect of the existing culture. The only fair way to analyze such work is by factors such as how well the evoke the material that are targeting, how good the jokes are and how well the jokes carry off in context. Basically, how good they are at being bad.