Enjoy the Best, Not the Latest, Media (opens in new tab)

The article uses Star Trek (2009) as its example of a mediocre film. Its IMDB rating is 7.9/10 from over 500k votes over 11 years -- surely this would place the film squarely in the "tried and tested" category.

If I look on some smaller sites I see a different story. Letterboxd: 7.2/10, 234k votes RateYourMusic: 6.4/10, 3k votes The first site has a higher ratio of capital f Film fans and the second site is a much smaller site focused on music. Using these three data points I can deduct that Star Trek (2009) is probably a decent franchise action movie that most will find enjoyable but won't stand up to scrutiny as a stand alone film or for those expecting something more substantial.

The article is right that it's so much easier to access the history of a medium than in the past. It's interesting to me when a previously unknown work from 25+ years ago is rediscovered and entered into "the canon". In alternative music a recent example is Long Season by Fishmans from 1996.

But going through the canonical "best of" lists for a medium is more-or-less a gateway to developing and discovering your own taste in these things (a process that never ends). You shouldn't put much trust in any single source.

Something that's missing now with this intermingling of old and new art is historical context. A film streaming platform is just a directory of video files attached to 250px images and paragraph blurbs. What is Netflix saying about film and its viewers when it has less than 50 films pre-1980? Now that watching 2000+ films before the age of 30 is common for film fans, what will that mean for the future of film?

The better I got to know Nagasawa, the stranger he seemed. I had met a lot of strange people in my day, but none as strange as Nagasawa. He was a far more voracious reader than I, but he made it a rule never to touch a book by any author who had not been dead at least thirty years. “That’s the only kind of book I can trust,” he said.

“It’s not that I don’t believe in contemporary literature,” he added, “but I don’t want to waste valuable time reading any book that has not had the baptism of time. Life is too short.”

“What kind of authors do you like?” I asked, speaking in respectful tones to this man two years my senior. “Balzac, Dante, Joseph Conrad, Dickens,” he answered without hesitation.

“Not exactly fashionable.”

“That’s why I read them. If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking. That’s the world of hicks and slobs. Real people would be ashamed of themselves doing that. Haven’t you noticed, Watanabe? You and I are the only real ones in the dorm. The other guys are crap.”

This took me off guard. “How can you say that?”

“’ Cause it’s true. I know. I can see it. It’s like we have marks on our foreheads. …”

... but the average rating is a measure of popularity :/. The best movies I have ever seen are rated poorly, because most people didn't understand them or they weren't "easy" to watch; if you want to find good content, you need to read reviews and find people whose recommendations matter to you, not work off ratings.

Here is the end of his 2019 series (which includes links to all the other decades of that series): https://jessewalker.blogspot.com/2020/01/#342764971747282839...

Consumption of the best-ofs in a media category is an exercise in building media literacy. By listening to Pink Floyd you can get more out of Tame Impala.

Big media companies make more money from new than old, so are quite happy to have a consumer go through their life paying for potboiler ephemera. The consumer shouldn’t be happy with that though, as they’d have paid dearly in time and money for media that’s painfully beige compared to the best old stuff and also the best new stuff that they’d only have known to look for if they had built the media literacy.

One reason that's not a persuasive enough argument for many people is that what they want to get out of art is different. If you want the best sensory experience, then a black and white movie from the 30s is probably not to your taste. Other people appreciate the social aspect of media: being able to be participate in an ongoing conversation about some work, actor, or topic.

Both of those are valid reasons to like things, but ideally, you want to be able to see the value of a work independent of your own preferences. That doesn't mean denying your own preferences. But, part of a successful education is cultivating the ability to appreciate culture of all kinds, and on its own terms.

Now, that said I haven't gone to see a summer blockbuster in a decade. I don't like Marvel movies or Star wars sequels. There was only one good star wars movie in the original trilogy anyway.

Note that their choices aren't perfect; I've watched some movies that won awards that I really didn't like. That said, I think these sources are a better starting point than lists based solely on popularity.

"Because people always read only the latest, instead of the best of all times, writers stay within a narrow circle of circulating ideas, and the age silts up ever more deeply in its own muck.

Therefore with respect to our reading the art of not reading is extremely important. It consists in our not picking up whatever happens to be occupying the greater public at any given time, such as for instance political or literary pamphlets, novels, poems and so on, which currently make a lot of noise and even reach several editions in the first and last years of their run. On the contrary, we should consider that whoever writes for fools always finds a large public, and we should devote the always precious and carefully measured time set aside for reading exclusively to the works of the great minds of all times and peoples, who tower over the rest of humanity, and who are distinguished as such by the voice of fame. Only they really shape and instruct us.

Of the inferior we can never read too little and the good never too often. Bad books are intellectual poison: they ruin the mind.

In order to read the good it is a condition that we do not read the bad; for life is short, and our time and our powers are limited."

My copy of "Greatest Hits of 1720", purchased in a nearby music shop before there was a commercial Internet, disagrees.

That limited space for physical goods in local stores didn't mean we only got new stuff. The record shops had an oldies section (not new but only a generation or two old music) and a classical section (for much older music). Older books and movies were similarly available at bookstores and video stores.

The way they dealt with limited space was by only stocking the best of the older stuff. You could not go into a music store and find the symphonies of whoever was the 50th best symphony composer from the time of Beethoven. You would just find Beethoven and Haydn and Schubert and some others.

Compare to the new section, where you would find everything from the best to the run of the mill.

New media is popular because of its novelty factor, hype pre-release, the social aspects of discussing whats popular, and the convenience of having a choice be top of mind. I doubt many people only watch whats new or think that new is better. There are many facets of life and few people are interested in making deliberate and contrarian choices in all of them.

I disagree. If something is long-term popular, that doesn't mean it's really good, it means it hit the average taste pretty well. The average taste is very bland, because it's, well, average. You can't really deviate too far from the lowest common denominator if you want to hit the average taste and be super popular.

I guess we can agree, that a badly made and acted move is likely to be unpalatable to most. But beyond that, its hard to gauge. That's why there's so much money in better predictors, they all suck so much now.

Much of the AV media (Not necessarily art) consumed these days by the younger generation a is transitory, part of a conversation, and short: Podcasts and YouTube videos in particular. They take up a lot of the media consumption time. I see this as our new dominant mode of sensemaking, a section of the populace isn’t going out into the world make making mistakes to learn from them, they’re watching YouTube to learn and make sense of the world. (This is why YouTube’s recommendation algorithm is so dangerous socially and politically.)

As for consuming art... even that has become a bit different. People watch the latest tent pole Marvel movie or whatnot , yes for a multi hour thrill, but also to join in the conversation with their friends and acquaintances and to not get left behind in the labyrinthine plot continuity. Same goes for the evolution of music genres.

In short, much modern media consumption seems to me to be about the current meta-narrative, and that makes it hard to place older stuff in context unless it’s curated by someone that is clever enough to fit it in.

For what it’s worth, I love historical art house cinemas, but know almost no one else in real life or my close online circle that does. But I find it provides a lot rewarding depth.

The Criterion Channel is my preference - it has a great selection on demand.

I agree on the principle, however there’s a trust issue.

Out of n reviews on IMDB and RT how many of them are authentic? And how much weight does a critic’s review bear on the overall score?

In my case, be it for a movie or a book (not so much for songs though) the Lindy effect applies.

I think High Hopes is from 1994 (not 2003 as the article states). I think I know this because I bought the CD single in the 90s.

Probably an innocent typo and not a indication of a less than carefully crafted post.

It gets weirder when he later says that we should go by the average rating and what a minority found great instead of what a majority found out to be ok... Except if the movie is Star Trek (2009), I guess (it has a lower rating in imdb than in either RT or MC).

And then he says that we should like stuff that has stood the test of time... But all the examples of his favorites are within a decade and a half of each other and the oldest is 33, which is young if we take in account the history of motion picture. In fact, his anti-example is closer to most of his examples than any of them to our time. And, of course, people are still talking about that movie, including him even if to disparage it.

He finally gets to what I assume is his thesis that we should pay attention to what has stood the test of time... Except if we do that we miss a ton of great content.

Sturgeon's law is a thing and it has always been. For every Godfather part II there were a hundred exploitation films. All the time, most of what's produced is garbage, but also every year (except, of course, the anomaly known as 2020) more media is produced. So, again by Sturgeon's law, that means that more great media is produced every year.

Apropos of nothing, my two favorite movies are a biopic/lawyer drama and a campy spy action movie. I can't choose between the two, and both were released the last decade (2010-19). I've also watched dozens of classics and I've liked most of them, but I've also hated a few.

So, ultimately, this is a matter of taste, and there's nothing wrong with having different tastes.

Netflix and all others track every minute of the shows they release. They track where people drop off, what they spend watching, for how long, what scenes they repeat. They probably track which scenes and stills are capped and shared on social media.

This alters the content, especially in something like a TV show which has time to be created in a reactive way.

The hallmark of a 2020 streaming show is a scene with 2-4 spicy, post-able bits of dialogue with a glaringly obvious connection to the political, social, or cultural malaise of This Month. TV shows are increasingly becoming just a chain of those.

This was always the case (studios have always had a profit motive) but with the internet it's turned up to 11. Like everything else in our culture, I guess.

Something like... Ten years ago Senate was voting to appoint John Doe a new supreme court judge. At that moment FNN Channel claimed it would be the end of the free world as we know it and Cox News praised the appointment as returning to the good old times. As we see now, ten years later neither prophecy was correct: the world has not ended and good old times did not return.

People in society want to have jobs in creative pursuits, and for that they need money, they need people to consume the newest products.

So on the other hand, isn't it better to support living people who are incorporating the current times into their art than to support old content where perhaps the creators are dead and won't see the money?

There'd be a lot of gems that would have been hidden from me if I just enjoyed what everyone else liked.

https://www.criterionchannel.com/

I've been invited to similar groups that have esoteric music tastes. They think that because I have a good taste in music I will fit into those groups. But I can't stand them. It's all about finding the most obscure thing possible. The kind of thing that isn't popular for very good reason. It's just not that good.

Beethoven's 9th Symphony has virtually universal appeal. Die Hard is considered one of the best action movies of all time. Those are the kind of things you need to make sure you see. After that, whether you watch the latest mindless popcorn thriller or crap that nobody really likes is up to you. I'd rather watch the popcorn thriller, though.

M

Dersu Uzala

Battle of Algiers

Z

The Third Man

Touch of Evil

Planet of the Apes

In The Mood for Love (OK: It's not that old)

The Killing Fields

The Lives of Others (OK: It's not that old)

The Straight Story (OK: It's not that old)

On The Waterfront

12 Angry Men

Mary and Max (OK: It's not that old)

Marty

Matewan

The Girl With the Red Scarf

City Lights

Umberto D

Fireworks (OK: Not that old)

How Green Was My Valley

Ordinary People

It’s what you’re buying

And receiving undefiled

There was a day before Star Trek:TNG came out, and then the next day it premiered. By the author's own reasoning he or she wouldn't have watched "the best tv show ever made" until after the invention of IMDB and its listing there.

I personally enjoy watching new content because it's a bit like real-time anthropology. The media we create and consume says something about the society that forms the context around its creation and consumption.

I suppose not everybody feels this way, and that's fine. I don't really have any desire to tell people what or what not to watch or listen to. This blog post being so sure of its content is a bit... odd.

For example, using the term "best album" over "the album I enjoyed the most" kind of indicates a surety that feels somewhat like they're talking down to you. I guess my question here is "Why?"

What is defined as "best" is a constantly moving target because audiences are getting more and more sophisticated. Every time the industry breaks new ground with new media or a new concept, the audience learns from the experience and the movie industry can only regurgitate that concept so many times before the concept becomes redundant.

You think something like game of thrones could have been made two decades ago? What drives the sophistication of TV shows up to the point where they kill off the main character in the first season just to keep you interested? Doing outlandish stuff like this was never needed to keep audience engagement in the past... In fact movies made nowadays are waaaay to intense for audiences back in the 60s.

This isn't something I'm just making up. Movie execs are very very aware of this issue, they know that the bar needs to be constantly raised to engage viewers and ironically by every time you raise the bar you train the audience to be even more more sophisticated and you gotta raise the bar again.

I'm only a matter of time before audiences are so sophisticated that they begin realizing this fact as well.

Right now, in general, the audience isn't intelligent enough to recognize this positive feedback loop. To the audience this phenomenon mostly appears as "all modern movies are stupid except for the classics."

What's going on is that the "classic" you love so much was the bar raiser and all the other movies that came after it are filler in attempt to capitalize on the concept and raise the bar further. The cycle continues until one random movie actually successfully changes the game.

How many marvel movies need to come out before the whole franchise becomes boring? I'm enjoying the franchise right now but I know that eventually it won't be as good as the classic original movies that started it all.