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Comment by flooow | Hacker News Reader

I went to see Manor at opening night. I thought it was OK, I was entertained. Was weird to find out (just now!) that it had got an absolute mauling in the press. It makes me wonder if I have terrible taste, and to what extent the 'quality' of a work of art is constructed after the fact by a social in-group (the critics).

Relatedly, I've started watching movies at random, without reading reviews before or after, to try to develop a sense of what I actually enjoy. Whether I have any real critical faculties at all. Perhaps it is all just received opinion. I re-watched League of Extraordinary Gentlemen last night though, and can confirm that it is in fact bad.

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> I thought it was OK

This may be enough to justify harsh reviews. If people are going to spend several hundred dollars to see a live show, it better be an amazing show, something they'll remember for life. If people want to see something that's just okay they can watch a movie and not regret their loss of time and (nowadays very little, if on a streaming service) money.

Tickets start at £10. It’s not a high value production.

I think one of the big differences critics and general viewing audiences is the amount of media consumed and how it effects their views. Over time the bar of excellence goes ever higher and the tolerance for the good, mediocre, and bad becomes less.

It's kind of like a lot of one-hit wonder bands. They may have a lot of really good songs but it all gets overshadowed by their mega hit song so people rarely get to hear it.

Most Millenials know the song, "Flagpole Sitta" by Harvey Danger, for instance, but how many people know "Problems and Bigger Ones" off of the same album, or "Jack the Lion"?

"Closing Time" by Semisonic is in the same vein, but on the same album is, "Secret Smile", "Singing in my Sleep" and "Gone to the Movies". Great songs that can totally stand on their own but most people hear the hit, enjoy it, and move on, never realizing how much musical depth they're missing.

Funny, never heard of the second band or song you mentioned. Looked it up on AllMusic and recognized it immediately. Rest of the album good? They have three.

Think I have the Semisonic CD around here somewhere... might dust it off. ;-)

Every song on Feeling Strangely Fine is terrific. The other albums have great songs but uninteresting ones too.

Sorry, I kinda screwed up my comment, meant second paragraph.

Yeah, Harvey Danger is hyperliterate garage rock. The follow up albums are a little less raw than Where have all the Merrymakers Gone, but still fun to listen to as a background of your life kind of music.

One of my favourite things is how hard the band Smashmouth tries to correct people that they aren't just "the Shrek song guys". They actually have a decent catalogue, but no one hears it outside of "SomeBODY once told me..."

Probably not so funny if you're Smashmouth and otherwise stoked to make new music :)

Funny enough I got into Harvey Danger’s back catalogue because Flagpole Sitta happened to be the one song of theirs that wasn’t on Spotify. Now I’m wondering if that was intentional to encourage people to listen to their other songs.

Furthermore, for a similar reason, critics probably are more attracted to novelty than the average viewer for whom it may actually be a negative if they're just looking for an enjoyable and not too challenging night out.

I once went to opening night of Il Trovatore at the NYC Met opera. I thought it was great. At the end of the performance, singers for the usual ovations but when the director appeared on stage, the audience started booing. They apparently didn’t like the modern decor. Neither did the NY Times. I obviously don’t have a good eye for these things.

The people who boo at operas are detestable. Like they have a mental image that the work is preserved in amber and the staging must never change. It's crazy and short-sighted. Example, they booed Patrice Chereau at Bayreuth in 76 and that is now considered a classic that rebooted Wagner out of the endlessly stale swords and horns look.

Plus there is the absolute dickishness of booing a team that spent six months or more slogging their guts out so they could sing, in tune, for three hours straight, for their entertainment.

In short: it wasnt you.

Well, the other side of this is that many audience members will give every performance a standing ovation, even when it isn't merited. Some people give 'unearned' standing ovations because they want to believe that the bad show was actually good, while others succumb to social pressure.

I think the audience should be expected to react with their genuine feelings about the performance; if the team wants a positive reaction every single time, they're going to have to earn it.

I go to a lot of classical concerts here in the Twin Cities, MN, and the audience basically gives a standing ovation every time. I don't mind it. I'd much rather be part of an enthused, appreciative audience who celebrate the incredibly hard work it takes to get to the point of these performance (literal decades of practice).

One issue is that giving standing ovations for every performance ends up devaluing them. I am sure that the performers on stage know that undeserving performances receive disproportionate approbation, so they discount the reaction accordingly.

Many studies show that improvement requires operating at your limit, and sometimes failing. Never letting anyone fail is a disservice to them in the long term.

The external feedback is just the last step in the chain, though. What the audience does on that night hardly matters: you got them to buy tickets, and the rest is knowing that you execute well on that performance, which is something the cast and crew have to know for themselves, because so many mistakes go unnoticed and just result in the performance being a little bit less polished.

When the seats are empty, that's the real marker of failure. But you can't get that information directly - flops are always a case of "couldn't see it coming". You can aim to derisk by following convention, but that's treading water and makes you an undifferentiated performer. You have to set principled benchmarks for yourself to excel because the feedback is going to be too sparse otherwise. That's the real struggle throughout all the arts. It's not on other people to set them for you.

Judith Martin, who writes for The Washington Post, said that were she a singer in operas, instead of perfunctory standing ovations, she'd rather be hissed for an off night, and on a great night have the students unharness the horses from her carriage to tow her back to the hotel.

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is a bad movie that is curiously extremely entertaining IMO.

Somehow I always remember it as being good escapist fun, but it isn't really. But I'll probably watch it again in a couple of years' time.

This makes sense if you consider 'quality' and 'enjoyability' on two separate axes:

- High quality and enjoyable? A classic.

- Low quality but enjoyable? A personal favourite.

- High quality but boring? Critics choice that no one watches.

- Low quality but boring? Obvious trash.

What if someone recognizes that Steven Seagal movies are utter garbage but enjoys them anyway as a guilty pleasure? Asking for a friend

That's category2 - personal favorite.

So long as he is wearing a giant leather trenchcoat, shooting people while sitting in a chair, saying "this is a little mutherfucking thing called justice", and letting someone younger fight for him.

“American History X”: I think that was amazing, and I hope I never see it again.

For an example of the polar opposite, I thought Drive[0] was exceptionally high quality, yet not even remotely entertaining.

It made for some nice screencap wallpapers, though.

[0]: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0780504/

Drive was made purely for the ambiance and aesthetic. Basically a music video for vaporware soundtrack, or the b roll you see behind the lyrics on a kareoke machine

I enjoyed it

> Drive was made purely for the ambiance and aesthetic.

Exactly what I mean :) it's a deliberate B-movie but with amazing cinematography.

> I enjoyed it

As did I, but from a (former) media studies geek/student POV.

The design of the Nautilus and Nemo's car are all I remember about it. That was some extraordinarily good work.

So is Megashark vs Octogator

But that car, the Nautilus…

https://www.google.com/search?q=nautilus+car+The+League+of+E...

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