I would also argue that while some may be doing what the OP suggested, some defenders of a specific work far too readily fall back to claims of misogyny or racism or both to any and all criticism. And that has poisoned the well regarding discussion as well.
“Nobody” is pretty hyperbolic. I had no trouble with Rey’s character in anything, let along flying the hunk o junk, and I can’t be the only one.
And I was 17 when I first watched SW, not some wet behind the ears kiddo.
But let’s get off Star Wars. How about this example: The “fact” Protectors made the Ringworld. Only if you admit facts and story elements in any number of other books and stories are lies. That’s bad.
or how about the first Jack Reacher book. The Coterie of Extremely Evil Dudes makes a big deal about torturing people to death in horrible ways for the sin of being a traitor to the job. That’s fine, but at the end we find out that, when you subtract the people actually doing the torturing, there aren’t that many other people involved. Who exactly are you scaring?
Or how the crooked FBI agent got left by the side of a highway far away, yet stumbles in at just the right minute to have a final big bad fight with Reacher. How did he know where they were? How did he even get there? How was his timing so perfect? That’s bad writing, obviously written to get the result the author wanted, not flowing logically.
I’ve seen it suggested that TV needs more shows that are “smart in a stupid way” and fewer that are “stupid in a smart way.” Or maybe the other way around….
Well, yeah. I’m the one pointing out the double standard, so clearly “nobody” wasn’t meant to be literal.
Sorry, it’s been a long time since I read Ringworld, and I don’t really follow what you’re saying here.
The part was for everyone…
It’s a “fact” from Ringworld Engineers that Pak Protectors were the ones that built the Ringworld, despite that fact that Pak are described as 1) incredibly xenophobic and 2) perpetually in conflict with each other so much that is virtually impossible to complete large scale projects. So there would be not only no reason to have enclaves of Kzin (especially) and other species on the Ring because any Pak adult would kill them all, but also that they would have instead immediately gone to war with the Kzin homeworld.
But Niven wanted what he wanted, and his defense, such as it is, was that the stories as presented in the novel Protector was a lie.
And that’s no even getting into the part where Pak couldn’t have built the Ringworld. And probably no one could. At least no one seen in Known Space from the time it was built.
He should have left it a Big Dumb Object and moved on. By trying to explain it, to make it fit with his other stories he ruined it. Bad writing (technically, a bad idea supported by good writing. The novel IS enjoyable. It just Makes No Damn Sense!)
But you can’t argue with it.
Here are the User Reviews of the recent Star Wars series The Acolyte, a story about twin black women who are training to be Jedi. I had my own issues with it, but those weren’t casting or writing.
I found their manner of killing so unrealistic and so over the top evil I actually laughed. I didn’t read any more books after that one. But I’ve read a couple other modern thrillers and they’re kinda all like that.
Yup. There were two very popular movies dealing with race this past year. In my opinion, one of them nailed it and the other one fell flat. But a frequent defense is that issues with the lesser movie must be grounded in racism. No, it actually just wasn’t very well executed. I did take issues with the writing. Actually I took issue in part with how it handled race.
Sometimes the things that champion our beloved causes are still kind of bad.
I’m mystified about what makes one eligible to be a “qualified writing critic”.
On occasion I’ve contributed an online review of a book which criticized the quality of the writing. But it’s never been to cover for anti-“woke” feelings - just that the writing was so poor as to detract from my enjoyment of the book.
A case in point: a book by a former arson investigator with the ATF, where either the editor was asleep at his/her desk, or the publisher decided to save money by dispensing with an editor altogether. Horrible organization, disjointed sentences, rotten grammar - that book had it all. Too bad, because the cases he described were interesting.
Genuinely awful writing can be legitimately criticized by anyone with a half-decent education and/or experience with good writing.
The 2016 Ghostbusters, the one where the ghostbusters were all women, is a really good example of that phenomenon. The movie just wasn’t as good as other Ghostbusters, whether the original ones from the 80s or the more recent ones. Despite that, ISTM that the defenders of that movie repeatedly used that defense.
I haven’t seen the entire movie, but someone I know who did said it was like the movie, despite being a comedy, was afraid to be funny.
Yeah, I’m not really sure how that failed so hard. To be fair, the original Ghostbusters is one of my favorite movies of all time. But the 2016 version had a pretty good comedic cast. Yet the only redeeming quality of that film was Chris Hemsworth’s ridiculous character.
I remember being kind of angry that it was bad. I hate when someone finally gives a female-driven project a chance and they screw it up. And I hate when people rush to defend it on charges of sexism. It makes us lose credibility. Women writers, directors, storyboarders etc have created some brilliant things. That movie was not one of them.
I liked the Ghostbusters reboot. Not nearly as much as the original, but I can’t say I wasn’t entertained.
The backlash to the film was intensely sexist and racist. As bad as the movie might have been, there’s no excuse for the way the cast was treated online, especially Leslie Jones. And it started well before the movie came out, so it wasn’t entirely based on the film’s actual quality.
It was also probably about 90% fake. 2016 would have been around the time state-sponsored troll farms really started ramping up, and I suspect most of the incendiary stuff from both sides was coming from the same server in Moscow.
If someone thinks a work was poorly written they shouldn’t have a difficult time providing examples to support their opinion. If I tell you I didn’t like a movie of what value would you find that assessment? I’d have to tell you why that movie was bad. Maybe the dialogue was nonsensical, the movie had plot holes, or some errors in logic. But for my opinion to have any meaning to you I’d have to tell you specifically what I found wrong.
Yes. Perhaps.
But in an era where many folks manage to find something political in saying “Good morning”, is the problem the politics in the piece, or the finding of politics in the piece?
Exactly. If you tell 'em to put up or shut up it will reveal their true colors pretty quickly.
“This movie is bad because it has women in it” isn’t an argument.
Whenever someone gives a job to a woman or a person of color, there will always be a contingent who find it inherently political, because they are bigots who can’t comprehend that a woman or person of color were actually the best candidates.
TBF (as someone who teaches freshman writing courses that involve lots of peer review), this is actually really hard for people who don’t do a lot of writing to articulate! At best they usually say it’s “choppy,” which seems to be an all-purpose negative adjective, or they invoke a “rule” they heard from their high school teachers that isn’t actually a rule (like declaring the writer shouldn’t have used “I” in a personal reaction paper).
This is not to say that “bad writing” can’t be a knee-jerk reaction to content the reviewer dislikes, but I think it’s often an unconscious one. Most people are just plain bad at assessing what works or doesn’t work about writing, and at separating their personal opinion from objective critique.
I thought about that as well after I made my post. And, fair, we’re not all Roger Ebert. I saw the first John Wick movie and I really didn’t care for it. Why? I was bored. I didn’t care about what was happening nor did I care about any of the characters. Is it poorly written? By action movie standards, no. I’m one of those weird people who can acknowledge just because I don’t like something doesn’t mean it’s bad.
For the discussion, how about this example:
In Full Metal Jacket, when Gunnery Sgt Hartman is confronting an obviously unhinged and suicidal Pvt Pyle, and instead of talking him down, bullies him so far that Pyle kills Hartman, is that bad writing? I mean, wouldn’t any seasoned DI know better? Would any reasonable person try that? Don’t provoke an armed nutjob with a gun pointed at you?
Or is it good writing because it shows Hartman wasn’t as smart as he thought? That bullying isn’t the solution to every Marine problem? That even real, smart people can make dumb mistakes?
I don’t know.