Forget not getting a title or two. I don’t get entire mediums.
Singing. Dancing. Music. Now I can understand if it’s in relation to something else, like a movie or video game. I can appreciate the rising and falling emotions that’s intended. Or nostalgia in relation to something else. But outside of that very narrow scope I feel like an alien when I see people talk about their love of music, especially re: culturally important music. When I see people dancing I think they look foolish. Hearing someone sing makes me feel embarrassed for them. I’m great at parties.
I’m OK with movies, but my appreciation is general and my ability to grade them feels like I’m using a dull blade. I just tried to empathize with fictional people and their fake problems for 2 hours, so I guess I enjoyed myself. Why else would I do it? The more serious the movie’s subject matter the less seriously I can take it. If I detect the story is trying to get at some philosophical or political point my mind rebels. Even “good” dialogue sounds either corny, stilted, rehearsed, too perfect, or just plain fake.
Plays. Something awful adults make kids do against our will, then you grow up to find people do this on their own and people who don’t know them come to watch. An entire culture and everything. No external pressure. For fun.
RE: the earlier 2001 discussion and its pace, name a mainstream movie that’s slower paced than 2001. Most of the movie has nothing in particular happening for 10+ minutes. It has good stuff, like HAL, some of the space scenes, but c’mon. It’s an insomnia cure in film form. And props to Ligeti’s Requiem stuff during the monolith scenes and during the long space shots in the last act. Creepiest music I’ve ever heard (see, if I just heard this without the context of the movie I would wonder what the big fuss is about some weirdos chanting and someone banging on broken instruments).
RE: people not getting sports, does the fact that people follow pro-video game matches blow your mind? Or maybe that’s easier, since the link to the game itself is a lot stronger.
Not to explode your basic point about different views of different fandoms, but I’m not sure your example fits.
A Peyton Manning jersey is fine. But a Star Trek T-shirt and baseball cap would be equally acceptable.
Wearing an entire Star trek uniform is weird. Wearing a Peyton manning jersey plus football pants and spikes and shoulder pads is equally weird.
And BTW I completely agree with this:
“But why should I go off and invest time in learning why some particular thing is interesting to others on the assumption I’ll eventually find it interesting, if I don’t find it interesting enough in the first place to care? Why should I devote time and effort into trying to make something interesting when I find it boring? Can’t you accept that someone may not get it, and may not care enough to go learn enough to get it?”
I know I’m coming in late here, but it has everything to do with taste. Shakespeare is not a great writer, there is no such thing as a great writer in any absolute sense of that word. There are a lot of people who hold the opinion that Shakespeare is a great writer because his writing appeals to their tastes to such a degree that they call it great. If, hypothetically, the tastes of those same people were different (than they are now, not from each other), Shakespeare might be widely considered a hack.
Some people have a really hard time with that concept, because the “greatness” of Shakespeare is so ingrained that it just feels natural, it could be no other way, it’s an inherent part of what we define as writing, etc. But that’s the key, that we’ve just defined it that way, not that there is any more reality to it than that.
For me, my answer to the OP is that I cannot get why some people have such a hard time with what I just said. I don’t get how anyone can believe that Shakespeare simply IS great, and anyone who disagrees is just wrong. To me, it’s just totally obvious that greatness or lack thereof in anything artistic is nothing more than by agreement among a bunch of people.
Having been involved with science-fiction fandom for many decades, my observation is that there are types therein who are (as I call it) “looking for Mr. Spock”–much as some socialist women are looking for John Reed, libertarian women are looking for John Galt, and Christian women, yes, are looking for Jesus Christ. Slash fiction (which doesn’t, to my knowledge [and desperate, fervent hope], exist in the other three) places just one more barrier to the unattainable male, who only needs the right woman in his life–and little Mary Sue is sure she’s the one, if he can just be made to see how special she really is.
Unmeetable ideals are bumpers against the insecurities of people who doubt their capability of even achieving the adequate.
You don’t seem to have recognized the intended meaning when I said:
Not enjoying reading Shakespeare may indeed in many cases have something to do with taste. But not being familiar with the arguments for why Shakespeare is generally considered great has nothing to do with taste. It has to do with a lack of cultural literacy. (One may disagree with those arguments, of course, but not being familiar with them is not an issue of taste).
Slot machine players - I guess I understand the rush that comes with the thrill of winning in games like Blackjack or Roulette where you at least have a choice. But slots, I don’t get it, the zombies playing don’t even seem to enjoy it. It’s almost haunting when they describe ‘hot’ or ‘cold’ machines, like raw statistics have a personality which seems to fulfill some empty hole in their soul.
It completely blows my mind. And I’m not only a hard core gamer, I work in the video game industry. I’d meant to use that as an example upthread, but I guess it slipped my mind: the idea of watching someone play Call of Duty is just about the most tedious thing imaginable, and I love the hell out of Call of Duty.
I feel the same way about people who watch chess games, and my junior high chess team was national champions two years running.
So, are you agreeing that the arguments themselves are based on taste? If you are separating familiarity with the arguments from the basis of the arguments, then I did indeed misinterpret what you said.
However, other posts of yours seemed to imply that it was not possible for a person to both know well the arguments as to why Shakespeare is a great writer and disagree with the conclusion (that he is a great writer). In other words, you seemed to be saying that the only way a person could possibly not agree that Shakespeare was a great writer was that that person was ignorant of the reasons why.
If you are really saying that it is possible for a person to be intimately familiar with Shakespeare’s writings and all the conventional reasons why he is great, and yet legitimately hold the valid opinion that he is not that great a writer, then I admit I misread your statements.
I think your off base here. I’m a fan of yuri (lesbian anime). Why would I want to watch a romance involving two women and no men? It’s just a fetish. Personally I’ve decided that sexual fetishes don’t really make sense. Not a very satisfying answer I know, but that’s just one of the mysteries of life.
I agree that the arguments themselves are based on taste. And in the exchange you responded to I was indeed separating familiarity with the arguments from the basis of the arguments.
I think I probably went too far in the language that I used, and for that I apologize. I was making an unfair generalization from my own experience.
I believe that it is possible, but unlikely (from my own experience), and I tend to err on the side of skepticism until I hear an explanation that confirms to me that the other person really is familiar with the case for greatness as well as is experienced and comfortable with Shakespearean language itself. As an example of why I think it is fair for me to be skeptical, someone responded to me in this thread arguing that Shakespeare is boring, saying:
Why is [Shakespeare] not translated into contemporary English?
This is the sort of statement that tends to corroborate my general attitude. Nonetheless, it is unfair of me to make judgments about specific people I do not know. I should be more gracious in giving the benefit of the doubt, and for not having done so enough, I sincerely apologize.
Not only is watching other people play video games tedious, it’s frustrating for everyone- “There! Grab the thing! The THING! Shoot that guy! Rocket launcher ammo! Jump here… Dammit, you’re doing it wrong!”
Frustrating if you’re the player because you’ve got all these other people trying to tell you how to play the game, frustrating if you’re watching because the gamer is invariably doing it differently to how you would and naturally your way is best.
