Callum Nathan Thomas Edmunds / MauLer93 / MauLer and the EFAPshere - Objective discussion about not-Channel Awesome featuring Rags, Southpaw and more!

[huecoffs02]

Drinker is one of the few that I still watch and have some respect for. However, I can't watch any stream he does with Mauler. Mauler is just a fat wet blanket in every stream he is on now. He adds nothing to the conversation and you can tell with certain topics like diversity, inclusion, representation (especially if they talk about a trans character or what not) that Mauler is uncomfortable with talking about issues like that. My guess would be because of Jay which goes to show that Jay is a millstone around Maulers neck and just a all around toxic and bad "friend".
My prediction for Mauler in 2023 is that Jay will make demands that Mauler refuse to hang out with or end the friendships he has with certain people that Jay finds "problematic" like JLongBone or E;R and Mauler will do as Jay says because Mauler is a spineless cuck.

Imagine being pussywhipped by girlcock

 

[Danone]

This could be applied to any art and thus nobody should discuss it and accept that a banana thrown in a corner is a master piece of modern art. You could classify books as entertainment so what's the point on criticizing and analyzing them when someone can just disagree and thus you cannot prove it as true.

As much as I think Mauler is a pretentious faggot nowadays, he had a point to what he does. He evaluates narrative consistency in his stories and that is the thing he values the most. What I am trying to say is that if you set some standards as to what you are evaluating or appreciating then you can analyze even capeshit on an "objective" standard. I still think he made some very strong points on his TLJ series and the movie is a fucking mess narratively, which bogs the whole thing down. It looks absolutely pretty and Rian Johnson has a great eye for effects and aesthetics while he sucks at writing and is overly dependent on twists or "subversions" in everything he does.

I'll agree that Mauler seems to now believe EFAP is some sort of authority on pop movies, and he might have a point to that with how many people turn to it whether we like it or not, but that doesn't mean that discussing and criticizing media is a meaningless endeavor, even capeshit that are just "enterntainment".

Just to leave the art sperging behind and focus on Mauler's lols again.

Then what are those standards? Is there a law or a counsel of "movie writers" that dictate how every movie should follow a specific guideline on what it has to do in order to be compelling? Should films like Schindler's List or Stalker from Tarkovsky be evaluated on the same principles and "consistency" as something like Interstellar? or worse, Endgame? That's what I mean when I'm referring on the objectives of what the hell is it being "discussed" in the first place.

You can autistically discuss the cultural significance and mediocrity of something like superhero movies, or worse, Disney movies, but it's pointless and a waste of time to do so because the movie accomplished it's objective already, which is to sell merchandise and "entertain".

On the contrary, it's fairly easy to demonstrate superhero movies are formulaic dreck, which is why Mauler is retarded. He uses 4-hour long blocks to tell us the sky is blue.

Art is generally the expression of a given theme through an aesthetic medium. One can make objective judgments based on the quality of the theme and how well it was expressed. A movie that tells us "the good guys win in the end but it sometimes costs things" with shopworn plot points is inferior to a movie that tells us "dark actions are a linchpin of our current world, and may even be necessary" through a relatively novel plot with memorable characters (Sicario). Deep down we all know this, but such is the childishness of our culture that some people pretend we don't.

I really don't get what you're even trying to tell here. You're bringing up "art" and "themes" but go on a tangent about "formulaic plots" and "good writing" (I hate that "term" already)?

M

Mauler's videos are pointless because their overabundance of frivolous details delude the focus away from the more prominent flaws he tries to point out, not because it's impossible to review something objectively.

And this whole "it's just entertainment" copout is just... no. Some people find sounding fun. Doesn't make THAT any less painful.

This is stupid.

What kind of "flaws" are even pointed out by Mauler that you think he's turning the focus away from? His so called "deviation from objectivity"? his formulaic approach to analyzing media? What are you even talking about here?
Your analogy is also retarded.

@John.Doe I can't quote your post, but you brought up something I forgot to point out in a previous post.

Your example of an art analysis is simple. It's just a painting. It can be evaluated on certain guidelines and standards.

Movies, shows, even video games (to an extent) have various things going in them. It's cinematography, acting, scripts, scenery; soundtrack, etc. It's a rich and varied medium with many practices within them that make it complex to even talk about them.

 

[huecoffs02]

Just to leave the art sperging behind and focus on Mauler's lols again.

Then what are those standards? Is there a law or a counsel of "movie writers" that dictate how every movie should follow a specific guideline on what it has to do in order to be compelling? Should films like Schindler's List or Stalker from Tarkovsky be evaluated on the same principles and "consistency" as something like Interstellar? or worse, Endgame? That's what I mean when I'm referring on the objectives of what the hell is it being "discussed" in the first place.

Then again, your position on this makes it moot to discuss anything at all because you'd only have a binary option of "reached its objectives" or not. I also get a feeling that you are conflating something having an objective to something being objective.

And while there is not a law book full of dos and dont's in a movie you'd have to be retarded to think that through all the years and years of storytelling, writing and creating art, we don't have a general understanding of things that just work and things that do not. Like I said in my post, Mauler generally is very clear as to what stick he is using to measure the movies and that is "narrative consistency" and then he formulates his arguments around that. It is not that films should or shouldn't be evaluated in whatever standard, it's just that he considers that one to be important. So you could evaluate any film in any way you want, hell CRT would evaluate them on how many niggers they have and grade them as such.

You can autistically discuss the cultural significance and mediocrity of something like superhero movies, or worse, Disney movies, but it's pointless and a waste of time to do so because the movie accomplished it's objective already, which is to sell merchandise and "entertain".

Again, you are being retarded to say this because then there is no point at ever discussing any art because it already fulfilled its purpose after you take your attention off of it, or it ends.

 

[LionoRaptor]

I'd add The Last Temptation Of Christ, Silence, and The Irishman to that list as well.

Finally saw Last Temptation of Christ. Great film. Really underrated. Jesus seemed like an ordinary decent guy. Fucking gangsta in the stoning scene.

 

[PaladinBoo]

Imagine being pussywhipped by girlcock

It will serve as a valuable lesson to the likes of dumbasses like Gary and Jeremy. You should never welcome everyone into a community. Sometimes you have to gatekeep certain fans from a community. Especially if they are furries and trannies. I'm sorry but furries and trannies ruin communities. This site has documented proof of that. Furries and trannies do nothing but bring in their baggage, mental illness and degeneracy into communities and also demand special treatment and unwavering loyalty from everyone until eventually they kick the old guard out and the community is just filled with degenerates. Yeah, it sounds harsh but to keep your community healthy you have to gatekeep these kinds of people out of the community.

 

[SaveTheWhales]

Just to leave the art sperging behind and focus on Mauler's lols again.

Your lack of self-awareness is astounding, and I'm not even going to bother with that rambling seething you typed, other than to point out one thing I noticed while skimming: I already answered that "Should films like Schindler's List or Stalker from Tarkovsky be evaluated on the same principles and "consistency" as something like Interstellar" question earlier, If you read my post instead of launching into a spergfest because someone doesn't like your heckin' superhero-arino flicks, you would have caught that.

Jesus this conversation is dumb...

 

[Kars den Karb]

I really don't get what you're even trying to tell here. You're bringing up "art" and "themes" but go on a tangent about "formulaic plots" and "good writing" (I hate that "term" already)?

Sure, but I didn't even mention the term "good writing." Try reading again, specifically the definition of art.

Movies, shows, even video games (to an extent) have various things going in them. It's cinematography, acting, scripts, scenery; soundtrack, etc. It's a rich and varied medium with many practices within them that make it complex to even talk about them.

Complexity only increases the difficulty of judgment; it doesn't make it impossible.

 

[Gloria The Glorious]

To give a basic, and less word-salad answer to "you can't objectively analyze art" - it's simply the acknowledgement that standards for art varies from person to person. I can prove a character's choices is a run 180 to what they did before, or prove a lore contradiction, or point out a leap of logic. I can't force anyone to give a shit. It's not "everyone gets a gold star for trying". It's actually the opposite. Your criticism can't just hit a few check boxes and automatically be valid and correct (i.e. it breaks these rules this often so it's objectively bad and this is not up for debate); you need reasoning to be of value to an audience. If someone wants to step back and try to argue that characters breaking consistency is better, that's their retarded argument to make, not mine. Don't get obsessed with "proving" a product's quality like MauLer does.

 

[Kars den Karb]

To give a basic, and less word-salad answer to "you can't objectively analyze art" - it's simply the acknowledgement that standards for art varies from person to person. I can prove a character's choices is a run 180 to what they did before, or prove a lore contradiction, or point out a leap of logic. I can't force anyone to give a shit. It's not "everyone gets a gold star for trying". It's actually the opposite. Your criticism can't just hit a few check boxes and automatically be valid and correct (i.e. it breaks these rules this often so it's objectively bad and this is not up for debate); you need reasoning to be of value to an audience. If someone wants to step back and try to argue that characters breaking consistency is better, that's their retarded argument to make, not mine. Don't get obsessed with "proving" a product's quality like MauLer does.

The objectivity of art isn't some neckbeard obsession, it's the foundation of the Western canon. The idea that art is hopelessly subjective is a cultural reaction to pointless pop arguments in the blockbuster era, when it's easier to "agree to disagree" with your friend than to get into a catfight over Batman or Superman having a better origin story. It has no scholarship and utterly no foundation in academic English. The average person asserting subjectivity of art can't even define art.

Mauler's measuring stick of "consistency" is a simplistic metric reverse engineered from fan entertainment like CinemaSins where the number of plot holes is the coin of the realm. Like almost all youtubers, he knows almost nothing about dramatic structure because his entire analytic process starts from "did I personally like it" - which is fine if you're a channel like Jeremy Jahns that gives ratings like "good time, no alcohol required," but abysmal as a video essay channel making sincere arguments about the relative merits of movies. He's not even familiar with Hitchcock aphorisms your typical screenwriting hack would quote (by the way, this thread had good discussion on Hitchcock at some point). When he goes up against someone who actually does have a deeper knowledge of how stories are constructed, like Critical Drinker or E;R, he gets annihilated.

Anyway, back to to the objectivity of art, and more specifically storytelling: Aristotle wrote Poetics 2300 years ago. This has been settled for a long time.

 

[Kaelic]

First of all, sorry for the first post. I am new on the site and was trying to do it from mobile which lead to me clicking something too early. So, now the actual post.

So, I've been reading here for a while just to keep up with what Mauler does but I wanted to add my 2 cents to the whole plot hole discussion because I feel people are missing the forest for the trees. The problem isn't that pointing out plot holes is generally wrong but that it doesn't really prove anything. I can make an autistically long video about the plot holes in Empire Strikes back (to stay with Star Wars) but would that now mean that the movie is bad from a script perspective? Most people would disagree but why? I think the first response would be that the amount of plot holes is lower or these plot holes aren't as bad. But how is that different from someone just saying they don't think pointing out plot holes even tells you anything about the quality of the movie since everyone has a different idea of what plot hole is worse.

So what is the reason for people to point out plot holes? It is not that people determine a movie is bad because of plot holes. But they already know the movie is bad and then find plot holes to prove they are right. Which is why you get these weird stances with Spiderman movies a few months back. It's something everyone can do with every movie. All you need to do is watch the movie 3 times and you can fill videos no matter how good the movie actually is.

And this is the problem with just "analyzing" plot holes. Because it's not actually an analysis ever. It's just a backwards explanation to why you think the movie is bad but you don't really know why. So you just decide to point out there are plot holes, because this isn't something that people can really argue against (if you don't pick really bad ones) and if you use enough, it doesn't even matter if some are considered "okay plot holes" since you have so many examples to choose from.

No, the real analysis would be to decide why a movie is really considered bad by a lot of people looking a bit deeper than plot holes. To give you a good counter example, let's consider that Vader being Luke's father is a plot hole when looking at A New Hope (this might be up for discussion, but a problem with the first movie can definitely be argued for). The reason why people don't care this to be a potential plot hole is that it makes sense in other parts of the movie. It gives us an additional emotional layer to the conflict since Vader was before just a bad guy that killed Luke's father. But since neither we nor Luke ever knew this character, it's not a real emotional point. Vader actually being Luke's father gives the narrative more weight. And it also supports the whole idea of the movie that everyone can be turned to the Dark side of the force since we now know it even happened to Luke's father.

And this can be done for a lot of plot holes in Empire specifically which is why no one really cares about them. And this is why just pointing out plot holes doesn't tell you anything about the actual quality of the movie and is ultimately a pointless endeavor. Because it isn't done as an actual analysis but as a reason as to why your feeling the movie being bad is right. This is why this idea falls apart so often if you just point out actually well written movies since plot holes are never the part you measure the "goodness" of a movie and even IF you have a standard of when you call something bad (which Mauler doesn't even do, he just points out plot holes but never tells you when a movie becomes bad in general, like how many plot holes do you need to find) this will always fall apart for some movie.

So in summary, I think the question here shouldn't be if plot holes are actually "real" or what the intent of a movie is because the real problem is thst plot holes are just a simple way for people to explain why they disliked a movie without looking into deeper as to why. Which isn't a problem for the standard movie watcher, don't get me wrong, not everyone needs to analyse why they dislike something, but if you are trying to be an authority I expect you to put in a bit more work aside from picking out plot holes and help people understand what the underlying problems are that they might have missed.

 

[Danone]

-Then again, your position on this makes it moot to discuss anything at all because you'd only have a binary option of "reached its objectives" or not. I also get a feeling that you are conflating something having an objective to something being objective.

-And while there is not a law book full of dos and dont's in a movie you'd have to be retarded to think that through all the years and years of storytelling, writing and creating art, we don't have a general understanding of things that just work and things that do not. Like I said in my post, Mauler generally is very clear as to what stick he is using to measure the movies and that is "narrative consistency" and then he formulates his arguments around that. It is not that films should or shouldn't be evaluated in whatever standard, it's just that he considers that one to be important. So you could evaluate any film in any way you want, hell CRT would evaluate them on how many niggers they have and grade them as such.

- It really doesn't. I never stated that you couldn't discuss anything about it. It's just that it's foolish to pretend you're stating important or thought provoking shit when bringing up Hulk's character in endgame or Berzerk's autistic interpretation of middle age fiction. It's all geeky consumer shit at the end of the day and that's why I think it's trivial and pointless to look for "objectivity" in something like that.

-"you'd have to be retarded to think that through all the years and years of storytelling, writing and creating art, we don't have a general understanding of things that just work and things that do not" with how people consume media and generally interpret it, couple that with the success of channels like Mauler or any other YouTube reviewer it's clear to see why no one has any fucking idea of what the hell they're talking about.

Also, notice how you couldn't bring up an "objective measure" of what something "works or not". Your take that is.

Again, you are being retarded to say this because then there is no point at ever discussing any art because it already fulfilled its purpose after you take your attention off of it, or it ends.

-It seems more like you want to believe that your "discussions" about "art" (we've barely brought up actual art in this thread) were not complete sperging. Which at this point it has become that.

Your lack of self-awareness is astounding,

Some people find sounding fun. Doesn't make THAT any less painful.

lol, k sperg.

Jesus this conversation is dumb...

At least you got that right.

Complexity only increases the difficulty of judgment; it doesn't make it impossible.

Alright, fair enough. That's a valid reason to look for simplicity in analyzing media.

The objectivity of art isn't some neckbeard obsession, it's the foundation of the Western canon.

And you fucked it up.

The average person asserting subjectivity of art can't even define art.

What the fuck even is this?

The only thing you have been doing is bringing up and comparing capeshit with action movies and a strange definition of "art". This is so stupid.

When he goes up against someone who actually does have a deeper knowledge of how stories are constructed, like Critical Drinker or E;R, he gets annihilated.

Mauler gets annihilated because he is a dork simpleton. It's actually embarrassing how a weeaboo like e;r is more articulate than him.

 

[Felis Meanis]

Wait, MauLers partner is a MtF tranny, and he is being influenced by this tranny to slowly but surely becoming a politically correct pussy?
What happened since the release of The Last Jedi?

 

[Midwit]

What happened since the release of The Last Jedi?

Rhino milk.

 

[PaladinBoo]

Wait, MauLers partner is a MtF tranny, and he is being influenced by this tranny to slowly but surely becoming a politically correct pussy?
What happened since the release of The Last Jedi?

Mauler got internet clout and trannies go to internet clout like flies on shit. Jay buttered and ass kissed Mauler in hopes of getting internet clout and fame. Since Mauler is a terrible judge of character he has allowed Jay to be a regular on his show. With each stream he is on Jay is becoming more and more like Grima Wormtongue. You can clearly see the negative influence he is having on Mauler. I for one find it funny. The Fandom Menace is going to get destroyed because a fat retard allowed a grooming furry degenerate and a degenerate unhinged tranny into their community. Kek.

 

[Gloria The Glorious]

The objectivity of art isn't some neckbeard obsession, it's the foundation of the Western canon. The idea that art is hopelessly subjective is a cultural reaction to pointless pop arguments in the blockbuster era, when it's easier to "agree to disagree" with your friend than to get into a catfight over Batman or Superman having a better origin story. It has no scholarship and utterly no foundation in academic English. The average person asserting subjectivity of art can't even define art.

Mauler's measuring stick of "consistency" is a simplistic metric reverse engineered from fan entertainment like CinemaSins where the number of plot holes is the coin of the realm. Like almost all youtubers, he knows almost nothing about dramatic structure because his entire analytic process starts from "did I personally like it" - which is fine if you're a channel like Jeremy Jahns that gives ratings like "good time, no alcohol required," but abysmal as a video essay channel making sincere arguments about the relative merits of movies. He's not even familiar with Hitchcock aphorisms your typical screenwriting hack would quote (by the way, this thread had good discussion on Hitchcock at some point). When he goes up against someone who actually does have a deeper knowledge of how stories are constructed, like Critical Drinker or E;R, he gets annihilated.

Anyway, back to to the objectivity of art, and more specifically storytelling: Aristotle wrote Poetics 2300 years ago. This has been settled for a long time.

If anyone here hasn't read Poetics, I do recommend it. It's easily available on Google, and it's only about 50 pages (different PDFs use different formatting, so page length will vary).

For pargraph 1, the idea of art being subjective actually originates from post-modernism. Modernism, to give a tl;dr, was the critical movement that art is to be criticized at face value to minimize opinions and interpretation for the sake of objectivity (Man, does that sound like someone we know?!). Post-modernism was effectively denouncing these values to show how subjective what people did or didn't consider good art was. All of this was well before modern day blockbusters were a thing.

For paragraph 2, I agree. I would say you don't need to explain dramatic theory to point out why so many Hollywood franchises crashed and burned, but that more so speaks to the fundamentally stupid choices a lot of modern films have been making. Honestly, my only addition would be there's room for an in-between of "casual guy drinking" and "understanding entertainment", but boy does MauLer fail at that (for reasons we've discussed for at minimum that past ~280 pages here).

For Paragraph 3, Poetics is interesting to this day because he's not trying to argue what you should value, he's pointing out there's a reason things are done a certain way. I know this is a simplification (henceforth why I recommend a reading of it), but he wasn't trying to argue how great any one work was; he focused on the resonating and reoccurring choices storytelling kept making and made guidelines around it.

Stuff like this is why I love this thread, by the way.

To offer a common ground I know we both agree on: MauLer doesn't know what he's talking about beyond his own personal values, and uses "objective" to correct people "wrong" opinions, which is cringe.

 

[SaveTheWhales]

lol, k sperg.


At least you got that right.


Alright, fair enough. That's a valid reason to look for simplicity in analyzing media.


And you fucked it up.


What the fuck even is this?

Okay, who let the butthurt zoomer create an account?

 

[huecoffs02]

- It really doesn't. I never stated that you couldn't discuss anything about it. It's just that it's foolish to pretend you're stating important or thought provoking shit when bringing up Hulk's character in endgame or Berzerk's autistic interpretation of middle age fiction. It's all geeky consumer shit at the end of the day and that's why I think it's trivial and pointless to look for "objectivity" in something like that.

As being here making fun of strangers on the internet so I don't know why you're so ass mad about it. Stop seething.

-"you'd have to be retarded to think that through all the years and years of storytelling, writing and creating art, we don't have a general understanding of things that just work and things that do not" with how people consume media and generally interpret it, couple that with the success of channels like Mauler or any other YouTube reviewer it's clear to see why no one has any fucking idea of what the hell they're talking about.

You want to say that it is pointless to discuss it regardless and on the next breath say that people don't know what they are talking about. I'm starting you believe you really are a jungle nigger like your avatar.

Also, notice how you couldn't bring up an "objective measure" of what something "works or not". Your take that is.

How not when I clearly mentioned how Mauler does it? Is there narrative consistency in a story? Then you can evaluate how objectively good or bad it worked on that fucking movie. You can objectively say if there even was a character arc, or if it made sense. You can objectively say if the story accurately portrayed the themes or ideas that it set out to do. You can objectively say if there is shit like ludonarrative disonance in a game (I hate that term but it is very useful). You can objectively say if the dialogue in a game or movie is good or bad. You can objectively say if a movie treats its audience with respect or if it is an exposition dump.

If you want a general standard for "movie good" to be treated as objective then you just gotta take more things into account and make your argument. It's almost like Mauler put it some time, you can objectively evaluate a chair by setting the standard as to "how good of a chair is this" so you evaluate how well it accomplishes chair things, but if you wanna evaluate a chair as to how good of a dog it is, then you can objectively say that a chair is a shitty dog.

-It seems more like you want to believe that your "discussions" about "art" (we've barely brought up actual art in this thread) were not complete sperging. Which at this point it has become that.

"Art is whatever I say art is".

I don't want to believe anything, I am just pointing out that your argument is shit and having discussions about anything is meaningless because it accomplishes its objective the moment you paid attention to it and it is irrelevant the moment you stop looking, according to you.

Discussing capeshit and shit is as meaningless as discussing lolcows so why are you wasting your time either way?

Lots of shit about plot holes.

Which is why the Drinker is better at this than Mauler. Little Platoon is also interesting.

 

[WootieWot]

Mauler got internet clout and trannies go to internet clout like flies on shit. Jay buttered and ass kissed Mauler in hopes of getting internet clout and fame. Since Mauler is a terrible judge of character he has allowed Jay to be a regular on his show. With each stream he is on Jay is becoming more and more like Grima Wormtongue. You can clearly see the negative influence he is having on Mauler. I for one find it funny. The Fandom Menace is going to get destroyed because a fat retard allowed a grooming furry degenerate and a degenerate unhinged tranny into their community. Kek.

I do remember in one of Mauler's streams he did admit that he was a progressive. And I think Mauler is using Jay just as much as Jay is using him. Mauler is using Jay to attract SJW and the progressives to be a bigger part of his audience, I don't believe that Mauler really cares about Jay. If he truly did then he wouldn't be encouraging Jay's delusions, a delusion that can lead to him making destructive life-altering irreversible decisions, if he did care he would try to make him snap out of it, and if that doesn't work he would've broken all contact with him as he shouldn't want to have any part in fueling his mental illness. Mauler associates with Jay probably only for his own self-image in trying to portray himself as tolerant and progressive on the surface, just like all the other enablers on his podcast.

Check out 5:04:20 from EFAP's New Year's Eve stream and how quickly they dogpile and put Doomer in an uncomfortable situation for saying something that Mauler and his sycophants disagree with.

 

[Kars den Karb]

If anyone here hasn't read Poetics, I do recommend it. It's easily available on Google, and it's only about 50 pages (different PDFs use different formatting, so page length will vary).

For pargraph 1, the idea of art being subjective actually originates from post-modernism. Modernism, to give a tl;dr, was the critical movement that art is to be criticized at face value to minimize opinions and interpretation for the sake of objectivity (Man, does that sound like someone we know?!). Post-modernism was effectively denouncing these values to show how subjective what people did or didn't consider good art was. All of this was well before modern day blockbusters were a thing.

Not a totally accurate characterization of modernism. It was an artistic movement, not a critical one, and basically it rejected traditional forms and innovated newer, abstract ones. Ulysses, The Sound and the Fury, and Guernica are modernist works, so it was very successful. It would take quite a while to list modernist achievements in painting, novels, music, etc.

Your definition of postmodernism is closer, but it's not a question of good or bad art so much as a philosophy that rejects traditional perception of reality. Relativism is key to postmodernism, but that's not a wholesale rejection of merit, only a redefinition of merit by a given context or situation. Postmodernist artists and critics evaluate art as naturally as anyone else. Overall it doesn't make much sense and in terms of art its legacy is much less impressive than modernism.

Postmodernism certainly moved the cultural needle closer to subjectivity, but it's only used as an excuse by the idea of complete subjectivity, which is a grossly simplified version that was created by fandom.* Anyone who sincerely profess that nothing is better than anything else is most likely a fan trying to make themselves feel better about enjoying less than great movies, which shouldn't even be a problem in the first place. Your self-worth shouldn't be tied to what cable sci-fi trash you enjoy and it doesn't matter how many people don't like it! But that's another large issue.

*It does have an antecedent in the Roman saying "de gustibus non est disputandum," meaning "in matters of taste, there can be no disputes," but that's not an intellectual concept, only an adage meant to make people get along.

For paragraph 2, I agree. I would say you don't need to explain dramatic theory to point out why so many Hollywood franchises crashed and burned, but that more so speaks to the fundamentally stupid choices a lot of modern films have been making. Honestly, my only addition would be there's room for an in-between of "casual guy drinking" and "understanding entertainment", but boy does MauLer fail at that (for reasons we've discussed for at minimum that past ~280 pages here).

Agree, and to keep beating the dead horse, the quality of current Hollywood is the only reason Mauler is successful. People are willing to watch hours of pedantry on The Last Jedi/The Force Awakens as therapy or an outlet for their rage.

For Paragraph 3, Poetics is interesting to this day because he's not trying to argue what you should value, he's pointing out there's a reason things are done a certain way. I know this is a simplification (henceforth why I recommend a reading of it), but he wasn't trying to argue how great any one work was; he focused on the resonating and reoccurring choices storytelling kept making and made guidelines around it.

Stuff like this is why I love this thread, by the way.

Yes, agreed that Poetics isn't a statement that some things are more valuable than others. But it is a necessary premise that Aristotle expects you to accept, because without that the book wouldn't make any sense. And yes it's been a great thread.

To offer a common ground I know we both agree on: MauLer doesn't know what he's talking about beyond his own personal values, and uses "objective" to correct people "wrong" opinions, which is cringe.

That's as concise of a summary of Mauler's failings as anything else in this thread. He's a very developed self-righteous ignoramus.

 

[Berrakh]

I am, of course, ignorant of where this recent conversational thread started but for me the issue with Mauler is easy to summarize. Is it the whole story with what’s wrong with his criticism? No, but it’s a fine place to start.

I’ve argued with a billion Mauler’s on internet forums. Someone who thinks they are very logical but really isn’t. Because stories have an emotional aspect that might not survive a very reductive weighing of pros and cons from a more omniscient pov (that the character’s don’t have).

Timeless example: it is certainly possible for Jack, in Titanic, to have balanced himself and Rose on the table at the end. But was it worth the risk? Was risking it all on the altar of simple self-preservation his priority?

The problem with defining yourself as logical or your style of criticism as logical is, well, logic is hard. There are always things you don’t consider, unknowns you don’t have the time to investigate, or knowns that you simply forgot about which change the entire risk profile. And to deny this is illogical.

Or best of all, when the characters aren't contradicting themselves at all but the critic won’t drop their flimsy assumptions about them.

Or they get mad when “coincidences” favor a character but said coincidences were always very likely outcomes that the character’s actions and decision-making accounted for.