The Problem with Ratings.
Art is inherently unrateable. My autocorrect tells me that’s not a word, and I can’t be bothered to double check that—let this be an announcement that it’s a word now. Unrateable. When you hear the word art you think of painting, probably. Who the hell would rate a painting? “Ah yeah mate saw the Mona Lisa. 3 stars at best, but I saw it in the Louvre so that’s an extra half star. What’s your Paintboxd rating?”
That’s ridiculous. Why do we hold ourselves, or each other, hostage to a static number to describe our feelings toward movies, toward shows, toward music? Motion pictures are in motion, music is finite, no set of numbers or letters can even come close to quantifying something that was made with a heart and soul. A rating to me is like a bookmark, or checking yourself into a visitor log at a museum—it proves you were there, you engaged with it, and briefly encapsulates how you felt. Why then is that treated like some untouchable thing, a statue on a pedestal?
I’m not arguing for ratings to be abolished, or even that I’ll stop using them myself. I think it’s a fascinating piece of the puzzle that is my relationship with a film or piece of music, and frankly sometimes I feel my three little stars can better represent the feeling of mediocrity than just saying “lmao meh”. But that’s just the thing—it’s a singular piece of the story. It’s almost exactly like judging a book by its cover—something universally recognized as bad. So why do we do it for movies or music?
I don’t have the answer, but I think it has something to do with what I’ve previously termed “qualityslop”— a messy word, if you even want to call it a word. Big number means something to people’s minds, so the bigger the number, the better it is. Right?
No.
People are very, very stupid. If you didn’t know that already, welcome to Earth 101, we’re so excited to have you.
It’s a self fulfilling cycle that’s reached a head with social media, wherein a previously established “good” director/artist is given a high bar to clear—if you clear it, your new work is hailed as a masterpiece and everyone who disagrees is stoned. If you don’t, and you hit your nuts on the bar, everyone laughs at you and you get stoned. Also everyone who disagrees? They get stoned too. There’s a lot of stones being thrown, it’s a real issue.
Take The Dark Knight for an example of the former. Christopher Nolan had made good movies before, and the bar was high, but The Dark Knight easily cleared it for most people, and still does. It’s pretty universally hailed as a masterpiece, and if you don’t give it 5 stars or some other equally high rating (there go the numbers again!) you’re branded as “engagement baiting” or “performative”, figuratively stoned to death by the horde of social media zombies that can’t handle that your number is different than theirs. Even if you have a well thought out explanation—as if your opinion even needs justification—the Number rules all.
This magic Number is especially powerful against dissenters during awards season—do you know how many weeks One Battle After Another has spent in the Letterboxd 250? If you don’t, Jake on Twitter will happily remind you because again: his Number is bigger than yours, and that’s why it should win awards. Sound familiar at all? Competition between art and artists certainly is nothing new (Michelangelo and Leonardo anyone?) but at least the Sistine Chapel’s IMDB score wasn’t a metric they used.
Again, I do not have a problem with ratings as a temporary or even semi permanent “bookmark” in your movie diary. There’s a reason they became prevalent, and it’s because it’s easy. You doodle your little stars, maybe write a review, and voila, you have something you can point to that says “hey, here are my thoughts”. The problem comes when you have no thoughts, and if you haven’t been here before, welcome to Earth 201: not a lot of people have thoughts. The Numbers rule all, and when your number doesn’t match…you have hell to pay. My friend Mosquito is a wonderful example of this. She’s a lovely girl, but I swear every time I see her on Twitter it’s because she’s accused of “baiting” and “being performative”. You’ll never, ever guess why.
Okay, fine. One guess. You ready? Lock it in.
If you guessed “because her Number doesn’t match popular opinion,” good job! She comes under fire at least once a week for some controversial rating or a piece of criticism for something popular. Part of it is misogyny, obviously, but a large percentage of the angry comments are just simply children who cannot handle Mosquito’s rating being different. A lot of times, I see her previously high rating for the movie in the replies with zero context, as if that’s supposed to mean something; to these people ratings must be static, opinions cannot change, and the only acceptable way is if you think more highly of their chosen movie on rewatch.
This is a twofold problem, of course. On one hand, people have such little self esteem that seeing someone with a confident yet different opinion, no matter how thoroughly it’s been expressed, is like seeing their dog die. Honestly, it’s almost worse if you explain yourself—these types of people really hate when you’re smarter than them. On the other, critical thinking and reading comprehension levels are at an all time low, and to these people’s cavemen brains, Number is Opinion. No matter how many times you explain it, you will never shift them. Even this piece, which is only about 1000 words, is 999 too long. If you stop rating entirely, you are again thrown into “performative” and “baiting” boxes. I have no illusions about my level of influence, but if I were to sum this up just to screenshot and dunk on someone later, I’d continue with the “ratings are like bookmarks” argument—to me, that’s exactly what they are. There’s no point in systems, or explanations: one man’s 3 star is another’s 1.5, and until we get on the same page that you can think critically and subjectively at the same time, situations like mine and Mosquito’s will continue.