> Especially with the recent virtue signaling olympics that movie critics have been going through to evaluate movies on anything but their actual quality.

What the christ does this mean?

Virtue signalling seems to a popular term among the alt-right. I would assume that this is a thinly-veiled reference to Black Panther.

It been popular for 10 years or so, not just with the alt right. I like using it when pointing out soulless corporatism and hypocrisy.

Yeah, it seems to be another term for disingenuous but much more buzzy and maybe more political?

From the Wikipedia page:

Examples of behavior described as virtue signalling include changing Facebook profile pictures to support a cause, participation in the Ice Bucket Challenge, offering thoughts and prayers after a tragedy, celebrity speeches during award shows, politicians pandering to constituents on ideological issues

-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtue_signalling

Black Panther earned its success, as did Wonder Woman. Alt-righters who complain about them are truly lone voices. But there were two major movies in recent memory -- Ghostbusters (2016) and Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi -- that had unusually high RT scores that they may not have gotten if they hadn't been so on message. Doubtless the critics involved were trying to reassure everyone that they weren't one of those people. Had they spoken the truth and said, for example, that Ghostbusters (2016) was ill-paced, obnoxious, and mostly unfunny, the likes of Jezebel would have raked them over the coals and you know it. That's what they did to James Rolfe, for simply saying he would not see the movie.

Roughly, that he thinks that movie reviewing has become about signalling allegiance to a political cause, to the exclusion of other considerations. I'm not sure I see the relationship to people being paid off, though.

Is this context, "virtue signaling" usually means "there's more media focused on black/female/queer characters and I'm angry about it."

A movie’s quality will always be criticized in he context of the culture it’s viewed in. Objective quality is not the most relevant metric in art.

RT is certainly losing my favor, it's Disney garbage everywhere, the top movies consist of whatever came out in the last 2 years, the algorithm just isn't good.

Their algorithm is mostly unchanged as far as I can tell. They take a bunch of critics and aggregate their reviews as positive or negative. Therefore most of their highly recommended movies are, and always have been, predominantly broad-appeal films that are mostly inoffensive.

RT's increasing popularity has created pressure to make more mass-appeal mediocre movies, as movies are rewarded for being "watchable" and get no bonus points for being "excellent" (and excellence which might turn off segments of the audience if any controversial choices are made en route).

I'm not entirely convinced this is a result of RT. Studios have been looking for ways to produce broad appeal blockbusters forever.

> Objective quality is not the most relevant metric in art.

And this is a disturbing trend.

Art, by definition should not be objectively evaluated. Art is inherently subjective - objectively great art would not be art, as it loses personal meaning.

Comrade Zhdanov would not put it better.

Perhaps you meant to compare the commentor above me to Zhdanov? His views seem diametrically opposed to what I said.

Right, the mania for 'politically correct' inspection of music, art, etc. went viral with Zhdanov, and even those who found the Soviets too authoritarian took it up with glee.

When was objective quality ever the most relevant metric in art? Why do you believe this is a trend?

The disturbing trend is people thinking objective criticism is possible, let alone desirable. Objective measurements of art literally do not exist.

Not all metrics are equivalent though. When art is judged more for some political statement it is trying to make than its intrinsic beauty or quality we can disregard that metric as illegitimate if our goal is to appraise the value of art in itself.

The political statement a piece of art is trying to make is a part of its intrinsic beauty or quality. Art does not exist in a vacuum, it always exists in a human context. Politics are inescapable, in art and in all other forms of human endeavor.

"Orwell's latest book is a rollicking farmyard tale of pigs versus humans held back by the author's political virtue signaling"

No, Orwell's book is a classic that happens to be about politics. It's not about Orwell's political message, it's about the way it was delivered, which indicates there are foundational artistic metrics we use to judge art.

All of Orwell's writing was about politics. Part of the point of it being farm animals was to convey that as a society we are little better than animals.

What you say is true. But when you say "a part", how much of a part is it?

Consider this: in any period of human history there will be political tension of one kind or another. Art will be created in response to that tension. Some we remember, and some we don't.

The art we remember is remembered precisely because it adheres to generic standards of beauty in art, these being eloquence, daring novelty, or something else.

It's not about the message, but how the message is expressed that makes us cherish and remember art, whether it is explicitly political or not.

Yes politics are inescapable, and they color much of what we do, but what defines timeless artistic beauty is separate from the political motivations of the art itself. Otherwise we would not be able to appreciate ancient art whose political climate has long passed.

I'd argue that it's a scale and every piece of art falls somewhere on that scale.

Further, I'd argue that because we don't fully understand the political climate for many ancient works of art that we cannot, in fact, fully appreciate that art within its ancient political context.

As an example, lets say some ancient work, e.g. stone henge, was in fact built either in support of or in protest of the practice of human sacrifice - wouldn't that knowledge enhance the work and our understanding of it?

The timelessness of the artistic beauty is still just a piece of the work as a whole.