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.