I think I got more responses -- and more good ones -- about yesterday's post than I've received about nearly anything I've posted lately. I went back and took another look at it, and realized a lot of what I was talking about were not things that were inherent in the quote itself but things which I brought to it on my own, and that was a bad thing to do.
First, to me, the idea that there's just "stuff you like" and "stuff you don't like" is self-limiting, because once you consciously embrace that as a way to define your tastes, a whole galaxy of other possibilities get knocked out of the box. It sounds like an argument from ignorance, and that's why I felt like the mounted attack on it seemed on target.
But that doesn't excuse all the other things that were wrong with the attack: its mean-spiritedness, for one -- and now that I look at it again, the way the responder uses the premise to put words in the other person's mouth, which pretty much invalidates the whole enterprise. It may well be true that "There's just music you like and music you don't like" is a prelude to warding off any objective criticism, as was claimed, but the original posted didn't actually do that -- that was something the other guy pre-emptively accused him of. (Assuming that such a thing wasn't snipped out due to my own ham-handedness with preserving the quote.)
I don't like the idea of not subjecting one's own tastes to a little analysis, but it's not much good if you come to that conclusion by steamrolling and logic-chopping, is it?
Oops, I didn't see this entry before adding a comment to the previous one. I also neglected the OpenID system.
I think, in part, it comes down to the hypocrisy of the commenter quoted. The mean-spiritedness aside, they were trying to force someone to accept criticism without being critical at all themselves, just manipulative. In any case, like I commented on the previous entry, the actual point about the importance of having at least some critical thought is certainly valid, though not something that I think should be enforced in a casual environment.
Even more's the point, though, subjecting your own tastes to critical evaluation doesn't actually change the fact that your tastes have no bearing on the actual worth of the piece in question. Like it or not, on gut instinct or after lengthy consideration and dissection, the art remains what it is: art.
In a way, all of art is an interactive rorshack test: The artist is throwing up there what he thinks the blob is, and everyone else gets to read their own blob from it. And no one person, the creator included, can say anyone else is wrong, just that they don't take the same thing from it.
It all depends on what the point of being critical about your tastes is. I know that Vampire Hunter D is not great literature, but it is great fun, and that I'm attracted to it for reasons entirely apart from its literary merit. And even then, at times, there are some truly wonderful moments that revolve entirely around the language: I love that the first time we hear about D's cape, it's not just black, it's "lacquered with midnight."
I don't agree with the Rorschach-test theory, for reasons I'll articulate in a later post, when I can state them better.