Any number of debate topics are pointless; the best known among these being anything concerning politics or religion. As an aside let me lay out in my mind the difference between a debate and a discussion. In a debate the goal to is present argument strong enough, well reasoned enough, and supported by enough facts that one party ends up conceding their position to the other while a s discussion is a dialog that does not possess conversion or ‘winning’ as a goal. Today religion and politics are often matters of core identities and people rarely surrender their identity for mere fact and logical construction and so discussion of religion and politics can be illuminating debates on these topics are often nothing more than unmasked futility. I would add to this short list of futile debates and relative merits of various television shows and feature films.
Beyond the traditional divides, Star Trek vs. Star Wars these debates where someone tried fervently to get someone to admit that a film or series is good or bad, depending on the debater’s point of view, are sound and fury signifying nothing. Art is not objective, it is inherently subjective and those pieces that speak to us or do not speak to us do so on levels that are effective by our known reason and our, often unknown, biases. It is possible to discuss why a film works or what made it so appealing to you, but climbing the mountain to getting someone who hates a movie to flip and love it is a fool’s errand. This is a debate I have witnessed over and over again. There have been films I loathed and friends have tried to convince me we worthy of love and there have been film I loved that friends have to get me to dismiss as garbage. It doesn’t happen, the heart wants what the heart wants.
Lately, as these debates have moved on line, the futility of these debates has grown with their number. I have watched as member of communities engaged in vicious and utterly meaningless debates over recent genre films. Often these debates are deeply heated because the movies themselves have become stand in for political positions and as such tokens of political identity and to love or hate a movie becomes inescapably bound up with one core sense of self. The participants in these debates rarely are aware that they are in fact debating matters of personal identity and descend into hateful attacks as the personal stakes continually rise.
I do not participate in these on line debates. I am more than happy to discuss movies, I adore movies, but I will never try to convince you that need to think of any film the same way I do.
My god if everyone did that film would be boring.
