Opinion vs. appreciation.

I've learned many things from my wife over the years. Things like how to attend Mass, how to make a meatloaf (and not refer to it to friends as "baked meat"), how to write a thank-you card, and how to make a bed so it doesn't look like I'm actually still sleeping in it. Among these things is something she learned from a college professor, namely the difference between opinion and appreciation in criticism.

Opinion is a personal preference of a work, but appreciation is an assessment of the level of art or craftsmanship in a work. Examples abound, because in reality we use and often confuse these when we make a judgment. I can appreciate the immense thought and labor and knowledge Tolstoy used in War and Peace and still in my opinion regard it as so boring as to account as a WMD. (In fairness to Tolstoy, I have never read the novel, but this is what I hear.) I can admire the work that created a Persian rug, and still think it's so ugly that I'd rather have food poisoning than hang it on my wall. I can say Gone with the Wind is breathtaking as a film (appreciation) but still find it soggy and dreary (opinion). One judge on Chopped dislikes raw onion, and will criticize a chef for using it, even though it can be used artfully and is enjoyed by many. 

My wife uses the example of Ralphie in the bunny suit in A Christmas Story. Appreciation: Aunt Clara puts a lot of effort into these things. Opinion: He looks like a deranged Easter Bunny.

It may seem that appreciation is a more technical assessment, and it is -- one must use one's faculties to review something not only in light of effort and art, but also how someone who is more of a fan of the type would consider it. It's not fair to throw Hammett's The Glass Key or Chandler's The Little Sister or Carr's The Hollow Man into the trash heap because one doesn't like mysteries. If one is to review such a thing fairly, one must approach it with the eyes of someone who likes the genre and judge it on those merits. 

Bearing that in mind, I could not be a proper critic of soccer, or hip-hop, or goat cheese, because I can't stand any of them. I am willing to consider they have merits to their fans, but I'm blind to them.

I have other such blind spots.

And yet, we know that never stops our friendly Internet reviewers, who often conflate opinion and appreciation. Calling Gone with the Wind "racist sh**" doesn't say anything about the craft behind the film. Personally, I thought the movie M*A*S*H was dull and not very funny, but I thought it was well made. I thought the film They Might Be Giants looked cheap and clumsy, but I loved it. I always try to consider both opinion and appreciation, although if you've read my reviews on this blog you can surely point to entries where I hop on the opinion train and ride it full-throttle to the end of the line.

Not that opinions have no place in reviews. They're actually quite useful. If I know you and I like the same kind of books, I'll give your opinion a lot of weight in deciding if I will read one that you recommend. If I know a reviewer hates science fiction, I have to assume that affects his thoughts on a Greg Bear novel.

I told my wife that there was one other factor in looking at artistic endeavors. There's opinion, there's appreciation, and there's dough. Meaning, if I'm a publisher and I know a writer is awful and his book is not worth the toilet paper it could have been used to make, but he is popular and will sell a lot of hardcovers, my opinion and appreciation go out the window. Print the bastard! If I know an actor is an idiot who hasn't got the talent to convince a child that ice cream is good, but he opens movies because the ladies love him, sign him to a multi-picture deal! Dough is always the ace in the hole. Dough overcomes opinion and appreciation.