DUNE 1984 is a paradigm case of a movie I love but which I would never call a great movie. It's fun and inventive and quotable. It's also awkward and cheesy. Writing the below tweet put me in mind to do a thread on philosophical aesthetics, on good and bad artworks. 1/n https://twitter.com/epicciuto/status/1304749499785654273

(Muting this conversation is probably a good idea if you have zero interest in philosophical aesthetics and are focused on your doomscrolling.) 2/n

Historically in Western philosophy, it was fashionable to think beauty was an objective property of an object—that it participated in a Platonic form of beauty or it employed a golden ratio, or it ticked off boxes on checklists (such as it had radiance, harmony, wholeness). 3/n

Hume and Kant (among others) upended this way of viewing it. They thought it was true that some things were beautiful and others weren't, but that wasn't a property of those things. If something that looked exactly like the Mona Lisa was just randomly floating...4/n

around a universe in which no one existed to perceive it, it wouldn't be beautiful. Objects that are beautiful (Hume, like me, was more focused on good artworks than beautiful objects) are only beautiful because our cognitive systems tend to perceive them that way. 5/n

Presumably, if our cognition had evolved differently, different objects would be beautiful. In Kant especially, and to a much lesser degree in Hume, there is an unwarranted dependence on people having typically functioning cognitive systems to correctly perceive beauty. 6/n

I wrote, in an extremely un-viral article, about Hume's view on what makes artworks good. It has its flaws—including xenophobia—but is pretty amenable to updating. 7/n https://arcdigital.media/would-david-hume-give-blackkklansman-a-golden-globe-e8e8abee196f

When I taught aesthetic value to undergrads, they would agree that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" (or "to each their own taste"), but also that the sentence "I love Dune, but it's certainly not a great movie" made sense. These are seemingly mutually incompatible. 8/n

They resisted the idea that some people's opinions matter more, and rightly noted that historically, "good" artworks were just those that were preferred by people with greater social power (economic, educational, racial, gender, etc.) "Who's to say?" they'd ask. 9/n

But they also resisted the idea that saying "I love DUNE, but it's not a great movie" was incoherent—that it simply meant "I love DUNE, but I don't love DUNE." So what can that sentence mean? I think there are several different ways we can mean that. 10/n

Perhaps the most common way to mean any sentence of the form "I love artwork [X], but it isn't great" is an acknowledgement that you are out of step with elite consensus—critics, academics, what have you. (I am pretty sure elite consensus of DUNE is *not* that it's great!) 11/n

Another thing it might mean is that your opinion is out of step with those whom you think might have a more legitimately weighty opinion than you. Think of someone who knew a given artform backward and forward, and taught you to see things in it with their knowledge. 12/n

I know little about jazz, though still have reactions to the music I hear. I also cede some deference to the opinions of those who really really understand jazz (or Marvel movies, or Russian novels). 13/n

This. Another thing it might mean is that it is out of step with what the majority of people like. Think about the reaction to Martin Scorsese saying Marvel movies are not real cinema. https://twitter.com/mathonwy/status/1304771527561351168?s=20

It also might mean (as it does for me with DUNE and many many others) that there is one or more aspects of it that strongly appeal to me, but I don't have an extra admiration for the all-things-considered artistry, they way the artwork in its entirety put together. 15/n

This has a reversed version: the movie that we think was really extraordinarily done, and for which we admire the artists' skills, but are not really moved by and don't want to engage with repeatedly. (The novel version of this for me is John Steinbeck.) 16/n

Here are some common ways movies get some things right but may still fail to be great:
- They have a really appealing character, but don't really do much with the character or lack plot.
- There's a good puzzle, like a mystery or twist ending, but lack depth...

- They scratch the itch the genre should provide (funny comedy, scary horror movie) but don't have much else going on.
- The dialogue is clever, but it lacks plot or resonance with characters.
- It's visually beautiful, or has amazing soundtrack, but not otherwise engaging 18/n

"I love artwork [X] but it's not great" can also be an acknowledgement that your appreciation is purely idiosyncratic, and not one that you'd expect anyone else (or many others) to especially appreciate. Some examples of this might be... 19/n

- A movie that resonates strongly with the particulars of you and your life, evokes an event or place or era that is meaningful to you.
- A movie that stars or is made by someone you really like and who you want to see do their thing no matter if it worked...20/n

- A movie that you experienced and shared with someone in your life in a meaningful way.

(obviously, these lists are not exhaustive, and I'm using "movie" as shorthand for any artwork.)

In the case of DUNE 1984, it's not as rich as the novel and it's incoherent. It's sometimes visually arresting, sometimes ridiculous. It works really well as something that teeters wildly on the border between straightforward scifi and camp. (22/23)

Thank you for your patience and your comments and allow me to especially appreciate those who liked only this tweet in the thread. (23/23) https://twitter.com/epicciuto/status/1304761053495123968?s=20