In Defense of Popular Taste: Film Ratings Among Professionals and Lay Audiences

Wanderer, Jules J.

doi:10.1086/224932

Cited by 29 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…Simonton, 2007b, which obtained 0.91 for a sample that included really bad films). Fourth, the opinions of film critics regarding the relative merit of various films correlate positively with the views of consumers (Boor, 1992;Holbrook, 1999;Wanderer, 1970). This correspondence is especially strong for those consumers who place a high value on film as a medium of artistic expression (Boor, 1992).…”

Section: The Success Triadmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cinematic success criteria and their predictors: The art and business of the film industry

Simonton

2009

Psychology and Marketing

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The author reviewed the empirical research on the factors underlying the success of feature-length narrative films. After specifying some methodological caveats, the review examined the three main criteria by which a film's success can be evaluated: critical evaluations (both early and post-theatrical run), financial performance (including first weekend and gross), and movie awards (including dramatic, visual, technical, and music categories). To what extent do these criteria represent distinct aesthetic and economic assessments? The review then turned to the various predictors of these success criteria. How is success connected with the film's production and distribution characteristics? To what extent do the predictors converge and diverge across alternative criteria? The article then closes with a discussion of some psychological issues raised by the reviewed findings.

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Section: The Success Triadmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cinematic success criteria and their predictors: The art and business of the film industry

Simonton

2009

Psychology and Marketing

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“…Some scholars also have studied the appraisal of the tastes of movie audiences. Wanderer (1970) states that there are two clashing perspectives. The first is to involve popular taste and the second is popular culture created by professional critique.…”

Section: Research Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

DVFx, and Modernization of Technology: Audience’s Changing Taste in the 21st Century

Hashim

2019

JKMJC

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The changes from analogue to digital in the film industry occurred rapidly and triggered a change in the landscape, especially in the usage of digital visual effects (DVFx). Thus, films that use the digital visual effects have developed a demand for technology exploitation among audiences. The most powerful effect afforded by digitization is the changes in the relationship between film and audience, especially in the aspect of cinema spectacle. Previously, the use of digital visual effects served merely to fix or modify damaged or negative elements in the post-production process, but it also has contributed to transformation of the tastes of audiences in 21st century cinemas. Tastes and aesthetic judgments are manifestations of aspects of class inequality and social, cultural and reproduction ideology. To evaluate tastes especially within different systems of society is not a simple matter as there has been a change in various aspects of society due to technological advances. This judgment involves complex processes and variables. This paper explored how globalization impacts audiences' changing tastes with the juxtaposition of the digital visual effects revolution. The research used qualitative research methods, which is focus group discussions involving three groups of moviegoers from Malaysia, India and Australia. The analysis of the findings is divided into two main themes: modernization and technology. In general, the findings show that taste among movie audiences is a typical representation of the middle class society.

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“…Irrespective of genre, audiences' and professional critics' film preferences differ. Audiences favor entertaining blockbuster films that are theoretically easier to process, and critics more frequently prefer complex, artistic films (Austin, 1983;Holbrook, 1999;Simonton, 2009Simonton, , 2011Wanderer, 1970). Differences in audience and critic preferences may be explained by their locomotion versus assessment mindsets.…”

Section: Critic Versus Audience Film Preferencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Genre-typical narrative arcs in films are less appealing to lay audiences and professional film critics

Nalabandian

Ireland

2018

Behav Res

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People tend to like stimuli-ranging from human faces to text-that are prototypical, and thus easily processed. However, recent research has suggested that less typical stimuli may be preferred in creative contexts, such as fine art or music lyrics. In an archival sample of movie scripts, we tested whether genre-typicality predicted film ratings as a function of rater role (novice audience member or expert film critic). Genre-typicality was operationalized as the profile correlations between linguistic arcs (across five segments, or acts) for each script and within-genre averages. We predicted (1) that critics would prefer more disfluent (genreatypical) films and general audiences would prefer fluent (genre-typical) films, and (2) that these differences would be most pronounced for genres expected to be more entertaining (e.g., action/adventure) than challenging (e.g., tragedy). Partly consistent with our hypotheses, the results showed that critics gave higher ratings to action/adventure films with less typical positive emotion arcs. However, regardless of audience-member or professional-critic status, higher ratings were attributed to films that were more genre-atypical (or disfluent), in terms of analytic thinking, narrative action, and emotional tone, across all genres except family/kids films. Such findings support the growing literature on the appeal of disfluency in the arts and have relevance for researchers in psychology and computer science who are interested in computational linguistic approaches to attitudes, film, and literature.

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In Defense of Popular Taste: Film Ratings Among Professionals and Lay Audiences

Cited by 29 publications

References 2 publications

Cinematic success criteria and their predictors: The art and business of the film industry

Cinematic success criteria and their predictors: The art and business of the film industry

DVFx, and Modernization of Technology: Audience’s Changing Taste in the 21st Century

Genre-typical narrative arcs in films are less appealing to lay audiences and professional film critics

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