The Problem With Ratings

Photo by Tallulah Jane

By Eli Nava

Rolling Stone reviews, Pitchfork ratings, Letterboxd stars—a plethora of numbers, calculated one-liners, and algorithmic tidbits all made digestible to an audience to shy away or toward a piece of art. Rather than make our own conclusions about a piece of art, we turn toward critics, consumers, and influencers to feed us knowledge about something we haven’t spent time with. Perhaps this has something to do with our shortened attention spans or consumption of bite-sized media, after all, we have grown used to scrolling past anything and everything in the span of a few minutes. Accessibility to art is at an all time high, and yet, it feels as if the lifespan of it is at an all time low. 

Now, ratings and reviews are nothing new—think of the last product you bought and how you probably read the reviews before giving it a chance. The five-star rating system has existed since 1958 when Mobil introduced a project that funded anonymous reviewers to give their opinions on restaurants, hotels, and travel spots. This has led us down the rabbit hole of numerical values being attached to products and services meant to drive sales. While it’s unlikely that Ryan Schreiber—founder of Pitchfork in 1996—could have predicted the commercial success of the magazine and the magnitude of staff reviews, in an evolving society that craved to be up to taste, it certainly did some damage. What originally existed as a means of expressing (and at times, hyperbolizing) an opinion, became the establishment. Companies promote what they believe audiences want. Trend cycles follow the never ending cycle of promoting the “next big thing,” and fail to allow what is already existing to exist. The critic becomes a tool within this system, and everyone's a critic more so now than ever. 

I’m not immune to the propaganda.

There was a time when after every movie I watched, I sat with myself (very much sat in the AMC recliner scrolling through witty, sarcastic online quips) and asked, “how many stars should I give this?” It’s a question I asked friends before allowing myself to reflect on my own thoughts regarding a piece of art. There was a time when I was tasked with reviewing an album and it’s something I never felt comfortable or honest doing. It felt like a performance. Struggling, I asked: Who am I to judge someone else’s art? Why not just listen to the thing and let that be the answer? I found that my words felt dry. Rinse, repeat. 3 stars, 4 stars, 5 stars (God forbid anything be a 1 or 2). And I found that sitting with something and letting it simmer was more pleasurable than trying to capture it numerically and dishonestly—even if I didn’t like it. Figuring out the reasons why I liked something or didn’t like something established my own subjectivity. It helped shape my taste. And that taste is no one else’s and why would anyone want it to be? This is how my consumption of art became more of a conversation than a review.   

It’s a cultural problem—our obsession with numbers is a representation of the Age of the Internet. We grew up looking for validation from critics, media publications, forum boards, etc. We grew up witnessing thousands of trend cycles, rinsing and repeating, marketed and sold to us through rose-colored lenses. What happens when we take a step back and listen to ourselves before anyone else? Valerie Wee says this in “Audiences and the Media in the Digital Era”: “Film, television, streaming video, live online events, social media posts- all appear to be merging into a singular entertainment experience that is increasingly available anywhere and at any time. The promise of such unlimited access to multiple forms of media entertainment can obstruct the distance and objectivity crucial for any form of critical perspective and ideological interrogation.” This unlimited access, industry-driven, algorithm fatigue has drained us all. I know it has drained artists, and steered them away from publicly explaining themselves or their art. What happens, when a magazine shape shifts into something more than review columns and ratings?  Forme, as it begins, is at its forefront about one thing: passion before anything else. 

Here’s the bottomline: ratings and reviews aren’t sustainable for art. If you don’t care for something, ask yourself why you don’t. Form your own taste removed from a numerical value. Don’t consume art, let it consume you. Listen to the album in full, perhaps you’ll find a song that you like, or you won’t ever know if you missed out on something to love.

If you care about something, do something about it. Sit with it. Write about it. Talk about it. 

This is who we are at Forme—art for the sake of art. Art for the sake of love.