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| This might or might not be the greatest movie of all time. That's up to you to decide. |
The New York Times recently released its list of the 100 greatest television shows of the 21st century. In case you haven't read it yet, here's a spoiler: it's pointless, meaningless horse manure. Judging by my social media feed the last couple of days, people seem to have forgotten that. There is a widespread delusion that The New York Times is somehow "in charge" of which shows are important or worth watching.
Reality check: It isn't. You are. You, the person reading this article now, get to decide which are the greatest TV shows of this century. The ones you watch, the ones you like, the ones that mean something to you—those are the greatest. Never ever lose sight of that. The New York Times doesn't know diddly. They can't. It's unknowable. You can only know which shows you think are the greatest; you don't get to decide for anyone else.
There's a British film magazine called Sight and Sound published by the BFI since 1952. Every ten years, they release a list of the greatest films of all time. In the most recent one from 2022, the winner was Chantal Akerman's deliberately slow and methodical art film Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975). Many disagreed with this choice, and they expressed their anger in various articles and videos. Bizarrely, their wrath was largely aimed at Akerman's film, as if the movie had arrogantly elected itself the greatest of all time. Instead, the haters should have been angry with a stupid system that dupes us into thinking that the Sight and Sound poll is somehow meaningful. It's not. It's just the fancy version of an internet listicle.
The human compulsion to create and consume art—books, paintings, songs, plays, whatever—is still somewhat mysterious. I mean, sure, there's the understandable desire to "express ourselves" or "communicate" or "externalize the internal," but there's no practical reason for us to take it as far as we do. If you're feeling alienated, for instance, surely there are more efficient and direct ways of dealing with that than to compose an opera about alienation. Or even attend an opera about alienation. But still we create. Still we consume. It's one of the best things about us, honestly. If there's a case to be made for not consigning the human race to a fiery furnace for all eternity, Art should be Exhibit A.
On the other hand, we humans are practical creatures, so we're always a little frustrated by the impracticality and impreciseness of art. We insist there must be rules to it. Some kind of mathematical certainty we can point to and say, "See?" So we make lists like the Sight and Sound one and the New York Times one. We assign grades and ranks and stars and scores to artistic works. We give awards to certain creators and deny awards to others. We pretend like reviewing movies and music is like doing math problems, and if someone came to a different conclusion than we did, that person must have added up the figures incorrectly. They didn't carry the two. But it doesn't work like that and never will.
As I see it, there is one good thing that can come from awards and lists. These things can cause people to seek out works that they might otherwise have ignored. If you watch a movie because it won an Oscar, and that movie has an emotional or intellectual effect on you, then the Oscars have done their job. Otherwise, it's just some dumb trophy.
