On Calling Things "Overrated"

A certain sort of stupid person gets mad when anyone refers to a thing as "overrated" or "underrated." They instantly jump down the throat of the person who originally used the word, and while the precise wording of their typically ungrammatical (and, when online, mispelled) attack can vary wildly, invariably the words are to the effect of "How dare you criticize other people's opinions?"

They are, of course, totally oblivious to the fact that criticizing another person's opinion is precisely what they are doing when, in their bullying way, they take someone to task for saying something is overrated. (It was not without ample reason that I said they are stupid.)

Still, the inconsistency in itself does not settle the issue of whether one can reasonably argue that something is overrated, or underrated.

I think one can actually argue that something is overrated or underrated, and in a reasonably rigorous way, too, rather than simply expressing a vague reaction. Whenever we have a standard to which we can point for measuring the value of something, and are able to generalize meaningfully about the common run of opinion about it, we can say whether, compared with other things of the same kind, people are praising it or dispraising it excessively. This is, obviously, easier with some things than others--those things which we can evaluate according to a set of quantifiable metrics, for example, like the performance and price of some piece of technology. It is harder when we are talking about the sort of things often the subject of such remark, like movies, lending themselves less well to precise discussion. But to say it is more difficult is not to say it is impossible, or even very hard. These days it is actually quite easy to generalize about the opinion widely held of a film by way of reviews and review aggregators (Rotten Tomatoes, IMDB scores), and its presence on critics' top ten lists and ten worst lists, and the awards for which it has or has not been nominated. And we can compare the writing and acting and other technical aspects of film, discuss even the more subjective experience of watching a film, in such a way as to allow for meaningful comparisons.

Moreover, I think it plausible that being overrated is not at all uncommon. Hype is, by definition, extravagant, and there is plenty of it about. Trying to sell something in today's saturated, deafeningly noisy market, where everything has to be built up into a life-changing event, all but forces publicists to exaggerate wildly, movies most certainly included. And for their own reasons critics tend to hyperbole--especially when under some pressure to talk up, or help bury, a new release, which is hardly a rare thing. ("What passes for film criticism is so prostituted in the US at this point that hardly anyone can state the obvious" one critic quipped about a major blockbuster of a few summers ago. Moreover, while people may differ over the details, I cannot imagine any reasonable person disagreeing with the statement.) And while I have encountered a good many amateur critics whose analytical skills run rings around the A.O. Scotts of the world (admittedly, not so tough a thing to do), the public as a whole is an unsophisticated consumer, credulous and with little memory to save it from mindlessly repeating what it is told by people posing as authority figures. Indeed, I find myself inclining to the view that these days most of what comes out, if getting much more or much less than two stars out of four--if it has the critics all lining up to sing its praises or bash it brutally, if it's up for an Oscar or being reviled as the worst of the year--is likely to be overrated or underrated, and often is very much so.