this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2024
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"Just following orders" absolutely does excuse bad writing as long as it's not harmful. I wouldn't get mad at a writer of a thing a studio ruined just like I wouldn't get mad at a grocery store worker for rearranging the shelves for the fifth week in a row. Just because I don't like it doesn't mean doing a stupid and pointless job makes them a bad person. If the writing is racist or whatever, sure, they're complicit, but writers have to eat and it's not morally wrong to write a boring script if that's what your boss is asking you for.
There’s a difference between a bad script and bad rewrites. Ending of GoT? Bad script, rewrites don’t matter. 2016 Suicide Squad? Arguably a good script with shitty rewrites. Galaxy of Terror? No comment on the scripts but the rewrites fucked it. Justice League? Horrible script and horrible rewrites. I don’t blame the writers of Galaxy of Terror for Corman’s worm rape scene; I do excoriate Whedon for the pile of shit Snyder used to make a worse pile of shit.
You’re conflating moral standards with film standards. There are standards that people agree on that loosely dictate what we consider good and bad. They can change based on the viewer. The core of a script is what has the opportunity to be butchered and if it’s bad that’s not on the studio, that’s on the writer. Studios don’t hire someone and say “write us a piece of shit” they take something that exists and modify it (unless you’re Neil Breen in which case that’s your goal).
In your example, I can get frustrated with a grocery worker pushing all of the things to back of the shelf where I can’t reach. That is a fair criticism of their contribution to the inane reshuffling. I’m not saying they’re a bad person because they’re doing the thing they need to do to survive poorly; I’m saying they’re doing a thing poorly. It has no bearing on them as a person. It’s not morally wrong of them to make it impossible for me to get the item I need; it is a shit job though.
You seem to be giving a LOT of agency to writers for the stories they tell. Some stories are going to be something writers worked hard on wanted to write, and in those cases ya they should be blamed for the resulting flaws, but many times they are constrained by the instructions they're given.
To go back to the metaphor, did the worker decide that the stuff you need goes out of your reach or are they putting it where they were told to?
Give me concrete examples. You don’t seem to know what you’re talking about so I want to discuss something specific; the agency you’re talking about is actually there and is centered around the core of the script.
In your hypothetical where you’ve now decided everyone is just following orders, I can still say the worker did a bad job. You gonna tell me the worker is gonna get fired for not following dumb instructions? Okay. Still did a bad job, orders or not.
I do not understand why you’re so dead set on telling people critical analysis is bad. Is it morally wrong to like something more than something else? Kinda seems like that way if I can’t ever judge anything because there are constraints outside the control of the thing. I’m not going to attack a straw man here. You should expand on what we can and can’t analyze.
I am under no circumstances saying you can't criticize art or say that the writing was bad or whatever you seem to think my position is.
Writers can and do get fired for not doing the job they were hired for and rarely get to lead the creative process (and usually if they do they're like, writer/director, or a big name). All I'm trying to say is that a worker can do a good job within the bounds they're given and still have the result be terrible because the bounds were terrible.