I was chatting with a coworker recently about film criticism. My coworker said to me that they believed a critic's job was to tell the objective truth of a film. I replied that art is inherently subjective, not objective. Thinking about it, though, there are certainly aspects of art or critique I'd say are "objective!" For instance, there is animation that moves and animation that does not move at all. There are times when a film is clearly "about" something and to misread that theme is to miss the point.
Still, I think that's a pretty limited way to look at writing about art. Criticism can be an arrow shot at the center of a target but it can also be a star emanating light in every direction. A lot of my favorite writers (whether or not I agree with them) come at questions from angles I'd never think of myself. So I'd prefer to believe in a world where criticism is subjective rather than objective, even if I have my own preferences regarding "good" or "bad" art. Most importantly: what does it matter whether art is good or bad? What is the thing itself? That hits closer to the center of things than just being "right," which is all about ego anyway. Who cares about that.
(Part of my skepticism might be that for ages, games critics (even the likes of now-comics writer Kieron Gillen) used to see game reviews as buyer's guides. But this practice, the reduction of a video game to a gadget instead of a work, has led to decades of bad behavior by entitled fans obsessed with the value of their dollar rather than what is actually in the thing they're looking at. Either way, I'm skeptical that the difference between "good" and "bad" so cleanly exists.)
