Lists

I like lists. They're very fun. You can makes lists, you can argue about lists, you can compare lists, you can do lots of stuff with them. I bring this up because Harry Knowles, Hollywood's self-titled stepchild, has put up an article pretty much denouncing the entire concept of lists.

Now first, a few works about Knowles. Harry is probably the best barometer I know of for judging if I want to see a movie or not. He likes a movie, because of these reasons, and I decide to see it. He hates a movie for these reasons, and I decide not to see it. However, he could claim that this movie is the best movie of all time, but when he says he likes for these reasons, I decide not to see it. Then again, he could not really care for a movie, but because he doesn't for theses reasons, I'll buy a ticket the first chance I get. I've found it hardly ever fails.

Anyway, I like lists for the exact same reason he doesn't. He says that giving top ten lists isn't even specific enough, are they your favorite movies, the most significant movies, or the ten best movies. But that's the great part about them: there's no right list. No one's list is correct. They're all wrong. You can argue all you want, you're never going to come up with the right list. And that's what's fun about it. You can look at Sight and Sound's list of the best actors, directors, and movies and say "Well what about Charlie Chaplin? He was one of the original faces of movies." You can look at look at VH1's Top 100 albums and say "They put 'Songs in the Key of Life' above 'Pet Sounds?.'" You could look at EGM's top 100 games of all time and say "There's only one SNK fighter and it's not  'King of Fighters '98'?"

You see, it's not that lists are supposed to be definitive, they're supposed to encourage discussion. True, some people take things very seriously, and get defensive, but people do that about everything. It's a lot more fun to ague if "The Bicycle Thief" should rank higher than "Seven Samurai" than if both were good movies. People have always defended their opinions, what better way to express them than to stack them all up in numerical value? It may be slightly cold to assign numbers to things, but once again, these aren't be-all end-all. They're comparative. Say you have your favorite movies written down and you compare them with your friends.

"Wait here," says your friend, "You put 'All Quiet on the Western Front' in front of 'The Godfather.'"
"Yes," you say, "I thought it had a greater impact on future movies than 'The Godfather' did."
"But this is about the best movies, not the most influential ones."

And so on. This is why we share opinions, to defend, express, stack up against and readjust. I may be presenting a perfect world scenario, where people discuss instead of fight, but that's only to show what lists can be. In any case, I stand by my view on lists, unless any of you would like to tell me otherwise.