Is it a mistake to wage war against Richard Berger on two fronts simultaneously?

Richard cautiously (yet laudably!) shuffles into the world of ideas in his latest post:

Maybe "best" needs to be redefined. As currently understood for something like the Oscars it's a fairly arbitrary decision that pretty much only rewards dramatic movies that are judged to be well-acted and have some serious themes. Fairly limited, eh? How about making the Best Picture the one that brings the highest combination of profit to filmmakers and enjoyment to viewers. Have exit polls at every screening of every movie and tally the enjoyment ratings in some manner (details TBD).

First of all, Richard, on behalf of myself and Malcom Gladwell, welcome to the world of ideas!

I think the "Best Picture" case is substantially more complex than you grant (does that hidden complexity intimate a larger problem? Yes). For example, why profits instead of gross revenue? It's "Best Picture", not "Best Picture per dollar spent to make it".

Exit polls of enjoyment are problematic as well -- a scary or otherwise upsetting movie might bias watchers' immediate responses, even if they would later admit that the movie was good. Furthermore, what if the watcher just doesn't get it (this is a problem even among well-educated Jews as evinced by the friends of mine who don't like Adaptation)? Or what if the main idea depends on getting some reference, or being a certain age, or having lived through certain events?

The above two symptoms hint at the gangrene that infects Rich's entire premise: when we say "Best Picture of 2008" we are not trying to approximate "The movie released in 2008 that provided the most total pleasure to movie watchers". Proof: even if a re-release of Star Wars killed the game in terms of clitoral stimulation, we wouldn't want to give it "Best Picture" since it was made 30 years ago.

Likewise, even if a movie doesn't completely copy another movie, but rather just rips it off substantially, we wouldn't want to give it "Best Picture" either (even if no one noticed and everyone loved it).

The point is that you can't effectively crowdsource the selection of the year's "Best Picture" because the criteria aren't available (or even easily definable). There's a plausible case that experts do a better job here since they have a good intuitive understanding of what makes a "Best Picture" (though comedies tend to get the short shrift -- and what am I saying; they're all idiots; whatever.).

That said, if you could define what makes a "Best Picture" (in the same way that you can define what makes a good encyclopedia article -- Wikipedia has a tome of guidelines), I think you could also effectively crowdsource its selection.