The word rigorous is often used to give non-scientific points of view a scientific (as in “rigorously controlled experiment”) veneer.

This word, when used to describe an artist’s methods, has a lot of validity. It can refer to the painstaking study and practice generally needed to develop serious technique. Also, if an artist works within the confines of a set of strict aesthetic guidelines, the results can rightly be labeled rigorous, and these rules can serve as a useful guide to the work of that artist and as an inspiration for certain others. It doesn’t follow, however, that these rules can serve as a template in the work of artists in general. What serves one practitioner well may be an absurd straightjacket for another.

Art (and by extension, art criticism) is not science. You can study it as rigorously as you like, and it’s still not science. Artists and critics may be searching for truth - they may have that in common with scientists - but when it comes time for measurable evidence that holds up to repeated experimentation, art criticism has no way of proceeding except through medieval Scholastic models, which is to say (given the absence of empirical data) by use of elaborate logical maneuvers. Certain well-stated points of view may gain general acceptance, but they are easily undercut as the next generation finds an aesthetic voice of its own with its own set of corroborating arguments.

Critics generally want rules or, at least, standards. After all, we can't just have people running out in the street blathering any damn thing they want. At present, these standards tend to promulgate the virtues of restraint. A movie should be slightly mournful, slightly redemptive, not overtly anything. It should be the equivalent of hanging out white lights at Christmas, without all that histrionic blue, red, and what have you.

But while grousing about the white-lights approach to culture, it should be kept in mind that without academics, critics, and commentators, large sections of human culture would simply evaporate. Academics in particular serve as guardians of the generous past.

The pursuit of objectivity leads to places that subjective approaches do not - and art is well served by these excursions - but ultimately the attempt to understand art objectively will only get you so far. Just when you think you have it hemmed in, it will break loose.