This started as thoughts on criticism, grew malignantly into a hyperbolic exclamation about the death of rebellion, and then deflated. Now it’s just some thoughts (and maybe prescriptions, because I can’t write without telling people what to do, apparently) regarding GRTM’s critical approach, if there could really be a consensus, or an “us”, or if there’s really any sort of unity at all. I feel like there is, but this was started as a conglomeration of some blogs rather than one publication. It’s less like a magazine and more like a message board, and I don’t want to ascribe one voice or approach when there is a multitude. We’ll see how this turns out in the comments.
Very (very) broadly, there are two potential critical approaches. One is educated, authoritative, third-person, journalistic, and objective. There are standards that are appealed to, comparisons made, and mathematical grades assigned. A canon is formed and defended through the accumulation of these sorts of pieces. This, I feel, is the approach of most contemporary critical institutions. Pitchfork, Spin, Roger Ebert, The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, and so on. Correct me if I’m wrong, but journalistic standards require that all evidence that an actual person wrote a review should be excised. The argument and its resultant grade should be floating in the ether, for the reader to be led by or to argue against.
The other approach is personal, subjective, emotional, contextual, and social. This has less to do with the inherent value of the work (it’s either assumed to exist or the question is ignored entirely) and more to do with its social impact, the impact it had on the critic personally, the context it emerged from, or any combination thereof. This is less common, but writers like Chuck Klosterman have championed something like it. This perspective rejects the idea of a closely-guarded canon, where this is in and that is out, and instead upholds the value of the individual and acknowledges the fact that perspective, context, and emotional experience have an impact on what a critic might come away from a work with. How often have you come away from a movie disgusted, only to find out that many of those whose opinions you respect disagree, find yourself reflecting on where you were when you saw it, and then deciding that further viewings might engender a more positive response?
Both are deficient. On the one hand, the Objective Review has been the whipping boy of artists and members of the disgruntled public for as long as critics have been around. How could the critic character from Ratatouille have existed without it? The critic is the authority on the subject, whose taste is as precise as the caliber of a bullet. That authority seems to issue from a mixture of education and experience. This authority gets them jobs at papers and blogs and websites, to be read by and to guide the hapless public. But this authority has gone awry so many times in the history of art that it seems like a dubious claim, at best. Too many artists to count have been vindicated long after their death by an audience who finally caught up. There’s sometimes an implicit unwillingness to recognize personal bias, or worse, to treat it as a universal standard. Too often with this kind of criticism there comes a recognition and love for the power that particular critical institution wields over culture. Some readers accept their grades and opinions in lieu of their own, and the cycle perpetuates itself. Chuck Klosterman (I obviously like him) compared press coverage of the death of a member of the Ramones (and for the sake of this argument it really could be any of the three that have died since they disbanded) and the lead singer of Quiet Riot, who died in ’07. The press went nuts over the death of a Ramone, publishing lengthy discussions on the influence of the Ramones on pop music. Few, if any, mentioned Kevin DuBrow’s death. To paraphrase Klosterman (since I don’t have it in front of me), why would this band that critics have deemed “important” get more coverage than a member of a band that provided a beloved soundtrack to millions of lives? There’s a great interview on the A.V. Club with Charlie Kaufman, shortly after Synedoche, New York came out. On critics, he said “I don’t like when critics review from up on high, which I think mostly they do. They present themselves as an objective authority. I really like when critics reveal their subjectivity and their humanity. …I do think there’s a dishonesty in not acknowledging that you’re a person with an opinion. I think it’s almost like a power grab.”
On the other hand, rejecting value judgments altogether is roundaboutly negating the whole reason we involve ourselves in this business at all. Both the baby and the bathwater are gone in order to avoid the violence that the Critical Institution has done to culture. The baby that goes out the window is a sense (not much more, sometimes) that whatever piece is under scrutiny is somehow not just good from your perspective, but good from many, potentially all perspectives. There is a ghostly thread in it that seems to whisper of not only a real, arguable quality that recommends it above other examples in its medium but that hints at a deeper element of experience and existence that transcends you, the artist, and the work. (Maybe you wouldn’t go that far; maybe you’re content to say that you and the author or the work or humanity as a whole have connected on a nearly subconscious level, or have touched a part of common human experience. Personally I think that the best art connects to truths inherent in the universe that stretch all the way to the divine. Um, I’m not really here to argue that point, though. I’m getting to the real point, I promise.) Even if there aren’t universal qualities inherent in the best art, there are at least formal similarities that can be argued and proven. Put another way (and ignoring that this whole essay is distinctly un-punk rock), it seems wrong somehow to give unequal attention to the death of the Quiet Riot member over a member of the Ramones simply because of their critical acclaim when QR did in fact have an impact on many people’s lives. But it’s also a distinctly arguable point that the Ramones had an impact on music that came after (QR most certainly did not start the biggest musical revolution since rock ‘n’ roll), and had some quality that separated them artistically from QR, validating them for critical attention.
POINT: An effective and ethical criticism should not only appeal to objective or universal qualities but also acknowledge the critics personal bias. A love of power should be shunned, but that does not negate the pursuit of those ephemeral, unspeakable, emphatically real qualities that makes great art great.
I don’t think this is just freshman hair-splitting. If the enterprise of art is as important as the amount of time we spend on it seems to suggest, our discussion of it and the ramifications thereof should reflect that importance. Sometimes it seems that, because we believe that creation is so important, the rabid attacks on what we perceive as “bad art” become the major goal of criticism. We have to warn the public what exactly they’re getting themselves into! Those artists should be ridiculed out of the hope of touching a pen/guitar/keyboard ever again! But why? There’s so much good being produced at any one point that it is baffling that any critic with a measure of freedom afforded by their employers should ever waste a single drop of ink disparaging something bad. Even more so when it comes to a time where any coverage is good coverage, bad press travels ten times faster than good, and we’re criticizing stuff that most people wouldn’t have heard of anyway. This is why I resisted writing about webcomics I didn’t like in my earlier piece; why waste time shitting on some struggling person’s work? Why not simply elevate the best? The corollary being that not talking about something strips it of its power. We here at GRTM have no reason to talk about whatever throwaway kids’ movie is released this week. Furthermore, big-budget bad art will be released and consumed, regardless of the hundred-thousand words that red-faced critics barf out into the world, so why waste time? We should barely be able to contain ourselves at all the incredible work produced by incredible people, but instead we’re (I’m) bogged down by cynicism and bitterness.
Maybe this is a pointless effort. People love art quantified, compared, and lambasted too much to ever see it stop. I feel like I could fill a book with this crap, but I’ll stop here. Where does the rest of GRTM stand when it comes to their own critiques and discussions?
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Stephen Hull is roughly a quarter-century old and writing in places like Canceled Forever, Some Experience, his notebook, bathroom walls, etc. He lives around Chicago.
We’ve talked about this quite a bit at our Thursday Caribous so you already know a lot of my thoughts.
Like you mentioned in your post, I often wonder why I care so much what critics say about a given film or album given that art history has proven them wrong time and again.
With that said, the critics I enjoy are the ones that add constructive thought to the discussion no matter what their opinion. I’ve always liked Roger Ebert. So many times I’ve disagreed with him (Blue Velvet and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas are two examples) but I love reading his reviews. Even if history proves him wrong, he’s still offered something worth talking about. And I think he does come across as someone who recognizes he’s only one opinion and not the single authority on film. I also thinks it helps that his love for the craft of film itself is so apparent.
With all that said, I reserve the right to like some things “just because”. Which raises another question. Should I be ready to defend ever single piece of art I like?
Speaking of Ebert, he wrote a really interesting blog post recently about criticism and the myth of the perfect film. I really think it is relevant to this whole discussion. You can read it here. http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2010/07/the_myth_of_a_perfect_film.html
He talks about the “usefulness” of a review and uses some current Inception reviews as examples. A good review describes the film and deals with it. A bad review “dismisses the film with preemptive contempt for anyone caught enjoying it.”
Thanks for posting this Stephen. I really hope that as a contribution team we can maintain what we’ve started. I think your POINT in this post is a great foundation.
At some point, I had written that I respect Ebert more than any other critic I’ve ever read, living or dead. I guess it got chucked out with some other scraps. Let me clarify that. I didn’t mean to dismiss him in the same group as Pitchfork and Rolling Stone.
I was just having a conversation witha friend of mine about how I love Lady Gaga. I don’t particularly like her music (even if her productions is freaking great), but she seems to be one of very few artists anymore in the mass-marketed pop world that is being truly creative with her presentation, that is starting a new movement and revitalizing old ones, and most importantly that is still selling out arenas and keeping them open until the recession passes (if it ever does). She is one of few beating hearts keeping the mass-music scene alive, which I see as a good thing in a lot of ways.
I thought that was pertinent, somehow.
But here’s my thinking:
It seems that so far we have mostly written about things that we like (with the exception, perhaps, of my self-loathing hipster essay). I’m not sure wether that’s a good thing or not, but it seems to keep us out of the hot water of a power struggle or putting on heirs.
But I think when we get down to it and get our hands dirty writing about things we don’t like, or things that we’re not entirely certain of, it honesty that is going to make the difference. Honesty with our readers, honesty with the material being rated, and honesty with ourselves. I completely agree that the more human we can be about our reviews the better – but the key is to act like educated humans. Humans with experience of that certain “canon” you refer to and not a mindless and trite acceptance of it as being brilliant because that is what has been said, but a personal connection to the works of art that are considered great and an awareness of the specific elements of them that we connect to that support our view of them as such.
Agreed. Nate pointed out the fact that in the best reviews, there’s an educational and welcoming bent. The writer knows their stuff, and their enthusiasm comes out in the prose. The reader comes away with not only an interesting perspective on a given work, but a broader understanding of its context and predecessors, as well
Stephen,
I’ve read this post probably ten times now. I really appreciate everything you’ve said. I don’t write anything in the realm of criticism, so I don’t know that I can add much to the discussion–except to say that, as a reader of lots of criticism, I agree that the best criticism educates me about both the art form and the writer.
I completely agree with your post, except for the points that I don’t.
All kidding aside, I agree that it is much more important for criticism to laud deserving works than to pan that which is not deserving. However, it is not only important to examine what makes a movie bad (as opposed to what makes a movie good), but reviews of bad movies are often the most entertaining I’ve ever read. The universally-loved Ebert has no less than two books full of his bad reviews (I Hated, Hated, Hated this Movie and Your Movie Sucks) both of which I love. I myself am debating writing a few reviews that won’t necessarily be glowing. I think these posts are important, and yes, artists who put their work out there are making themselves vulnerable, and it’s our job to foster and encourage people to keep putting things out and taking risks, but it’s also our job to tell them when it doesn’t work, when their art is, at least to us, bad. I think if we only write about what makes us happy and what we love, this will become a boring site, and we’ll lose credibility, because it will seem like we love everything.
Just my two cents.
Just as a side note, there was an awesome piece in the Trib today about criticism. (I hope we can do HTML markup in comments, otherwise I’m going to look like a scrub.) I loved this: “You can smell the caution and paranoia in too many reviews weighed down by generalities and a stenographer’s devotion to ‘objectivity,’ which isn’t what this endeavor is about at all. It’s about informed, vividly argued subjectivity.”
Beth — I’m really glad you liked it. There’s no point to my writing unless people get something out of it. It means a lot that you did.
Evan — I was waiting for those exact (and welcome!) objections. Kind of afraid of them, actually, because I’m not sure how to address them. I’ve read I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie and enjoyed it. I once wrote a rabid and hateful review of Juno. (God I hate that fucking movie.) It’s true, a good panning is a hell of a read from the right critic.
It could become boring to just rave about stuff we like. But does credibility only come from negative reviews? It definitely does show our ability to judge, to argue a point, to defend what we believe to be the best qualities art should have by holding everything to a standard. Still, I feel like what I outlined is a challenge, to be sure, but a worthwhile one. This sprouted from my thoughts on our culture of watchers and judges, cynics and and the ironically detached. I feel like we as appreciators are too willing to hate something and not willing to engage in something with sincerity; a well-written, honest, sincere positive review is hard to overrate, I think.
It really depends on the medium and the context of the critic, too. A professional movie critic has to see everything, and will by necessity give out bad reviews. Theater and opera reviews in big cities will also have to write negative stuff, because there’s a finite number of shows going on at any given time. But pop music specifically: it’s impossible to review everything, and it seems… well, pointless to take some small-time album by a small-time musician and pan it.
I sidestepped the question of why we criticize to attend to the approach, but the two concepts are so linked that the absence of “why” now seems like a deficiency. Maybe that’ll be Round 2.
I’m meandering. I guess the happy medium I’m willing to personally adopt is this: I should write informed, gracious, and incisive reviews, and pan only when it seems important. I’m not necessarily talking about sparing people’s feelings; there IS a question of the human being on the other side of the work, but more importantly, I think it’s about checking our (my) own tendency to fall in love with the gleeful, adolescent power a negative review can grant. Not all negative reviews are like that, and I’m definitely not saying yours will be.
Thanks for the interaction. I’m looking forward to reading your reviews.