Criticism: It Gets Personal

It is with no small degree of irony that Hollywood’s house organ recently ripped into, of all beings, a movie critic.

Variety senior reporter Brent Lang, on 27 March 2016, took to task A.O. Scott, who writes about film for the New York Times, and other critics for having the temerity to say unkind thinks about Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, the latest example of comic book characters being repurposed for the big screen. Scott’s assessment of the film in the New York Times on 23 March was none too kind, e.g., “The studio has, in the usual way, begged and bullied critics not to reveal plot points, and I wouldn’t dream of denying you the thrill of discovering just how overstuffed and preposterous a movie narrative can be.”

Neither were many others. Yet that didn’t stop the film from raking in $170 million in its first week of US release.

Variety took that bottom line and attempted to pound Scott and his colleagues into the dirt with it, not at all unlike a high school jock showering disdain upon the chess team. In “‘Batman v Superman’ Triumphs: Do Critics Matter at the Box Office?“, Lang declared the eternal invincibility of characters in capes over critics with opinions, and all but declared critics to be useless wastes upon the realm.

“The results are a devastating rebuke to the power of mainstream American critics at a time when many newspapers have already outsourced their reviews to wire services and the rise of bloggers has de-professionalized the practice of assessing a film’s attributes and demerits,” Lang immodestly proclaimed. He even speculated that the disconnect between critical opinion and box-office receipts has a political parallel: “In an era of popular discontent, when Donald Trump has amassed political capital by thumbing his nose at the status quo, the pile-on by establishment tastemakers may have even backfired.”

Of course, critical opinions and sales figures do not always go hand-in-hand, else Lucinda Williams would be a household name in more households than, say, Carrie Underwood. Critics themselves know that better than anyone. But that didn’t prevent Variety from flipping its middle finger to everyone who has ever published a negative assessment of a wildly popular piece of art. Screw you nerds taking notes in the theater while explosions are happening on the screen,, goes the subtext, the people do not need your bloviations to know what they like and they have spoken! So there! Now go home and watch your damned Fellini DVDs while we churn out more crap for the masses!

Such broadsides are old hat for critics by now. It’s not simply a matter of people disagreeing with their assessments of one thing or another; that comes with the territory of being a critic. But that very territory has been disturbed in no small measure over the past few years, as Lang kindly reminded everyone.

Newspapers, both daily and alt-weekly, once gave a good amount of space to cultural criticism. Then the internet showed up and upended print’s basic business model, forcing newspapers to carve away portions they could manage without, including most of those reviews and think pieces.

Yet the internet also became a venue for much of that work. You are currently visiting a website devoted to serious, passionate writing and exploration of cultural works (and we thank you for that). You’re probably aware there are many others (another reason why we thank you for coming here). Other writers have gone their own route, blogging and tweeting their thoughts of the day. Notably, many of these critics are voices that were never much present in the newspapers — namely, women, LBGTQ and people of color.

Nowadays, you can’t go too far online without finding some form of criticism or another, from footnoted essay to Facebook post. If you’re so inclined, you won’t have to go too long without encountering some kvetching about the sorry state of critical affairs, from advocacy groups tracking the demographics of critics’ bylines in mainstream publications to critics having an existential moment about their work. Such hand-wringing is not only a subset of the hand-wringing about the state of journalism itself, but also a cri de coeur, a bold assertion that Critics’ Lives Matter.

None other than Scott himself stepped into the fray with Better Living through Criticism, an extended musing on his chosen craft. Curiously, Scott more or less punts on the business side of the “whither criticism?” issue, and chooses instead to ponder the very nature of criticism itself. If you were expecting him to rise up on behalf of downtrodden criticism practitioners and the return of stand-alone book sections in Sunday papers, this isn’t that rant. If anything, this is a thoughtfully considered and composed argument in favor of the critical instinct itself, and how it is actually central to our understanding and appreciation of art.

Scott uses two different devices to construct his argument. His leisurely, wide-ranging chapters about criticism as an impulse, a practice and an art form are set against Q&A interludes with himself, which get to the heart of his developments and motivations as a writer. Those sections give some needed context (and breathing room) to his unraveling of his main themes, so much so that it’s tempting to read them more closely than the chapters.

It’s one thing to accompany Scott on a critical visit to the Louvre, or to trace his history of criticism writing (a winding and non-chronological path scooping up George Orwell, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and a cast of writers far less renown). It’s a different thing to hear Scott think out loud about what he does and why he does it. His chapters take a long time to get to their point, as Scott explores how critics and non-critics alike approach the work of considering the art they’re consuming. But it’s the dialogues that get to the heart of the matter quicker and more concisely, using Scott himself as Exhibit A.

Scott quotes from Teju Cole’s novel, Open City in identifying the one thing that ties together both of the book’s devices: the need and search for transcendence, to have an experience with a work of art that opens up new ways of experiencing the world. That’s why we read books and listen to music and watch films, and that’s part of why Scott found himself drawn to being a critic, of all the types of writing one could do.

That sense of transcendence runs through Scott’s cultural ecumenism (Better Living Through Criticism references everything from the Mona Lisa to Django Unchained), and speaks to what he believes criticism ought to aim for. He advocates for criticism that holds fast to some basic virtues and verities about art, even if they result in an opinion that history will deride (the chapter “How to Be Wrong”). The point is the destination, not the journey: “Time blunts the edges of argument and banks the fires of opposition. What survives, if we’re lucky, is beauty and truth.”

Scott concludes Better Living Through Criticism with a defense of criticism straight outta, of all places, Hollywood. He cites Brad Bird’s film Ratatouille as “ the symbiosis between artist and critic”, and quotes from his New York Times review: “exuberantly democratic and unabashedly elitist, defending good taste and aesthetic accomplishment not as snobbish entitlements but as universal ideals.”

In exploring the film’s relationship between Remy the aspiring chef and Anton Ego the restaurant critic, Scott asserts that artists are best served not by mindless consumers, but by informed audiences, or at least audiences willing to invest a little bit of thoughtful appreciation into the art they’re consuming. Critics, when acting in the highest spirit of the craft, can illuminate the best (and worst) of their subject, for the benefit of all the rest of us, trying to sort out how to spend an hour or two amidst the never-ending stream of content.

Had any person connected with that Variety rant actually read Scott’s book first, which I absolutely doubt, perhaps they would have dialed it down a bit. They would have seen that in fact, Scott is no stranger to the Art v Commerce debate. He begins Better Living Through Criticism by recalling the 2012 hissyfit Samuel L. Jackson tweeted after Scott was insufficiently awestruck and revenant in his assessment of The Avengers, a previous comic-book movie. Jackson’s dismissal of Scott’s professional worth and the supporting tweets that followed were quite similar to Variety’s stance four years hence, in suggesting that Scott was irrelevant, unqualified to appreciate the utter majesty of The Avengers, and basically a party-pooper.

Furthering the irony of it all, Scott would be the first to agree with some of Variety’s premise. He notes that publicity is part-and-parcel of the business of art and “there’s nothing wrong, in principle, with soliciting the attention of the public, with seeking out an audience for whatever it is you’re selling.” But given the glut of whatever it is they’re selling that we face these days, Scott then re-frames the question:

How are you supposed to choose, in the face of this abundance? What will guide your choices? There really only two options: marketers, whose job is to sell — that is, to spin, to hype, to lie — and critics, whose job is to tell the truth.

Further, in wrapping up his recount of Jackson’s flame throwing, Scott asserts that in giving some thoughtful consideration of what’s on the screen (as opposed to, say, the fictional movie critic Joe Bob Briggs’ “blowed up real good!” seals of approval), he writes:

A critic will be no different from anyone else who stops to think about the experience of watching The Avengers (or reading a novel or beholding a painting or listening to a piece of music). Because that thinking is where criticism begins. We’re all guilty of it. Or at least we should be.

In other words, everyone’s a critic. Take that, Variety.