I've been questioning myself on this very subject for a long time. Even when I was a young post-teenager studying litterature, the relevance of critics was a big dissertation point in itself. There's a famous book by Proust called "Contre Sainte-Beuve" (against Sainte-Beuve, who was a very influential litterary critic in the 19th century). The whole point was "should an author be judged solely on his work or should his life and personality also be taken into account?"
The point of Sainte-Beuve was that the man could not be separated from the artist, whereas Proust said this was stupid. He also attacked Sainte-Beuve with a very ancient and relevant argument: should people who do not create have the right to judge (often harshly) those who do?
We still have the same questions today, althought it changed a bit IMO. Critics of the past (19th century up to Les cahiers du cinema era, as you said) were real intellectuals. Most of them had a classical education, could read greek and latin and were a sum of knowledge. Their opinion was grounded in something bigger than them; bigger than their prejudices and personnal opinions. I've met some of today's critics and let's just say that ain't it. People can respect and give credit to someone they look up too. Hell, even artists can. But to someone who you see as equal or even inferior to you? Not the same. I've known a litteray critic who never read Dumas (considered too popular), never read Roland Barthes (reminder: he was a critic), and only read one book from Balzac. But he'd read Françoise Sagan and all the postmodernists, so he got the job.
The first issue lies there; on top of an ever-falling cultural level, most of the critics have become their own social caste. They're not readers and men of the word who almost came to it by accident, they're products of a system, and they're hired because they navigate in the right waters and have the appropriate resume. Their opinions are just that: personnal opinions, based on what their caste says is good or bad.
And the second issue is of course the Internet; if everyone can be a critic, than no one is. People don't need critics anymore because in a mass market they became irrelevant. I want to watch this netflix movie because 5000 people gave it a 5 star review, not because some intellectual in his ivory tower tells me to. And we know how delicate the taste of the common man is. Only 20 years ago, many movies could never had been made, because the producers knew the critics would rip it off before it even reached the theaters. So now, they just pay the critics to say something nice. Which in itself is a third issue.
But Internet also allowed for a new generation of critics, more in tune with the OGs: people who are passionate about a subject and can talk directly to us without the approval of the gates guardians. The only issue, as John Hellion said in his comment, is that the information overload makes it difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff... forcing us to sharpen our discernment and judge ruthlessly what comes in our brain. Dare I say, to become our own critics?
Great one, Tom. It's an important topic. I've been thinking about 'criticism as creative act' and a form of art itself. And I think it doesn't matter if you have "a professional critic education", it should be more punky and supportive. I mean people should be open to constructive criticism as well as ready to give it. It benefits everyone in a long run. And I think it doesn't necessarily mean saying "how bad things are" or "why this is so good", it just signaling, telling each other what is worth paying attention to.
The internet allows that, especially the changes we are seeing now - more independent artists and (probably) more independent critics (I think curators are also critics in some way). Because the amount of information grows substantially it gets hard to navigate it so we need, every one of us, signal to each other as human beings what we like and what is worth our precious attention more than other things.
One thing I do not completely agree with is algorithms. The thing is it's more complex than showing "similar items" to "similar users". It's a pretty interesting field in terms of the underlying mathematics and stuff. E.g. they calculate latent variables for products / users - hidden features defined by abstract numbers, some complex matrix multiplication and etc. It's a developing field (RecSys) and I believe it has a brighter future than we tend to think now.
I agree that recommender systems (algos) in their current state are mostly garbage and just optimized to suck money from our wallets or hold our attention, but that could change, I really want to believe in that, although maybe they would never work well for recommending true Art.
It is also possible to start writing film criticism, earn nothing at the beginning, and end up being the lead film critic for the Chicago Tribune. I cannot tell you how Mike Wilmington made that transition, but I can tell you the story of his beginning as a critic. When I met him at a dive called The Plaza in Madison, Wisconsin, he was writing film reviews for the Madison Press Connection, a radical newspaper created by striking employees of the city’s two mainstream papers. His compensation consisted of two free passes to the Majestic Theater in exchange for writing a review. I was the fortunate beneficiary of the second pass. After the film, we would go to The Plaza, order a pitcher of beer, and talk about the film. Then bleary-eyed, he would stagger home to write the review, which I would edit the next day (it was the beginning of my editing career). His reviews were eccentric, at times poetic, but perfect for a paper that was challenging the status quo.
Hi, Thomas. You probably know this already, but it's almost impossible to make even a poverty-level living writing film criticism. Very few people are willing to pay for criticism, and those that are are much more likely to be interested in Marvel and Disney flicks and other big blockbusters than small indies. Whatever money there is in criticism is in the franchise stuff.
I completely agree with what you're saying here about critics seeking out the new and championing the little films. I wish it were more realistically possible to make that work. I review all sorts of films -- the Marvels and the Disneys as well as indies and non-English-language films -- and I've been doing this online for 24 years. (I was one of the first purely online critics, and my site, FlickFilosopher.com, is one of the few from the early days of the Net still going.) The reviews of big films get big traffic, sometimes, but the reviews of little films get almost none, all the time. This is not sustainable.
I stick with it because I love it, but I'm exhausted from the financial stress of it.
Lots of hidden concepts at this one. Good morning!
Great article Tom!
I've been questioning myself on this very subject for a long time. Even when I was a young post-teenager studying litterature, the relevance of critics was a big dissertation point in itself. There's a famous book by Proust called "Contre Sainte-Beuve" (against Sainte-Beuve, who was a very influential litterary critic in the 19th century). The whole point was "should an author be judged solely on his work or should his life and personality also be taken into account?"
The point of Sainte-Beuve was that the man could not be separated from the artist, whereas Proust said this was stupid. He also attacked Sainte-Beuve with a very ancient and relevant argument: should people who do not create have the right to judge (often harshly) those who do?
We still have the same questions today, althought it changed a bit IMO. Critics of the past (19th century up to Les cahiers du cinema era, as you said) were real intellectuals. Most of them had a classical education, could read greek and latin and were a sum of knowledge. Their opinion was grounded in something bigger than them; bigger than their prejudices and personnal opinions. I've met some of today's critics and let's just say that ain't it. People can respect and give credit to someone they look up too. Hell, even artists can. But to someone who you see as equal or even inferior to you? Not the same. I've known a litteray critic who never read Dumas (considered too popular), never read Roland Barthes (reminder: he was a critic), and only read one book from Balzac. But he'd read Françoise Sagan and all the postmodernists, so he got the job.
The first issue lies there; on top of an ever-falling cultural level, most of the critics have become their own social caste. They're not readers and men of the word who almost came to it by accident, they're products of a system, and they're hired because they navigate in the right waters and have the appropriate resume. Their opinions are just that: personnal opinions, based on what their caste says is good or bad.
And the second issue is of course the Internet; if everyone can be a critic, than no one is. People don't need critics anymore because in a mass market they became irrelevant. I want to watch this netflix movie because 5000 people gave it a 5 star review, not because some intellectual in his ivory tower tells me to. And we know how delicate the taste of the common man is. Only 20 years ago, many movies could never had been made, because the producers knew the critics would rip it off before it even reached the theaters. So now, they just pay the critics to say something nice. Which in itself is a third issue.
But Internet also allowed for a new generation of critics, more in tune with the OGs: people who are passionate about a subject and can talk directly to us without the approval of the gates guardians. The only issue, as John Hellion said in his comment, is that the information overload makes it difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff... forcing us to sharpen our discernment and judge ruthlessly what comes in our brain. Dare I say, to become our own critics?
Great one, Tom. It's an important topic. I've been thinking about 'criticism as creative act' and a form of art itself. And I think it doesn't matter if you have "a professional critic education", it should be more punky and supportive. I mean people should be open to constructive criticism as well as ready to give it. It benefits everyone in a long run. And I think it doesn't necessarily mean saying "how bad things are" or "why this is so good", it just signaling, telling each other what is worth paying attention to.
The internet allows that, especially the changes we are seeing now - more independent artists and (probably) more independent critics (I think curators are also critics in some way). Because the amount of information grows substantially it gets hard to navigate it so we need, every one of us, signal to each other as human beings what we like and what is worth our precious attention more than other things.
One thing I do not completely agree with is algorithms. The thing is it's more complex than showing "similar items" to "similar users". It's a pretty interesting field in terms of the underlying mathematics and stuff. E.g. they calculate latent variables for products / users - hidden features defined by abstract numbers, some complex matrix multiplication and etc. It's a developing field (RecSys) and I believe it has a brighter future than we tend to think now.
I agree that recommender systems (algos) in their current state are mostly garbage and just optimized to suck money from our wallets or hold our attention, but that could change, I really want to believe in that, although maybe they would never work well for recommending true Art.
Cheers,
John
It is also possible to start writing film criticism, earn nothing at the beginning, and end up being the lead film critic for the Chicago Tribune. I cannot tell you how Mike Wilmington made that transition, but I can tell you the story of his beginning as a critic. When I met him at a dive called The Plaza in Madison, Wisconsin, he was writing film reviews for the Madison Press Connection, a radical newspaper created by striking employees of the city’s two mainstream papers. His compensation consisted of two free passes to the Majestic Theater in exchange for writing a review. I was the fortunate beneficiary of the second pass. After the film, we would go to The Plaza, order a pitcher of beer, and talk about the film. Then bleary-eyed, he would stagger home to write the review, which I would edit the next day (it was the beginning of my editing career). His reviews were eccentric, at times poetic, but perfect for a paper that was challenging the status quo.
Hi, Thomas. You probably know this already, but it's almost impossible to make even a poverty-level living writing film criticism. Very few people are willing to pay for criticism, and those that are are much more likely to be interested in Marvel and Disney flicks and other big blockbusters than small indies. Whatever money there is in criticism is in the franchise stuff.
I completely agree with what you're saying here about critics seeking out the new and championing the little films. I wish it were more realistically possible to make that work. I review all sorts of films -- the Marvels and the Disneys as well as indies and non-English-language films -- and I've been doing this online for 24 years. (I was one of the first purely online critics, and my site, FlickFilosopher.com, is one of the few from the early days of the Net still going.) The reviews of big films get big traffic, sometimes, but the reviews of little films get almost none, all the time. This is not sustainable.
I stick with it because I love it, but I'm exhausted from the financial stress of it.