Critics v Bloggers Redux (Or: I've heard that song before...)

It's with a sense of bemused fascination that I've been reading Kevin Lee and Karina Longworth's dispatches from the Moving Image Institute in Film Criticism, which ended on Tuesday. Unlike my recent comments about the NYU workshop, it seems that there was plenty of healthy discourse on the current state (and future) of film criticism, and the timing couldn't be better with critic firings becoming a regular occurrence. At the same time, I can't help but feel that much of what was said was simply a retread of arguments we've heard for several years now. New York Times critic A.O. Scott's presentation (thoroughly covered by Karina) was refreshingly candid, if not a bit dated. Like corporate structures of yore, Scott believes in a traditional top-down model that places old-media critics at the top of the pyramid, and bloggers somewhere in the tombs below. It's an understandable position, perhaps, though his stance on commenters – who he likens to rabble-rousing riff-raff scaling the walls of Versailles – is not only passé, but it's the kind of spurious generalization brought out time and again that somehow magically brings the discussion to a close. While it's true that there are those whose contributions are little more than efforts at baiting the writer, it's nowhere near the level Scott believes it to be. Check out the comment threads on any of the heavily trafficked serious film blogs – The House Next Door, Glenn Kenny's blog, Girish, etc. – you'll find plenty of disagreement and argument, but for the most part it's quite civilized. Fortunately, there are enlightened visionaries like Matt Zoller Seitz who truly get the new paradigm, and who are not afraid to bite the hand that feeds. Matt, who has one foot planted in old media (he too writes for the Times, and elsewhere) and the other in one of the best online communities for film criticism (the aforementioned House Next Door), views blogging as a means of returning "human communication to its natural state," effectively wresting power away from ad-driven media conglomerates who, based on comments he's heard from colleagues, are stifling their writers. Unfortunately, however, Matt's views in the critic vs. blogger debate are the minority opinion, and many still see bloggers as a nuisance. In fairness, there are plenty out there who are contributing daily to the negative impression, and this brings me back once again to the issue of responsibility that I raised in the NYU post. I left a lengthy comment that I'm quite proud of over at Kevin's site which delves further into the matter. Please have a look – I'd love for more to join the discussion. I'm longing for the day when bloggers and critics can get together in a room without pulling the hierarchical bullshit (and that includes paid bloggers looking down at those who do it for free) and flippant generalizations, and actually discuss how we're going to move forward and keep the art of genuine film criticism alive, because the threat is coming just as much from the corporate overlords as it is from those sullying the blogosphere. Plus, when you get right down to it, we're the only ones reading each other's work. Not to beat a dead horse, but I leave you with a little quiz. What follows are two excerpts from reviews on Murnau's Sunrise; one written by an unpaid blogger, the other by a salaried professional whose work has appeared (amongst other places) in the very paper Mr. Scott calls home. Can you tell which is which? Sunrise weaves fluidly through the canvas of human emotion with the poetic grace of a silent, visual masterpiece. Directed by German expressionist icon, F.W. Murnau, the film is an ageless tale of dichotomy: betrayal and redemption, duty and hedonism, innocence and guilt, tradition and modernization. ... The camera tracking during the city scenes is seamless and adept, echoing the frenetic pace and limitless possibilities of urban life. Emotional turmoil is reflected in contrasts of light and darkness, shadows, exaggerated physical stature, and translucent, superimposed images. Sunrise is paper-thin, hilariously schmaltzy. All three primary characters are cartoonish clichés and their performances 3-inch slices of honeyed ham. Mind you, I'm the kinda guy who'd normally side with the weepie. On my top 10 list of fave pix of all time are Peggy Sue Got Married and Titanic. But I just can't shed a real tear when the farmer in Sunrise decides that he just — by golly! — can't off his sweet, dimpled wifey-pooh, after all. ... What corn pone! Smothered in Cheez Whiz! Wings ain't Shakespeare or Scorsese, mind you, but it's better than that!

Comments

[Chet Mellema]

While your "quiz" is clearly rhetorical, it is a nice defense for the film-blogging community. No respectable blogger would admit to including Peggy Sue Got Married and Titanic in his/her all-time top 10 while concurrently bashing a renowned classic. Whoa.

Also...love the site!

[logboy]

in the same way as a good film is about a successful endeavour for the individuals watching it, and a confident, progressive and individual perspective from the persons making it, i think a good writer (confident, progressive, individual) can come from the oddest of places, and bad writers hide in the most obvious places too.

a rose by any other name.

as long as there's something to be found within it, something to be had from it, i don't object to the idea of people earning a living from it. if i find it for free, perhaps they should be the ones being paid? if paid writers are offering something they're confident is worth having people pay for, then although there's to be a fear in seeing audiences drawn away from good writing, there has to be an allowance for what is, ultimately, a different horse for a different course... perhaps it would be nice to be so sure that those that have entered film fandom in recent years are learning from those who've been there for a long time, and that they're in turn partly educated by the lengthy past of paid writers, whom, i would hope, have played a part in trying to maintain people's desire to apply consideration to their understanding more than simply asking people to not bother trying to understand what they're determined to be the only ones capable of explaining it to the public.

[mch83]

Sorry, i think that both paragraphs are godawful in different ways. One is middlebrow and tedious, the other is just faux gonzo, tell it like it is, anti cannonical idiotic bullshit

[HarryTuttle]

Great post Filmbrain! It seems only people who don't attend these events have the liberty to speak freely and critically about potential flaws of a convivial meeting between agreeing people who are all there to cry the death of criticism.
Though I agree with you, this one, along with the published reactions was more constructive than NYU's (of which we are still waiting for the online audio).

When I looked up the panel programs I worried that the guests were already compartmented by trade and by hierarchy... instead of playing on more mixity among professionals. Why have distributors talk to distributors, established critics to established critics, bloggers to bloggers? Instead of forming a transversal dialogue between a critic, a filmmaker, a producer, a distributor, a curator, a blogger all together to listen how eachother's work is perceived.

Your quizz is unbelieveable (if the answer is what I imagine). This is the kind of stuff A.O. Scott should have been confronted with at the conference, to see how he justifies his theory when the evidence contradicts his perceived monolithic reality...

[jake]

I'm with mch83. They both look rather silly, but I guess one is not because it shows how MEANINGFUL and PROFOUND the movie is.

[GMAIL gonzales]

Ok, I live in a third world country (bolivia) and have worked a while as an editor in chief of the cultural magazine of some unknown newspaper....I´m 22 years old and, as you might suppose, i kinda wrote articles that resembled the second one in your quiz....

ok, critics in my country don´t quite have a high hierarchie (did i spell this right?? i´m more familiar with the word hierachitiptitoploftical and i´m a pretencious prick)...i mean they are not taken seriously at all....and they write in this amateurish kinda style that uses words like "canvas" or "grace" in the worst possible kind of sense...so when i started writing my readers were like: YES YES, EVERYBODY WILL IMITATE YOU (and they did...all the mediocre critics from main newspapers tried to write in what they thought was a funny and fresh style)

Ok i live in bolivia, and this boring story doesn´t say much. But in some way it does....I mean, even if a critic has some kind of recognition...be it in the USA or in Zomalia, common readers will have the same feeling when they come across with a word like canvas.....

ok..i don´t quite know what my point is...i get so mixed up in this language that i tend to completely forget what i wanted to say....
Ok, i think this is it...
Who cares....the world is about to eat you...a next generation of critics will be ashamed to even think of writing in a newspaper that smells like some classic piece furniture...(dont read so fast...i assure you that they will have the word illuminism in their vocabulary) and newspapers will hire bloggerish (i loved using this ish thing) younglings or aging filmbuffs that watch a tsai ming liang film like some starwars geek......
Meanwhile oldschool critics will be flapping their heads,keeping this uninteresting discussion hot.....

Fuck, i can´t write in english
FUCK me badly

[Peter Nellhaus]

I did have a paying gig for a while, but I gave it up because the pay was not not worth the effort, and most the what passed for writing was badly re-written press releases. Not every blogger is Harry Knowles, just as not everyone who sees their stuff in print is a Kael or Sarris. Take the second string film critic at the Denver Post, please! (Assuming he's still there, I haven't actually read the Post in months.)

[John]

Give the Times credit -- it wouldn't have published either of those embarrassing paragraphs.

[Derek Hill]

Granted, the first paragraph may lack original insight, but it's at least attempting to seriously deal with the film. That second one is pure monstrosity. The overall point being stressed is that there is plenty of worthy writing by unpaid bloggers on the serious film sites that is comparable or better than what's being written by paid film reviewers, bloggers, etc. Obvious, I know, to anyone who is familiar with the quality film blogs.

To that end, here's a blog I think better exemplifies the fine film writing done by amateurs in relative anonymity:

the two-fisted filmgazer

Full disclaimer: it's written by a good friend of mine, but I'd think she was a kick-ass writer and critic even if I didn't know her.

[Lonely Long Distance Runner]

In the interest of fairness, it was actually the L.A. Times, not the New York Times, that published that drivel. Not to fuel East Coast superiority complexes, but facts're facts.

[Lonely Long Distance Runner]

Ah, I see: "whose work has appeared (in other places)"...comment redacted.

[Campaspe]

Ah, I thought I recognized that first graph and a little Googling shows I did. Indeed I would much rather read that person's site. What was striking about the second Sunrise post, from the professional critic, was that almost all of the comments (or the ones I could read, some seem to have been scrubbed) were far more thoughtful than the original post. That includes one commenter (riddle) who also disliked Sunrise for much the same reasons, but was far more persuasive, polite and concise. And the commenters arguing with the critic were mostly quite calm, albeit extremely cutting.

We should drop a line to Mr. Scott, with the link.

[HarryTuttle]

Yeah, the reaction of the blogosphere to this kind of uneducated review is hopeful. And the line of defence of this LA Times "critic" is hilarious! Not only he insists to stick with his outrageous Nazi analogy, but he believes he is persecuted for his taste (while he is precisely doing that by dismissing a century of film studies for being mere bad taste).
That's what we get when the anti-intellectual populists let every film viewers believe their taste could pass as film expertise that can revise scholarly canons. When will Kael's destructive influence die out???

[Whitney]

I never replied to that comment you left over on Kevin's site. I think it's a very interesting question you pose. It seems like it would be a shame to put so much time and energy into something you love and not get any compensation, while someone over at the local paper can write awful, typo-full tripe and make a living of it. If you could make a living off your critical, thoughtful blog without compromising yourself to the self-promotion that plagues profitable blogs that seems like the best solution...but possible? I'm not sure. Like I said, the time spent promoting paid bloggers could be better served elsewhere, and catering to advertisements and what people want to read about (celebrity gossip, exploitation, what have you) is sure to compromise your critical values. It's such a tough situation.