In among all the blog-talk about criticism lately, I was very struck by Keith Phipps' comment that "We’re not bullies and we’re not, though this sometimes gets forgotten, consumer guides. We're writers who think what we write about matters."
It is this approach that makes the best critics worth reading: the passion for film, for food, for comic books, for opera, that drives the devoted critic to stand to one side and analyze his reaction to a piece of work, the thrill or the disappointment or the odd mix of the two, and then to explain that to me, the reader. Good criticism is indeed not a consumer guide.
Consumer guides are supposed to be objective, but criticism at its best is wildly biased. Since great criticism happens when an intelligent person with an actual personality and emotions engages with a work and returns to tell the tale, it cannot be other than biased. A good critic brings to a film or a romance novel or a meal everything he has ever been or done. Some of that personality and history reacts to and with the thing being experienced, and it's that reaction that good criticism elucidates.
That's why good critical pieces about the same film can arrive at vastly different conclusions about whether the movie was any good. It's why you sometimes see a very honest critic saying, "You know, in a lot of ways, this is dreck, but my gosh I love it." The quirks of the individual critic come into play because they affect the emotional engagement that the critic had before he started writing his piece, when he was simply experiencing the thing he later sits down to write about.
Good criticism is, by definition, personal and iconoclastic. It attacks settled beliefs because it asserts that what really matters when we consume cultural objects is that personal engagement. Good criticism tells me what the critic experienced, what he thought, how he reacted, and some of why that was.
So here I arrive at one of the great paradoxes of my attitude towards criticism and why it matters (and why I enjoy reading good critiques of things I already know I don't like, even when the writer does like them). I read criticism because I am in some sense a cultural voyeur. I enjoy understanding how works of art and works of craft affect other people, and I admire greatly those who consistently communicate that information, especially those who do it with a sense of humor about themselves and the whole critical endeavor.
At the same time, I admit that a good many things I have tried over the years have found their way into my orbit because of a review I read about them. Good criticism is not a consumer guide, but it nevertheless helps me navigate my own path through all that stuff out there that I could engage if only I had the time and money and will to do so.
That's why an on-going relationship with specific critics is so helpful to me. If you write great critical pieces, and I read you long enough, I will start to understand where our tastes overlap and where they differ. If I know what your "typical" reaction to new television show is, I may follow you to one that elicited a stronger-then-usual reaction from you.
I don't expect that I will respond the same way you did, even if I only read/ate/watched it because you pointed me there. It's just that your critical piece, revealing your own response, touched something in me, and made me curious enough to go back to first sources.
I know enough about my palate and Dominic Armato's palate to be able to judge when I am likely to respond to a dish the same way he did -- and when I am likely to enjoy it a lot more than he did. I know enough about my own adventures as a watcher of films to know that I will dislike some things Roger Ebert likes very much -- and love some things he's bored by. Over time, I've even gotten pretty good at telling when one of those things will happen. The other day, I was looking for a slight romantic comedy to watch, so I went to Ebert's site and looked through the archives specifically for a romantic comedy that he gave 3 stars to along with a specific type of response. If found what I was looking for, too. And if I ever read another review by Linda Holmes where she announces that she a reality TV show has beaten down her resistance and caused her to fall in love with it, you can bet I'll be cuing it up to take a look at it.
Criticism is an art form in and of itself. I read it because it makes me think, because it invites me to share someone's personal response to the world, and because, like all good art, my engagement with it changes and deepens me. However, I also use it to find new books to read, new games to play, new films to watch, new dishes to cook. It's not a consumer guide, but it still opens my world to things I would otherwise have missed.
The difference is that I don't expect critics to tell me what to like, or what the value of a piece is. I just, sometimes, respond to a great piece of critical writing by thinking, "Yeh, I want to experience that work, too."
That's why good critical pieces about the same film can arrive at vastly different conclusions about whether the movie was any good. It's why you sometimes see a very honest critic saying, "You know, in a lot of ways, this is dreck, but my gosh I love it." The quirks of the individual critic come into play because they affect the emotional engagement that the critic had before he started writing his piece, when he was simply experiencing the thing he later sits down to write about.
Good criticism is, by definition, personal and iconoclastic. It attacks settled beliefs because it asserts that what really matters when we consume cultural objects is that personal engagement. Good criticism tells me what the critic experienced, what he thought, how he reacted, and some of why that was.
So here I arrive at one of the great paradoxes of my attitude towards criticism and why it matters (and why I enjoy reading good critiques of things I already know I don't like, even when the writer does like them). I read criticism because I am in some sense a cultural voyeur. I enjoy understanding how works of art and works of craft affect other people, and I admire greatly those who consistently communicate that information, especially those who do it with a sense of humor about themselves and the whole critical endeavor.
At the same time, I admit that a good many things I have tried over the years have found their way into my orbit because of a review I read about them. Good criticism is not a consumer guide, but it nevertheless helps me navigate my own path through all that stuff out there that I could engage if only I had the time and money and will to do so.
That's why an on-going relationship with specific critics is so helpful to me. If you write great critical pieces, and I read you long enough, I will start to understand where our tastes overlap and where they differ. If I know what your "typical" reaction to new television show is, I may follow you to one that elicited a stronger-then-usual reaction from you.
I don't expect that I will respond the same way you did, even if I only read/ate/watched it because you pointed me there. It's just that your critical piece, revealing your own response, touched something in me, and made me curious enough to go back to first sources.
I know enough about my palate and Dominic Armato's palate to be able to judge when I am likely to respond to a dish the same way he did -- and when I am likely to enjoy it a lot more than he did. I know enough about my own adventures as a watcher of films to know that I will dislike some things Roger Ebert likes very much -- and love some things he's bored by. Over time, I've even gotten pretty good at telling when one of those things will happen. The other day, I was looking for a slight romantic comedy to watch, so I went to Ebert's site and looked through the archives specifically for a romantic comedy that he gave 3 stars to along with a specific type of response. If found what I was looking for, too. And if I ever read another review by Linda Holmes where she announces that she a reality TV show has beaten down her resistance and caused her to fall in love with it, you can bet I'll be cuing it up to take a look at it.
Criticism is an art form in and of itself. I read it because it makes me think, because it invites me to share someone's personal response to the world, and because, like all good art, my engagement with it changes and deepens me. However, I also use it to find new books to read, new games to play, new films to watch, new dishes to cook. It's not a consumer guide, but it still opens my world to things I would otherwise have missed.
The difference is that I don't expect critics to tell me what to like, or what the value of a piece is. I just, sometimes, respond to a great piece of critical writing by thinking, "Yeh, I want to experience that work, too."
*God said No. I give you blessings, happiness is up to you.
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