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On Criticism

As promised last month, I here present an intellectual barnburner rendered in prose so flowing as to rival that of Cicero: a cerebral tour de force that undoubtedly will establish me (if only posthumously) as the critical love child of Matthew Arnold and Northrop Frye and the most innovative stylist since Mailer. I have Mahler's 8th for accompaniment (Mailer and Mahler are two different people, you imbecile) and, by the time that concludes, I hope to drop enough wisdom on you to cure you of your philistinism and convert you to a bohemian appreciator of avant garde art who nevertheless maintains a well-cultivated and reasoned scientific logic in all areas of intellectual investigation. You will embrace the ephemerality of limitless human creativity while viewing it all through the lens of a posteriori knowledge systems. Proceed only if you are prepared to be enlightened.

To begin this discussion of criticism, reader, we must share a common vocabulary. In modern usage, Criticism really comprises two separate fields, which I term Popular criticism and Scholarly criticism. This article treats the former sub-field. Popular Criticism consists of quotidian reviews and assessments written by legions of largely untrained and uneducated staff writers and published ad nauseum by institutions interested chiefly in appealing to as many people as possible. Its substance consists of what is essentially a stranger's suggestion: "Consume this media" or "Do not consume this media." Scholarly Criticism stands in contradistinction to popular criticism in that it is written by and for people so highly specialized in their education as to render their publications nearly inaccessible to anyone outside those insular academic circles. From this field I borrow the term Text to refer to the object of criticism, whatever its form (film, music, electronic media, et cetera). It is my position that popular criticism should be abolished for three reasons: 1) because it is so overproduced and bureaucratic, it is nearly always self-contradicting and self-negating; 2) the past century has proved that that which is consumed is often not that which wins the approval of some revered critic, but which advertises, and; 3) in the cases where the medium of interest is not one being heavily sold to an audience, it is most often the suggestion of a trusted friend or the now technology-driven access to preview a given text that incentivizes consumption.

No matter how lackluster the quality of composition, the irrelevance of subject matter, nor the dearth of originality, there will always, always, always, be a group of popular critics willing to give an emphatic stamp of approval to any contemptible text. I find it hard to believe that this is merely a game of statistical probability, though the glut of critics might seem to make that likely. I suspect one of two things to be at work here, perhaps both: either critics are reading the general reception of a text and offering a counterpoint simply to stand out from their peers, or some of these critics have a pecuniary interest in a positive review. This, however, is merely speculation; the point to take home is that critics have undermined their own credibility, and much of their craft is now given over to finding creative metaphors or turns of phrase to denigrate or praise some text. In essence, the only substance they ever were purported to offer ("Consume/Do not consume") has been compromised, leaving only empty creative writing exercises.

As an example of my second point I offer you The Da Vinci Code and Drumline. Forget about all of the terrible things you know I want to say about each of these creations; they have all already been said by others. Rotten Tomatoes is a website that collects movie reviews and averages them into a percentage of approval. Their ratings for the Da Vinci Code were abysmal (24%), but the movie was the 21st highest grossing film ever. Drumline only grossed 56 million domestically, less than Da Vinci's first weekend, but was actually rated a fairly high 78%. These are both terrible* films but clearly the media blitz did a great deal more for the one than critical acclaim did for the other. There are a thousand examples just like this one, but the take home message is that essentially nobody pays any attention to criticism. It probably didn't help that the majority of Drumline's cast is black.

Rotten Tomatoes leads into my third point: the internet is in the act of killing popular criticism. An IMDB rating is about the most reliable and accurate measure of a film's quality. Where music is at issue, even if we keep things legal, Amazon.com's preview capabilities, coupled with the free tracks offered by most artists on their own sites is a much better means of determining whether an album is worth buying than what some joker at Rolling Stone decided. With literary texts, things are admittedly more difficult, but word of mouth is still worth more than a critical review. Look at the cover of any new york tiimes best seller; it is plastered with blurbs praising the plot twists or the author's style. The last best seller I read was Running with Scissors. Its cover had blurbs of this nature, and the book was positively dull, bland, and vapid - written with far less style than this bullshit article of mine you are reading now.

Anyway, that's my argument. When I began writing this article I had planned to more fully expand my argument and suggest a way forward that combines the best aspects of scholarly criticism with a more accessible format and knowledge base. That will have to wait for another article because I am already five hours late in posting this one. Oh, and I know that you haven't been "enlightened" by this article. You should know this about me if you don't already; nothing I have written or ever will write can or will ever be called enlightening. Confusing, numbing, irrelevant, superfluous - these are my strong points.

* I did not actually see The Da Vinci Code but I read the book and any movie that could have anything to do with a book that atrocious simply cannot help but be terrible.

-bj-

bj@paganbabies.org

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