Critics: The March of Time

There's been a huge outcry on the web about the current critics' crisis. (When did people start calling them crickets?) Here's a sampling:

My column and last critics blog entry with links. And responses from Spout and FirstShowing.

Sean Means is keeping a list of departed critics.

A spoof on the situation.

Is the Internet killing the film critic?

UPDATE: FilmSchool Rejects responds. And last but not least, Patrick Goldstein.

Comments

[Mark Horowitz]

Part of the problem is the dull orthodoxy of most critics today. Even the best critics, like Scott, Dhargis, Edelstein, etc., have no truly distinctive tastes or personalities. Not compared to the old days. There's a boring consensus out there amongst the old school mainstream critics. Sure, they disagree -- sometimes -- but there's no polemical edge, and none of them ever go on those multi-year campaigns to promote their pet favorites against the rest of the establishment's disdain, the way plenty of big-time critics used to. There are no real dissenters anymore. They are all the establishment. You hit the nail on the head when you mentioned Sarris and Kael, or as I see it, Sarris versus Kael. (I actually think Sarris was the most radical and influential, while Kael, with her writerly-ness and enthusiasm, was the mother of the current breed of bland, self-important indistinguishables ... but I know that's just my usual eccentricity talking.) But Sarris and Manny Farber and even Kael were fighting a whole aesthetic, critical war... over high versus low culture, art versus Hollywood, etc., and they won it. I miss the smell of smoke when reading film critics today. They are boring. No wonder kids don't read them. I don't read them, either. Who really cares what A. O. Scott thinks, aside from film distributors and Upper West Side sheep looking for a safe consumer guide? No one. But back in the day, even boring old Vincent Canby used to spend years promoting Fassbinder against all comers ... he "made" Fassbinder, in a sense. And Fassbinder would STILL be a hard sell to most audiences! Those were the days...

[David C]

It's hard to blame mediocre critics for being mediocre. They are what they are, as are we all. For a while I tended to blame editors who didn't value criticism and didn't know any better. Now I think they know perfectly well what they are up to and hiring quite deliberatly critics you and I might consider lackluster. Look what happens to the rare critic who does get passionate upon occasion, such as Armond White. He should have a gig at major national magazine but who in their right mind in publishing today, with the industry in meltdown, would deliberately hire a critic who might annoy large numbers of their readers? Would you?

[David C]

A friend writes:

"As long as the press insists upon the primacy of the mostly irrelevant theatrical window and as long as it further insists that every single movie that somebody feels compelled to 'release' theatrically in New York and Los Angeles should be reviewed, the job of most critics will be intellectually marginal and, I suspect, soul-destroying.

"Imagine reviewing every record, concert, or book released.

The luckiest film critic in America is Dave Kehr, because he can pick what he wants to write about and because he can actually have an impact on the behavior of audiences, by reminding them that movies they wanted to see are now available at the corner store or on Netflix. I say this as one who just spent a zillion dollars on a box of Sacha Guitry movies on Kehr's recommendation.

"Treat film critics like book reviewers and the genre will revive."

[T. Holly]

I think that's a better approach than trying to make film criticism relevant to twentysomethings. When you do that, you get Ben Lyons, and they don't even know his name! Those twentysomethings, even if they are film students taking a criticism class, will grow up and some of them will come to criticism. I think that's always been the case, and I wish I had been there during the Sarris/Kael days. I thought there was a decent discussion about local reviewing with Gene Seymour yesterday; after the 4th commercial break, about three-quarters of the way down the page:

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0804/06/rs.01.html

[David C]

Find critics they trust and allow them to set their own agendas? Editors would rather slit their wrists.

[N.P. Thompson]

I quite agree with Mark Horowitz. "Dull orthodoxy" -- as apt a phrase as any.

[David C]

Speaking of orthodoxy: Would any reviewer for a major American magazine be able to get away with the right-of-center equivalent of this recent opening ploy of David Edelstein's?

"As a male movie critic with both liberal-humanist convictions and a hypersensitivity to injustices large and small..."

The question answers itself.