Seventeen Syllablues

I’ve been thinking a bit about critics lately – Since reading (and listening to) criticism is kind of what I do for pleasure. It’s a funny place to be, being a critic. You observe things in a different way, different and more incisive, but not – And I think this is really important, in the same way a simple punter watches movies. Critics tend to observe things in a special way – Looking for an angle to write about – To make their piece worth reading, but very rarely as a normal punter. They tend to tie the movie, play or book or piece of music into the context of the wider culture and the movements that preceded them. They make assumptions about what the director is trying to achieve and often build their entire case out of whether they have succeeded or failed, (according to that critic). The most egregious example of this I have ever encountered, to my mind, was Stephanie Zacharek, reviewing The Dark Knight – Where she built the case that Christopher Nolan was trying to be Alfred Hitchcock – (An extremely tenuous proposition) and then lambasted the movie for failing to sufficiently achieve Hitchcock-icity. That is to my mind nuts – But also extremely common. All critics should state up front that this is all opinion and that any implied certitude in the piece is a matter of style – For every entertainment is entirely subjective. No one can speak for another. You can say this succeeded or failed based upon x or y criteria. You can say this film pissed me off because of Z lazy trope or Q irritating directorial flourish. But you cannot state these things as a matter of certifiable fact and from some erroneous position of authority. Each critic is a person and every person has their own idiosyncrasies. And it may be implied and assumed that everyone knows this, but I don’t think it is. Often we treat what we read in a paper or online, as a kind of distraction, with a certain uncritical lack of attention. But when that piece asserts its authority as absolute and its assumptions as written in stone, then it does itself and the work a disservice.

Of course when you are writing about an utter piece of shit – Then have at it.