What’s up guys?
Michael here with a question bound to encourage only the most civil and polite conversations:
How was the latest Star Wars movie?
Turns out, it REALLY depends who you ask.
If you’re a critic - there’s a good chance you did not like it.
Just 52% of critics on Rotten Tomatoes endorsed The Rise of Skywalker.
If you’re just an everyday movie-goer, you probably loved it - a full 86% of audience
members, and a VERY vocal social media army, unabashedly bought the goods that JJ Abrams
was sellin’.
An almost identical gap in consensus came with The Witcher, which recently debuted to
a tepid 66% approval rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes compared to an impressive
92% from the audience.
Watchmen, on the other hand, had an equal and opposite problem, snagging a whopping
96% approval rating from critics, and a mere 54% from the audience.
Now this is hardly the first time audiences and critics have vehemently disagreed, but
Rotten Tomatoes has just made it easier to quantify their bickering.
Critics are an easy target for… well, criticism.
In popular culture, they’re typically portrayed as failed wanna-be artists, cultural saboteurs,
and, invariably, major snobs in berets.
But while we might get cranky about them not loving the latest Star War, they have exerted
an undeniably profound impact on the film industry.
Some critics - and their thumbs have even become celebrities in their own right.
But, judging from recent controversies, they may not be able to reliably help you figure
out what to binge on Netflix and what you should confidently skip.
And in a world where critics and fans are regularly at odds, we thought it’d be worth
asking: Do film critics even matter?
Let’s find out in this Wisecrack Edition on Film Critics: Are They Useless?
Before we can judge the usefulness of the critic, we need to figure out their purpose
in the first place.
In theory, film critics help us separate the cinematic cream from the Emoji Movie crop.
But ironically, in its earliest days, cinema wasn’t even considered worthy of criticism
in the first place.
Paying someone to review a film would be like paying someone to review this Bill Murray
gif, which, incidentally, is a job we’d gladly take.
Please.
The practice of film criticism wouldn’t begin in earnest until around 1907, when industry-specific
trade papers sprang up and started assigning general reporters to write about film.
According to the documentary For the Love of Movies, these reviews were simple, opinion-free
plot synopsis mainly published to encourage advertising from movie studios.
Because, money.
But, as scholar Jerry Roberts notes in his book on the history of film criticism, there
were a few prescient outsiders.
Folks like Frank E. Woods and Vachel Lindsay saw the potential of film to become a serious
art form.
They believed it could change the way we see, think and dream about the world.
In the first-ever book of film criticism, Lindsay argued that the medium wasn’t only
art, it was “painting in motion, poetry of the eye.”
Once films started talking in the late 20s, critics like Alexander Bakshy attempted to
articulate what made film a unique art - like its collapse of space and time and its ability
to show the same scene from different angles.
But despite that creative potential, film was still largely seen as a cultural stepchild.
According to film scholar David Bordwell, early-to-mid-century critics like Parker Tyler,
Otis Ferguson and James Agee transformed and elevated film culture, praising everything
from life-like dialogue to deep-focus cinematography to Freudian symbolism.
Their work was essential to film becoming the defining medium of the 20th century.
This status was only augmented in the 60s and 70s, thanks to very-visible celebrity
critics like Andrew Sarris and Pauline Kael.
As the century neared a close, critics continued to elevate independent directors like Quentin
Tarintino, the Coen brothers, and John Sayles to popular attention.
In short, rather than being some parasitic institution of talentless hacks, critics have
been well, critical, to the development of cinema that does not suck.
Thanks critics.
But film criticism isn’t perfect.
In recent decades, it may have been, well, a little to nice and not critical enough.
Scholar Jerry Roberts dates this development back to the era of Jaws and Star Wars, which
conjured fandoms and even a subculture out of thin air.
Studios subsequently became laser-focused on replicating their success, sometimes very
badly.
Overwhelmed with mediocre movies, critics subsequently went soft on popular films as
a means of survival.
You can’t make a career of shitting on everything most people love.
Unfortunately . On top of that, studios began throwing more money at marketing- practically
tripling their spending between 1980 and 2007.
Increasingly, they shelled out dollars to the “Blurb Mill,” or marketing-adjacent
journalists who would regurgitate praise that looked good on a movie poster.
By the late 1980s, press junkets had become central to studio marketing.
In what sounds like a truly awesome if slightly morally compromising gig, junket reporters
are flown out to fancy hotels, fed classy meals and given sick swag bags full of gifts
by movie studios.
That might sound like a conflict of interest, because it totally is.
Quick note: Some media organizations like the New York Times and Wall Street Journal
forbid journalists from accepting these sweet “gifts”.
And of course, plenty of critics can and do still pan movies even after glamorous junkets.
But the practice still led to a lawsuit against studios in 2001 for “perpetrating a fraud
on the movie-going public” by essentially paying for endorsements.
The suit was settled for 1.5 million dollars.
Meanwhile, film criticism was becoming increasingly superficial, focusing more and more on production
costs, box-office revenues and the ever-growing cult of celebrity.
Perhaps most importantly, film critics’ opinions have become increasingly less likely
to sway the public.
That’s largely because of the aforementioned ginormous marketing budgets.
While a good review from the New York Times could start your career in the 1970s, all
the positive reviews in the world for today’s best art film usually can’t help it break
through the noise.
Conversely, even the most scathing reviews don’t mean much against a barrage of ads
for the latest Pirates of the Carribean, even if the plot doesn’t have a peg leg to stand
on.
Still, that doesn’t mean film criticism as a WHOLE doesn’t matter.
Think of Rotten Tomatoes, whose “Tomatoemeter” still positions critical opinions first and
foremost.
Scholar Mattais Frey argues that the site actually validates the practice of criticism
by assuming that “critical judgements can and should matter to the reception and consumption
of film.”
All of which is to say, an individual critic might matter less, but the aggregate opinion
of critics is still being considered when people decide what to watch.
Or, in the case of The Witcher, considered and promptly raged about.
It’s also worth asking if what counts as criticism has changed.
Indeed, there’s a solid argument to be made that film criticism isn’t DYING, but, like
Emperor Palpatine, is coming back from the dead in a slightly different form.
The real struggle for critics is the massive proliferation of opinions via the internet,
where everyone and their mother’s chiropractor can share their hot takes about Geralt’s
emotional journey.
But is that film criticism?
According to scholar Greg Taylor, criticism is “practically any form of articulated
spectatorship.”
So if you watch a film and use words, drawings or a creative drinking game to explain how
you feel about it, congrats, you’re doing a criticism.
So you know where this is going…
Am I, Michael, a film critic??
Technically, this channel is all about me and my absolute best friends articulating
our spectatorship.
But when you decide you hate this video and leave an angry comment that I’ll read during
a midnight burst of crippling self doubt, you ALSO become a critic.
So in short, if you hate film critics you hate me and you also probably hate yourself!
No, that’s not how we saw this video going either.
But here we are.
SOME critics, understandably, bemoan the replacement of their thoughtful prose with Karen’s flippant
Facebook comments.
But Taylor doesn’t see the rise of populist film criticism as a bad thing at all.
He argues that this “cultural noise” has always existed, it just now can be memorialized
in YouTube comments that only occasionally suggest I punch myself in the face.
According to Taylor, this online discourse matters, as it reveals truths both about art
and about ourselves as we grapple with our complex emotional and psychological reactions
to said art.
In sum, while film criticism has irrevocably changed, it has not become irrelevant.
If anything, we crowdsource more than ever before, even when it means risking spoilers
about Hooded Justice’s true identity.
Now let’s return to our central question: Why do Rotten Tomatoes-certified critics sometimes
hate the very things you love,and why weren’t they thoroughly charmed by this clusmy bard
? We think the answer is actually pretty simple.
Taylor suggests comparing film criticism to food criticism.
There’s no one way to watch a film, just as there’s no one way to chow down on a
juicy piece of steak, and the way you do probably depends on how hungry you are and whose picking
up the tab at The Longhorn Steakhouse.
While I might typically scarf a fillet down in three bites and declare it the best thing
I’ve eaten in weeks, a food critic probably eats it slowly, chews 50 times, and compares
it to the other 2,733 steaks they’ve sampled in their lifetime.
Nobody is wrong -- perspectives are just different.
So when critics see Geralt, a silent, brooding loner, they also see every silent, brooding
loner character of the past five years.
And there are a lot.
Can we blame them for getting a little bit bored?
So if film critics DO become jaded, it’s not hard to see why: They’re required to
watch every single bad film that gets made, including the 2018 adaptation of Robin Hood
you blissfully ignored.
On the other hand, critics have also seen just about every good film.
So, their perspective is naturally going to differ from somebody who heads to the movies
once a month, genuinely hoping to have a fun time.
What might be cliche and unoriginal to a critic who has seen every heist film might be exhilarating
to someone who can’t predict what’s gonna happen next.
Again, neither person is more or less right, they just have different perspectives.
All of which is to say: There’s more than one legal way to watch a movie, particularly
if you live in California, Colorado, or Nevada.
Still, the ongoing tension between “highbrow” and “lowbrow” has long plagued critics.
As scholar Nick James argues, critics exist in a perpetual “dichotomy between being
seen as an authority with special expertise” and wanting to be a “legitimizing part of
the community.”
That is, we don’t want our critics to be snooty film jerks, but we don’t want to
listen to someone who think the Coen brothers run that glasses store.
Critics have found various ways of dealing with the question of “taste.”
Most notably, critics ranging from Manny Farber to Pauline Kael staked their reputations on
defending mainstream or even b-movies, what Kael fondly calls “trash cinema.”
While critics had once bravely made the controversial choice to take good film seriously, writers
like Farber and Kael argued that “lowbrow” and mainstream films deserved the same rigorous
analysis.
Of course, some film critics are less friendly to popular taste, like New York Times critic
Bosley Crowther, who spent the 40s, 50s and 60s railing against supposedly-“low art”
like film noir.
And throughout their history, film critics have, admittedly, been outspoken advocates
for all that is “highbrow,” from international films to art house flicks.
But ultimately, critics of all stripes helped build a media environment where all kinds
of film are taken seriously.
If you love Quentin Tarintino, Parasite or Rocky Horror Picture Show, you can say the
critics have done you a solid.
What’s more, since the launch of Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel’s film criticism show in
1975, many film critics have worked to make the writing form more egalitarian and accessible.
When he emerged on the scene, Ebert was roasted by more quote unquote“sophisticated” critics
like Kael, who still used academic language even when analyzing mainstream film.
But his “man of the people” review style has been adapted and elaborated on by popular
contemporary critics like Henry Knowles of Ain’t it Cool News as the internet has spread
a newer, more accessible brand of film writing.
But is there maybe a… downside to accessibility?
Could there be people who are giving mass culture a little too much credit?
Ahem... this?
While Taylor sees value in critics and audiences making the defiant choice to embrace middlebrow
and even lowbrow culture, he wonders if, in doing so, we are actually giving the culture
industry too much credit.
That is, Taylor asks: Should we be content to parse every detail of the Marvel Universe,
or should we be demanding more?
Don’t freak out, we’re JUST asking the question.
A question which may or may not dunk on everything we do.
Taylor argues that “in privileging the marginal or derided, in claiming formal or symbolic
intricacy where none exists we prove again and again that we are more inventive and more
profound than the guardians of the culture industry.”
All of which is to say: Are you a whole lot smarter than the movies you’re watching?
Now if I can take a second to get over the fact that I feel very specifically, and personally,
targeted by Taylor - it does get to an issue we’ve thought about a lot.
Not that we’re that smart, but you get what I mean.
When certain films enter the zeitgeist, we do our best to genuinely uncover meaning in
them, even if it feels like not a lot of thought was put into the making of Sausage Party.
Still, sometimes, when we find ourselves lying awake at night trying to uncover the relationship
between Gilles Deleuze and Transformers, we have to stop and wonder if, as Taylor argues,
we’re simply giving the culture industry too much credit.
Is it possible that, when film criticism becomes as creative and rigorous an enterprise as
it is today, the viewers and reviewers become the real creatives?
And are we sometimes taxing ourselves searching for meaning where none exists?
Perhaps.
So, at the end of the day, film criticism was definitely necessary for the development
of cinema.
Also, thoughtful film critics are probably the only reason you’re watching this video
right now.
While film criticism has changed and become more democratic, it still relies on people
sharing their opinions and arguing about whether or not Cats is a surrealist masterpiece or
a Nightmare Before Christmas for furries.
Critics are dead, long live film criticism.
But what do you guys think?
Is a New York Times critic more, less, or exactly as right as you?
And does it even matter?
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Leave us nice comments so we can sleep at night.
Thanks for watching.
Peace.