Film Criticism and Digital Cultures

Journalism, Social Media and the Democratization of Opinion

Andrew McWhirter

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781786720399
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Digital Media
• Index: Computer Science

'The critic is dead.' 'Everyone's a critic.' These statements reflect some of the perceptions of film criticism in a time when an opinion can be published in seconds, yet reach an audience of millions. This book examines the reality of contemporary film criticism, by talking to leading practitioners in the UK and North America - such as Nick James, Mark Cousins, Jonathan Rosenbaum and Richard Porton - and by covering a broad spectrum of influential publications - including Sight & Sound, The Guardian, Cineaste, indieWIRE and Variety. Forming a major new contribution to an emerging field of study, these enquiries survey the impact of larger cultural, economic and technological processes facing society, media and journalism. Historical perspectives on criticism from ancient times and current debates in journalism and digital media are used to unravel questions, such as: what is the relationship between crisis and criticism? In what way does the web change the functions and habits of practitioners? What influences do film industries have on the critical act? And how engaged are practitioners with converged and creative film criticism such as the video essay?In the face of transformative digital idealism, empirical findings here redress the balance and argue the case for evolution rather than revolution taking place within film criticism.

1

The Death of the Critic in the Digital Media Age

This chapter argues that the contemporary crisis discourse around criticism (Eagleton 2010; McDonald 2007) and subsequently film criticism (Doherty 2010; James 2008), resulting in hyperbolic claims of proposed death, should be placed in the context of previous crises. It also details a multitude of possible contributions to the most recent crisis narrative, which is more visible than at any other period and therefore may account for such hyperbole. In other words, through investigating the various media where the discourse of crisis circulates, it is possible to assert that these public utterances may contribute to the perceptions of an intensified crisis period. Then a similar crisis is outlined in contemporary journalism, as this institution negotiates obstacles and concepts in the digital age such as technology, democracy/participation and commercialisation/PR. It is proposed that these concepts will provide an analytical framework which will be useful when examining empirical evidence on contemporary film criticism; this data will be provided through interviews with, and observations of, film critics working today. In short, the aim of this chapter is to provide contextualisation to the hyperbolic notions of crisis and disruptive revolutionary change brought about by new technologies, by firstly showing that criticism has been in crisis many times over and, secondly, grounding discussions of technology historically in order to examine large amorphous topics such as the digital age.

The Death of the Critic?

Many articles have been written in recent years which either declare a crisis in criticism or contribute to a crisis narrative. It is a concept that has found particular notoriety in media discussions about the field of film criticism. Exemplary of many articles which actually argue against the demise of the critic is one written by Sight & Sound editor, Nick James (2008:16), who provocatively asks: ‘Who needs critics?’. James (2008:16–26) lists many reasons for the current crisis in film criticism, including the rise of the internet leading to falling print revenues and a cull in professional critics; the emergence of ‘critic-proof’ films and the culture of marketing; high levels of philistinism; a general decline in the status of journalism; interference from publications; tensions between amateurs and professionals, and the blogosphere. Yet his article is actually one which, paradoxically, supports the continuance of purposeful film criticism when he claims that the internet age can, at least theoretically, herald a new ‘fire-in-the-belly’ form of criticism to reinvigorate the discipline ‘for another golden age’ (2008:17–18).

Anxiety over the future of criticism and the influence of critics has been prevalent throughout much of the twenty-first century; in a great deal of literature on the subject the influence of the internet is often apparent. The concern over a crisis in contemporary criticism reaches across media and disciplines and is articulated in books on the subject of literary and arts criticism (Berger 1998; Carroll 2009; Eagleton & Beaumont 2009; Elkins 2003; McDonald 2007), in newspapers (Carr 2008; Crace 2007; Ebert 2008; Gabler 2011; Horton 2011; Rayner 2008), magazines and journals (Corliss 2007; The Editors 2000; 2005; 2008; James 2008; Johnson 2009; Marshall 2008; Nowell-Smith 2008; Totaro 2010 & 2010b), international film festival panels (New York Film Festival 2008; Edinburgh International Film Festival 2009), broadcast media (Lawson 2013; Young 2009b), within academic papers and seminars (Eagleton 2010; Rosenbaum 2009), and even in documentaries (Fisher 2008:19; For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism, Peary 2009). Although as a collective this body of work contributes to the crisis narrative, like James (2008), many offer a robust defence of criticism and its future. David T. Johnson (2009) remarks that ‘Criticism, like any discourse, often spends as much time reflecting on itself as it does its object of study, but we seem to be in a renewed period of such reflection.’ However, the language in the discourse also often relates to corrosion or demise: Rónán McDonald (2007) highlights a concern over ‘the death of the critic’ in literary criticism stretching from journalism to the academy and David Carr (2008) discusses film critics in the context of an ‘endangered species’; ‘The Death of Film Criticism’ is proclaimed in The Chronicle of Higher Education (Doherty 2010) and in the Guardian, Neal Gabler (2011) asks, as social media rises, ‘Is criticism dead?’. High-profile academic papers which consider the death of not just the film critic but the critic in general also raise questions about ‘The Death of Criticism?’ (Eagleton 2010), and the eulogy is not yet exhausted as the demise of the critic continues to permeate discussions on arts critics (Lawson 2013) and film criticism more specifically (Peranson 2012).

As this work is predicated on the assertion that a widespread perception has circulated in recent years that film criticism is in crisis, it is important to illustrate and examine some public utterances to this effect. Four examples are particularly representative of how film criticism has been discussed as in crisis across the Atlantic and across media platforms. Within an episode of The Culture Show, broadcast in October 2009 and called ‘On Critics’, critic and broadcaster Toby Young (2009) talks to a wide range of arts critics, some of whom acknowledge his overall argument for a crisis in criticism. He asks ‘Is it game over for the professional critic?,’ before claiming that he is less well paid today than in previous decades when the professional critic was a ‘big deal’ in a past golden age. With regards to film criticism in particular, Young (2009) comments that ‘professional movie critics are an endangered species’ before going on to interview film critic at the Guardian, Peter Bradshaw. Bradshaw (2009) remarks that the vast majority of film writing online is ‘fan-boy criticism, and stuff that has been very obviously influenced by PR freebies; If you are being paid as a professional critic, you’ve got some measure of independence.’

A blog written for the Guardian online by critic and academic Ronald Bergan (2010), called ‘The film critic is dead. Long live the film critic’ is mainly about film critics having to train harder at their craft to survive the crisis and challenge from the web. Bergan (2010) comments that, ‘Few people would deny that film reviewing is in crisis. One hears the wailing and gnashing of teeth everywhere in the English-speaking world. Panel after panel, discussing “the Future of Film Criticism”, has come to the conclusion that there isn’t one.’ Bergan (2010) argues that there appears to be a belief among critics that the general audience no longer cares about film criticism and he continues the crisis analogies around death with his phrase ‘vigils at the bedside of print film reviews’.

In an article titled ‘The Death of Film Criticism’ written by Thomas Doherty (2010), which appeared in the Washington-based publication The Chronicle of Higher Education, the author analyses a host of publications from film studies and critics’ anthologies which, he argues, amount to an obituary for film criticism. The newspaper is subscribed to by more than 64,000 academics and has a total readership of more than 315,000, publishing 45 times per year. Online ‘The Chronicles audited Web-site traffic is more than 12.8 million pages a month, seen by more than 1.9 million unique visitors’ (Anon, 2014). Like Bergan (2010) and Young (2009) the crisis in this article is mainly linked to the rise of film writing on the internet. Doherty (2010) argues that the most ‘common aesthetic in contemporary film criticism’ announced by internet movie critics is ‘it sucks’. He continues, ‘In cyberspace everyone can hear you scream. Just log on, vent, and hit send.’ A ‘poster-boy’ for this type of criticism, according to Doherty (2010), is Harry Knowles, creator of the film website Ain’t It Cool News (AICN) <http://www.aintitcool.com>. Although The Chronicle is a newspaper for academics and not an academic journal, and even though the writer is clearly well informed on his topic, Doherty (2010) seems compelled to use more journalese than is evident in the previous two examples. He talks of print film criticism (which he defines as newspapers, magazines and academic journals) as being replaced by ‘ectoplasmic Web-page billboards’ and that in journalism ‘pink slips are landing with hurricane force.’ This style in particular serves to irritate Jonathan Rosenbaum (jrosenbaum2002 2010) who remarks in the comment section, ‘Personally, I don’t read Harry Knowles, but even on the few occasions when I have, I don’t find the slangy, with-it, would-be populist tone there all that different from the tone of Doherty’s piece.’

Part of the related discourse which has Doherty (2010) assert ‘The Death of Film Criticism’ is the DVD release of a documentary feature on US film criticism, by film critic and academic Gerald Peary: For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism (2009). Narrated by character-actress Patricia Clarkson, Peary’s film provides a selective history of film criticism in the US and has been criticised for a lack of substance (Nayman 2010). To be fair to Peary, his film did take nine years to make and his motivations had changed over that period from, he argues, the US public no longer reading film criticism in 2000 to the increased popularity of the web throughout the decade. However, his documentary also argues for a golden age of film criticism and prophesises a bleak future for the profession: one chapter is called ‘When Criticism Mattered’ which indicates that Peary no longer views criticism in this way. In his final chapter, which he labels ‘Digital Rebellion’ from the period 1996 onwards (the same year that Knowles’ website began publishing), Peary subtly condemns the stream-of-consciousness writing-style of film bloggers. According to Peary, and due to the fact that Knowles could regularly command 6 million readers a month to his work, he was the first web-critic noticed by the studios and flown to Hollywood for private viewings of new films. Hyperbolic statements from the online critic are used for effect: ‘You don’t need the presses anymore, you have the Internet’ (Knowles 2009), and other bloggers are given metaphoric rope from which to hang themselves for praising work deemed poor by the more established critical community, such as the Hollywood-based Mike Szymanski from <http://www.zap2it.com> with his praise of Cats & Dogs (Guterman 2001). As most of the examples given here do, his film promotes a crisis narrative without providing any examples of quality work being produced online by amateur film critics, such as the imaginative video essays and canonical viewing project by Kevin B. Lee <http://alsolikelife.com> or the thoroughly-resourced blog by Chemical Engineer Girish Shambu <http://girishshambu.blogspot.com>. What each of these examples also share is a commonly acceded to perception that film criticism is in crisis at worst and inhabiting a transitory period at best.

Two major events need explicating as a backdrop to the latest crisis in criticism, that of economic turmoil (or a crisis in itself) and the changing nature of print media brought about by the rise of the web. The former may well have been an accelerant for the latter but also predates the late 2007 global financial crisis, and is more specifically related to newspaper revenues declining steeply as a result of advertising and readers moving online (largely consuming content for free). The effects of both of these phenomena are still keenly felt as economies across the world struggle and commentators and media institutions remain uncertain over the future of print media. Allan Rennie, Editor-in-Chief of Media Scotland, is uncertain over whether printed newspapers will continue to decline as the popularity of tablets present new opportunities and challenges (Future of Printed Media Debate, 2013). If a crisis in criticism did not quite begin with this twin upheaval, it is within this landscape that the death of the critic literature intensifies. One serious outcome is the impact that both of these events have had upon the jobs of journalists and, as such, film critics working at newspapers. At the end of this century’s first decade, critics were certainly justified in having concerns over their own positions as job losses in publishing and journalism intensified.

All arts critics working for the Daily Telegraph were made to go freelance in 2009, and pay rates were cut by 70 per cent, leaving arts criticism at some British newspapers in the hands of rota staff (Young 2009). Toby Young (2009) argues that when newspaper editors are forced to make cutbacks, it is critics who are first in the firing line; this is a point echoed by others who use the metaphor of film critics as canaries (Ebert 2008; James 2009:14). The growing recession in media spending ensured that falling print revenues (Marshall 2008) and print readerships (Tunney & Monaghan 2010:VIII), alongside pressures to offer web alternatives, combined to ensure many TV critics lost their jobs before film critics did at newspapers like the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mail, the Mail on Sunday and London’s Evening Standard (Rayner 2008). In the United States, where local newspapers are more plentiful, the dwindling print revenues have been more extreme. The Salt Lake Tribune online reported, with alarming consistency, the number of film critics losing their positions. The blog, written by resident film critic Sean P. Means (2010), provided information on job losses from April 2006 to March 2010. When Means eventually closed the list, the total number of critics he named had reached 65.

So, the wider economic picture certainly has an impact on the discourse of crisis in film criticism as critics lose jobs in la...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Endorsement
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 The Death of the Critic in the Digital Media Age
• 2 (Film) Criticism
• 3 Film Critics in Print
• 4 Film Criticism Online
• 5 ‘Other’ Film Criticism
• Conclusion
• Filmography
• Bibliography