Following Philip French’s retirement and Roger Ebert’s death, professional film criticism needs to fortify itself.
At the weekend, Philip French, long time film fellow at The Observer, put an end to all his criticism and witticism. And considering that Roger Ebert, the most famous film critic in the US, died in April of this year, there is no doubt that 2013 marks the end of an era, perhaps the era, of film journalism. For these were men who made the trade what it is today, or what it was just yesterday. Before the web, and the consequent ubiquity of criticism, commentary and everything else under the sun, writers like French and Ebert played important roles in shaping the arts of both this and last century. Now that they’re gone, what’s going to happen?
Philip French is right – critics are no longer tastemakers
There won’t be like-for-like replacements, no matter how well The Observer has done in recruiting Mark Kermode to fill the void. In their time, critics like French and Ebert were the arbiters of what was good, what wasn’t, and, most importantly, why. They were celebrated for their intelligence, open-mindedness and sophisticated understanding of both the history and value of cinema. But it’s more than that. Critics of yesteryear earned the trust of their readership, and enjoyed reputations that are rather more difficult to cultivate in this digital age. In his farewell Q&A, Phillip French speculated: “I don’t think that any critic in any medium will have the same influence that certain critics have had in the past.” And he’s right. Critics are no longer tastemakers.
What we have instead are aggregate websites like RottenTomatoes and Metacritic, and the internet consensus available on Twitter. Once upon a time, people would consult a newspaper or watch Ebert’s At The Movies to decide what was worth seeing that week. No longer. Now quality is supposedly quantifiable and the reactive tweets of the everyman shape the conversation more than the expert analysis of the critic. The democratisation of film criticism may sound all well and good – replacing lecture with dialogue – but it leaves the industry vulnerable to myriad problems greater than elitism.
Consensus risks Groupthink, for one, and there’s a distinct lack of critical thinking in the criticism on new media. 140 characters just isn’t enough to effectively express complex thought. It cannot be the basis for how and why one film succeeds and another does not.
The critic should still have the power to affect the box office
In this new system, nobody looks at the big picture. Because the importance of the film critic isn’t endorsing one picture and lambasting another – it’s holding to account filmmakers and their studios. The critic should have the power to affect box office, the critic should be feared by the studio exec, and the industry press should continue to check and balance the direction of the movie biz. Without fear of critical reprisal, and the consequent lack of moneys, Hollywood gets lazy.
And, right now, Hollywood is very lazy. It is no coincidence that the quality of the cinematic product has declined so dramatically in this new age. It’s because, for a few reasons, critics have less influence. Digital marketing has made it easier to sell shitty, shitty movies. I saw just the other day a poster for Kick-Ass 2 littered with positive reviews, not from critics or publications, but from the Twitterati. Hollywood PR has found a way to sidestep actual criticism.
That’s not the only thing wrong with Kick-Ass 2: Post-controversy, Jim Carrey should show us the money
Couple this strategy with an ever-increasing strain of anti-intellectualism and you’re left with the desolate landscape of modern movies. I’ve often encountered an attitude that believes highbrow critics like French attribute meaning where there is none, that they intellectualise cinema as though it were a higher art. ‘Movies belong the masses’ is the sentiment. If this close-minded, antagonistic attitude prevails, then film as art will become ever harder to find.
It’s the job of the critic to prevent cultural decline
It’s the job of the critic to prevent cultural decline, to share with readers and viewers their insight and ideas. It makes everyone more critical, more analytical, and art is better for it. Look what has happened to television since the explosion of TV criticism at the turn of the 21st century. TV is in a golden age of artistic experimentation – there’s Breaking Bad and Mad Men, Louie and Girls.
Werner Herzog once told Roger Ebert to watch the Anna Nicole Smith Show to see “a vulgar, a perversion, an obscenity, the obscene perversion of an American dream, an obscene perversion of what constitutes beauty. In many ways something very, very revealing about what is going wrong in this civilization. A monumental failure of civilization.” Professional criticism is our weapon against this vulgarity. Let us not undervalue it. Some people just know better.
Now try this: Is TV beating cinema into irrelevance?
Featured image: workinpana, via Flickr
Inset images: Steve Rhodes, via Flickr; Plan B Entertainment
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