What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Movies

A thoughtful post about the fate of film criticism. Much of this boils down what happens when film criticism leaves the world of print journalism and adapts to the TV — not only in the content of the review but the context of celebrity/insider/gossip in which movies are presented to the public. (Armond White, New York Press, via)

In the Ebert age of criticism, the Aesthetic of the Hit dominates everything. Behind those panicky articles about critics losing their jobs (what about autoworkers and schoolteachers?), lurks the writers’ own fear of falling victim to the same draconian industry rule: Most publishers and editors are only interested in supporting hits in orderbto reach Hollywood’s deep-pocket advertisers. This is what makes traditional criticism seem indefinable and obsolete, leaving web criticism as a ready (but dubious) alternative.

The Internetters who stepped in to fill print publications’ void seize a technological opportunity and then confuse it with
“democratization”–almost fascistically turning discourse into babble.
They don’t necessarily bother to learn or think–that’s the privilege of graffito-critique. Their proud non-professionalism presumes that other moviegoers want to–or need to–match opinions with other amateurs. That’s Kael’s “layman” retort made viral. The journalistic buzzword for this water-cooler discourse is “conversation” (as when The Times saluted Ebert’s return to newspaper writing as “a chance to pick up on an interrupted conversation”). But today’s criticism isn’t real conversation; on the Internet it’s too solipsistic and autodidactic to be called a heart-to-heart.