Critics on the web: Quantity vs. quality
Just as two critics can see the same movie and have different reactions, Bill Wyman (the former arts editor for Salon, not the aging Rolling Stones bass player) and the Cricket had different takes on Roger Ebert's recent blog post about the sorry state of newspapers.
Ebert takes the evidence of fewer newspaper jobs for movie critics, and the AP's new plan to trim all feature stories (including movie reviews) to 500 words or less, and finds ominous portents for thoughtful criticism. He also sees newspapers dumbing themselves down with celebrity gossip and other junk-food journalism.
Wyman, in this post on his Hitsville blog, disagrees.
"For virtually everyone interested in film criticism, today’s state of affairs is great," Wyman writes. "Ebert’s vista is the too-narrow one of daily newspapers. That’s an artificial construct that has no resonance to anyone with a computer. And even in that limited sphere film criticism was not a savior. A lot of highly profitable newspapers never had anything but crummy critics covering any arts medium you can think of."
Wyman points to aggregator web sites, like MetaCritic. "Today, if I’m interested in critical takes on, say, 'Australia,' in a click or two I have at hand the writings of Manohla Dargis, Ebert himself, Ken Turan, Ella Taylor and Todd McCarthy on that film. A click or two more and I have at my disposal the collective wisdom of the internets’ collective film writing, the intellectual equivalent of that sandworm in 'Dune,' majestic and slightly nauseating at the same time."
Wyman's vista is none too wide, either. The critics he points out are (except for Ebert, based in Chicago and a fiefdom unto himself) from New York and Los Angeles - two insular cultural capitals that become echo chambers for their own bicoastal pomposity. And as for his tunneling into the rest of the Internet, the Web is like Forrest Gump's box of chocolates from which one never knows what one will get.
There are great critics working at regional papers around the country - Roger Moore in Orlando, Chris Hewitt in St. Paul, Rene Rodriguez in Miami, the Cricket's friend Moira McDonald in Seattle, just to name a few. There have been others who, because of management decisions at their newspapers, aren't there anymore. Every time one of those voices is stilled, those local bylines replaced by wire copy or syndicated critics, the pool of "collective wisdom" Wyman praises gets a tiny bit shallower.
Ebert takes the evidence of fewer newspaper jobs for movie critics, and the AP's new plan to trim all feature stories (including movie reviews) to 500 words or less, and finds ominous portents for thoughtful criticism. He also sees newspapers dumbing themselves down with celebrity gossip and other junk-food journalism.
Wyman, in this post on his Hitsville blog, disagrees.
"For virtually everyone interested in film criticism, today’s state of affairs is great," Wyman writes. "Ebert’s vista is the too-narrow one of daily newspapers. That’s an artificial construct that has no resonance to anyone with a computer. And even in that limited sphere film criticism was not a savior. A lot of highly profitable newspapers never had anything but crummy critics covering any arts medium you can think of."
Wyman points to aggregator web sites, like MetaCritic. "Today, if I’m interested in critical takes on, say, 'Australia,' in a click or two I have at hand the writings of Manohla Dargis, Ebert himself, Ken Turan, Ella Taylor and Todd McCarthy on that film. A click or two more and I have at my disposal the collective wisdom of the internets’ collective film writing, the intellectual equivalent of that sandworm in 'Dune,' majestic and slightly nauseating at the same time."
Wyman's vista is none too wide, either. The critics he points out are (except for Ebert, based in Chicago and a fiefdom unto himself) from New York and Los Angeles - two insular cultural capitals that become echo chambers for their own bicoastal pomposity. And as for his tunneling into the rest of the Internet, the Web is like Forrest Gump's box of chocolates from which one never knows what one will get.
There are great critics working at regional papers around the country - Roger Moore in Orlando, Chris Hewitt in St. Paul, Rene Rodriguez in Miami, the Cricket's friend Moira McDonald in Seattle, just to name a few. There have been others who, because of management decisions at their newspapers, aren't there anymore. Every time one of those voices is stilled, those local bylines replaced by wire copy or syndicated critics, the pool of "collective wisdom" Wyman praises gets a tiny bit shallower.
Labels: disappearing critics
9:59 AM
| 
1 Comments:
It's funny that Wyman names five invaluable critics that he turns to on the Internet instead of reading a newspaper -- and they all work for newspapers (some dailies, some weeklies).
In getting mired in the old Web vs. ink-on-dead-trees conundrum, we ignore the real issue: it's not the delivery system that matters. It's the fact that some institution bothered to employ someone who could devote themselves (more or less) full-time to watching, thinking and writing about movies.
It's true that at the apex of critic-dom, when it seemed like every paper over 100k circulation had an in-house critic, there were some bad ones out there. But compare that to the wheat-to-chaff ratio of critical thinking about film that we get online. I'll take the paid critics.
And as good as some of those critics mentioned are, I would hate to live in a world where nearly all the film criticism most people see is from Ebert, the NYT, LA Times, Variety and AP.
Post a Comment
<< Home