Now that I have started to write about film I’ve naturally sought out the opinions of others, to aid my research, blog, and in general to juxtapose my thoughts. This intake of opinions coupled with a small conversation I recently had about film criticism led me to the importance of articulating another aspect in this overall series, namely to criticize the critics. I wracked my brain over the last few days and have found an appropriate clarification or at least a point of departure to open the matter up to debate. I included it under this series because it underlies some of the other points I have previously discussed and moreover most certainly impacts future posts in this series.
I’ve read and participated in many debates as to why criticism and review in any field is important, it “attempts” to impartiality give advice and help consumers pick the proper way to invest their resources in cultural products. To buy or not to buy, that is the question! The issue however is what makes any of our modern critics, especially the anonymous glut of those writing reviews on IMDB or on blogs such as this one, appropriately expert enough to slag off something they couldn’t in a million years improve upon? What in fact gives anyone the right or ego to say, matter of factly, this movie, song or art piece isn’t worth a piss? How does one’s own subjective opinion carry that much weight? How or why are we so easily swayed by an opinion formulated by another?
The answer is found in the death of universalism. A great intellectual friend of mine once explained that he thought the death of universalism occurred when nuclear scientists essentially possessed the knowledge (albeit specific knowledge to their field) that carried with it the potential to impact all of mankind. Up until this point the requirements to achieve this large of an audience were monumental, requiring years of interdisciplinary learning and study; spots typically reserved for brilliant philosophers, writers and other driven individuals. When this aforementioned fact became apparent, that scientists possessed such powerful knowledge, a fragmentation was created. No longer would the majority of societies intellectuals strive to be knowledgeable in all things, they could simply focus on just one thing in an attempt to become “impactful” or experts. This fragmentation however created a much larger need for something else, it necessitated a go between or “body” that appropriately could relay or choose for all the fragmented “experts” what was important on any given day in an attempt to fill them in and allow them to focus entirely on their pursuit. This de-emancipating body of course is the modern news media, which now extends onto the internet and the blogsphere.
This explanation is important as it explains why most reviews don’t really convey anything; they are simply journalistic and fragmented, and lack any kind of concrete theory. They stem from individuals that now exist, write and analyze from the void created when universalism fell. They attempt unjustly to tell people who are too busy with their individual fragmented pursuits how to think about things; very rarely making any attempts to put films into a larger discourse. As a classmate proposed to me, maybe we as critics, reviewers and theoreticians need to build the future of “criticism” upon a much more focused attempt at understanding the reason and reasoning behind any given film, to become more universal in our understanding of films and art in general; to cease with the shortcuts and reviews that only explain away our own individual shortcomings.