I can write about film all my life. I could even get paid to do so. (I won’t, of course, but I ‘could.’) However, I will never call or consider myself a “film critic”, no matter what the circumstances. Whenever that designation is lobbed in my direction, I duck as fast as I can.
What annoys me about the whole idea of film critics is the idea that they represent some sort of authority. Most annoying is when they consider themselves some sort of authority. Ultimately, you can make arguments about whether a film is good or not. And to a very limited extent you can actually establish objective standards of what constitutes good or not.
However, at the end of the day, those standards are not going to be relevant to everyone. Thus you are really only saying, not “It was good” or “It wasn’t good”, but rather “I liked it” or “I didn’t like it.” If, however, you really think you have the standing to make the former judgment from a position of authority, well, you have a different idea of film than I do. I like movies enough, and watch them and think about them enough, that I am confident that I say something to say about them. However, at the end of the day, I’m never going to feel that I’m ‘right’ about a movie, and somebody else is wrong. Or rather I will, but I wouldn’t think of my views as constitution some sort of larger, more authoritative proof.
Peter Bart, one of the most knowledgeable writers about movies today (being a former film studio executive himself) now writes for Variety. Bart’s latest column, in the March 19-25 issue of Weekly Variety, explores again the tired new question of why audiences don’t seem to be paying much attention to what critics say when they opt to see a movie. The article explores how a batch of recent films that drew often scathing reviews from the mainstream critical community—Ghost Rider, Night at the Museum, Norbert, Wild Hogs—yet have made various amounts of money.
I’ve seen only one of those films, and would even conceivably sit down to watch one other (Night at the Museum). However, here’s the ultimate secret about audiences and the movies: PEOPLE SEE WHAT THEY WANT TO SEE.
Films like Ghost Rider and Norbert might range from uninspired junk to outright crap, and it would be nice if all popcorn movies were as deftly made as Spider-Man 2 or Batman Begins. However, we all know that ain’t going to happen. I just saw Ghost Rider, and it was as utterly flawed as I expected it to be, but those flaws were marginally outweighed by the good stuff. I wasn’t expecting much, and hit the top end of those expectations.
I don’t see a lot of movies, and since I take them so seriously you might think I’d only want to see really good (or really bad, in my case, which I find they very seldom make any more) pictures. However, I’ve been a Ghost Rider fan since I was a kid. They made a Ghost Rider movie, so I went to see it. If I was less invested in the character I might have been in the sort of frame of mind that reviews might have swayed me to see it or not.
However, that wasn’t the case. So I went with the full knowledge that I might seriously dislike the film. In other words, with full awareness, I rolled the dice. Given this situation, there was little the critics could do for me one way or the other.
And while I think Ghost Rider could easily have been better, I was marginally satisfied. And in the end, I have to realize that my suggestions, if followed, might have made the film better for me, and perhaps for others, and perhaps for even the majority of those who saw the film. Arguably, they could even have made it a better film in a Larger Sense.
However, the truth of the matter is that my suggestions would, if implemented, have not made a lick of difference to a great many—perhaps most—viewers, and would have inevitably lessoned the enjoyment of some other viewers, even if only a handful. You can make films that please the critics and please the masses. But at the end of the day, you want to please the people who actually dip into their own pockets to buy the tickets, not the handful of people who are paid to watch them. You can bemoan that fact, but that’s the nature of the beast.
And if I’ve made my peace with any issue, it’s this: What is funny, like what is sexy, is entirely in the eyes of the beholder, and cannot and never will be constrained by what should be funny or sexy. Am I instinctively appalled that some people would find Wild Hogs funnier than Duck Soup. Yep. Should I sneer at them? Nope. It’s not a matter of intellect or taste, it’s a matter of brain wiring.
I have a friend, female, of course, who bitches every single time somebody gets hit in the crotch in a movie. This annoys me because, while I believe that nine out of ten times the crotch hitting is unfunny, that tenth time it makes me laugh. (By which I mean, it all depends on the execution of the thing.) And of that ten percent, ten percent of that will strike me as downright hilarious. Same thing with fart jokes or whatever.
So who is right?
She is.
I am.
So is the guy who laughs every time someone is hit in the crotch. Because if the answer is “Is it funny?”, there is no authority. You laugh, or you don’t. Right or wrong has little to do with it. (The little is when tastes are so abhorrent as to go beyond the pale. Finding very young children sexy crosses that line, and there are things that, should one actually find funny…the Holocaust, for example…they actually do cross a line into mental illness. Even then, though, it’s a consensus issue. We know it when we see it.)
What makes Bart’s article even more problematic is that 300 is lumped in with the other titles mentioned above. Here’s the problem: 300 is a very good movie. You may not like it, but a) It’s technically well-executed, and b) it achieves the effect it seeks. Those criteria, to me, are about as close to an objective standard of quality as you are about to get. Past that, it’s again, did you as an individual “like it” or “not like it.”
Making the 300 issue particularly obnoxious is many of the critics forthrightly just don’t like the film’s ‘politics,’ or (even more irritatingly), the film’s lack of politics. Some critics have said flat out they fear the film will encourage support for the war in Iraq. Others take the filmmaker’s word that the film doesn’t address the current war, but are annoyed because it should. (As long as it makes a statement against it.) For an already infamous example, let’s take Dana Stevens at Slate.com:
“One of the few war movies I’ve seen in the past two decades that doesn’t include at least some nod in the direction of antiwar sentiment, 300 is a mythic ode to righteous bellicosity. In at least one way, the film is true to the ethos of ancient Greece: It conflates moral excellence and physical beauty (which, in this movie, means being young, white, male, and fresh from the gyms of Brentwood).”
This is what I hate about ‘critics.’ Ms. Stevens admits that the film succeeds in its apparent goals (“the film is true to the ethos of ancient Greece”), and basically criticizes the film because it’s not what she wanted it to be (“One of the few war movies I’ve seen in the past two decades that doesn’t include at least some nod in the direction of antiwar sentiment…”).
Moreover, despite the endless critical bemoanment that films seem to be made with a cookie cutter, Ms. Stevens actually complains that this film *is* different. It is, she again notes, “One of the few war movies I’ve seen…that doesn’t include at least some nod in the direction of antiwar sentiment.” However, she doesn’t think this makes the movie fresh and exciting. She thinks it puts it beyond the pale.
To the extent that this is the opinion of a viewer, Ms. Stevens is dead on. The only way she couldn’t be, in fact, is if she secretly liked the film but slammed it because she didn’t want to admit she did. (Or vice versa.) To the extent that Ms. Stevens is to be read as a Critic, however, an Authority, she’s revealed nothing other than that she is an ass.
Many will call me out right about now. This is predicated, I think, on two grounds. The first is that again, if I have a film website and write about films and argue strenuously for my opinions, then I am in a de facto sense a critic myself. The second is that many people will say that I myself historically will often judge a film’s worth based on how well its politics align with mine.
To which I say, sorry. Again, I reject the first label, even in my own mind. I might think more about film, know more about film, care more about film, and even in rare cases actually consider myself ‘smarter’ than the person I’m disagreeing with. However, there are people who know as much or more about film, care as much or more about film, and there are definitely people who are smarter than me, and there are times with they will disagree with me too. Liz Kingsley, over at And You Call Yourself a Scientist!, falls neatly into the second category.
So…when I’m debating the first person, am I the one that’s right? The authority? And when I disagree with Liz, who I cheerfully acknowledge as smarter and (much more importantly) more thoughtful than I? Is she then the authority?
In both cases, the answer is, again, neither of us. Because Liz is Liz, she might well formulate a case strong enough that it makes me reconsider my position, and perhaps will even win me over to her point of view on some issue. Yet in the end, if she likes a movie and I don’t, or the other way around, nobody is ‘right.’ At best, one of our tastes might more closely align to that of a reader, and that’s the only sense in which one of us might generally be considered more ‘authoritative.’ Even that fails, though, on a case by case basis.
As for the political slant issue, I’ll say it again, as I’ve said it over and over. I love many films whose politics ‘disagree’ with mine. However, in most cases, it’s not really an issue. A good movie makes fresh and individual it’s characters and incidents. When I complain about evil businessmen or military officers in movies, its almost always because such are used as such a stupid, cloddish, unthinking cliché in so many movies. Nobody ever has, or ever will, however, hear me complain that It’s A Wonderful Life demonizes businessmen, or that Dr. Strangelove demonizes the military. Both film are smarter than that, and have subtler things to say.
I try to draw those distinctions when I raise them, and thus can get a little testy when I am criticized for not doing so. Perhaps, and this is certainly possible, I wrote so poorly that a reader may seek clarification on my views. However, I think I’ve earned the benefit of the doubt on most issues, until such clarification is sought and given, especially if one is conversant with the bulk of my work.
More often, I’ll see criticism that indicates that the critic of my work didn’t really bother reading what I said. This is annoying because I do, after all, write at some great length and really try to be explicit in my thoughts on the matter. The reason my reviews of Superman IV and the Billy Jack movies are so long is because I try to really lay the ground for my disagreements and problems with the films. If I didn’t, my reviews would be a lot shorter.
Then, of course, there are the people who just think I’m a liar. I might say that I hate racism, and criticize what I actually consider to be racist in a movie. However, c’mon…I openly admit I voted for George Bush! I watch Mr. Moto movies and don’t flagellate myself or the filmmakers! I openly revile Al Sharpton! So how can I really, in my heart, hate racism? Obviously if I attempt to draw distinctions between Martin Luthor King Jr. and Sharpton, it’s merely to hide the fact that I really hate both of them, because they’re black.
Do I argue, at length, that for all the horror represented by nuclear weapons, that they arguably stabilized the political scene during the Cold War, and quite probably kept us from fighting further world wars? That, on balance, nuclear weapons might well have saved millions of more lives than they took, even at the cost of increasing mankind’s apocalyptic fears and dread?
Well, that’s a pitiful cover for the fact that, in actuality, I really just love weapons of mass destruction. ” “My enjoyment of the Jabootu review has always been tempered by the love letter to nuclear weapons halfway through, so I was impressed at how much Al was able to point out how ludicrous the premise was while still not looking like a nut himself, something Ken Begg didn’t quite manage.”
[I have no problem being thought of as a nut, by the way. However, again, I’d like to have it be based on my actual views. The idea that my thoughts on MAD constituted a “love letter to nuclear weapons” strikes me as a bizarre interpretation, at best.]And if spend endless paragraphs explaining that I think the Billy Jack movies and the Captain Planet cartoon actually hurt, through their essential dishonesty and arrogance the very causes that could be advanced through a more careful approach, well, some viewers are canny enough to see through my pose. “I recently saw Star Trek V…because my curiosity was peaked [sic] by a certain “bad movie” site I no longer go to because the host is a fascist bastard. (Cough, cough, Jabootu, cough.)”
Anyway. It’s amazing to me that people complain less about my propensity for tangents than about my politics, which after all are fairly mainstream. But there you go.
So please, call me a crank. Call me a windbag. Even call me a fascist. (Since I think that make you look far more stupid than it successfully labels me.) Just don’t, please, call me a critic.
Or, you know, late for dinner. Goes without saying, really.
