Being a critic means never having to say I'm sorry...

There's a great article I came across in the NYT this morning written by A.O. Scott on the role of the film critic, and how to think about movies as vehicles of both art and commerce. I think it's one of the most fascinating divides in popular culture because movies are a medium that have become so accessible. With a combination of options from digital television, illegal and legal downloading, and just the overall increase of new products flooding new markets the demographic is changing. Where I think this gets really interesting is how it influences audiences comprised of people like me who are about equally engaged in reviews and movies.

"So we’re damned if we don’t. And sometimes, also, if we do. When our breathless praise garlands advertisements for movies the public greets with a shrug, we look like suckers or shills. But these accusations would stick only if the job of the critic were to reflect, predict or influence the public taste.
That, however, is the job of the Hollywood studios, in particular of their marketing and publicity departments, and it is the professional duty of critics to be out of touch with — to be independent of — their concerns. These companies spend tens of millions of dollars to persuade you that the opening of a movie is a public event, a cultural experience you will want to be part of. The campaign of persuasion starts weeks or months — or, in the case of multisequel cash cows, years — before the tickets go on sale, with the goal of making their purchase a foregone conclusion by the time the first reviews appear. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, but the judgment of critics almost never makes the difference between failure and success... "

I think to an audience like us the cultural experience of the film is embedded into the discourse surrounding the film (i.e. who made it, their aesthetic choices, studio intrigue, etc.) I don't think films exist in that kind of vacuum anymore, and the proof is in websites like metacritic.com and rottentomatoes.com, both good at providing numerical breakdowns of judgment, and both popular with audiences who like going to the movies, but who claim not to be concerned with judgment.

"So why review them? Why not let the market do its work, let the audience have its fun and occupy ourselves with the arcana — the art — we critics ostensibly prefer? The obvious answer is that art, or at least the kind of pleasure, wonder and surprise we associate with art, often pops out of commerce, and we want to be around to celebrate when it does and to complain when it doesn’t. But the deeper answer is that our love of movies is sometimes expressed as a mistrust of the people who make and sell them, and even of the people who see them. We take entertainment very seriously, which is to say that we don’t go to the movies for fun. Or for money. We do it for you."

I guess the final point to make here is that critics exist where culture mattters, and even as that notion evolves, and the division between high and low brow is maintained I still like thinking that there are people out there doing the heavy lifting.