Ferocious Aardvark wrote:The review of the Soumaya Museum seems pretty innocuous to me, it is just one critic's personal assessment of the place, and while I'm unlikely ever to go see for myself, they all read like valid criticisms to me. I really don't see the arrogance you seem to.
Like I said, maybe I am hyper sensitive because I don't read too much criticism. It just seemed like he never missed the opportunity to stick the knife in. It didn't seem like he was going in to enjoy the experience, it seemed like he was going in to see how it didn't meet his standards.
Quote:I don't believe anyone who reads books and listens to music etc yet claims they have "no time for reviews", simply because there is such a mammoth volume of books published and music released that you don't have any hope in hell of ever reading or listening to even 1% of it, and you don't have access to even a list of everything that is published or released, and you couldn't possibly read everything or listen to everything - or even more than the tiniest percentage of everything). Unless you read something, somewhere, to alert you to the existence of a book, then how would you even know it exists? Ditto music, with the exception that you will of course hear pieces of music new to your ears on media such as radio or internet - but they are only being played because somebody - who loosely is acting as a critic- has pre-filtered and selected those pieces of music.
I gave a quick outline of my use of the rating systems to make sure the film isn't getting a 4, which in my experience is generally a good guide to it sucking. But generally that's as deep as I go.
Music. The bands I like are: Tears For Fears, Third Eye Blind, Depeche Mode, Placebo, IAMX, Linkin Park, Blink 182, Imagine Dragons, The Killers, plus maybe some others that aren't coming to me right now. I don't read about music. I don't think I've ever read reviews of any of the bands. I'd struggle to name people involved in most of the bands. I don't read interviews from them.
I'm not saying my choices aren't influenced by critics at all. Obviously a DJ or TV producer heard Hot Fuss, thought it was worthy of airplay and I then heard it and thought it was worth investigating. But it wasn't through reading criticism of the band.
From what I've seen of the press of The Arctic Monkeys they supposedly have some merit. From the clips of the couple of songs I've partly heard I'm just not interested. The Beatles and Rolling Stones are two of the biggest bands on the planet. I've never actually heard anything of there's that has spoken to me enough for me to bother to figure out whether I like them.
Quote:Next, some of the best music and literature I know - lots of it - I wouldn't have liked much, or at all, without critics. Classical pieces such as Rachmaninov, or Wagner, spring to mind, or the plays of Shakespeare, or one of what became my all time favourites, the Canterbury Tales. What you often need, or if not "need" then what is extremely helpful, is someone who knows and understands - who is thus acting as a critic - to explain to you why this has merit. And the more you learn, the more you might understand, and the more you might appreciate.
But I'd say that all these are regarded as masterpieces that have stood the test of time. They have gained popularity. I'd also question whether there weren't critics at the time saying what a pile of crap they'd done and they needed to get off the stage for someone better.
Is your favourite Shakespeare work the one that gave you most pleasure, or the one that critics said was the best? If you love Hamlet and think Macbeth is slightly dull, but the world's leading authority says the opposite are you wrong or were you just different people liking different things?
Quote:I could go on. I could point to wonderful series like the recent Waldemar Januszczak programmes, which gave you startling insights and history and background into art of the Dark Ages" which, short of studying the subject yourself, would have completely passed me by, and I am infinitely better informed, and much more appreciative of the subject art, entirely down to an art critic.
But that seems to be a series of programmes produced with the intent of educating and spreading the enjoyment of that art. I don't see any relation between that and the slashing that I linked to.
Quote:In a less highbrow context, a year or so ago somebody tipped me the wink about a new series on Watch! by a young magician from Bradford called Dynamo. I watched and think it's great. That person was acting, informally, as a critic and reviewer, and I was benefiting from their critique.
To me he was saying, "I like this, I think you might too." You watched it, and you did.
To go back to the link. Say someone spent the day at that museum and had a great day. They don't know art, but they enjoyed it and they want to return many times to slowly learn more. They later read that article and they respond to it like I did. Are they then going to see the work by Dali and appreciate it, or is it going to be in their minds that the work is "second rate".
Quote:Finally, I disagree entirely that to offer a meaningful critique you need to have created world class art yourself. My English Lit teacher, who instilled in me a love of Shakespeare, Milton, Chaucer etc., had never written a book or a poem in his life, but was both wonderfully knowledgeable, enthusiastic, and - critically - able to communicate all that to his students.
That's not what I meant at all. I said that to display that level of arrogance, you'd have needed to have been the greatest artist ever, and even then you shouldn't. I think great talent and success gives someone some licence for arrogance. I don't see how a critic can ever earn the right to be that arrogant. I suspect that from that article that critics gain readership just by being outrageously mean.
Your English teacher was there to teach you a love of English literature. He seems to have succeeded to a very high degree. But it doesn't seem to me to be the role of the critic. The teacher gives you appreciation. The critic seems to be telling you that the work in front of you is junk.
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