Always Lashing the Same Back

[ludickid]

It continues to amaze me every day how completely and thoroughly we fail to understand our own culture.  It’s especially baffling considering that this country, really, only has pop culture going for it; having given up on the Supermanly troika of truth, justice, and the American Way, and having shipped all its manufacturing to places where the gap

Comments

[ludickid]

Would you be willing to entertain my suggestion that your frequent citation of Ta-Nehisi Coates - who I love - as an example of how the art of criticism is thriving is just as broad a generalization as my frequent citation of a million other voices who suck as an example of how the art of criticism is stagnating?

Activists have inspired backlash against racist/sexist art, but backlash has never been exclusively progressive.

I did not say that it has been exclusively progressive, nor did I say that it has never been conservative. I said that it has been progressive in the past, and that it is currently quite reactionary. I’m getting pretty tired of defending myself on the basis of statements I didn’t make. Your problem isn’t that your criticisms need editing; it’s that you’re not reading very closely.

It's unclear why "means of defending them" is linked to an essay praising feminist backlash against a sexist Catwoman illustration; what is the backlash defending racism and sexism - the catwoman picture? Isn't the backlash explicitly against that?

The article linked addresses the backlash against the backlash - the thousands of people who attacked critics who found the picture sexist, and did so in a sexist way. I picked that article because it neatly groups together dozens of ways in which the defense was made, saving me the trouble of linking to a dozen different sites.

Despite decrying the backlash against the advances made by minorities, these meta-criticism posts mostly name and quote white guys. The two named critics who aren't white and/or guys, Michiko Kakutani and Stanley Crouch, are examples of failure and inadequacy. This dissonance is not present in other essays, and you promote female artists, so perhaps the simplifications of this meta-narrative makes it more reactionary than intended.

Here you’re just playing the counting game, which teaches us nothing. It’s pure sidetracking. (It’s also highly selective, almost to the point of dishonesty, since the same pieces you’re talking about also cite by name as “examples of failure and inadequacy” Harry Knowles, Sasha Frere-Jones, Peter Travers, and Erik Hayden - all white guys.) You and I both know that I could cite a hundred straight white male critics who display the problematic tendencies I talk about; picking out two that aren’t and using them to subtly imply that I’m a reactionary is nothing but a dodge. Let’s stick to the essence of the critique rather than the demographic makeup of who it’s applied to.

[ludickid]

So perhaps a truly transcendent essay about Harmon's firing would move beyond the easy lionization of him as singular betrayed genuis, a trope spouted by many fanboys.

Except that three of Harmon’s producers (one of them a woman) and six of his writers (two of them women) also quit the show in protest of his treatment, or were fired out of fear they’d show too much loyalty to him. I’ve never argued that Harmon isn’t an asshole, or that he is free of personality disorders, or immune to having bad opinions. But as a creator vs. bosses narrative, it’s hard to think of anyone who fits the bill better; and it’s hard to think of a recent time (outside of comics, anyway) when so-called serious critics were so quick to defend the bosses over the creator.

It's raising a topic of discussion: "And those walkouts may not have seen this debate over slow films involving hundreds of readers and set off, in part, by Mr. Malick’s film." Not perfect, but not the embrace of ignorance claimed in the paraphrase.

It’s a topic unworthy of discussion. If it’s one person asking for their money back because they think Malick is too artsy-fartsy or a thousand people who think movies are too slow these days, it’s just different measures of link-baiting bullshit. Neither of those things are news, and neither of them raises a single solitary interesting point in the framework of worthwhile criticism.

Let us not be so ardent that we are untrue. There are plenty of people who said John Carter was poorly executed at many levels and plenty who agreed in thoughtful ways.

Sure. But what’s the dominant narrative right now? It’s doing better on DVD and on-demand, so shut up, everyone who thought it was an overpriced dud. That’s not criticism; it’s accounting.

I'm not sure what selective sample of internet discourse…Nor are Community fans facing a backlash of this sort

You aren’t aware of these backlashes, apparently. That doesn’t mean they aren’t happening. I could waste both our times by linking to dozens of examples, though.

Also, haven't later critics, like Nathan Rabin, observed that Heaven's Gate isn't the offense to art as deemed by the intitial response? Hasn't the backlash against Michael Cimino faded in contrast to other, far more mindless and tacky excessive flops? Wasn't such shifts kind of the point of my year of flops?

You’re making my argument for me. Heaven’s Gate is no less an artistic failure or a financial catastrophe than it ever was, but critics have decided to ‘rehabilitate’ it - not because it’s any less of a disaster, but because it gives them something to talk about instead of writing real insightful criticism, and because “SPACEBALLS: Was it really a work of subversive brilliance?” gets more clicks than “Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s movies deserve your attention”.