Out of Touch

[monsterofmud]

I hate it when college writers are able to write printed reviews without a proper background. The entertainment writer for the OSU paper trashes today's Black Snake Moan, despite the fact that its sitting at a 7.2/10 on the imdb. Just from reading the opening paragraphs of this review its clear that he's missing the point, and instead basing his

Comments

[monsterofmud]

Yeah...sometimes I expect too much. Ultimately subjectivity does have final say when it really comes down to it, and it might not matter how well-justified, studied, or intentioned something is in premise, it is what it is, and people only have the time and energy towards the arts to say "Yea", "Neigh", or "It Was Okay". Which is why I really love rottentomatoes.com when it comes to film reviews, because it is a close approximation of that very thing. But even then its not to be trusted 100% of the time as evinced by the occasional aberration such as Hannibal Rising.

I suppose outside the academic/art world, people simply want the buzz on high-profile entertainment selections to help guide them in their decisions on how to spend their time; So there is a definite need in place for reviews. But I know as well as most anyone else that people don't actually read the reviews, they read the headline and perhaps the thesis paragraph. It's simply an inherent problem with the arts: At a gallery space people look at the art, but don't bother to read the one-page artist's statement on the wall near the entrance; They don't read a composer's statement in the liner notes before throwing on the CD. They don't read an academic review before or listen to the director's audio commentary after a film to glean context and purpose.

I would guess that 70% of the art out there in the world hardly deserves any of that preparation/post-experience dissemination, especially when its something made for fun like Napoleon Dynamite or Beerfest. But I guess ultimately I would just have hope that people would pause and think first: "Is this an art-piece for pure laughs/titillation, or might it be intended as something more?" And if they feel its more, then a short and simple preface should be consulted first, which in this day-and-age of instant internet access at nearly all times, means there is no excuse not to do so, given that it takes no more than a few minutes at best, for something that will take up many more minutes once engaged. And there should be an inherent acknowledgment that a small-run press review will be more unlikely to give the straight scoop with which to effectively fuel your decisions.

Maybe that acknowledgment is indeed there in most people and I am too harsh. It makes no difference if I disagree with an author of a piece, because their opinion is their own, founded on sound reasoning or not. But I do have to recoil when I see something being wholly under-patronized due to a few rapidly-scrawled statements in the press.

These are the kinds of discussions academics get into endlessly, and its been going on since the dawn of time (I love the "caveman critic" segment in Mel Brooks' History of the World Part 1). All I know is that reviews are needed by the public as much as they're needed by academics and artists, and though they facilitate different purposes, there is no way they can ever be cross-pollinated to work at ideal levels. They're for humans to disseminate, and humans being humans, there's just too much organic-ness to wade through.