The Shifting Landscape of Criticism
How does one define a critic these days? Until recently one could have argued that a film critic is someone who makes a living by publishing his thoughts on films.
Yet these days, the publishing of one’s thoughts is as possible for the layman as checking his email. Simply post on Facebook, update your blog, write a review on sites like Netflix or The Auteurs, or comment on an article on the New York Times website and your thoughts have been “published.” The power to crown someone with the title of “critic” is no longer just in the hands of editors, but the hyper-democratized space of the Internet places it directly in the hands of the reader. Many people take cues about what to watch from a variety of these unorthodox sources because of their ubiquity and presence on highly trafficked sites, legitimizing their voice and strengthening their influence.
Granted, the depth and quality of the criticism out there varies, especially in the case of blogs where some of the most insightful new voices in film criticism maintain a presence. Films propel people to communicate and what we’ve gained is an invaluable forum for this dialogue that is no longer exclusively reserved for professionals.
In this time of economic uncertainty we are concurrently undergoing these revolutionary changes in media and publishing, and many emerging critics can no longer strive toward the type of employment that previous generations could. We are forced to invent our own, unconventional path—a pastiche of internships, part-time, freelance and volunteer work that we pray will one day lead to something that resembles a career. The shift towards web-based readership that is simultaneously responsible for this crisis in publishing is already forging new structures of compensation, while propelling innovations in how and where we write and read.
Valuable criticism isn’t defined by where it is published, but by its rigorous commitment to cinema. I am drawn to criticism that considers how a film surpasses what we thought was possible, incisively examines formal technique without losing track of the film’s relationship to life, and all the while maintains a distinction between personal taste and one’s own perspective. These are things I strive for in my own writing. But above all, what inspires me (and I imagine most) to write about film isn’t the eloquence or art of criticism but the films themselves.
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