Criticism for the masses

I’ve been reading the movie critics’ discussion on Slate, which has almost degenerated into name-calling on a couple occasions, and hasn’t been enough about movies, but does offer a little insight into the state of professional criticism today. It also got me thinking about movie-making as an art form, and what direction it may or may not be headed in the future.

For many years now, movie criticism has been splitting into two camps, and this split has been exacerbated by the rise of amateurs on the internet (like Vern). To perhaps unfairly generalize, one side takes the view that movies are an art form that should be viewed as such, and that movies – and by extension, criticism of them – should be taken seriously and studied for meaning (or lack thereof). The other side views movies as mostly entertainment that it’s ok to just sit back and enjoy – that mindless stuff that leaves you smiling can still be considered “good”, and worth your time and money, if you’re on a date, killing time, whatever.

I think both camps would agree that movies themselves can be differentiated into “art/foreign/independent films” and “Hollywood films”, but they might disagree as to what this distinction means. After all, there’s a lot of crap out there, period, and plenty of failures in both groups. This is a consequence of the very nature of filmmaking as a collaborative enterprise. Art as a whole has historically largely been a solitary creation and criticism of it reflects that, even theater to an extent – one has to differentiate the run being performed today from the run a play has had in the past, under different direction and with different actors, but still all performing the same written work. Movies are different, in that all the different contributors lead to too many variables for any single person to reliably control the quality.

I find the group that believes the “blockbuster” subset of Hollywood films to be inherently inferior to smaller films that take on different (i.e., non-action, non-glamorous) subject matter to be a lot like art critics who write about paintings, sculpture, etc., in that they are writing for a smaller audience that is only looking for engaging material, or perhaps simply trying to engage with everything they see. This is not, in my opinion, the majority of people going to see movies, and that’s ok. But it’s a little disconcerting when these critics try to argue that they are writing for that larger audience, and that if only they could make their arguments loud enough or persuasively enough, the masses would discover what they’ve been missing and flock to the great little film about wine-tasting while ignoring the silly superhero-of-the-week movie. And it’s disappointing to hear them heap scorn on critics in the other camp who (they believe) don’t try hard enough or speak loudly enough for these smaller films.

The way I see it, the division between Hollywood movies and non-Hollywood movies (perhaps better characterized as “big” and “small”) reflects the growth and evolution of the art form. Big movies are becoming more like television shows (times ten or a hundred) before reality TV took over, and small movies are becoming more like the art found in galleries, which has to be sought out. Big movies want and need big audiences, so they’re designed to appeal to the masses. Small movies don’t necessarily want or need big audiences (although the financiers can always hope), so they’re typically highly stylized, or controversial, or just plain art (when they’re not porn, straight-to-video, or made-for-TV specials – I'm talking about theatrical releases here). I side with the critics who aren’t afraid to put Spider-Man 2 on their best-of lists next to Tarnation and Sideways. If a movie succeeds at what it’s trying to do, it doesn’t bother me if all it’s trying to do is entertain its audience for two hours.