What Film Critics Don't Need to Know
Look, I'm all for film critics being knowledgeable about the art and history of film criticism, but Ronald Bergan's Guardian blog post, "What Every Film Critic Must Know," is a cranky, curmudgeonly example of the Dougherty doctrine--"If it were more like me, the Republican Party would be better off. It’s failing because it’s like you"--except applied to film criticism. He could've just written, "If film critics were more like me, film criticism would be better off," and been done with it.
I don't see, for example, how knowing anything about jidai-geki is going to help anyone "read" the next Michael Bay film, or how having seen every Bunuel film will come much in handy when reviewing next fall's crop of self-important, Oscar-hopeful period pics. The vast majority of movies that a critic, especially a critic outside New York or L.A., must see and review are breezy popular entertainments that have little to do with Bergan's list of must-sees and reads. Now, it doesn't hurt to have seen all those classic films, and anyone reviewing film professionally will hopefully have an interest in seeking out this sort of noteworthy material. But I don't think anyone is going to be terribly worse off for not having seen them while reviewing I, Robot.
No, Bergan's criteria doesn't have much use for most mainstream film critics these days; instead, he's put together a pretty solid list of requirements for what it should take to become a film studies professor--which, surprise surprise, is just what Bergan is. Gosh, imagine that: a professor arguing that more people need to take and value the type of courses he teaches...
posted by Peter @ 4/01/2007 09:41:00 PM
3 Comments:
Thanks for pointing me to Dougherty's lovely little article. The implied parallel between the ideological activists and the grumpy film studies profs is very apt.
I'm going to make my semi-annual case for distinguishing between a film reviewer and a film critic and argue that Bergan's blog post applies only to the latter.
If you're talking a bout a reviewer, someone who trades in offering brief evaluations of the quality of the next Mike Bay film, then maybe you don't need Bunuel or Fellini (although you probably do need some Ingmar Bergman to understand Bay's melancholic reflections on the nature of existence).
If you're a film critic interested in theorizing the nature of film as a medium, it's limits and potentialities as a mode of expression, then you probably do need to have seen Bunuel, Ozu, and company. So the question becomes how you're defining mainstream, I suppose, but I wish we had more critics who were well-versed in the film canon.
I'm in the latter camp, personally, if somewhat reluctantly because I'm not cranky or curmudgeonly, I swear (don't you have to be over 50 to be a curmudgeon?). But I think there's an important distinction to be made here between the two modes of writing about film.
"If you're a film critic interested in theorizing the nature of film as a medium, it's limits and potentialities as a mode of expression"
I'd basically agree. But, for good and for ill, that's just not the job of most people employed, or even occasionally paid, to watch and write about movies. There are precious few outlets that allow that sort of thing, much less encourage or specialize in it.
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