{"id":36830,"date":"2014-12-30T22:15:14","date_gmt":"2014-12-30T14:15:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=36830"},"modified":"2025-01-29T11:56:13","modified_gmt":"2025-01-29T16:56:13","slug":"is-social-media-killing-the-professional-critic-experts-weigh-in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2014\/12\/30\/is-social-media-killing-the-professional-critic-experts-weigh-in\/","title":{"rendered":"Is social media killing the professional critic? Experts weigh in"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"shutterstock_222296650\"<\/a><\/p>\n

TORONTO\u2014It seems the adage \u201cEveryone\u2019s a critic\u201d has never been more true than now.<\/p>\n

Between Twitter, Facebook and blogs, online opinions are becoming just as prominent as those of professional reviewers, raising the question: where does the role of the expert critic stand in the social media age?<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the role of the critic has been very diminished, because you get a lot of people who set themselves up as critics by having a website where it says that they\u2019re a critic,\u201d says filmmaker David Cronenberg. \u201cEven now if you go to Rotten Tomatoes, you have critics and then you have \u2018Top Critics\u2019, and what that really means is that there are legitimate critics who have actually paid their dues and worked hard and are in a legitimate website connected perhaps with a newspaper or perhaps not.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen there are all these other people who just say they\u2019re critics and you read their writing and they can\u2019t write, or they can write and their writing reveals that they\u2019re quite stupid and ignorant. … Some voices have emerged that are actually quite good who never would have emerged before, so that\u2019s the upside of that. But I think it means that it\u2019s diluted the effective critics.\u201d<\/p>\n

Film reviewer Richard Crouse agrees, noting there are fewer people making a living as critics these days\u2014and those who are making a living at it generally don\u2019t have the cachet of those such as the late Roger Ebert, Jay Scott or Pauline Kael.<\/p>\n

\u201cDo critics still have the same kind of clout that they once did?<\/p>\n

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I don\u2019t think so, and it\u2019s strictly because I think it\u2019s been democratized,\u201d says Crouse, a journalist, author and radio host.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is so much noise out there right now in terms of the amount of words that are written about films, unlike 30, 40 years ago when there were a handful of people that you could build a relationship with, you could trust. Even if you disagreed with them, you went and read them and you went on your way and you took their advice. Now I think it\u2019s much different. I think that people skim through the blogs and Twitter and everything else and make up their own minds there, by and large, and look at star ratings.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jesse Wente, director of film programs at TIFF Bell Lightbox, says he doesn\u2019t \u201ceven know if film criticism is a career anymore.\u201d At the same time, he feels \u201creal critical authority is actually more needed and more valuable now, because you do need something to cut through what is this large amount of reaction to films.\u201d<\/p>\n

The issue of the changing role of the critic came to the fore in Toronto recently when Factory Theatre announced it was going to \u201cexperiment\u201d with media coverage of its shows. Instead of inviting working members of the media to opening night, as is typical in the theatre world, the company said it had decided to offer complimentary tickets to them three performances after that.<\/p>\n

Factory Theatre says it made the move \u201cwith the unanimous support from this season\u2019s partners.\u201d The idea was to \u201csupport and celebrate the work of\u201d its theatre creators \u201cby giving general audiences the first chance to respond\u201d to its shows \u201cand to be at the forefront of the conversation,\u201d said a statement.<\/p>\n

But headlines swirled over whether the company was trying to sideline critics and build positive social media buzz first before any potential negative reviews came out.<\/p>\n

Factory Theatre artistic director Nina Lee Aquino says that\u2019s not \u201ctrue at all.\u201d She notes it was a \u201ccollaborative\u201d decision that she didn\u2019t think \u201cwas groundbreaking or controversial.\u201d \u201cIt was an experiment, and we\u2019re still changing. There was no set-in-stone media night.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe intention was never to ban,\u201d she adds. \u201cThere\u2019s this big idea that we were banning critics or excluding them. If that was the case, then why have a media night at all? If critics wanted to come earlier than said media night, they were more than welcome to but they need to buy their own ticket for that, which some of them did during (The Art of Building a Bunker).\u201d<\/p>\n

Crouse says his personal mandate for when reviews should be able to run is \u201cthe first time an audience can see it and pays for it, that\u2019s fair game.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is nothing that will get a critic\u2019s back up any more than being told, \u2018Oh, you can\u2019t see this when everybody else sees it.\u2019 For me, the idea of a critic is that if people are paying money to see something, we should be able to write our opinion about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Aquino notes she does \u201clove critics\u201d and feels professional reviews are an important part of the \u201cemotional journey as an artist.\u201d But she does believe the power of social media will influence \u201ca shifting or an evolution of what the critic will be in the digital world.<\/p>\n

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\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know what that is but I don\u2019t think we\u2019ll get rid of that profession any time soon. They\u2019re going to exist but probably in a different shape, form, or maybe the content will change a little bit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Aquino hopes critical content will change in a way that will offer more \u201copen-ended\u201d reviews that \u201cgive people the power to ultimately decide\u201d on whether they should attend a show.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like the star system continues to be more appropriate for film, at least in the world of Hollywood,\u201d she says. \u201cBut for theatre it\u2019s different, and to put stars on a certain show, especially in something as organic as theatre, is I think limiting people\u2019s preconceived notions of what a show is, because it\u2019s not the same.\u201d<\/p>\n

Evan Goldberg, co-director and co-writer of the new film \u201cThe Interview,\u201d says he would like to see reviews become \u201ca much more organic, flowing river of debate as opposed to, \u2018And now on Friday or Sunday, this specific edition of this paper comes out and I will read the criticisms of the films by these nine people.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I would personally like to see is the critic says what they say and then the filmmakers respond and then the critics respond and then the filmmakers respond,\u201d he adds. \u201cI feel like that\u2019s where things should go. I feel like the critic needs to evolve to be someone who\u2019s a conversation, not just a comment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Crouse notes the star system of ratings in the film world is a phenomenon that wasn\u2019t used by reviewers of the Kael generation, \u201cbecause they wanted people to actually read the review rather than just go, \u2018Oh, it\u2019s three out of five so it must be OK\u2019 and not read the review.\u201d<\/p>\n

Filmmaker Jake Paltrow, writer-director of the recent dystopian water-shortage drama \u201cYoung Ones,\u201d says audiences\u2019 reliance upon the star system and the \u201csplat vs. tomato\u201d summations on online aggregators like Rotten Tomatoes is \u201cdangerous\u201d and \u201cpretty scary.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe live faster now and that\u2019s a fast way of getting a consensus on a movie, so it\u2019s not wrong, it\u2019s just not nuanced in a way that I think we used to check in with the same reviewers and you could develop a sense of their taste,\u201d he says. \u201cThat still exists to a degree. I think it\u2019s very strong still at the New York Times and I think they work hard to keep that tradition alive. So it\u2019s not dead, it\u2019s just changed, I guess.<\/p>\n

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\u201d<\/p>\n

Wente also thinks there\u2019s a \u201cdanger\u201d in the \u201cneed for an immediate reaction to a work\u201d on social media these days.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I was a critic I would at least have the blessing of some time for consideration before actually putting my review or my ideas into the rest of the world,\u201d he says, noting he often viewed films twice before writing his review. \u201cI think what Twitter and Facebook and the digital age has meant is, there\u2019s this real demand to react instantly to something without the time for actual deep consideration.\u201d<\/p>\n

Crouse predicts the professional critic will start to specialize more.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ll find critics that specialize in writing hard-core academic kind of pieces that will run in the equivalent of literary magazines for film, or you\u2019ll find critics that just go completely populist and essentially give you a synopsis of who is in the movie and a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down. I don\u2019t know that there\u2019s going to be a whole lot in between, professionally,\u201d says Crouse.<\/p>\n

\u201cI cannot tell you how many people get in touch with me every single week and say, \u2018I\u2019ve always thought that I would want to be a film critic. Can you tell me how I can get started, can you give me advice?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cThe advice that I have for them is pretty grim. It\u2019s like: \u2018Get a job doing something else and do this as a hobby.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

With files from Canadian Press reporter Lauren La Rose. \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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