Humph, He, Ha: In Degas’s opinion, ‘literature has only done harm to art’ | Hacker News Reader

Humph, He, Ha: In Degas’s opinion, ‘literature has only done harm to art’

lrb.co.uk

17 pointsprismatic9 comments

Wow ... this is really timely for me, in the context of contemporary movie reviews. I won't mention any specific ones so as to not taint the conversation, but I've found myself disagreeing with movie critics more and more these days. I will go see a movie and enjoy the hell out of it! only to come home and read/watch reviews where people are just lambasting the movie.

It just baffles me, that I could enjoy something so much ... when it's so "academically wrong". Makes me really question the value of said critical analysis.

Perhaps you misunderstand the reason for critics. They don't exist to be a barometer of public perception.

Then why do they exist? They are there to persuade public opinion, right?

They're there to criticize.

A movie about two guys kicking each other in the balls for an entire hour might become very popular with the public. But it's shallow, repetitive, and with no actual redeeming qualities.

The quality of something has only a small influence in its popularity. Critics are there to evaluate quality.

That's a pretty good point - sounds like the movie Jackass, which did pretty well across the board, critics and users alike.

There is, or should be, a difference between a critic and a reviewer. It's possible for the same person to do both jobs, but they're not the same job.

TL;DR: Roger Ebert was almost always a reviewer.

A critic applies a critical theory (that is, a theory of what art is, does, or should be, and how it hangs together) to a piece to extract something from it, be it "meaning" or "social consciousness" or some other aspect not apparent on the surface. They're not concerned with whether a piece is good or bad, but with what it's possible to extract from it, and how it fits into some context.

A reviewer is either a consumer protection advocate or a marketing shill. Their whole job is the thumbs up/thumbs down shtick, and telling you whether something is worth consuming.

Is it possible to be both at once? Yes, but the critical part and the reviewing part must be separate in that whether something is interesting critically is a very different question from whether it's enjoyable to consume.

It seems you're presenting 'what a critic is' as if it's the definition, not presumably what it is - one of a large number of different/competing ideas of what critics are/should be.

E.g. (spends 2 seconds googling) Wikipedia says "art criticism, which is concerned with establishing a relative artistic value upon individual works with respect to others of comparable style, or sanctioning an entire style or movement from the standpoint of its history and of its major scholars." - ok, not authoritative, but at least establishing that a view/understanding contrary to yours is widespread: criticism is centrally concerned with whether the piece is good or bad.

And the sentences on reviewers seems resentful, even angry.

But I'll give you a Thumbs Up :-)

The new Star Wars is at 91% on rotten tomatoes. That alone should raise some questions. The public did for a brief time have an unbiased avenue for assessing the entertainment being offered to us, I think that window is closing though.

> The new Star Wars is at 91% on rotten tomatoes. That alone should raise some questions. The public did for a brief time have an unbiased avenue for assessing the entertainment being offered to us, I think that window is closing though.

And 49% as reviewed by the public. That seems relatively unbiased.

As a critic, are you REALLY going to slag a Star Wars film? It's going to be a MASSIVE blockbuster no matter how bad you slag it, and you'll just look stupid. And this is before you start talking about the amount of money that was being thrown around to promote it.

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