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Comment by baddox | Hacker News Reader

That's kind of like saying that Bill Nye the Science Guy delves as deep into science as 99% of the population can appreciate, so any scientist going deeper than that is a self-important blowhard. And as for your second sentence to the end of your comment, I believe that is a statement of an axiom with which Armond White would adamantly disagree. If you're entering into this discussion with different axioms, the discussion is pointless.

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How many scientists go out of their way to bash Bill Nye as a hack who damaged American science?

That's not analogous because Bill Nye, unlike Roger Ebert, has not become the public face of pure excellence in his field.

I'm under the impression that most people think "film critic" is a guy who writes a paragraph for a newspaper saying whether or not a film is entertaining enough to see, and that was true before Ebert showed up. I don't think White's field has a public face at all.

I think people who would use the words "film critic" know that Roger Ebert isn't one. Most people would call him a "movie reviewer."

Armond White writes for people that want to pretend that they are intellectuals. If you want to dive into a movies deeper meaning you need to look at it from the perspective of the content creators and not just treat it as literary crit 2.0.

In many ways movies are closer to architecture than novels because there are far more constraints on the artist. Conceder how a useful hospital and a successful blockbuster are both built for the masses, yet using what freedom remains and artist can still create art and not just another forgettable commercial success.

"If you want to dive into a movies deeper meaning you need to look at it from the perspective of the content creators ... "

That's another axiom with which I suspect White would disagree. I don't think White considers a film a success just because the filmmaker accomplished what he/she set out to do. White indeed treats film criticism like literary or other art criticism--you identify a set of criteria, perhaps arbitrarily though ideally derived from the history and cultural context of the medium, and criticize a film against those criteria.

No, I didn't say there wasn't a place for "deeper analysis", but let's be real and not compare science with "literary criticism".

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