Via Political Animal, I found Richard Schickel’s diatribe against blogger critics. You can read the piece or just Kevin Drum’s summary and then come on back. Yeah, okay. This kind of stuff is stupid. With wearying regularity these days, some member of the mainstream press registers complaints about the blogosphere and without fail that person sounds ignorant and whiny.
But let me try to pick Schickel’s points apart a little bit.
His first point sounds horrifically elitist and arrogant:
Let me put this bluntly, in language even a busy blogger can understand: Criticism — and its humble cousin, reviewing — is not a democratic activity. It is, or should be, an elite enterprise, ideally undertaken by individuals who bring something to the party beyond their hasty, instinctive opinions of a book (or any other cultural object). It is work that requires disciplined taste, historical and theoretical knowledge and a fairly deep sense of the author’s (or filmmaker’s or painter’s) entire body of work, among other qualities.
But I understand where he’s coming from here, because this is a very old point for film critics such as Schickel. Most people don’t like film critics. Most people find them mean. Critics pick on your favorite Sandra Bullock movie and your favorite Avril Lavigne record and your favorite performer on American Idol. Critics are all intellectual and they can’t just feel things and say “thumbs up” or “thumbs down.”
Schickel is right about one thing. People often are confused about what criticism is. They think a critic should merely say whether a work of art is good or bad or they take “critic” to simply mean to criticize something negatively. Critics (the good ones) should put things into context and tell you the “why” and not just the “what.”
But Schickel’s op-ed, like almost all of the other blog criticism I’ve seen, seems to assume that it’s not possible for non-accredited writers to do this. Usually you see references to bloggers writing while wearing pajamas or living in Terre Haute or being young. Some bloggers engage in these activities. I fail to see how they would prevent a person from also writing well.
The blogosphere simply means that there is no gatekeeper filtering out bad writers. It doesn’t mean there are no good writers.
Next quote:
Inevitably, blogging was presented as an attractive alternative — it doesn’t take much time, and it is a method of publicly expressing oneself (like finger-painting, I thought to myself, but never mind).
Hey, screw you, Schickel. You’re not reading blogs or you’re reading the wrong ones. You just condemned an entire form of communication.
The act of writing for print, with its implication of permanence, concentrates the mind most wonderfully. It imposes on writer and reader a sense of responsibility that mere yammering does not. It is the difference between cocktail-party chat and logically reasoned discourse that sits still on a page, inviting serious engagement.
Maybe most reviewing, whatever its venue, fails that ideal. But a purely “democratic literary landscape” is truly a wasteland, without standards, without maps, without oases of intelligence or delight.
There are no imposed standards in the blogosphere. It is up to the readers to judge, not editors. Yes, writing for a print publication is different from writing for a blog. Different, that’s all. Blogging can be “mere yammering,” but is not always. Formal expression is not automatically superior.
Yes, there are many bloggers that I wish were more disciplined in their writing. Oh, boy, I wish people would use the spellchecker religiously. But there is much to recommend online and you can always ignore the rest.
11 Responses
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dithers Says:
“…print, with its implication of permanence…”
That’s pretty laughable.
Last time I checked, newspapers were lining birdcages and being recycled, and magazines were ending up only the latter. The circulations of both media are declining. Meanwhile, contents of the web are archived for who knows how long. Print implies the opposite of permanence these days, I’m afraid.
Disclaimer: I worked at a newspaper for ten years.
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The Pop View Says:
Two further points.
Schickel writes about bloggers as if they’re some special breed. They’re not completely representative, as a Pew study shows. For example, 37% of bloggers have college degrees, versus 27% of the American population, and 79% have broadband, versus 62% of all Internet users. But bloggers are roughly half men and half women. About half are 18-29 in age and half are 30 and above. In many ways, bloggers are typical Americans. So when you criticize bloggers, you’re criticizing ordinary people — more tech-savvy and curious, but average in many other ways.
In addition, different forms of writing have different strengths and weaknesses and levels of difficulty. The interview book Le Cinéma selon Alfred Hitchcock (a.k.a. Hitchcock/Truffaut) is not the same as a scholarly study of Hitchcock, but it has much to offer. An author’s letter or diary entries are not equal to a novel, but they may have value as well.
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Dan Dorman Says:
Here’s my review of Knocked Up
(dedicated to Richard Dickel)I just saw Knocked Up the other day. I wasn’t expecting much from this movie. Actually, that’s not true. I thought it would be funny in a similar vein as The 40 Year Old Virgin (writer/director Judd Apatow’s last film). The funny thing is, 40 Year Old Virgin was co-written by Steve Carell. Knocked Up was not. Now I know why The 40 Year Old Virgin was a funny movie. First of all, Knocked Up is just NOT funny. It attempts to be funny numerous times but it mostly falls flat on its face. The biggest problem I had with this movie is it seemed to me like it was written by aliens from another planet. What I mean by that is — it’s like it was written by someone (or something) who had no idea how the human race interacts with itself, especially the sexes — it’s like aliens had been observing us for about a week and then decided to write a hip comedy about relationships and pregnancy. That fuckin’ Hugh Grant movie about having a baby, Nine Months (95) was a better fucking movie than this piece of shit. I’m serious. It totally sucked my fucking balls. It was seriously one of the worst written films I have ever sat through. They actually managed to make stoners un-funny. I don’t know how that’s even possible. Not to mention the fact that EVERY character in the movie (despite being poorly written) was completely and totally unlikable. The character that Leslie Mann plays (the “shellfish sandwich” and “fuckin’ FRENCH toast” girl from 40 Year Old Virgin) was so unlikable in fact that I felt like throwing things at the screen whenever she appeared. I sensed the rest of the theater did as well since some people actually were throwing things at the screen. At one point in the movie, her husband (played by Paul Rudd) who is a perpetually nice guy is just so sick and tired of her that he has to lie about going to a fantasy baseball meeting every week in order to get out of the house (this event eventually leads to her throwing HIM out of their house [that his job paid for] and all of the female characters in the film labeling him a “bad husband”…right…). If I was married to that woman I would blow both our brains out. The sickest most unforgivable thing about this movie is that it actually tries to side with these awful female characters. There’s actually one point where the two main male characters are actually crying about how they’re just not good enough for their gold-digging fucked-up bitchy women. The title of this movie should not have been called “Knocked Up”…it should have been called “Pussy Whipped”. My fuckin’ girlfriend who saw the movie with me even blew the fucking whistle on this piece of garbage and couldn’t stand these bitchy fuckin’ cunts. I know what you’re gonna say: I didn’t come around to The 40 Year Old Virgin for quite some time (now it’s like one of my favorite movies) but this is different. This is a triple fuckin’ decker shit sandwich with shit fries and gravy.
The best movie along these lines is still: She’s Having a Baby
If you don’t have anything else relevant or funny to say on the subject than why fucking bother?
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Dan Dorman Says:
oh, and ps:
Fuck You, Richard Schickel. Why don’t you go blow Clint Eastwood while you’re at it. That fuckin’ book he wrote on Clint was a total piece of ass-kissing shit. Clint may be one of our greatest living filmmakers but he’s also made more whores of women than the mayor of Mexico City.
Here it is again, in case you missed it:
MOVIES ARE THE LOWEST COMMON DENOMINATOR. They are what bring us all together. All the classes, all the sexes, all the races…Anyone can put their money down, go see a film and then become an expert on it. It’s up to you to respect that just because you may have more knowledge of names and places that doesn’t make your opinion more informed that anyone elses. You don’t need a PhD in film studies to be a movie critic. This guy’s just scared that one day he might be out of a job. Most Americans are afterall, Dick, two paychecks away from unemployment these days. Here’s hoping yours is almost up.
BTW — most “critics” I read said that Knocked Up was one of the best movies of the year.
I wish I would have stayed home and watched Baby Geniuses instead.
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Dan Dorman Says:
was my review a little harsh?
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The Pop View Says:
Well, Kevin Drum agreed with you.
KNOCKED UP….I saw Knocked Up yesterday. I wouldn’t normally bother mentioning this, but because it’s gotten so many enthusiastic reviews I want to add mine to the pile: It was quite possibly the worst movie I’ve seen in the past year. Or three. I almost walked out halfway through out of sheer boredom.
The dialog is leaden. The plot was phoned in. There is not a single engaging character in the entire cast. Seth Rogen is almost completely charmless. There are no jokes worth more than a slightly upturned lip. We are expected to believe that Katherine Heigl has trouble getting a date. The supposed anguish of the characters is vapid and platitudinous. And aside from a change in the tempo of the music at the end, there is no genuine reason to believe that any of them has actually changed in any serious way.
So, um, I guess that’s a thumbs down from a married, childless, 48-year-old grump. Just thought I’d share in case there are other people out there like me.
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Dan Dorman Says:
I really wish he hadn’t brought his age into it because he’s absolutely right about the film. I’m not saying that I didn’t laugh at all during the movie but I was mostly just trying to find things to laugh at to validate seeing a comedy.
The thing that gets me the most about it is that this is not just a harmless little story. There are so many fundamental problems with it from not only a filmmaking perspective but also a sociological point of view. I guess what I am trying to say again is: people just don’t act like that in real life. Sure, it’s a movie — it’s not SUPPOSED to be real life. Ah, but there’s the rub. This movie strives for more. It’s not content with simply being the dumb, sweet, harmless comedy that it pretends to be.
Not only that, there are two types of realities in film: reality and movie-reality. Some examples of reality films are (forgive me for going straight for the big guns): Lawrence of Arabia, Kramer vs. Kramer, Jaws, The Godfather etc., (these seem like “real” movies in that the execution of the story and the events taking place could happen any day in the real world). Movie-reality films are films like: Being There, M*A*S*H, The Graduate, Apocalypse Now, etc. (although they contain corporeal elements, these are films that never let you forget that you are just watching “a movie” — they exist in their own world of internal logic). There are undisputed classics in both realms (examples already mentioned above) and one is not necessarily more important than the other. The main difference is you can relax a little more in movie-reality than you can in reality-reality films and it’s true: most of them are comedies (with the exception of Apocalypse Now). There’s something safe there. You can let your guard down a little more because it might not seem entirely “real”.
That’s what appears so inviting about Knocked Up — then it tries to step out of its shell and get all serious. There is nothing tangible about the story. Nothing. The parental figures are useless, as are all of the friends, which leaves you with the core relathionship of the main male and female characters. There is nothing in this movie to convince me that these two people would ever come together in any way. Quite the contrary can be said of the characters in The 40 Year Old Virgin. What or rather, where is the “internal logic” of Knocked Up?
I guess this is just another way for me to express not only my dislike for this film (and it’s tragically BAD writing) but for the stupid mindless droves of idiots who can’t see beyond the fake cuteness of it all. I suppose the big question I have is: did the filmmakers actually expect us to laugh and take this movie seriously? The real crime is it doesn’t even deserve this much thought — it’s simply shoddy goods however you want to slice it.
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The Pop View Says:
This article in the Times indicates that much of the film is taken directly from real life, including incidents, dialogue and character names.
Some of the dialogue was lifted near verbatim from his marriage to [Apatow's wife Leslie] Mann, and both Rogen and Rudd are well-meaning men who keep the womenfolk at a distance with jokes and buddy time masquerading as work.
“My way of dealing with the world has always been to make fun of it and observe it but not take part in it,” Apatow told me when we first met in the fall of 2005. “That’s how I became a writer. But when you have kids, suddenly you have to be part of things. It leads almost to a breakdown because your whole defense mechanism is now really destructive.”
One of the most heartbreaking scenes in “Knocked Up” occurs when Debbie, played by Mann, finds out that her husband has been lying about his whereabouts — not to have an affair but so he can hang out with his friends. “You think because you don’t yell that you’re not mean,” Debbie says through tears. “This is mean.”
You don’t have to be Dr. Phil to figure out what Mann was channeling for inspiration. “There were times where Judd was here but not present,” Mann told me one evening in March. Mann, a striking blonde, was curled up in a chair in her husband’s study. “I told him you have to be really in our lives, not just physically here.”
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Dan Dorman Says:
Unfortunately, Paul, that’s not how it comes across in the movie. It’s all pretty trite and unrealistic. Not to mention preposterous considering the fact that his wife’s character is the biggest fucking bitch I have EVER seen in a movie. I mean she was even worse to me than Donald Sutherland’s character in 1900. I digress — if I were married to that woman I would blow both our brains out (à la Lady from Shanghai). I agree with the old saying: write what you know. Unless what you know is bullshit and then you just end up with Knocked Up.
I don’t want to sound like a hater (too late) but this movie is just smart enough to keep the mindless dribbling popcorn eating masses entertained into thinking they just watched a really “smart” comedy. I’m tellin’ you, Brother, it’s mean, uninformed and completely nonsensical. My girlfriend’s best friend (who is also six months pregnant) just saw the movie the other day and called to say she LOVED it. She also pointed out that the Leslie Mann character was “a real bitch” and it seemed a little out of place. Duh. The point I’ve been trying to make here (even to myself) is this film makes her out to be the fucking victim. I have to admit, I had no idea that she was married to the director and according to the statements above she was basically playing herself in the movie. I think I dislike it even more now.
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Dan Dorman Says:
And seriously, whatever goes on in Apatow’s house needs to stay in Apatow’s house and not make its way to the typewriter, or Final Draft or whatever the fuck he writes his shit on. And it certainly should have never been made into a motion picture. It’s fucking trite, man. That’s his fucked-up reality — not the rest of the fucking world. Anybody that relates to that shit the Times was selling is probably from another fucking planet like him.
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The Pop View Says:
Here’s another take from the conservative publication National Review (sub. req.):
Like The 40-Year-Old Virgin before it, Knocked Up exists at an angle to American life, but not a particularly sharp one. It partakes of a cold-eyed realism about everything from the difficulties of marriage to the mechanics of pregnancy and childbearing (there’s a scene of the baby’s head crowning that will inspire shocked gasps in any theater you care to visit), and if Apatow’s plot devices — a middle-aged virgin gets the girl; a mismatched couple makes it work for the sake of their unborn kid — seem unbelievable, well, then maybe the joke’s on us. In an era when your friends want to get rich off porn and your mother tells you to get an abortion, this is exactly the sort of social conservatism we need: not a jeremiad against cultural rot or a gooey ode to idealized family values, but a clear-eyed, hopeful, and hilarious celebration of doing the right thing.
I’m not endorsing this view, simply pointing it out. There seem to be conservatives embracing the “very pro-life and pro-marriage” message of the film.