Criticism Archive

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Adam Shaftoe on John Updike on Criticism

By
Adam Shaftoe
– December 5, 2012Posted in: Criticism, The Daily Shaft

In my travels about the internet I happened upon six of John Updike’s rules for literary criticism. Though these rules were originally published in Updike’s 1977 anthology Picked up Pieces, I think they remain relevant for experienced contemporary critics as well as those seeking to dip a toe into critical waters. In fact, I suspect these guidelines could be applied as signposts for any sort of critical analysis, regardless of the medium in question; in the interest of brevity, I’ll save said discussion for another day.

A word of warning before we proceed any further. Criticism, like art itself, can often be a very subjective thing. What one person reasonably and rationally justifies as a sound evaluation can just as easily and efficiently be dismissed by another. Therefore, it’s important to take the following rules, as well as my subsequent editorial, with a grain of salt. When art is defined by what the audience is willing to accept as art, the waters of critical consideration can get a bit muddied.

1- Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

In my estimation this is a crucial first step. Reading a text with enough depth to understand the author’s motivations informs the sorts of conclusions that can be drawn from various metaphors, allusions, and sundry literary devices within the book.

Additionally, there is a difference between blaming an author for missing their goals and holding them to account for the self same shortfall. Assume that a dedicated artist is concerned with honing their craft. Showing how a book misses an understood, or explicit, goal is a very good way to help an author reflect on their growth. Moreover, it establishes a meaningful connection between critic and writer.

2- Give him [or her] enough direct quotation – at least one extended passage – of the book’s prose so the review’s reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

Generally, I don’t think this is a hard and fast necessity. Between Google books and Amazon it’s easy enough to find a chapter of a given book. However, there is something to be said of a critic who can find a passage from a book which embodies the novel’s themes as well as the writer’s narrative voice. Alternatively, there are writers whose wholesale style and subject are so unconventional, James Marshall comes to mind, that any paragraph would be sufficient to show off a text’s essential uniqueness.

3 -Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

Again, not a rule I think people need to follow. Updike was writing for a literary market with less access to books and book marketing than the world in which we find ourselves today. This said, rule three speaks to something essential and often absent within a quick, fast, and dirty review market: supporting evidence. Regardless of word limits and other such barriers, if a critic puts a judgement on the table they owe the reader and subject under evaluation some level of substantiation.

4- Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

Yes. Forever yes. Frankly, it is a poor critic who can’t evaluate a text without giving away the ending. One, if not the ultimate, purpose of a review is to help a reader make an informed choice about if they will read a particular text. Spoiling the ending, or giving away the resolution to a story’s central conflict nullifies the need for a review. However, there is a time and place for full-on analysis. In those missives, which can often masquerade as reviews, surprise endings are not sacrosanct.

5- If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author’s ouevre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it’s his and not yours?

The ability to compare from one text to another is the mark of a great and well experienced critic. Bearing this in mind, any poser can use Wikipedia to pad a piece with a couple hundred words of name dropping. Even if those references are genuine, filling a review with oblique comparisons can be worse than useless to somebody using a review as a roadmap to break into a particular genre or style.

I’d also offer there’s nothing wrong with a critic who is willing to admit that their personal taste renders a certain book unpalatable. Again, so long as the reviewer is clearly justifying their position – so much so that the reader can compare their own tastes to the critic’s – they are doing their job.

Updike also offered a sixth potential rule.

6. To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser. Do not accept for review a book you are predisposed to dislike, or committed by friendship to like. Do not imagine yourself a caretaker of any tradition, an enforcer of any party standards, a warrior in an ideological battle, a corrections officer of any kind. Never, never (John Aldridge, Norman Podhoretz) try to put the author ‘in his place,’ making him a pawn in a contest with other reviewers. Review the book, not the reputation. Submit to whatever spell, weak or strong, is being cast. Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.

Much of this rule exists to protect the critic. Just as authors put a part of themselves on public display through their work, so too do critics. It’s a different sort of vulnerability, but it exists in the moments when readers go out of their way to tell a critic they are wrong/stupid/tasteless.

Also, Updike’s sixth rule speaks to a maxim made famous by Wil Wheaton, “Don’t be a dick.”

Sage advice for all critics.


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Critic for Hire: A Thought Exercise

By
Adam Shaftoe
– September 19, 2012Posted in: Criticism, The Daily Shaft

Since the New York Times broke the story on Todd Rutherford’s reviewer for hire service, there’s been no so shortage of justifiable outrage orbiting critics who get paid to write glowing reviews regardless of the text under examination’s actual quality. Over at The Mad Reviewer Carrie Slager calls the transaction of cash for disingenuous praise “unethical on the reviewer’s part and laughably pathetic on the author’s.” At Salon.com Erin Keane says that buying rave reviews is “lazy and counter to the true indie sprit.” Do a few more google searches on “Paying for book reviews” and a theme of near universal condemnation for said practice will emerge.

And generally, I agree with their sentiments. Any critic worth their salt knows not to intentionally misrepresent a given work. So please, dear readers, go forth in this missive knowing that I do not advocate being paid to spread lies.

However, I would ask if it is sensible to expect non-professional critics (that is critics not paid a fixed salary to review life, the universe, and everything) to maintain a level of integrity and impartiality akin to that of the Jedi Knights? Idealism is all well and good, but more often than not it loses out to pragmatism. Allow me to draw a comparison.

During the glory days of the Roman Republic, the Senate thought it best not to pay citizens who held various public offices. The dominant rationale being civic virtue and a sense of service to Rome was ample reward for a year spent as a city magistrate, judge, or septic engineer. This idealism was bolstered by the fact that any Roman who had the means and social connections to consider a life in politics was, by and large, of an old moneyed family. Yet this reality did not prevent a measure of corruption from winding its way into even the lowest levels of Roman bureaucracy.

So as an artistic community, are we not setting ourselves up for disappointment by expecting critics, who probably can’t claim the same sort of financial backing as a Roman aristocrat, to act as beacons of virtue? Indie authors, depending on how they market themselves and the quality of their work, can at least hope to find some form of eventual compensation for their labour. Even if those returns on a self-published novel amount to a penny per word, it’s more than most critics can hope to see given this now explicit expectation of monastic purity and poverty; at least monks received a warm bed, food, and beer in exchange for their daily scribbles.

Once again, I’m not advocating for the sort of disingenuous practices that Todd Rutherford was employing in the name of supply and demand. Yet Rutherford reminds us all that words arranged in a pleasing fashion are a commodity, fiction and editorial alike. Therein he and his ilk illustrate what I see as the crux of this issue. While writers, and perhaps even artists at large, now have venues to create for free with the expectation of deferred compensation, no such effective model exists for independent critics. Those few reviewers who are alternatively audacious or desperate enough to sell their services can now look forward to being anathematized by the writing community, and subjected to the digital age’s equivalent of being pilloried and flogged in the town square.

Still, prosecuting these offenders, at least within a Western tradition of justice, is not always as reductive as condemning a guilty act. Ask yourself if an extreme reaction against buying and selling reviews is warranted when the mens rea is simply a writer wanting to be paid for their words? Show me a writer, any writer, who doesn’t crave a vision of the future where they can write for a living, or even write for the occasional bottle of scotch, and I’ll gladly kiss your ring.

If we take it at face value that the digital age has democratized publications, and further assume that the ideal state for publication 2.0 is a meritocracy wherein good independent authors are rewarded with sales, then shouldn’t it follow that there is a similar revolution awaiting criticism and reviewing? Treating critics and reviewers as a limitless gestalt of free opinions is the same sort of tack some elements in the publishing industry struck with writers prior to the rise of e-publication. We need only look for diminishing sales and stock values to see how mindless adherence to tradition is faring in those quarters.

More to the point, can we really expect this new system to flourish if there are no incentives for reviewers to resist the temptation to mindlessly shill? Perhaps a good place to start is asking if there is a way to reconcile buying a critic’s services without buying the critic wholesale? Because as the indie publishing market grows, the problem of reviewers as paid PR stooges is only going to grow with it.


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The Saturday Shaft: Random Thoughts

By
Adam Shaftoe
– August 4, 2012Posted in: Books, Criticism, Movies, The Daily Shaft

On Art,

Minecraft is a fantastic tool for having fun while creating digital art. But creating art with unlimited resources can diminish the experience. Minecraft builders, save for those undertaking “super” projects, would do well to play in survival mode from time to time. For one, there’s a unique satisfaction in creating a piece of digital art when you’ve had to scrounge for materials. For second, defending one’s project from creepers, zombies, and skeletons is much like defending one’s non-digital art. There are always going to be philistines who want to destroy, dismantle, or piss on the things that you care about. Accept that as a reality to be managed, rather than a thing to be avoided, and the experience will be that much more rewarding.

On Criticism,

Every writer a critic, and every critic a writer; that’s my solution to what Jacob Silverman calls an “an epidemic of niceness in online book culture”. Within the academic world, peer review is an essential part of the writing process. The creative sphere needs a little more of that. Granted getting published, save for writing a blog, self publication, or hooking up with a vanity press, is not easy. Once a writer has climbed that mountain the last thing they might want to hear from a colleague is that their work is wanting. But if we maintain that “critic” is the root of “critical thought” rather than simply “criticism”, we should welcome the feedback of our peers even if it’s not quite what we want to hear. In doing so, everybody grows as a creator and consumer.

Every writer a critic, and every critic a writer.

On Film,

The story of Pygmalion and Galatea is terrible; stop making movies that use it as the central conceit. I’ve met/talked to a lot of writers/artists over the last couple of years, and 96% of them are well adjusted and generally pleasant people. They can also be laser focused, incredibly determined, and passionate in ways that some folk might find surprising. This does not make them misanthropic narcissists who are incapable of holding down relationships with anybody who they have not created – I’m talking to you, Ruby Sparks and to a lesser extent Stranger than Fiction.

On America,

There are a lot of things that America does well. There is one thing America does very poorly: leaving issues of civil rights up to individual states and then a popular vote therein. Civil rights should never be a question of popular opinion, that’s why we call them rights. If they are not universal to all, then they are not worth the paper upon which they are printed. Who thinks that the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the US Constitution would have been better left to regional/state opinion? Such is the stupidity of putting marriage equity in a similar light.


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The Thin Plaid Line of Negative Reviews

By
Adam Shaftoe
– July 25, 2012Posted in: Books, Criticism, Movies, Television, The Daily Shaft, Video Games, Web Media

In recent months, I’ve heard a great many thoughts on negative reviews. I’ll credit one of the best ideas to both Ryan Oakley, author Technicolour Ultra Mall, and Leah Petersen, author of Fighting Gravity. During a panel on criticism at Ad Astra 2012, a panel moderated by yours truly, both Oakley and Petersen suggested that leaving an inferior novel/film/game/whatever to languish in obscurity can sometimes be a better course of action than constructing a negative, albeit fair, review.

At that same convention I had a quick conversation with Sandra Kasturi, co-editor of ChiZine Publications, on the subject of criticism. Therein, she told me a critic should not be afraid to speak their mind as it is their job to assign value to a given work.

When I began writing reviews I found guidance in the writings of W.H. Auden, who framed criticism as something most useful when it calls attention to things worth attending to.

In an alternate timeline where I’m a “professional” critic, in the sense that I work for a publication and use words which elucidate critical thought for a living, I think it would be easy to craft the above mentioned philosophies into a set of grand critical principles. As an “amateur” critic, the issue is slightly more complicated.

Where “professional” critics are always going to receive gratis review materials, not to mention a fortified buffer zone from the subject under review via their publication, the amateur critic’s inclusion in the great game is dependent upon the good will of the publishers. Thus the “amateur” must broach the thin plaid line of negative reviews. In theory, a well crafted review, either positive or negative, speaks to the talent, experience, and ability of the critic in question. In reality, the publisher-critic relationship is about advertising, and no publisher is going to want to work with an “amateur” who makes one of their authors/game studios/clients look like a douche.

So that’s when you default to something that resembles the aforementioned Petersen-Oakley approach of occasionally leaving bad things to rot without comment, right?

Well, maybe. If a critic receives unsolicited review materials, they have every right to say thanks but no thanks. I did that once when a porn studio asked me to review one of their movies.

However, if said critic opts not to put pen to paper, then they probably aren’t going to see anything in the future from that publisher. To my previous example, nobody from the adult entertainment industry has solicited me since I said no to writing a detailed review of their Spartacus porno. (Come on, what would I say in a porn review? Offer commentary on the grunting and thrusting?)

If a critic asks a publisher for a review copy of a book/game/whatever, there’s an implicit, bordering on explicit, expectation that the work in question is going to get reviewed. A failure to complete the transaction on the part of the critic will likely yield the same result as producing a negative review: the end of the association between critic and publisher.

The equation is further complicated when self-published authors and independent productions enter the fray. Suppose a self-published author sends an “amateur” critic their debut novel. The critic then uses their review to demonstrate the inherent flaws of the text, warning potential readers away from investments in time and money. Under the Kasturi model, the critic has done their job. In theory, this is a good thing. In reality, a person who can write has held a person who can’t write to task for their inability to write. Some people (friends, family, fans of the author in question, and bored internet trolls) might be inclined to label that sort of treatment as a very public bullying.

Scenarios such as these contribute to what I see as a troublesome culture of positivity among the ranks of “amateur” critics. Beyond tiring both body and mind with a perpetual good will truffle-shuffle, this positive culture can cripple an “amateur” critic’s transition into the “professional” realm. Ask yourself this, how long would a New York Times book critic last if they loved everything? Would Ebert still be writing film reviews for the Chicago Sun Times if he praised every movie? Such a perpetually positive critic would quickly forfeit their perceived position as arbiter of taste, instead becoming something of a fanboy/girl, or worse, a paid stooge. Why would any editor want to hire such a writer? Furthermore, and even if people don’t want to admit it, readers love a scathing review.

A good negative review, that is to say one that knows how to challenge art without attacking the artist, is a spectacle in and of itself. It’s the reader-writer equivalent of a trip to the Coliseum. The negative review allows opportunities for revelling in collective contempt; those requiring evidence on that point should check the view count on Gilbert Gottfried’s reading from Fifty Shades of Grey. Similarly, the negative review can turn fans of the lampooned work into the most fervent advocates. At that point, a debate about the quality of the work often becomes a secondary concern. The focus shifts to proving the critic wrong and in the process mobilizing/recruiting others to that end. Go ahead and call out Stephenie Meyer and see just how quickly the Twihards assemble and more importantly proselytize. The same could be said for Community fans – myself among them. Say something bad about Dan Harmon within earshot of me and I’ll spend the next twenty minutes explaining why he is a visionary.

 

Thus we return to the Petersen-Oakley model where the bad review still promotes the work in question. Despite that reality, and the truism that any press is good press, there exists a limiting structure that shifts dominion over negative reviews to “professional” critics. The internet may have mobilized an army of well trained and highly skilled “amateurs”, but those critics risk biting the hand that feeds them should they dare to do their jobs and write like “professionals”.


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5

Second Person Narratives: I’m not your monster.

By
Adam Shaftoe
– May 23, 2012Posted in: Books, Criticism, The Daily Shaft

As a reader, critic, and occasional writer, I don’t much care for the second person narrative style. That isn’t to say that I think it’s a pointless thing that needs to die an eternal death in the darkest foulest bowels of hell’s antiquated septic system, not at all. Second person can be quite useful. Choose your own adventure novels demand a second person narrative structure. Decades of Dungeons and Dragons DMs have forged elaborate worlds using the second person. Within more “conventional” storytelling (novels, short stories, modern video games) second person seems like a problematic thing.

First, a quick refresher for the benefit of anybody who doesn’t know what I’m talking about.

First person narrative: I couldn’t stand the sound of his voice for another minute. The way he went on and on, and the way everybody listened as if he was god’s chosen prophet. So I did what any coward would do; I kicked him in the nuts.

Note that the narrator is telling the story from their own perspective. FPN is life as you live it every day…or this.

Third person narrative: Adam’s practiced poker face was about to shatter. For three years he listened to his boss drone on and on about a managerial style that increased ROI each quarter. For three years Adam watched his colleagues genuflect to the pontification of a blowhard who outsourced his work to unpaid interns. At exactly eight minutes into the 10am meeting, Adam stood up from the boardroom table, walked to the front of the room, and smiled as he kicked his boss in the balls.

Notice here that the story is being told from a perspective external to the character in question. Both first and third person perspective should be quite familiar to anybody who has ever read a novel. Now things get weird.

Second person narrative: You can’t stand listening to him any longer. He’s taken so much credit for other people’s hard work. Everything he’s done is built on the backs of people half his age but twice his intelligence. You didn’t go to business school for this. You know going to Human Resources won’t solve anything. You don’t think about your next action, really. All you do is stand up, square yourself to the man who has stolen your life, and drive a size ten-and-a-half wingtip firmly between his legs.

Hilarious as crotch shots may be, these vignettes illustrate an essential problem with second person narrative. “Adam” might be the sort of guy who kicks his boss in the junk, but what if “You” are not?

What if the story is about something less cathartic than avenging one’s self against a boss? What if a reader is being told that they are standing at the feet of a dead body, licking a blood stained knife as a crimson pool slowly wraps around their feet. I don’t know about you, but sometimes I don’t feel like giving up who I am to become somebody else’s monster.

A narrative built in the more conventional first or third person style can safely assume that a reader wants an experience removed from their own world. To read Dune, or The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is to ride on a worm behind Paul Atreides or follow along in the cab next to Holmes and Watson. At no point does the story ask the reader to do anything other than maintain their suspension of disbelief. Who the reader is, is irrelevant to the issues at hand. Second person narratives depend on a reader’s willingness to abandon their sense of self. If you, the reader, are not willing to become the serial killer, the half-demon spawn of a fallen angel, or the sexy horse vampire, then the story falls apart.

I live in fear of this moment every time I see a play

So what’s the problem? For my part, I hate audience participation (save for choose your own adventure novels, especially the ones that offer a hierarchy of endings [Hierarchy of Endings is the name of my next band]) in printed text just as much as I do in theatre. As a reader, I’m looking to be entertained. As a critic, I’m looking for subtexts and themes. As a writer, I’m looking to see what I can learn from the words in front of me. How can I do any of those things if I’m spending the lion’s share of my mental energy turning myself into someone who is compatible with the narration?

What am I gaining by undertaking this effort? Who is the writer to make me think I would even want to become this person? After all, the reader is the consummate and professional voyeur.

When evaluating recent encounters with second person narratives, the reader in me invokes Benedict Cumberbatch as he sighs “Bored”, the Jay Sherman in me says, “This is weak character construction masquerading as high concept bullshit”, and Adam, the scribbler of words, desperate for the approval of his peers, moves on to a new teacher as the story appears to be the ultimate form of telling without showing.

So to the writers of the world, I would offer these words, for whatever devalued Hellenic currency they are worth: it is infinitely easier to appropriate a concept, culture, historical figure, political ideology, or religious doctrine than it is to bank on your reader’s desire to abandon their sense of self as to give your story its necessary cohesion. If a reader is unable, or outright refuses, to participate in what you, the writer and possibly your editor and publisher, think is a transcendent experience, then all of the deeply layered metaphor and allegory in the world won’t amount to jack.


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The Daily Shaft: Critical Disclosure: It’s not necessary, so let’s stop doing it.

By
Adam Shaftoe
– May 17, 2012Posted in: Criticism, The Daily Shaft

Lately, I’ve noticed a trend within some critical circles. This trend suggests that if you are reviewing a given thing (book, movie, game, CD, graphic novel, adult novelty) you need to disclose that you were given said thing as a gratis review copy. When I did some asking around, nobody could give me a justification that seemed to match the magnitude of the “Thou Shalt Disclose” commandment. Therefore, I would offer the following thought to the critics of the world.

You don’t need to disclose if you got something for “free”, it’s part of the job.

Go ahead and look at any of Roger Ebert’s reviews, or scan through a game review on Kotaku or Game Informer. You won’t find those critics marring their prose with a gaudy “we got this for free” disclaimer. If the professionals don’t do this, why should the rest of us take up an action that would brand us as rank amateurs in the eyes of our readers and our betters?

In combating this cult of disclosure, perhaps we as critics need to do more to end the myth that we get things for “free”. Forgive me for invoking the ghost of Heinlein when I say this, but there is no such thing as a free lunch. When an organization gives something to a critic, it’s not a present, it’s an investment. Said investment only pays dividends when/if a critic produces a positive review, which, theoretically, yields greater sales and exposure. More importantly to the critical process, the no cost review copy is the best way to make sure a critic isn’t letting a financial bias influence their review.

I know that I have, from time to time, reviewed things that I paid for out of pocket. I suspect other critics have done it too, as few of us get into this game with corporate sponsorship from day one. The most important thing to note here is that no cost access to the subject under review buttresses professional detachment between critic and object. Once coin is parted from hand, that relationship begins to crumble. In a worst case scenario, the critical voice is all but lost in a sea of consumer outrage. I made this mistake with one particular game review (no, I won’t tell you which one, but I’ve left it up on the website as a lesson to myself.) I doubt that the bottom line of my review would have changed if I evaluated the game off a review copy, but my piss and vinegar outrage probably would have been a little more subdued. In short, it’s hard to be objective if a person feels that they have been ripped off.

Therefore, the question should be one of what is gained from expecting critics to disclose the origins of their review. To those who think it adds a measure of transparency to a critic’s words, I would say that a critic who gets paid to say nice things about shitty products is not going to feel any compunction about sticking in a line to appear on the up and up. How can disclosure do anything to curb the actions of those mercenary critics? Given the way a critic should operate, at least under ideal conditions, foisting an expectation of disclosure upon them feels like a counter-intuitive effort to codify amateurism.


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The Daily Shaft: Free Advice on Critical Methodology

By
Adam Shaftoe
– January 5, 2012Posted in: Criticism, The Daily Shaft

Right then, a planned trip to a Neuro-Ophthalmologist (I’m fine, I was playing wheelman/seeing eye dog) saw me in the city from about 9AM to 8PM today. During that time I managed to hand write the post that I wanted to do today, but after spending a day enduring hospital folk, sitting on commuter rail and driving to and from the rail station, I’m not in the mood to try and translate my chicken scratch rough draft into a polished post.  Instead, I want to share something that I read today.

In between moving from one waiting room to the next, I read through a book that one of my colleagues is considering for use as a guide for upper year history students who want to gain a better footing in discussing art.  The introductory chapter of the book includes W. H. Auden’s – an English born poet of the 20th century – attempt at framing the role of the critic.  Although his words have aged nearly a half century, I find that they remain supremely poignant.

What is the function of a critic?  So far as I am concerned, he can do me one or more of the following services.

1 – Introduce me to authors or works of which I was hitherto unaware.

2 – Convince me that I have undervalued an author or work because I had not read them carefully enough.

3 – Show me relations between works of different ages and cultures which I never could have seen for myself because I do not know enough and never shall.

4 – Give a “reading” of a work which increases my understanding of it.

5 – Throw light upon the process of artistic “Making.”

6 – Throw light upon the relation of art to life, to science, economics, ethics, religion, etc.

From The Dyer’s Hand (1963), 8-9.

I try not to offer a lot of unsolicited advice to other people; mostly because I approach life the same way I did Kendo.  Therein there are three types of people: the students, the advanced students, and the teachers.  Despite teaching for a living I far too often feel like a first among learners hence my reticence at doling out the wisdom.  However, I feel absolutely confident in suggesting that any aspiring critics should frame and mount Auden’s words above their desk.  For my part, I’m happy to see that my attempts at criticism have quite often connected to one or more facet of Auden’s epistemology.  The obvious caveat is when I ply my sharp tongue and razor wit to eviscerating a particular travesty of genre media.  Those reviews are a necessary tool for demonstrating to magazine/website editors that I know the difference between slander and the sort of theatrical writing that will draw in an audience.

I’d also offer that Auden’s thoughts on critical writing need not be limited to academic discourses.  Language and background information can always be tailored to suit a broad audience. Bearing that in mind, a given work need not be stuffy or pretentious to introduce a potential audience to something new or demonstrate connections between an author and the culture in which they are writing. Moreover, where high school English teachers spend years training students to ignore their personal biases, Auden’s third point, when applied with a modicum of common sense, encourages a critic to engage their unique experiences as they explore a given text.  Within an increasingly “democratic” critical sphere, an application of any of these approaches could lead to some very interesting relationships between artists and critics.

And that is my free advice on critical methodology.  Tomorrow, my thoughts on 2011’s game of the year.


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The Daily Shaft: How bad is The Darkest Hour?

By
Adam Shaftoe
– January 3, 2012Posted in: Movies, The Daily Shaft

I don’t want to be that guy who dwells on the previous year, but there was no way I was letting The Darkest Hour pass without comment.

Perhaps it was the twelve year old single malt holiday cheer flowing through my blood stream, but the first commercial I saw for The Darkest Hour looked fascinating.  People running from aliens in Moscow; what sci-fi/horror/survival fan wouldn’t perk up at that pitch?  Two days later  I saw another trailer that had Emile Hirsch wearing what looked like a low rent Soviet Navy take on Ghostbuster’s positron glider.  That’s when I got suspicious.

Unless the central characters are those nerds from The Big Bang Theory, there’s no way that your average person is going to have the physics or engineering know how to build an DIY energy weapon.  Given that I couldn’t suspend my disbelief long enough to get through the trailer, I decided to see what some other critics had to say about this movie.  The results are not encouraging.  In fact, I think that The Darkest Hour is a dark horse candidate for worst sci-fi action movie of 2011, right up there with Battle LA or Skyline.

Jeannette Catsoulis asks in her New York Times review, “…how slovenly is it to use invisible aliens? If you’re going to tease us with nothing but pinwheels of light for three-quarters of the film, you’d better have one heck of a reveal up your sleeve. But if all you have is the equivalent of exploding garden gnomes, then your problems are greater than a disposable cast and a filming style as flat as the color palette.”

Catsoulis also points out that The Darkest Hour’s screen writer, Jon Spaiths, is credited as one of the two writers for Ridley Scott’s upcoming Prometheus. Live in fear, boys and girls.

Mark Olsen, in his review for the LA Times, takes aim at questionable direction and sub-par performances from the actors. “Director Chris Gorak previously made the effective, low-budget, horror-thriller Right at Your Door and in making this move to a splashy, bigger film his instincts for character have perhaps been overwhelmed by the demands of a larger production. Capable and compelling performers like Hirsch and Thirlby seem left to their own devices to make some connection with the material.”

In a review for the Boston Globe, Joel Brown also targets bad character development.  “Hirsch, Minghella, Thirlby, and Taylor resemble dollar-store knockoffs of Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Anne Hathaway, and Nicole Kidman.”

Brown also poo poos The Darkest Hour for a shameless attempt to connect its alien invasion to the 9/11 attacks. “Even though the movie is set in Moscow, some will be disturbed by the way it evokes 9/11 with abandoned cars, drifting ash, and collapsing buildings. There are even towers of fire and smoke, although this time they’re shooting upward, as the aliens take our electricity or minerals or whatever.”

True to form, Nathan Rabin on The Onion’s AV Club offers the most scathing review, also picking up on the movie’s prop plagiarism.  “The Darkest Hour reeks of desperation even before the cast straps on what looks like homemade versions of Ghostbusters proton-packs and go out on the offensive against the bad guys. The Darkest Hour is a film utterly devoid of merit, a dreary sci-fi slog so tedious even its own actors seem bored. Who can blame them? They’re in a film that tries to make a variation on static cling terrifying.”

Amid the cutting reviews, I managed to find one critic who actually enjoyed the picture.  Josh Tyler over at Giant Freakin Robot said The Darkest Hour is, “a notch above every alien invasion movie released in the past two years, outside of Attack the Block.”

That’s not saying much considering the steaming pile of Rhino crap that is the last two years in sci-fi action.  His bottom line is that “…director Chris Gorak is good enough to keep his film entertaining, if not exactly engaging, throughout. The Darkest Hour is worth a look.”

I’m not usually one to ignore a movie because of its trailers or critical reviews, but in this case I think I’ll make an exception.  Thirty seconds of this movie was more than enough to convince me that it’s not worth my time or money.  Of course, if somebody wants to pay for my ticket I’ll gladly eviscerate or defend (high unlikely from the look of it) this movie.

NB: Tomorrow’s post will be the 200th post to the Page of Reviews.  Not quite sure what I’ll do for it, but I’m sure it will be something interesting.


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2

Shaftoe’s Rants: On Other Critics

By
Adam Shaftoe
– November 14, 2011Posted in: Rants

The Short Version:  As critics we should attempt to maintain a modicum of common sense if not internal consistency in our evaluation.

The Long Version:  One of the first things that I was told when I started writing reviews is that critics don’t criticize other critics.  It’s just not done.  The general consensus seems to be that in criticising ourselves we become the snake that eats its own tail.  Our words will somehow become less relevant if we use our public voice to hold our peers to the same standards of performance that we do movies, books, games et cetera. However, I think that precept is built upon the misconception that criticism is an act of educated opinion rather than an act of evaluation that can be, and ought to be, easily quantified.

Rather than constructing a theoretical framework for criticism, an act which would no doubt drive away more readers than it would attract, I’m going to recap two recent examples of criticism that illustrate a dire need for more thought and less opinion in cultural criticism.

Example 1: A video game review of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

A well-established Canadian online publication released a review that scored Skyrim at 10 out of 10.  I didn’t bother with reading the long form of their review since their short form completely invalidated the score and any credibility that I might have attributed the following words.  In sum, if the game is going to get a perfect score then the “Con” section of the “Pros” and “Cons” overview should be empty.  Full stop.  It should not read, “Some frame rate issues as well as occasional bad texturing.”

Frame rate issues speak directly to the ability of the game engine to render sprites with a baseline of consistency.  If there are enough frame rate drops as to merit putting a black mark against the game in the preamble, then the game can’t possibly be perfect.  Even a half-educated reader will look at such an incongruity and assume that Bethesda paid the publication in question to write a glowing review, or that the author of the review is so blinded by their love for the franchise that they can’t reconcile what they want the game to be against what it is.

Example 2: Movie reviews of The Immortals and J. Edgar.

A well-known Canadian film critic considered The Immortals and J. Edgar as both worthy of “3 stars”.

Well and good except for the way in which he justified both movies.  In his words, J. Edgar ought to have focused on a single event in Mr. Hoover’s life rather than aging Leonardo DiCaprio through fifty years.  The critic also said that the makeup job on DiCaprio was outstanding but sub-par on the supporting cast.  He wrapped up his evaluation by saying that we should expect an Oscar nomination for DiCaprio’s performance.

On The Immortals, the critic said that it was a visually stunning picture but utterly devoid of any story.  He said that the people playing the Olympian gods looked like a bunch of kids preparing for a night out at the club.  That was the extent of his qualifications for a 3 star review: very pretty but stupid, very stupid.

I don’t want to get crass with things here, but if a movie is going to get three stars just because it is pretty, I had best leave the theatre with a marked desire for a cigarette and some spooning.  How the hell does a professional critic justify putting a movie that has Oscar worthy acting in the exact same category as sword and sandal puff piece without any observable plot?  It boggles the mind.

Turning to the question at hand, why am I complaining about this?  Primarily because weak sauce criticism from the big boys makes me look bad by association.  The aforementioned incidents make critics and reviewers look like either incredulous and unthinking PR instruments or morbidly stupid fan boys who can’t divine when a product is flawed.

That said, where is the harm in a little internal oversight?  Are critics so thin skinned that they can’t accept a bit of the feedback that they dole out on a regular basis?  Gods know my readers have called me out from time to time, and I for one enjoy not only the dialogue but the motivation to justify what I am saying in a quantifiable fashion.  Contrary to what some believe, there is no divine right of criticism.  It is a responsible relationship between critic and reader wherein the latter extends a measure of trust to the words of the former.  The expectation is that the former won’t use their position to forward anything other than a thoughtful argument.

I know that one editorial-ish rant form one obscure writer isn’t going to change the reality of the entertainment industry wherein critics can become PR flunkies.  Life will go on as usual, and I’ll grumble about it to those unfortunate few who remain within earshot.  Be that as it may, this code of silence among reviewers and critics does nothing other than to further isolate us from the very people we are trying to serve.  Let’s not hide behind arbitrary degrees of professionalism and inaccessibility when it is painfully obvious that some among us are making stupid mistakes.


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2

Shaftoe’s Rants: On Evaluating Television

By
Adam Shaftoe
– October 8, 2011Posted in: Rants, TV Reviews

The Short Version: Based on my current methods of evaluating television, I think I would have written off Star Trek: TNG as a bad idea.

The Long Version: Of everything that I review, genre television can be the most problematic.  It’s not that it is particularly difficult.  Nor is it particularly time consuming.  In fact, as labour intensive projects go, book reviews and podcasts take up the most time and appeal to the smallest subset of my audience. The issue with television is gauging just how much of a show to watch before putting pen to paper.

There’s an obvious temptation to write in the aftermath of a series’ pilot episode.  For a small website like mine, writing in the immediacy of a premiere places my words right at the forefront of the blogosphere.  Granted it’s impossible for me to compete with the big boys, but even the trickledown represents a noticeable volume of traffic.

From a purely critical perspective, it’s best to wait for an entire season to conclude before writing something.  A restaurant reviewer doesn’t write a review based solely upon the starters so why should a television critic do anything different?  The downside is that by the time the season is done, so many things have already been said that it is challenging to come up with something new to offer.  Not to mention the fact that in delaying an evaluation I lose the “I need somebody to tell me if I should watch this” demographic.

To that end, I came up with the “three episode rule”.  A new series gets three episodes to prove its chops before I put pen to paper.  No system, however, is perfect.  Consider my review of Spartacus: Blood and Sand. It got the customary three episodes and I wrote it off as fetish realization in togas.  I’m not sure what primitive part of my psyche kept me watching Spartacus, perhaps the part that moves me to watch True Blood if only so I can rag on its abject stupidity.  Fortunately my desire for titillation carried me to the point where Spartacus got better.  Before I knew it, I was writing a mea culpa review.

After watching two out of three obligatory episodes of Terra Nova, I find myself examining the three episode rule.  In the case of TN, I don’t fear that writing this show off will prove to be a mistake.  It might not be frame for frame plagiarism of Outcasts, but it’s pretty damn close.  More on that next week though.

Still, the utter shite that is Terra Nova got me thinking about how a “successful” genre series would stand up to my critical approach.  That’s when I realized that I probably would have written off Star Trek: The Next Generation as a great idea gone horribly wrong.

Consider the summary judgments of the first four TNG stories.

Ep 1&2 “Encounter at Farpoint”:  Encounter at Farpoint introduced the eighties to a new Enterprise with a new crew and a very familiar villain.  Being the cynical prick that I am, I would have looked at Q (John de Lancie) and probably said something snarky like, “Hey is this Trelane’s older uncle?”  Granted, Q turned out to be a fantastic character, if only for introducing the Federation to the Borg, but that didn’t happen until season 2.  Otherwise all we get from this episode is that Geordi is blind, Data can’t whistle, Troi and Riker used to have a thing, Troi looks good in a miniskirt and Picard is both French, despite an English accent, and a bit of a grouch.  The only genuinely interesting thing to come of this episode is the courtroom of the post-atomic horror.  Too bad the late twenty-first century never really comes up again within televised Trek.

Ep 3 “The Naked Now”:  Hey look everybody, it’s that episode of Star Trek TOS where everybody acts like they are drunk; now featuring damaged blondes having sex with androids.  Also, those of you conscious of things race related will notice that a certain sword fighting Dumas quoting Asian character has been replaced by a drooling moron who likes to play “toss the isolinear chips”.  Great work with the race relations there writers John D. F. Black  and J. Michael Bingham.

Ep 4 “Code of Honour”:  A planet of black people use Thunderdome to settle disputes in their multi-partner marriages.  Christ and Hunter, do I have to draw a picture on why this episode blows goats?  So much for Star Trek as a morality play.

Of course TNG had the benefit of the Trek franchise backing it, and that isn’t something that is easily dismissed.  Though it would take a particularly die hard TNG fan to defend these episodes, indeed TNG’s first season, as a high watermark of genre writing.  More to the point, my current practice of evaluating television would have seen Star Trek TNG tossed in the same bin that I plan on putting Terra Nova. In retrospect, season two of TNG and subsequent episodes in future seasons more than made up for the questionable writing and recycled plots of the show’s first season.  Say it all together now, “There are four lights.”

Thus we return to the point at hand.  Genre television is an oddly biological medium.   Sometimes things that seem destined for extinction undergo a spontaneous mutation, becoming something new and exciting.  In other instances, things that ought to be titans among the genre, gifted with every conceivable tool for success, stumble.  By the time they recover their footing, they find themselves surrounded by an army of smaller predators.  They die not with a roar, but to the whimper and online outrage of the fans.


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