'Rookie Era': In Defence of Critics
Why do we resent professional critics so much if we think they're irrelevant?
Look, I’m not going to pretend that posing the question “is professional criticism dead?” is all that original. It’s a subject that’s been pondered and debated by pretty much anyone who cares at this point – from professional pundits themselves, to irascible “stans” on social media, and confined to private conversations between friends.
Even asking the question feels a little clichéd…
Whether you see professional critics as a bunch of pompous relics, or value their opinions and eagerly await your favourite commentator's cultural takes every week – all of us, it seems, have an opinion on how they shape the discourse around music, film, literature – and any other form of creativity.
That is, we have strong opinions about other people’s opinions.
Either way, here we are at the beginning of February, caught between the relentless bombardment of “Best of 2023” lists coming at us from every conceivable direction, Sunday’s disappointing Grammys, and the looming Oscars.
More pointedly, there’s been the news about the hugely influential – and often divisive – website Pitchfork. The post-mortem analyses are already underway. And given Pitchfork’s ascent from plucky upstart – and remarkably prescient – online publication in 1996 to its sale in 2015 to Condé Nast, now feels like an appropriate time to talk about the cultural status of the professional critic – and how we treat them.
It doesn’t matter whether or not you’re a fan of Pitchfork. Its impact over the last three decades is undeniable and its fate gestures towards a larger trend around the folding of publication after publication, as media outlets struggle to turn a profit. The market has undergone a pronounced change too: we’ve come to expect to be able to read whatever we like for free and ad revenue is proving more elusive than ever.
I’ll be candid: I love Pitchfork. The writing is great, and I enjoy reading its reviews, even when I vehemently disagree with a particular critic’s assessment – in fact, I don’t care if they tear my favourite artist’s latest release to shreds or anoint it “Best New Music”. I like hearing what other people have got to say – especially when it’s rendered in the sparkling prose that so many of Pitchfork’s contributors excel at.
It goes without saying though, that I understand how a negative review from Pitchfork – or any other publication for that matter – is sure to sting the creatives behind the work.
The thing is, though, it’s not just professional critics doing this, is it?
Social media can be an equally harsh, arguably even more vicious arena for this kind of criticism. And it’s often extremely partisan, personal, mean-spirited and vindictive.
But something else has become clearer to me, too: the scepticism shading into contempt reserved for any critic with a large platform and some kind of name recognition – whether that’s at The New York Times or on YouTube.
And what’s most arresting is the tone that characterises a lot of the criticism of critics. As well as a fundamental irony that undergirds it – that is, seeing professional critics lambasted for the crime of doing precisely what a professional critic is paid to do. Too often, it’s utterly merciless; the original “take” seeming fairly benign compared to the chorus of voices seeking to “take them down a notch” and demonstrate what they see as their anachronistic irrelevance – even their intrinsic worthlessness.
A couple of recent examples of this dynamic come to mind…
Hannah Williams wrote a piece for The New Statesman – a well-respected and historied left-leaning British weekly – titled “Taylor Swift’s hollow empowerment narrative”; and Pamela Paul of The New York Times published a somewhat exasperated review of the highest grossing film of 2023: “Barbie Is Bad. There, I Said It.”
To say that the reaction to each of these commentaries was somewhat overwrought would probably be an understatement. The response was vitriolic and frequently rooted in an interpretation of what these writers had said that simply did not exist in the actual texts. Nor did the fact that both authors were female insulate them from accusations of sexism – even misogyny.
What’s interesting to me is that the apparent justification for this unbridled ferocity was that their opinions – I think it’s important to remember that that’s what they were: opinions – were perceived as “punching down” or going after the “underdog”.
This is, of course, totally absurd: Taylor Swift is by far the most famous and successful pop-star on the planet right now; and as Paul pointed out in her piece, in 2023, “disliking ‘Barbie’ meant either dismissing the power of The Patriarchy or dismissing Modern Feminism. You were either anti-feminist or too feminist or just not the right kind”.
Of course, anyone is free to disagree – or feel rankled by either of these articles (or both!) – but to attack a critic for expressing an opinion you dislike in a tone that far surpasses the critical sentiment contained in their actual writing, doesn’t sit well with me.
And that’s especially true when the reaction crosses the crucial line delineating reasonable disagreement and ad-hominem broadsides. Are professional critics irrelevant? Or are they influential tastemakers with the power to destroy an artist’s reputation? It seems to me you can’t have it both ways.
Questions for our readers:
– Do you value the views of professional critics? In a media landscape that’s saturated with so many creative projects – across every medium – are they a useful guide to help you discover new work you might never have considered before? Or do you see them as ‘gatekeepers’ – hopelessly out of touch with what’s going on culturally?
– Is the ‘democratisation’ of criticism a good thing? Or should a critic have certain credentials to justify their status as tastemakers?
– Are sites like Pitchfork important to you? If professional critics were to die out entirely (metaphorically, of course) would creativity & culture suffer as a result? Or would it thrive?
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Great piece Stefan!