Film Criticism and Digital Cultures: Journalism, Social Media and The Democratisation of Opinion 9781350986442, 9781786730398

Citation preview

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Andrew McWhirter is Programme Leader in Media and Communication at Glasgow Caledonian University. He has also worked as an arts journalist for a number of years with DC Publishing, Tribune Magazine and the Glasgow Film Theatre among other outlets. He is c­ urrently researching audiovisual pedagogy and social media critiques.

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‘[This] rigorous study goes beyond the clichés bemoaning the “death of criticism” and examines the specific challenges facing film critics in the digital era. At a time when print journalism is under siege, McWhirter emphasises that a public sphere that defies corporate interests and encourages critical thinking is of the utmost importance.’ Richard Porton, Cineaste ‘Andrew McWhirter has provided a great service to those interested in the state of both written and audiovisual film criticism. Through rich and detailed analyses, written in lucid prose and enriched by in-depth interviews with prominent film critics on the international film festival circuit, he provides an essential point of reference for understanding film criticism today.’ David Archibald, University of Glasgow ‘Film critics and scholars of film criticism alike will welcome this book. Andrew McWhirter brings critical calmness and consideration to the widespread notion of a crisis, to provide a historically informed but contemporarily aware account of what Anglophone film criticism has been, is, and might be in the future…’ Jonny Murray, University of Edinburgh

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FILM CRITICISM and Digital Cultures

Journalism, Social Media and the Democratisation of Opinion ANDREW MCWHIRTER

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Published in 2016 by I.B.Tauris & Co. Ltd London • New York www.ibtauris.com Copyright © 2016 Andrew McWhirter The right of Andrew McWhirter to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Every attempt has been made to gain permission for the use of the images in this book. Any omissions will be rectified in future editions. References to websites were correct at the time of writing. International Library of the Moving Image 37   ISBN: 978 1 78453 284 0 eISBN: 978 1 78672 039 9 ePDF: 978 1 78673 039 8 A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library A full CIP record is available from the Library of Congress Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available Typeset by Out of House

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Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Abbreviations

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Introduction

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1 The Death of the Critic in the Digital Media Age

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2 (Film) Criticism

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3 Film Critics in Print

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4 Film Criticism Online

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5 ‘Other’ Film Criticism Conclusion

169 216

Appendix Filmography Bibliography Index

225 229 233 259

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List of Illustrations 1.1 Teviot Row House, the press centre and delegate hub at the EIFF 2011 © 2015 Andrew McWhirter

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1.2 Venues and Delegate Centres at the TIFF 2011, The Hyatt Hotel, the Tiff. Bell Lightbox and the Scotiabank Theatre © 2015 Andrew McWhirter

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2.1 The first American cartoon published about the movies in the comic journal Judge on 20 February 1897

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2.2 Six Schools of Contemporary Film Criticism © 2015 Andrew McWhirter

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4.1 The Home/Index Page of the Guardian’s film website

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4.2 A typical text-based article on the site with links to social media and comment sections

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5.1 Emerson overlays the film image with his detailed annotations and narration

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5.2 Ben Gazzara and James Stewart acting in the scene Keathley (2011b) ‘can’t stop thinking about’

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5.3 The end sequences of two Bad Lieutenant films blended together

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5.4 Indiana Jones’s famous leather jacket and fedora as seen through film history

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Acknowledgements This book is indebted to the patience of busy individuals who saw some purpose in having a reflective document of early twenty-first century, English-language film criticism. Without the participation of film critics there would be no narratives to analyse and deconstruct. Likewise, without the generous support of the Arts and Humanities Research Council there would be no project to speak of, so to them I am also extremely grateful. Colleagues Dr David Archibald, Professor Raymond Boyle, Dr Melanie Selfe and Dr Won Kyung Jeon have been inspirational and given me tailored and robust support throughout, both personally in difficult circumstances and professionally from their complementary perspectives on film, journalism, media and cultural policy. Thanks of course to my mum as always for her emotional and financial support and also to my beloved Ruth, who I soon hope to call my wife, for her unwavering support from start to finish. Finally, this book has coincided with the birth of my daughter Rosie, the death of my brother and best friend, Iain, and the birth of my baby boy, Arthur. It is to these three uniquely brilliant people that I dedicate this work.

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Abbreviations AICN BAFTA BAFTSS BBC BFI CSM EIFF FDA FFRN GCHQ GFT IMDb KDM NPS NRS PADD NSA NUJ NYT P:NC SCMS TIFF VOD

Ain’t It Cool News British Academy of Film and Television Arts British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies British Broadcasting Corporation British Film Institute Centre for Social Media Edinburgh International Film Festival Film Distributors’ Association Film Festival Research Network UK Government Communications Headquarters Glasgow Film Theatre Internet Movie Database Key Delivery Message National Press Shows, London National Readership Survey Print and Digital Data Survey National Security Agency National Union of Journalists New York Times Project: New Cinephilia Society for Cinema and Media Studies Toronto International Film Festival Video On Demand

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Preamble If one opening sentence might summarise film criticism at the beginning of the twenty-first century it could ape that Dickens classic: ‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.’ Recent discourses of expectation and demise upon this phenomenon, which is a method of writing that has historically been a nominal function to the wider production, perception and consumption of movies, have been disproportionate: if film criticism was not dead then it was hanging on in the OT; if it was indeed alive and kicking then it was proclaimed to herald in a new golden age. Of course such concerns and hopes are part of a much larger narrative of disruptive digital transformations impinging on daily routines in our professional and personal lives – the rapid infusion of Web 2.0’s social media platforms and media connectivity serve as just one example. Still, I like to consider that even within these new developments our tastes are, to borrow from Pierre Bourdieu, still symbolically shaped by a variety of mediators. If we like a particular art form or medium and are actively involved in pursuing it for pleasure or cultural capital, then more often than not, critics are never far away. With a keen interest in video games since my parents gifted me a second-hand Atari 2600 in the mid-1980s, 1

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I find myself often fully converged in allowing my consumption of that art form to be shaped by the old world and the new. I follow a critic called David Jenkins, writing for GameCentral in the UK newspaper Metro and have done since his views and those of others under that banner were broadcast on Teletext from 2003–2009. While I regard Jenkins’ ratings as the benchmark for any video game scores out of ten, because he appears fair and as disinterested from industry influence as is possible to be, I also rely on the voice of the multitudes and the collective critical community (professional and amateur) by visiting Metacritic. In this way, for me, the traditional gatekeeping world still exists simultaneously with that of aggregates, a precursor to the world of the current academic buzz words Big Data. Having researched within this media landscape the subject of film criticism for a number of years, and although the overall inflection of this book will argue that many habits, norms and continuities permeate its current narrative, I  have to declare my own view that there has never been a better time for English-language film criticism. I choose the term film criticism here rather than film critics because I cannot speak for all those practitioners who have experienced some of the most dramatic media changes in recent years. However, the purpose of this book is to give voice to some of those film critics in one collective yet diverse space with views from Glasgow and Birmingham to Salt Lake City and New York, California and Arkansas to London and Edinburgh. Beginning two years after Rónán McDonald published The Death of the Critic (2007), and taking place against broader digital disruptions in culture, media and journalism, and also coinciding with a period which saw job losses for a number of film critics in the UK and North America, my early research for this book set out to uncover what was happening to film criticism in the contemporary digital age. This top-level investigative question was broken down into sub-questions and categories exploring the relationship between crises and practitioners; asking what film criticism is in order to reveal its inherent functions and associations to other arts criticism; querying the ways technologies are affecting the field of film criticism; analysing the tensions between art/industry and the pressures of commercialisation; and also investigating the role of the expert in digitised culture. To achieve answers to 2

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these questions and gather empirically-grounded evidence to set against increasing hyperbole, such as crisis and death or radical transformations and a new golden age, this book interviews some of the key film critics currently writing in the English language, subjecting their narratives and institutional affiliations to comprehensive analyses. Some of these agents and organisations are as follows, but are not limited to: Jonathan Rosenbaum, Nick James, Mark Cousins, Xan Brooks, Richard Porton, Girish Shambu, Kevin B.  Lee, Eric Kohn, Adam Nayman and Robert Koehler, writing for such diverse outlets as, Film Comment, Sight & Sound, The Times, the Guardian, Cineaste, LOLA, Fandor, IndieWIRE, CinemaScope and Variety. Research into contemporary film criticism in the UK is a small area. There are academics performing historical enquiries (Bell 2010, 2011, 2011b; Selfe 2012) as well as encouraging signs of growth through the work of Mattias Frey and Cecilia Sayad at the University of Kent, among other edited collections (Clayton and Klevan 2011). It is therefore not quite a neglected field of audiovisual criticism, as Paul Rixon (2011) remarks of UK non-academic television criticism in TV Critics and Popular Culture:  A  History of British Television Criticism, but it is a scholarly field which looks set to pique more interests in the coming years. There is no doubt that, compared to the study of literary criticism or journalism studies, the latter of which is dominated by a focus on news and politics, film criticism from the professional journalistic and amateur realms certainly appears more under-researched. As such, this book utilises an interdisciplinary approach which brings in topics from literary and arts criticism, journalism studies and the most recent scholarly developments on digitally networked media cultures. While it goes without saying that this positioning book is not a final word, given the nature of the topic it is prudent to highlight the continuation of media utterances on the changing nature of film criticism: pondering its future (Avrich 2014); reflecting on the collision of online and offline worlds in positive ways (Kustanczy 2014) and making arguments for the upkeep of traditional standards in others (Semonson 2014); and continued questioning over how much authority film critics have (Kaplan 2014). All of which fit into broader discussions of criticism and 3

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critics in general, still topical across media from Mark Lawson (2013) on BBC Radio 4’s Front Row to an IndieWIRE composite of 17 critics on the state of film criticism in April 2016. This book does not, therefore, provide a definitive answer but seeks to offer one sophisticated reading of film criticism in a landscape often characterised by digital idealism which praises and indeed foregrounds change. It would be naive to assume that technology is the main or only driving force for change but equally so to take the view that nothing is ever truly new and, thus, avoid the transformative powers of technology altogether (Meikle & Young 2012). While it is important to note a paradigm shift in the consumption and production of media and its journalism, it is equally helpful to consider these transformations as less of a revolution than a continual, slow evolution. One interpretation of Raymond Williams’ 1961 book The Long Revolution, and his discussions of media and cultural trajectories into the twentieth century, is that the perception of new and transformative acts as uniquely current or revolutionary may be the result of an inability to commentate whilst still inhabiting our respective contemporary cultural spheres. It is the purpose of this work to at least attempt to provide a significant commentary on film criticism during such a period, and to posit a thesis which places film criticism within this fluctuating continuum of change and continuity in order to discover if one digital trend is more dominant than the other. While outlining the subsequent chapters I  will also, so to speak, show the workings behind their creation.

Approaching Film Criticism behind the Desk With so many utterances on film criticism during the first decade of the twenty-first century focusing on crisis, there is value in allowing film critics themselves to create their own narratives about what may be happening to contemporary film criticism. This also became a necessity because, unlike topics in which the field is rich with literature, it was apparent from the outset that it would be difficult to ascertain which knowledge gaps this monograph could fill because of the newness of the subject matter. Having reviewed what little scholarly literature existed on the subject of 4

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film criticism in the digital age and indeed on the topic of non-academic film criticism in general, it became necessary to improvise, to manoeuvre towards other fields of enquiry (discursive and tangential) to establish a grounded theoretical framework from which to build. This is in line with the arguments and subsequent interdisciplinary methodological frameworks applied by Rixon (2011; 2012) in his study of the under-researched area of television criticism. Therefore I chose a multi-method approach combining desk research, including textual analysis and archival work, with qualitative research methods, such as participant observation and elite interviews, all with their respective strengths and weaknesses. The fundamental concerns which shape my methodology pertain to the newness of the subject under scrutiny – film criticism in a digital age – and, thus, the desirability for film critics to shape their own narrative without imposition. The implementation of these methods helps me answer the research question in two ways. Firstly, as there is minimal literature on the specific subject matter, it is appropriate to employ desk research into other related disciplines of enquiry such as digital media, journalism and arts and literary criticism. The second phase of researching this book involved fieldwork: semi-structured interviews, with open-ended questions, were implemented so that practitioners could convey their own ideas about what may be transpiring in contemporary film criticism. This process involved interviewing some of the world’s most acclaimed film critics at the Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF) 2011 and The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) 2011, with supplementary email and telephone interviews also carried out. A full list of the publications observed and the film critics interviewed can be found in the appendix. As a result of both these tasks, desk research and the subsequent analysis of the narratives which critics themselves have created from interviews, I am able to uncover whether or not film criticism in the digital age is characterised by more dominant processes of continuity rather than change. Both of these methodological approaches are also established methods, which is a central concern in the research practice’s ability to present ‘certifiably objective and reliable knowledge’ (Brewer 2000:2), but they are particularly appropriate here when exploring a newer field of 5

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enquiry. I offer this approach rather than methodology as epistemology – as offered within the work of many textbooks on the subject (Bryman 1988; Seale 1999). As C.  Wright Mills writes of a scholar made weary and impatient by elaborate discussions of method and theory, ‘It is much better, he believes, to have one account by a working student of how he is going about his work than a dozen “codifications of procedure” by specialists’ (Mills 1959). Plentiful media commentaries on the crisis in criticism and more scholarly literature on digital media and journalism, areas logically and symbolically linked to film criticism outside of academia, allowed me to posit that key themes affecting these areas would equally, vis-à-vis, provide a requisite framework from which to analyse contemporary film criticism. To this end, Chapter One begins a contextualisation of the contemporary landscape of film criticism and examines a number of reasons which may be contributing to a particularly intensive period of crisis in both criticism and media culture. Extending this crisis narrative into the proposed disruptive changes in journalism, this chapter then goes on to detail key technologies and conceptualisations of the digital age, such as the web, participation and commercialisation. Representative of the importance of deploying an interdisciplinary approach to the study of film criticism in the digital age is a key interpretative framework which emerges out of the literature review which I  term Respected Space. In discussing wider cultural concepts, the notion of a certain dominant legacy through branded media will be introduced. Respected Space is not exclusively an online space or offline space in print or broadcasting, but it is representative of the converged connection and transition of certain print outlets into web-based environments. Here they continue to command gatekeeping dominance as before; and in some cases their original significations as trusted news and content producers is magnified as a result of increased digital audiences. If potent trusted barometers for disseminating news and cultural information, once available only at an expense to the consumer, are then distributed freely, they become even more popular but still maintain a level of respectability. This may indicate a phenomenon where quality newspapers become popular newspapers in digital form but still perpetuate the historical link of gravitas even with 6

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increased numbers. The bridge between older institution and its newer digital access platforms is the Respected Space which ensures both popularity and at least a certain level of trust. Additionally, commercialisation and participation are key threads which become useful frameworks for analysing the empirical data in subsequent chapters. My arguments in Chapter Two, that film criticism is inextricably linked to the functions of aesthetics and politics found in the ancient and modern origins of criticism, are a product of uncovering some of the earliest work of film criticism written some months after the inception of cinema. This initial archival search and subsequent textual analysis of the documents then lent itself to further searches for similar themes throughout film history in newspapers, magazines and film journals. Being immersed in a variety of types of film criticism, both historical and contemporary all of which can be viewed in the appendix, allowed me to propose the Six Schools model which aids categorisation in such a broad field under consideration. The main arguments of Chapter Two are thus: Firstly, film criticism is distinct from journalism because it shares a visible continuity from ancient and modern origins of the critical act and secondly, it is important to provide a model for the entire field of film ­criticism and therefore show which areas are the central focus of this book. From this taxonomy it will be possible for the reader to discern what film criticism is for the purposes of this book. The first argument continues the research context by examining scholarly engagement with the history of criticism from its ancient and modern roots and conveys two key functions of the critical act arguably present in all arts criticism: aesthetic judgement of the object and socio-political comment on the context of that object and its creator(s). Aware of film criticism as more than perhaps only an intellectual analysis, I then detail the disparate communities of film criticism in a Six Schools of Contemporary Film Criticism model, which acknowledges the agency of individual critics to belong to more than one mode of film criticism, but also the dominant ideologies of each school. Such classifications of film criticism (Bordwell 1989) and television criticism (Rixon 2011) have been performed before by scholars. The Six Schools model, or ‘hive’ of film criticism and its interpretative frameworks, is justified against these previous frameworks 7

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but also provides a visible map of the entire heterogeneous field of film criticism and as such will benefit the analyses of interviews and observations because it reveals which positions individuals are contributing ideas from. Although this book recognises a spectrum of amateur and professional writing as forms of criticism, the majority of those interviewed can be classified as professional critics working at the level of popular journalism or more cinephilic writing. Additionally, even though this chapter also details the differences between the terms, this book echoes the work of Rixon (2011), and before him Mike Poole (1984), in collapsing the descriptors ‘reviewing’ and ‘criticism’ together for the purposes of broad analysis – terms which are also picked up briefly by some critics and documented in Chapter Three. Before moving to discuss the first of these empirical chapters it is worth reflecting on the processes which comprise the opening chapters. These conceptualisations are based on multidisciplinary research which is in turn analysed and presented in such a way as to create the foundations of a relatively new area. Of course there are countless examples of film criticism in practice and even examples which examine individual bodies of works by single critics but rarely is film criticism looked at as an entire entity. Melanie Bell (2011:191) has argued that the critic has been more readily connected to histories of journalism and broadcasting and that, ‘Film criticism occupies a liminal space in film history. As a practice and a body of work, it is secondary to the film itself; an ancillary form that is entirely dependent on the continued release of films’. It is perhaps for this reason that there exists little in the way of substantial scholarly literature on the role of film critics and film criticism in general other than looking at the work of ‘star performers’ of film criticism (Bell 2011:192), such as famous names like Iris Barry in the work of Haidee Wasson (2006). Historical investigations into film criticism have also been carried out through specific thematic prisms, such as feminist studies and women film critics, prevalent in the work of Bell (2010; 2011; 2011b) and Wasson (2006), and also via examining gendered spaces in different film industry sectors, visible in the work of Melanie Selfe (2012). Criticism more broadly, however, is also distinct from conceptualised ideas of journalism as news reporting and politics. Gemma Harries and 8

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Karin Wahl-Jørgensen (2007:624) recognise that arts journalists ‘do not fit comfortably into the professional category of the journalist,’ where the job involves reportorial duties as well as criticism. Rixon (2011:231) says of television criticism that it ‘is a complex and disputed activity [with] little agreement on who is a critic, where they operate [and] in whose interest.’ As Maarit Jaakkola (2012:487) makes clear with her two paradigms of cultural journalism as the journalistic and the aesthetic, critics are not just reporters. Rixon (2011:2)  also argues that critics are not ‘straightforward’ journalists, and therefore are not the sole responsibility of an academic field of inquiry like Journalism Studies but occupy the focus of other fields such as literary and cultural studies. Deploying an initial existing literature investigation in 2010  – with the pertinent databases (Ethos; Expanded Academic, JSTOR; MLA Bibliography; Newsbank; Proquest; Web of Knowledge; World Cat; ZETOC), publisher-specific websites and journals (Cambridge University Press; Oxford University Press; Taylor & Francis; Verso; Wileyonline), Open Access e-journal portals (Directory of Open Access Journals; Open J-Gate; JURN; Intute), existing PhD work (Ethos; ProQuest), and using relevant search parameters and combinations (film criticism and internet, film criticism and digital age, criticism online, digital-age criticism, film criticism online, web criticism, movie criticism and the internet, film reviewing online, film journalism online etcetera) – there was minimal evidence of research into the field of film criticism in the digital age. Debates were taking place but not from any substantial body of academic work and were often dominated by talk of crises. Commentary was mainly from film publications themselves and newspaper coverage, with an article by Nick James (2009) in Film Quarterly on the potential for a revitalised criticism and a Cineaste symposium in 2008, ‘Film Criticism in the Age of the Internet’, filtering to the top of most searches. This certainly highlights the fact that the topic is more relevant in the journalistic domain where talk of crisis and death are often directed – albeit Film Quarterly and Cineaste do have more gravitas. Academia, as Jonathan Rosenbaum remarked to me, often lives in geological time rather than the immediacy of journalism  – which is often reported as close to real time as possible (details of all interviews can be found in 9

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the appendix). Rosenbaum’s statement seems particularly apt given that some years after this flurry of media attention dedicated to film criticism, scholars are now turning their interest to the subject. While there were always many discussion panels at international film festivals debating the state of film criticism where scholars have also participated, now there are proposed manuscripts and conferences dedicated to the subject specifically. Frey and Sayad expect to publish an edited collection under the title ‘Film Criticism in the Digital Age’ in 2015; they also organised a conference into the current state of criticism at the University of Kent in 2012; and in 2013, the first annual BAFTSS Conference was themed around critics and writing criticism. Apart from the addition of one pseudo-academic work gleaned from internet material titled Film Criticism Online (2010) with no recognised author and an edited monograph on film criticism in academia (Clayton & Klevan 2011), the topic of criticism – not always exclusively film criticism – has been written about more in open-access journals. In retrospect, the interdisciplinary nature of open-access journals is perhaps best served to provide broad discussions of culture and criticism rather than the specialisation often required of peer-reviewed equivalents. Further archives on the subject of film criticism since emerged online. Film critics Kate Taylor and Damon Smith curated a workshop called Project: New Cinephilia (P:NC) in association with MUBI and the EIFF 2011, with a dedicated web presence which collated many articles on the subject of film criticism past and present and moves tangentially towards discussions of criticism in general . This highlights the dynamism with which writing about new subjects can find their space online, unafraid of large and amorphous zeitgeist issues, as opposed to theses, academic journals and monographs. Yet, the disparity between the volume of material on the subject of film criticism’s crisis, death or new golden age that exists in the media or is provided by critics themselves, and that which can be considered scholarly research, will not close substantially anytime soon. Throughout the course of researching this book computerised alerts from Google have consistently outperformed any results from academic alert systems, such as ZETOC. From late 2012, the frequency from the former dropped dramatically, which may indicate that the topic is no longer a zeitgeist issue for journalists. Although in summer 10

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2013 after the death of Roger Ebert, and again in 2014 with the release of an autobiographical movie based on him, there was a renewed interest in discussing film criticism once more. Google Alerts continue to offer evidence of regular discussions around the topic of film criticism into 2016.

Approaching Film Criticism in the Field In conducting qualitative research at the EIFF and the TIFF, my choice of utilising participant observation was aided by the fact that I  was a fully accredited member of the press writing for Tribune Magazine. I attempted to detach myself from my own experiences as a film journalist in shaping the conceptual chapters, to attempt to remain objective and not impose themes that emanate solely from personal experience. However, that role was of subsequent use in gaining access to research areas otherwise off-limits, such as screenings, press events and film festival delegate centres. In discussing the popularity of her co-authored film blog with David Bordwell, and how it has since benefited the forging of links with industry, Kristin Thompson (2012) acknowledges that festival passes and other access benefits can aid research. In some ways I sought to maintain objectivity in that I specifically chose not to interview any film critics that I knew personally. In others I embraced the positives of being a film critic (at a festival at least). I was working alongside critics while interviewing and observing them, which allowed me to forge connections and build more of a rapport – even by being around the same locations – than I could have as a researcher coming to the topic cold. This debate between emic and etic or insider and outsider (Headland et al., 1990) is one which originated in anthropology in the 1950s and has permeated some of the literature on qualitative methodologies. As I am an occasional critic, I  would argue that while I  may have been somewhat of an insider researcher at festivals and press events I  still maintained an outsider approach to the work as a whole. Press accreditation on the basis of academic research alone was not forthcoming from a large event such as the TIFF (I met fellow researchers, from the University of Chicago, who worked as volunteers and had been refused full access for research purposes). Without this access it would be difficult to 11

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triangulate material – whereby information found in one place is related to another and measured in terms of significance – such as off-the-record comments, hearsay, consensuses, discontents, and many other general observations alongside formal interviews and existing literature. I draw association with my work and ethnography as explained by John D. Brewer (2000), as it is closely related to my own research process. For instance, Brewer (2000:6) defines ethnography as: ‘The study of people in naturally occurring settings or ‘fields’ by methods of data collection which capture their social meanings and ordinary activities, involving the researcher participating directly in the setting, if not also the activities, in order to collect data in a systematic manner but without meaning being imposed on them externally’. Such an approach is often deployed anthropologically or sociologically but is not infrequent to screen studies or cultural policy. As what I required was an appraisal of the culture of film criticism rather than an economic or market analysis common in the work of Basuroy et al. (2003); Boatwright et al. (2007); Eliashberg and  Shugan (1997); Ravid et  al. (2006); Terry et  al. (2005), or specific quantitative appraisals from Simonton (2004), elite interviews and participant observation exercises were deemed most appropriate. The options open to survey and observe a number of critics dictated the best possible locations as international film festivals. Moreover, most critics who expressed an interest also preferred to be interviewed face-toface after initial contact was made via email or over the telephone. A total of 94 critics were contacted with a view to participating, from which I  conducted 30 interviews  – the majority of which took place at both film festivals. The location of the film festival as an area for research also has a prehistory (Archibald 2012; Bart 1997; Beauchamp & Béhar 1992; Craig 2006; Mazdon 2006; Coreless & Drake 2007) and my work follows these previous models in so far as some of these scholars also worked as film critics. Film festivals have also grown in importance both in Europe (Aas 1997) and worldwide (Iordanova & Rhyne 2009; Iordanova & Cheung 2010; 2011) and have become a respected field of enquiry over the last 20 years, with work coming out of St Andrews University and the ever-growing Film Festival Research Network (FFRN) organised by Skadi Loist and Marijke de Valck which publishes information at 12

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. Internationally labelled ­festivals are also concentrated locations where film journalists from a variety of backgrounds congregate to not only work but meet one another and discuss their own practice. The latter is especially true at the EIFF 2011: the event’s curatorial statement claimed to offer a fresh appraisal of cinéphilia. It is for this reason alongside its historic respectability as being a festival of film culture (Auty & Hartnoll 1981), occupying ‘the high ground when it comes to credibility’ (Bolton, 2005), as well as its geographical proximity to my base location, that the EIFF was chosen. There also exist precedents for studying criticism in festival environments in Edinburgh. Wesley Jr. Shrum’s (1996) analysis of high- and low-brow art at the Fringe supports his argument that the critic is essential to understanding cultural hierarchies, and Mathew Lloyd (2011) analyses the impact of cinéphilia on the EIFF from 1968–1980. I understood from the outset that I  would require a larger festival than the EIFF in order to harness non-UK critical voices and broaden my reach, as some of the elite participants contacted would not attend the EIFF. Considering that my focus was on English-language criticism, it was logical to find a location in North America to supplement the work at the EIFF, predominantly due to the large market of English-language film criticism in existence there. As the continent’s premier international film festival and one of the world’s most important, the TIFF presented itself as the coherent choice, with much US media such as Variety and Time magazine claiming that it was either second only to ‘Cannes’ or even more influential (Shoard 2012). While these two distinct festival locales formed the basis of my participant observations, they also provided the opportunities for me to conduct in-depth interviews with elite participants. I specifically requested interviews with critics who have a profile in film culture. Nigel King (2004:11) acknowledges that qualitative research is about the researcher’s ability to shape the interview because they are part of that process, and David Deacon et al. (1999) understand qualitative interviews to be more suited towards non-structured than structured approaches. Having variable time windows for each interview required both preparation and improvisation. The time pressures upon critics at festivals meant that implementing a structured interview was 13

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impractical, as most critics could not say in advance when and for how long they could speak; often this was negotiated on a day-to-day basis. A more active qualitative interview process was therefore necessary, not entirely unstructured, whereby I  could produce open-ended questions that also observed some protocols. A spine of basic questions allowed for flexibility in each interview, which was particularly useful when questioning Kevin B. Lee on his video essay work or editors from Cineaste and CinemaScope on the machinations of publishing. Being an accredited member of the press led to having a rapport with the film critics, but it was unclear whether this role minimised any reluctance they may have had about being open and honest in their responses. This trust was achieved mainly due to my status as a researcher which allowed participants to feel more comfortable about a variety of possibilities: how they might be used in the project, the understanding of the ethical responsibilities the researcher places upon themselves in a position of power to shape and lead interviews and, more importantly, to frame and edit their responses prior to publication. Making critics aware of these factors led to frank and candid disclosures about colleagues and industry, of which some have been omitted from this publication at their request. This duel role of being in a sympathetic position as a critic yet also being a researcher whom they could depend upon not to make public certain concerns certainly benefited a relationship of trust  – only one critic asked to see a proof of quotes prior to publication. One recognisable trend was that, although happy to talk about industry, publications or other critics, interviewees were hyper-aware of their surroundings and potential eavesdropping. This was particularly visible when conducting interviews in or around press centres where industry ears may be listening. When given the choice of venue most critics opted for off-site options such as coffee shops or bars. Those interviews that were conducted in official delegate areas (Figures 1.1 and 1.2) often resulted in lowered tones and looks over their shoulders when speaking about potentially sensitive issues. While this is perhaps not applicably labelled ‘sensitive research’ entirely, that particular term is applicable to a huge variety of research types and almost all social research can be described in this way (Dickson-Swift et al. 2008). 14

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Introduction

Figure 1.1:  Teviot Row House, the press centre and delegate hub at the EIFF 2011.

Certainly I  possess sensitive information which I  have been trusted to anonymise accordingly where I deem its use appropriate. Contacting critics prior to the festivals was something that had its strengths in that I could build a relationship with them, negotiating times and places via emails and in some cases they would put me in touch with colleagues by helpfully telling me the best times to contact them. It also confirmed that they were interested in the work and had something to say rather than being approached on the spot at the festivals. As was shown from my canvasing of critics by putting flyers on the press tables in the Tiff. Bell Lightbox in Toronto, this was an ineffective way of having people participate. On the both occasions that I checked back, all the cards had been taken, or perhaps disposed of. The film festival environment makes it difficult to conduct large-scale research with many critics because it is an extremely busy period for most involved. This not only limited participation but the length of time for interviews. This was a more noticeable factor at the larger event in 15

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Figure 1.2:  Venues and Delegate Centres at the TIFF 2011, The Hyatt Hotel, the Tiff. Bell Lightbox and the Scotiabank Theatre.

17

Figure 1.2:  Continued

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Toronto where critics on average spoke for around 35 minutes compared to 45 minutes in Edinburgh. However, the festival framework did provide me with face-to-face access to a significant number of high-profile critics which would otherwise have been unmanageable. Within these environments I obtained lengthy interviews with key critics working today, from the Guardian’s film editor Andrew Pulver and Allan Hunter from Screen International and the Daily Express to IndieWIRE’s chief critic, Eric Kohn, and Cineaste editor Richard Porton. Moreover, I interviewed critics working with a broad range of outlets, including the BBC, Box Office Magazine, CinemaScope, Electric Sheep, Eye for Film, Fandor, iFilm, LA Weekly, Newsweek, Reverse Shot, Rotten Tomatoes, Sight & Sound, The Big Issue, the Birmingham Post, The Boston Phoenix, the Independent, The Onion, the Scotsman, The Village Voice, Time Out:  London and New  York and Variety. This helped complement additional interviews secured outside of the festival space with other key figures such as Mark Cousins, Nick James and Jonathan Rosenbaum. Regrettably, I had a lower number of responses from amateur and consumer critics; these areas may have benefited from an online survey targeting amateur film criticism websites. At times this lack of participation was out of my control, because some fans no longer wrote, with some showing self-effacing behaviour. Here a personal email on 15 August 2011 from Matt Weatherford, AKA The Filthy Critic, is fairly typical: ‘I am no longer reviewing movies. Even if I were, I wasn’t a real critic and wouldn’t have provided much insight into anything like an intellectual process.’ Simon Cottle (1995) notes the dangers of taking information at face value and not verifying it against other sources; so much of what constitutes my reference to these schools of criticism comes from participant observation or analysis of web content examples and secondary materials as found in the appendix. This allows me to still contribute a meaningful commentary on film criticism as an entire entity without empirically canvasing these schools.

Approaching Film Criticism Synthesis and Analysis Having outlined the methodological approaches of desk research and qualitative observations and interviews that were necessarily applicable 18

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to, firstly, achieve a solid academic foundation and then, subsequently, to carry out fieldwork I will now outline the content of the remaining chapters. The arc the findings chapters follow is that of a pattern of perceived chronological newness in terms of technological and media developments. They begin with the older tradition of materiality in print, before moving to an analysis of the newer online environment of film criticism, and subsequently towards the newest developments within convergent media forms impacting on the practice. Each of these chapters draws extensively on the interview material sourced while investigating themes and trends in the digital age. Chapter Three presents the first of the empirical evidence and analysis, framed by print film critics and their institutions, by examining the narratives of film critics working today against the conceptualisations in the opening chapters on crisis and the purpose and functions of film criticism. It also details the heritage of print institutions and draws association with the term Respected Space as recognised by the critics themselves through filters such as reader loyalty, relationships with international film festivals and more commercial aspects of the film industry. This chapter also integrates some of the earlier literature frameworks with the empirical evidence by examining the relationship of commercialisation to critical practice. This shows how commercialisation affects critics’ writing in terms of word counts and also the content within reviews and articles. Other concerns raised in association with commercial pressures are the implications for film criticism in the public sphere, at both popular and niche cultural levels. Chapter Four outlines and analyses the structures, textualitites and interaction dynamics of different types of online film criticism via abstract discussions, detailed mapping and case studies. These are reflective of the perceived newer themes through which film criticism can now be discussed, such as a comprehensive analysis of amateur culture and hierarchical descriptors like ‘fan-boys’ and ‘cinephiles’, as well as the ethical implications of free-content creation. Further tensions are explored through the use of usability techniques and an awareness of forms and readerships in design, word counts, comment sections and social media. Here I also provide a textual analysis of the film website of the Guardian 19

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which reveals the changing nature of digital film criticism as well as the increasing volumes of film content produced daily. Additionally, major themes such as immediacy, relating to the pace of working practices and producing counter-concepts such as Slow Criticism, are analysed through the critical reactions to The Tree of Life (Malick 2011) screening at the Cannes Film Festival 2011. Furthermore, the documentation of critical practices on Twitter is in keeping with my earlier ideas of a continued cultural expertise and gatekeeping because it finds that participation within this space is largely defined by self-promotion techniques. With the knowledge that the web has been in existence for over two decades, the final chapter details what is perceived to be newest about the current digital landscape, the ways in which convergent media can now be utilised to shape the form that film criticism takes. This involves comprehensively analysing forms of criticism afforded by the web which are not exclusively text-based, such as the picture essay, the podcast and the video essay. Due to its increased popularity in terms of the discourse surrounding it within and outwith film studies, the video essay in particular requires a more thorough examination than the previous two forms. Although currently an umbrella topic, this book follows the work of other scholars (Keathley 2011) and journalists (Smith 2011) who have sought to provide categories and parameters to limit the scope of what is signified by the signifier video essay. I do this by textually analysing four video essays, each belonging to the micro or macro category: those which concentrate on a specific scene or sequence from one film in the first instance and those which look beyond a single film in the second. Furthermore, this section on the video essay also explores the skillsets, such as technology and performance skills, and the legalities, such as copyright issues and awareness of Fair Use laws, associated with producing this type of work. By situating the opinions of film critics alongside histories of criticism and contemporary debates in journalism and digital media, it is envisaged that a clearer picture might emerge from the hyperboles of crisis and death or even a new golden age, and provide some detailed answers to the overarching question of what is actually happening to film criticism in the digital age. 20

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1 The Death of the Critic in the Digital Media Age

This chapter argues that the contemporary crisis discourse around criticism (Eagleton 2010; McDonald 2007) and subsequently film criticism (Doherty 2010; James 2008), resulting in hyperbolic claims of proposed death, should be placed in the context of previous crises. It also details a multitude of possible contributions to the most recent crisis narrative, which is more visible than at any other period and therefore may account for such hyperbole. In other words, through investigating the various media where the discourse of crisis circulates, it is possible to assert that these public utterances may contribute to the perceptions of an intensified crisis period. Then a similar crisis is outlined in contemporary journalism, as this institution negotiates obstacles and concepts in the digital age such as technology, democracy/participation and commercialisation/PR. It is proposed that these concepts will provide an analytical framework which will be useful when examining empirical evidence on contemporary film criticism; this data will be provided through interviews with, and observations of, film critics working today. In short, the aim of this chapter is to provide contextualisation to the hyperbolic notions of crisis and disruptive revolutionary change brought about by new technologies, by firstly showing that criticism has been in crisis many times over and, secondly, grounding discussions of 21

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technology historically in order to examine large amorphous topics such as the digital age.

The Death of the Critic? Many articles have been written in recent years which either declare a crisis in criticism or contribute to a crisis narrative. It is a concept that has found particular notoriety in media discussions about the field of film criticism. Exemplary of many articles which actually argue against the demise of the critic is one written by Sight & Sound editor, Nick James (2008:16), who provocatively asks:  ‘Who needs critics?’. James (2008:16–26) lists many reasons for the current crisis in film criticism, including the rise of the internet leading to falling print revenues and a cull in professional critics; the emergence of ‘critic-proof ’ films and the culture of marketing; high levels of philistinism; a general decline in the status of journalism; interference from publications; tensions between amateurs and professionals, and the blogosphere. Yet his article is actually one which, paradoxically, supports the continuance of purposeful film criticism when he claims that the internet age can, at least theoretically, herald a new ‘fire-in-the-belly’ form of criticism to reinvigorate the discipline ‘for another golden age’ (2008:17–18). Anxiety over the future of criticism and the influence of critics has been prevalent throughout much of the twenty-first century; in a great deal of literature on the subject the influence of the internet is often apparent. The concern over a crisis in contemporary criticism reaches across media and disciplines and is articulated in books on the subject of literary and arts criticism (Berger 1998; Carroll 2009; Eagleton & Beaumont 2009; Elkins 2003; McDonald 2007), in newspapers (Carr 2008; Crace 2007; Ebert 2008; Gabler 2011; Horton 2011; Rayner 2008), magazines and journals (Corliss 2007; The Editors 2000; 2005; 2008; James 2008; Johnson 2009; Marshall 2008; Nowell-Smith 2008; Totaro 2010 & 2010b), international film festival panels (New York Film Festival 2008; Edinburgh International Film Festival 2009), broadcast media (Lawson 2013; Young 2009b), within academic papers and seminars (Eagleton 2010; Rosenbaum 2009), and even in documentaries (Fisher 22

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2008:19; For the Love of Movies:  The Story of American Film Criticism, Peary 2009). Although as a collective this body of work contributes to the crisis narrative, like James (2008), many offer a robust defence of criticism and its future. David T. Johnson (2009) remarks that ‘Criticism, like any discourse, often spends as much time reflecting on itself as it does its object of study, but we seem to be in a renewed period of such reflection.’ However, the language in the discourse also often relates to corrosion or demise: Rónán McDonald (2007) highlights a concern over ‘the death of the critic’ in literary criticism stretching from journalism to the academy and David Carr (2008) discusses film critics in the context of an ‘endangered species’; ‘The Death of Film Criticism’ is proclaimed in The Chronicle of Higher Education (Doherty 2010) and in the Guardian, Neal Gabler (2011) asks, as social media rises, ‘Is criticism dead?’. High-profile academic papers which consider the death of not just the film critic but the critic in general also raise questions about ‘The Death of Criticism?’ (Eagleton 2010), and the eulogy is not yet exhausted as the demise of the critic continues to permeate discussions on arts critics (Lawson 2013) and film criticism more specifically (Peranson 2012). As this work is predicated on the assertion that a widespread perception has circulated in recent years that film criticism is in crisis, it is important to illustrate and examine some public utterances to this effect. Four examples are particularly representative of how film criticism has been discussed as in crisis across the Atlantic and across media platforms. Within an episode of The Culture Show, broadcast in October 2009 and called ‘On Critics’, critic and broadcaster Toby Young (2009) talks to a wide range of arts critics, some of whom acknowledge his overall argument for a crisis in criticism. He asks ‘Is it game over for the professional critic?,’ before claiming that he is less well paid today than in previous decades when the professional critic was a ‘big deal’ in a past golden age. With regards to film criticism in particular, Young (2009) comments that ‘professional movie critics are an endangered species’ before going on to interview film critic at the Guardian, Peter Bradshaw. Bradshaw (2009) remarks that the vast majority of film writing online is ‘fan-boy criticism, and stuff that has been very obviously influenced by PR freebies; If you are being paid as a professional critic, you’ve got some measure of independence.’ 23

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A blog written for the Guardian online by critic and academic Ronald Bergan (2010), called ‘The film critic is dead. Long live the film critic’ is mainly about film critics having to train harder at their craft to survive the crisis and challenge from the web. Bergan (2010) comments that, ‘Few people would deny that film reviewing is in crisis. One hears the wailing and gnashing of teeth everywhere in the English-speaking world. Panel after panel, discussing “the Future of Film Criticism”, has come to the conclusion that there isn’t one.’ Bergan (2010) argues that there appears to be a belief among critics that the general audience no longer cares about film criticism and he continues the crisis analogies around death with his phrase ‘vigils at the bedside of print film reviews’. In an article titled ‘The Death of Film Criticism’ written by Thomas Doherty (2010), which appeared in the Washington-based publication The Chronicle of Higher Education, the author analyses a host of publications from film studies and critics’ anthologies which, he argues, amount to an obituary for film criticism. The newspaper is subscribed to by more than 64,000 academics and has a total readership of more than 315,000, publishing 45  times per year. Online ‘The Chronicles audited Web-site traffic is more than 12.8 million pages a month, seen by more than 1.9 million unique visitors’ (Anon, 2014). Like Bergan (2010) and Young (2009) the crisis in this article is mainly linked to the rise of film writing on the internet. Doherty (2010) argues that the most ‘common aesthetic in contemporary film criticism’ announced by internet movie critics is ‘it sucks’. He continues, ‘In cyberspace everyone can hear you scream. Just log on, vent, and hit send.’ A ‘poster-boy’ for this type of criticism, according to Doherty (2010), is Harry Knowles, creator of the film website Ain’t It Cool News (AICN) . Although The Chronicle is a newspaper for academics and not an academic journal, and even though the writer is clearly well informed on his topic, Doherty (2010) seems compelled to use more journalese than is evident in the previous two examples. He talks of print film criticism (which he defines as newspapers, magazines and academic journals) as being replaced by ‘ectoplasmic Web-page billboards’ and that in journalism ‘pink slips are landing with hurricane force.’ This style 24

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in particular serves to irritate Jonathan Rosenbaum (jrosenbaum2002 2010) who remarks in the comment section, ‘Personally, I  don’t read Harry Knowles, but even on the few occasions when I have, I don’t find the slangy, with-it, would-be populist tone there all that different from the tone of Doherty’s piece.’ Part of the related discourse which has Doherty (2010) assert ‘The Death of Film Criticism’ is the DVD release of a documentary feature on US film criticism, by film critic and academic Gerald Peary: For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism (2009). Narrated by character-actress Patricia Clarkson, Peary’s film provides a selective history of film criticism in the US and has been criticised for a lack of substance (Nayman 2010). To be fair to Peary, his film did take nine years to make and his motivations had changed over that period from, he argues, the US public no longer reading film criticism in 2000 to the increased popularity of the web throughout the decade. However, his documentary also argues for a golden age of film criticism and prophesises a bleak future for the profession: one chapter is called ‘When Criticism Mattered’ which indicates that Peary no longer views criticism in this way. In his final chapter, which he labels ‘Digital Rebellion’ from the period 1996 onwards (the same year that Knowles’ website began publishing), Peary subtly condemns the stream-of-consciousness writing-style of film bloggers. According to Peary, and due to the fact that Knowles could regularly command 6 million readers a month to his work, he was the first web-critic noticed by the studios and flown to Hollywood for private viewings of new films. Hyperbolic statements from the online critic are used for effect: ‘You don’t need the presses anymore, you have the Internet’ (Knowles 2009), and other bloggers are given metaphoric rope from which to hang themselves for praising work deemed poor by the more established critical community, such as the Hollywood-based Mike Szymanski from with his praise of Cats & Dogs (Guterman 2001). As most of the examples given here do, his film promotes a crisis narrative without providing any examples of quality work being produced online by amateur film critics, such as the imaginative video essays and canonical viewing project by Kevin B. Lee 25

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or the thoroughly-resourced blog by Chemical Engineer Girish Shambu . What each of these examples also share is a commonly acceded to perception that film criticism is in crisis at worst and inhabiting a transitory period at best. Two major events need explicating as a backdrop to the latest crisis in criticism, that of economic turmoil (or a crisis in itself) and the changing nature of print media brought about by the rise of the web. The former may well have been an accelerant for the latter but also predates the late 2007 global financial crisis, and is more specifically related to newspaper revenues declining steeply as a result of advertising and readers moving online (largely consuming content for free). The effects of both of these phenomena are still keenly felt as economies across the world struggle and commentators and media institutions remain uncertain over the future of print media. Allan Rennie, Editor-in-Chief of Media Scotland, is uncertain over whether printed newspapers will continue to decline as the popularity of tablets present new opportunities and challenges (Future of Printed Media Debate, 2013). If a crisis in criticism did not quite begin with this twin upheaval, it is within this landscape that the death of the critic literature intensifies. One serious outcome is the impact that both of these events have had upon the jobs of journalists and, as such, film critics working at newspapers. At the end of this century’s first decade, critics were certainly justified in having concerns over their own positions as job losses in publishing and journalism intensified. All arts critics working for the Daily Telegraph were made to go freelance in 2009, and pay rates were cut by 70 per cent, leaving arts criticism at some British newspapers in the hands of rota staff (Young 2009). Toby Young (2009) argues that when newspaper editors are forced to make cutbacks, it is critics who are first in the firing line; this is a point echoed by others who use the metaphor of film critics as canaries (Ebert 2008; James 2009:14). The growing recession in media spending ensured that falling print revenues (Marshall 2008) and print readerships (Tunney & Monaghan 2010:VIII), alongside pressures to offer web alternatives, combined to ensure many TV critics lost their jobs before film critics did at newspapers like the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mail, the Mail on Sunday and London’s Evening Standard (Rayner 2008). In the United 26

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States, where local newspapers are more plentiful, the dwindling print revenues have been more extreme. The Salt Lake Tribune online reported, with alarming consistency, the number of film critics losing their positions. The blog, written by resident film critic Sean P. Means (2010), provided information on job losses from April 2006 to March 2010. When Means eventually closed the list, the total number of critics he named had reached 65. So, the wider economic picture certainly has an impact on the discourse of crisis in film criticism as critics lose jobs in large numbers. However, if economic and cultural crises are often cyclical or never entirely eradicated (Crosthwaite 2011; Eagleton 2010; Puttnam 2009) then perhaps the crisis in criticism has similar historical precedents. This is a view held by some high-profile film critics. Rosenbaum (2010) claims that film culture is always in transition, A.O. Scott (2011) argues that all criticism is in a continual crisis and, in discussing film criticism at the turn of the millennium, Theo Panayides (2000) talks about a ‘current transitional phase’ in film criticism. Scholars too have noted this trait in the act of criticism in general. Paul de Man (1983) theorises that there is a necessity for criticism to always be in crisis for it to have functionality, and claims that since the Enlightenment all knowledge has been thrown into crisis, as is also suggested by Reinhart Koselleck (1988) and subsequently by Nikolas Kompridis (2006). There is certainly historical evidence of critics perpetuating a crisis narrative about what they do or what they are expected to critique or both. There was talk of a ‘difficult phase’ for British arts criticism in 1923 (Cargin 2010b) and in the 1930s, F.R. Leavis (1979:19) bemoaned the lack of publication space to write sustained criticism, with the honorable exceptions of Criterion and the New Statesman. Early on in the short history of cinema, around the same time Leavis (1979:4) claimed that culture itself was in crisis, writers like Grahame Greene considered whether proper film criticism was necessary for 1930s films at all – for instance, in watching Shirley Temple in Wee Willie Winkie (Ford, 1937) (O’Hagan 2004:182). Greene argued in Sight & Sound in 1936 that there was a general lack of films to take seriously, with criticism only necessary for the ‘two or three’ films in the year that can be ‘treated with respect’ (James 27

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2008:16). In his 1946 essay mourning the loss of standards in book reviewing, George Orwell (1946) takes solace in the fact that the literary critic can at least look down upon his film-equivalent brethren: Everyone in this world has someone else whom he can look down on, and I must say, from experience of both trades, that [the] book reviewer is better off than the film critic, who cannot even do his work at home, but has to attend trade shows at 11 in the morning and, with one or two notable exceptions, is expected to sell his honour for a glass of inferior sherry.

But, like Greene, he questions whether any book is worthy of critique: ‘In much more than nine cases out of ten the only objectively truthful criticism would be “This book is worthless” ’ (Orwell 1946). In the 1950s, there were debates over a crisis facing film criticism in the pages of Sight & Sound (Anderson 1956), and in the 1960s Pauline Kael (1965:19) claimed that Susan Sontag’s arguments for the existence of a polymorphous culture and for the recognition of a false divide between high- and low-brow hierarchies were a threat to critics and could cause ‘the end of criticism’. Towards the end of the 1970s, Kael became even more disillusioned with her profession, after spending time as a producer getting to know Hollywood under the guidance of Warren Beatty (Buchanan 2002). This prompted her to write the essay ‘Why are Movies so Bad? Or, the Numbers’ (Kael 1980). While Leavis’ comments on a cultural crisis and Kael’s prophecy of ‘the end of criticism’ are closely related to the hyperbole today, each example also serves to illustrate that for these critics of literature and the cinema the standard of criticism is inseparable from the art which is under critique. Contemporarily, both the medium and the methods through which it is discussed are once again linked through crises and the – now shared – label of death. Jonathan Lupo (2007) argues that there is a link between diminishing standards in cinema and in film criticism, and Emilie Bickerton (2009:110&149), more specifically, states that apocalyptic judgments on the art form and film criticism are inextricably linked to the declining influence of journals like Cahiers du Cinéma, which she argues was itself declared ‘dead’ even though it still publishes. At the turn 28

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of this century, Raymond Haberski (2001:1) talks of films as being in a ‘state of crisis’ and at the same time Andrew O’Hagan (2004) shows that UK critics were disenfranchised by their critical profession namely due to cinematic output. Film critic Richard Schickel (2008:41&42) states that the ‘demise of film reviewing’ coincides with the ‘ageing and death of the great foreign auteurs’ and ‘to have great criticism you need to have great art inspiring it – and we’re not in a great movie age.’ This view is echoed in Sight & Sound, as the lack of quality output is symbolically linked to the deaths of acclaimed auteurs Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni (Mathews 2007). That there is a connection between crises in cinema and its criticism is evident but these crises in criticism and cinema also exist independent of one another, a result of consistent rearticulating of the crisis theme by critics and commentators. Any crisis in cinema cannot be solely to blame for a similar crisis in twenty-first-century film criticism because, as statements such as the death of the critic show, there are crises across cultural criticism, not just in film. Trepidation over the impact of digital media (economic or otherwise) or declining standards in cinema are not the only reasons behind such an extreme crisis discourse. Perhaps it is due to his time of writing in the late 1990s, but film critic and academic Jim Hoberman (1998:72) does not mention anything of the internet when he argues for a multitude of reasons behind a crisis in film criticism: ‘The crisis in film criticism has been variously linked to the consolidation of entertainment conglomerates, the proliferation of home video, the dumbing down of the movie audience, the toxic fumes of film theory, the death of cinephilia, the retirement of Pauline Kael…the disappearance of movies.’ His remarks highlight a variety of reasons beyond digital technologies contributing to a proposed crisis only 15 years ago. In his study of US film criticism between 1996 and 2006, Lupo (2007) finds that critics and criticism had to c­ ontend with a variety of impacts which could connote crisis: from ­declining column inches and charges of elitism to more entertainment-aligned journalism where critical writing is frowned upon by editors and r­ eaders, as well as industry mistreatment. He also makes no explicit mention of any unfavourable effects of the internet, which supports the argument that no 29

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single factor is solely responsible for the perceived crisis of film criticism in recent years. Academic disciplines have also been blamed for the recent crisis in literary and film criticism. Hoberman hints at it as he mentions film theory, but others like McDonald (2007:134) are forthright in claiming that Cultural Studies is partly responsible for the death of the critic, because of a general suspicion of any evaluative measures. Others argue against the increased esotericism coming from academia whereby critical disciplines offer inaccessible jargon and specialisation (Carroll 2009; Eagleton 1984). Alex Clayton and Andrew Klevan (2011:2) question whether film criticism actually exists at all in academia, due to never quite cementing itself as a discipline, as literary criticism has. Of course film criticism in academia does exist, if not in the way that Clayton and Klevan (2011) consider as literary and concerned with more colourful descriptions and word-play, normally associated with a belletristic writing style, then certainly as an interpretative practice for the discussion of films (Bordwell 1989). In Making Meaning, David Bordwell studies the act of writing film criticism and he focuses primarily on film criticism as existing in film studies, which he argues is theory-centred and offers symptomatic readings, and film criticism which is art-centred and found in high-end journalism. A discussion of this historic split between these two schools, as film studies developed in academia, will be outlined at the end of Chapter Two when arguments will be made for a variety of schools of film criticism in existence today. There are more practical, rather than conceptual, issues impacting specifically on film criticism and which have contributed to a recurring crisis of late. There exist increasing pressures from publications’ marketing priorities and these often negate serious film criticism. A  Cineaste symposium (The Editors 2000:27) on American film criticism in 2000 found many film critics – especially those writing for the mainstream – agreeing that they were ‘increasingly embattled in their efforts to write serious film criticism because of commercial pressure from publishers, publicists, and film distributors, all of whom are principally interested in using critics as marketing aids.’ This particular problem extends beyond North America. In 2005 the same magazine (The Editors 2005b:4) 30

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surveyed 22 critics from 20 countries in another symposium on international film criticism, and found there to be similar concerns and anxieties across Europe, Asia, Latin America, Africa, and Australia: ‘Critics from such disparate countries as Brazil, Italy, Austria, and The Philippines decry the space newspapers and magazines are required to devote to blockbusters, as well as the bottom-line considerations that result in an American-style obsession with gossip and movie-star trivia.’ In 2008, the Associated Press (AP) even issued guidelines for 500 word-limit restrictions on all entertainment writers in the US (Ebert 2008), further handicapping serious, or at least sustained, criticism. There are also inherent issues of disrespect towards the profession of criticism and film critics specifically. In the last century Leavis (1979:25) makes the argument that critics came under attack in a ‘hostile environment’ for trying to protect standards, similar to claims made today by scholars studying the subject of criticism. McDonald (2007:66) states that there exists a general perception of negativity towards critics and Lupo (2007:103) shows that the film industry often attempts to control critical coverage and obstruct film critics with simple practices such as withholding press kits or screening times to a movie they think will be covered negatively. Jonathan Romney (2005) argues that this is the era of the ‘critic-proof film’ where distributors view a critic as an ‘irrelevance that gets in the way of revenue’. In 2000 O’Hagan became a film critic for the Daily Telegraph, which inspired his 2004 polemical essay, ‘Two Years in the Dark’. One section deals with the public relations companies and distributors who impinge upon critical day-to-day life, where he parodies his own experiences with PR people: ‘ “Oh, Sasha. Please don’t ask me that.” “Everybody is really excited about this film.” “I’m sure.” “Oh come on. You won’t say how good you thought it was?” “Nope.” “Any chance of making it Film of the Week?” ’ (O’Hagan 2004:184). A more serious concern is voiced by Adrian Martin, associate professor at Monash University and former film critic of the Australian newspaper The Age. He speaks of a ‘code of ethics for film reviewers’ that was distributed at film industry conventions which stated: ‘Critics should only review the film in front of them [and] a review should predominantly tell the prospective consumer what the film is about’, which, he argues, 31

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is a twin attack to deconstruct socio-political comment and the act of criticism itself (Martin 2005). Additionally, there is the perception that film critics are not respected in mainstream publications which favour serious coverage of other arts disciplines instead (Bergan 2007; Lopate 2006:XXIII; Rosenbaum 1995:261). It should be expected that the art critic be familiar with fine art history, or that the literary critic be familiar with the classics, yet those employing film critics in the mainstream are understood to advertise little need for a writer to know anything about the history of the medium. Ronald Bergan (2007) reiterates the common understanding that anyone can write film criticism through an anecdote about a young writer at a UK newspaper being denied the post of a vacating critic because he knew too much about cinema. While this list of potential reasons for a crisis in film criticism is indicative rather than exhaustive, this section has served to highlight the complexities involved in the contemporary crisis narrative. Through the arguments of Leavis, Greene, Orwell and Kael and other debates in publications such as Sight & Sound, it is evident that critical crises have happened before; it is even possible to suggest that when Hoberman speaks of a crisis in 1998 this too may have been a previous crisis, or is indeed illustrative of a continual crisis. However, for the first time there appears to be a correlation across all arts and culture which proclaims the act of criticism as dead. For that reason, the rise of digital media and the web, as well as the impact of this technology on newspapers and the ability for anyone to participate in cultural criticism, with the additional catalyst of economic crisis, cannot be ignored as main proponents of a currently mooted crisis in film criticism. Yet, while much of the literature in this most recent crisis period is correct to make association between the rise of the web and a critical crisis, it has been shown here that there are in fact many different reasons why the idea of a crisis in film criticism is espoused. The death of cinema and product unworthy of serious critical appraisal in the eyes of critics, academic jargon and a systematic inability to make judgements, commercial pressures which restrict word counts or serious detail in favour of celebrity or PR, and elitist perspectives on critics in general or industry mistreatment, have all been attributed to moments of crisis in contemporary film criticism. Perhaps a combination 32

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of all of these forces – against a backdrop of the web, financial turmoil and uncertainty over the future of printed media – coalesce to create the hyperbolic death narrative associated with this latest crisis.

The Digital Media Age While there are many facets which contribute to a crisis in film criticism, there is a similar crisis coinciding in journalism as a profession. The current economic landscape is also a contributory factor here but there is a more specific association to be made with the rise of the web and digital media platforms. This section provides a short overview of the current crisis in journalism by analysing three tropes which have affected communications and media in recent years, as evidenced from an extensive literature review. These may help foster an understanding of what is happening to film criticism when the views of film critics are subjected to empirical investigation. These concepts are technology, democracy and capitalism, but more specifically relate to how the definition of journalism has been challenged as it interlinks with the web, how democratic the web actually is in terms of participation within that communication space and, finally, the effects of media concentration and commercialisation. Concentration on technology, participation and commercialisation together also gives rise to the idea of legacy media brands benefiting from a Respected Space, a mental construct existing between the offline and online worlds, where the traditions of broadcasting and print publication converge with networked digital media on the web.

Technology The rapid proliferation of computer technology, which created the web and networked interactions, has distorted traditional media forms as they converge with one another and with newer delivery and creation platforms online. Inevitably this has an impact upon practices reliant on these varied media, such as journalism. However, these older media still exist, albeit in a computerised culture. There is persistent incongruity in using the term New Media because at some stage all media were new; it 33

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is more accurate to consider media in a digital environment rather than something completely new. For instance, much of what is termed ‘new’ can be viewed as an extension of the old (Allan 2006; Manovich 2001; Marshall 2004). The current mediascape is one which is characterised by both disruptive changes to working practices and interactions with technologies, but longstanding continuities are also discernible as former habits are maintained and technologies built upon over time. Graham Meikle and Sherman Young (2012:7) refer to the convergent digital media environment in similar terms as ‘contestation and continuity’. In The Long revolution (1973), Raymond Williams talks about the continual revolution between communications, democracy and politics and the difficulty of comprehending what is actually happening when directly experiencing subtle and extensive changes. Back in 1961, Williams (1973:10) argued that: We are living through a long revolution, which our best descriptions only in part interpret. It is a genuine revolution, transforming men and institutions; continually extended and deepened by the actions of millions, continually and variously opposed by explicit reaction and by the pressure of habitual forms and ideas. Yet it is a difficult revolution to define, and its uneven action is taking place over so long a period that it is almost impossible not to get lost in its exceptionally complicated process.

Williams’ quote could easily have been written today about the impact of the digital age, another technological and cultural revolution taking place in the wake of the industrial and democratic revolutions, and the main accelerant of the information age. The purpose his words serve is to suggest that the disruptive technological change experienced today has happened before, and is continually happening, since the inception of the machine; in a way there is always a revolution transpiring. If previous revolutionary media forms are assessed – printed press, radio, film, and television – nothing is revealed which obliterates the existence of what came before it. Undoubtedly, however, digital media and computing have made some radical changes to societies and cultures, from DVDs and 34

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social media to the most significant downturn in sales in the history of the printed press. While historically linked in other ways, criticism and journalism are contemporarily linked by the narrative of crisis and the fact that crises are not new to these areas. Consider that in the late 1980s, David Altheide and Robert Snow (1991:X) proposed that journalism, or at least organised journalism, was in fact ‘dead’. James Curran and Jean Seaton (2010:236) argue that there are always sporadic periods of unrest and stability in media, and Stuart Allan (2006:176) argues that any crisis has happened before when the telegraph, newsreel, radio and television spelled the end of newspaper journalism. Moreover, the current journalistic crisis takes place in the knowledge that the institution of journalism has had a longstanding relationship with the web, launched in 1991 by Sir Tim Berners-Lee and his collaborators (Meikle & Young 2012:31). There were even electronic versions of newspapers on the internet offered by proprietary services like America Online and CompuServe in the 1980s (Dimitrova & Nezanski 2006). By 1995, net usage was becoming widespread with the rise of online service providers (Allan 2006; Fisch & Mcleod 2007; Manovich 2001; Munster 2006), but one year earlier the Daily Telegraph became the first national online newspaper in the UK (Monaghan & Tunney 2010:3) and Time magazine reported that there were 450 publications online worldwide with the majority motivated by ‘strictly commercial’ aims, some charging directly for access (Jackson 1995). Yet, the restructuring of media institutions and particularly the sacking of journalists over the past decade will be seen as a seminal event to many of those involved. Heavy job losses in the UK – the British newspaper market shrunk by 20 per cent since 2004 (Barber 2011); 106 local newspapers closed and 1000 jobs were cut at ITV (Curran 2011:465) – and in the US – print newspaper circulation down 7 million in the last 20 years (Fisch & McLeod 2000); one in five journalists losing their jobs throughout the decade (PEW 2009)  – have led to National Union of Journalists (NUJ) conferences on ‘How to save journalism’ (Salusbury 2010) and newspaper practitioner hyperbole which describes the situation as a ‘mainstream media disease’ (Barber 2011). Gary Hudson and Mick Temple (2010:70) contend that ‘In short, “chaos” rather than “control” best describes the current journalistic 35

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environment.’ In the tenth annual PEW (2013) report, albeit only dealing with US journalism, there is evidence of decline with the numbers of full-time professional journalists below 40,000 for the first time since 1978. What the report names as ‘the only major print news weekly left standing’, Time magazine, cut 5 per cent of its staff in 2013. For the first time the report states the impact that these cuts are having on audiences as almost one third of US people have ‘Deserted a news outlet because it no longer provides the news and information they had grown accustomed to.’ (Stateofthemedia.org 2013) A similar story continues in UK journalism as The Telegraph Group cut 80 print jobs at two of its newspapers in March 2013. Albeit these were offset by the creation of 50 new digital posts (Greenslade 2013). In spring 2016 more job losses are expected at UK newspapers like the Guardian and the Independent and the conferences on how to monetise journalism online from both industry and academia show no signs of abating. The industry of journalism on both sides of the Atlantic has therefore been hit by a disruptive technological impact partly induced by more people reading their news online for free. Additionally, the technology of the web has affected journalism in one other way. According to Meikle and Young (2012:118), whereas in the past journalists were the only ones who could write in public, now anyone can. Of course, everyone from novelists to politicians could also write in public pre-digital age; it must be noted that there are varying degrees of importance and value attached to this writing, as there are to online writing now. Although this will be explored further when considering the fact that anyone can now perform film criticism, it is possible to say that online writing does destabilise the concept of journalism. As Lupo (2007) argues, critical authority has been eroding since the 1960s. The rise of the blogosphere and social media has been a further challenge to the legitimacy of journalistic authority – at least for news and politics. Raymond Boyle (2006:142) argues that not all journalistic authority is equal because something like sports journalism has always had a ‘long tradition of dissent’ (this is equally true of film journalism, with the history of fanzines and the emergence of VHS in the 1980s). Understandably nervous over their futures, traditional journalists initially found an easy target in those producing written content online for free. This formed a bedrock debate for a number of years: print media 36

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versus online. The reality is much more complex, not least given the fact that most print institutions simultaneously, and in some cases more efficiently, also appear online. Furthermore, the web and its technologies have not enabled the usurping of traditional media that has been feared by the mainstream and welcomed by innovative online publishers. The promise of a new golden age of journalism is just as unconvincing as claiming that everyone is now a journalist (Gant 2007; Hudson & Temple 2010) – as is the notion that everything was once rosier in a nostalgic golden age (Bernstein 2010; Boyle 2006). Arianna Huffington (2009) is unsurprisingly positive about the future of journalism in the digital age when she claims that ‘the state of newspapers is not the same thing as the state of journalism…the future of journalism is not dependent on the future of newspapers.’ While The Huffington Post may be an exception (it is ranked third most popular news website in the world in 2013) the majority of sites in the top rankings come from established media groups such as the Guardian, the BBC or the New  York Times (NYT) (Alexa 2013). There is a crisis in journalism relating to how audiences are reading their news online for free and how users are now able to create content freely. Similar to the crisis in criticism, recent economic disruption has acted as an accelerant – especially given that journalism and media have been involved with web initiatives since 1994 – and has coincided with the expansion of ‘creative audiences’ (Meikle & Young 2012:103) who write online in public. Therefore, the concept of journalism is affected by technology and the people using that technology. However, much reading still takes place with trusted media sources, with writing platforms such as blogging and social media also being absorbed by these legacy institutions in an attempt to control user-generated content (UGC) (Hudson & Temple 2010:71; Thurman & Hermida 2010:54). A  self-publishing many-to-many model in Web 2.0 (Curran & Seaton 2010:280) has broadened the definitions of what is meant by journalism at least in terms of news and politics, but specialisms such as film have always had alternative voices in societies and zines. That print journalists and critics are still losing jobs is more closely related to wider economic pressures, as well as poor ownership choices in giving away online content for free, rather 37

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than any usurping of cultural or institutional authority. That more people can write online in public is related to a recent discourse of participation as discussed through the concept of an enhanced digital democracy.

Participation In the digital media age any assumptions made about production, consumption and inclusivity need consistently re-examined as they did before the arrival of the web. One topic which emerges consistently throughout much literature on the digital age is the concept of democracy (Axford 2001; Curran 2011; Dahlgren 2001; Domingo & Heinonen 2008; Greenslade 2008; Heywood 2007; Hudson & Temple 2010; Krotoski 2010; Manovich 2001; Markham 2010; Monaghan & Tunney 2010; Munster 2006:3; Nardi et al. 2004; Nip 2006). As democracy is a significant topic for a number of scholars on digital media, and given statements such as ‘we are all journalists now’ (Hudson & Temple 2010:64) and ‘We Are All Critics Now’ (McDonald 2007:4), some of these interests are worth extrapolating, especially in relation to the theme of participation and inclusivity more than any political connotations. This idea of participation is also commonly expressed as interactivity (Dimitrova & Nezanski 2006; Hudson & Temple 2010:63; Manovich 2001; Marshall 2004; Munster 2006; Nip 2006). Although lately more nuanced readings into the differences between the terms have started to emerge, I will use them interchangeably here. Two schools of thought lead current thinking on the internet according to Curran and Seaton (2010:252) – the first is that it is an enabling and empowering technology, the second is that the technology is over-hyped and undermined by capitalism and social inequality. Both of these polarities can be examined through the prism of participation. This notion of freedom online can be seen in the discourses which perpetuate the idea that everyone is now a critic. An examination of the concept of participation here will provide an interpretative framework which the empirical evidence in Chapter Four can draw upon when documenting – not only the increasing levels of participation in amateur culture online but – the ways in which professional film critics interact alongside these new writers in the converged digital media environment. 38

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To begin by looking at the more positive outlook: the ability for digital media and citizens to impact on journalism and communications through the internet has been referred to as electronic democracy, cyber democracy, and e-democracy (Heywood 2007:237), with proponents titled as ‘netizens’ (Papacharissi 2002:22). There are antecedents in another time:  Jürgen Habermas (1991) argued that a democratic and progressive discourse was able to emerge in the form of an eighteenth-century public sphere with unified communicative ideals. His perspective is not without criticism, seen by some as evidently ‘flawed’ (Crossley & Roberts 2004; Curran 1991:42; Manovich 2001:59; Monaghan & Tunney 2010:5). However, his concept persists and is a topic reinvigorated by Web 2.0 as a ‘place for a new transformation of the public sphere’ (Marshall 2004:52) where online newspapers and journalism can also play their part (Sparks 2003). There are those who actively view the internet as lacking any such public spaces: See Axford (2001:6) and Markham (2010). Although ‘uncomfortably implicated in the commercial logic and language of software upgrades’, Meikle and Young (2012:65) also recognise that the term Web 2.0 is most often applied to online participatory culture where users create and share content. To extend the point about online writing made above, Curran and Seaton (2010:280) also claim that the most significant digital disruption to the communication chain which affects journalism and media is the many-to-many publication characteristic of the web, which converts desks ‘into a printing press, broadcasting station and place of assembly’. This is a paradigmatic shift, from a one-way lecture in traditional media to a two-way open dialogue and exchange between practitioners, content providers and audiences. Therefore, there is clear evidence of a large-scale media movement from passivity to activity when considering the web and its users, as new technologies have allowed communication channels to be created and manipulated. For a variety of discussions around the collapsing of boundaries leading to new portmanteaus like prosumer and produser see Bruns (2002); Kotler (1986); Tapscott and Williams (2007:4); and Toffler (1980). The increasing media production power now quite literally in the hands of the individual is a significant change when considering that in the past people often functioned largely as a ‘consuming audience’ within 39

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the traditional mass media framework (Bolter 2003:27). David P. Marshall (2004:13) argues that digital media ‘is encoded with the capacity to transform the actual flow and presentation of the material itself ’. Users of the internet and the web are effectively creators of the contents within that space, at both the micro and macro levels. Single video uploads on YouTube combine as a huge part of that site’s overall content or each individual user account on Facebook shares and creates content, which those users do not own, without which there would be no social network. Equally so film culture is now just as malleable, for instance the user solyentbrak1 (2010) merges trailers for The Simpsons Movie (Silverman, 2007)  and Inception (Nolan, 2010)  inventively to paint Springfield as a dream world to be invaded. Video essays, whereby short digital videos are compiled to critique individual films, themes or artists, are regularly made by critics Kevin B. Lee and Matt Zoller Seitz. Therefore, from the point of view of participation in cultural production, the internet has to a certain extent levelled the playing field and become more inclusive in a way which has reinvigorated the public sphere or at least its discourse: from the blogosphere challenging what traditional media deem legitimate to increasing participation rates in social media (Oxford Internet Institute 2011). Whether social media use contributes to a public sphere which enhances democracy is contestable – but there are certainly high-profile examples of using digital media to affect politics. For instance, consider that in June 2013 Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan denounced the use of social media in political protests, yet at the same time members of his cabinet used Twitter to discredit BBC journalists (Anon BBC News 2013). On the same micro-blogging site on 24 June 2013, Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa announced to ‘the world’ that he would consider whistle-blower Edward Snowden’s case for political asylum ‘very responsibly’ (Correa  2013). Today we come to expect important political announcements to simply be tweeted in the first instance. Both examples above reflect the complexities of convergent media communications and the rapidity with which they contribute to the discourse of the public sphere. However, they were also narratives reported upon by the traditional media, outlets which still dominate in terms of 40

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audience numbers and also through their attempts to develop participatory frameworks within their own media space which are often moderated. See Thurman and Hermida (2010) for a full list of control factors at UK press institutions online. These legacy media have a historical brand identity and respectability as they are (certainly in the case of the BBC, regardless of recent high-profile controversies) trusted sources of information for the public. In some instances the free availability of these brands online has opened up access to those who may have had only aspirational investment in them offline and may have had limited access through geography or, in the case of newspapers such the NYT and the Guardian, through an inability to regularly pay cover prices. This relates to the concept of a key interpretative framework giving rise to an important methodological term to be used throughout this work: Respected Space. Such media institutions enjoy the Respected Space created between their converged links of past tradition and new digital technologies such as the web. It is therefore questionable whether, as Hudson and Temple (2010: 69) argue, a new democratic public voice can truly challenge the elite agenda setting of traditional media. There are, of course, some examples where outlets such as The Huffington Post command as much attention as the mainstream media but inevitably as aggregators they are reporting, more often than not, the work of those traditional outlets. The old binaries of producers and consumers, or producers and audiences (Meikle & Young 2012:104), have become blurred as Web 2.0 has afforded anyone with an internet connection the potential to have a voice online. Whether that voice is heard, as traditional media continue to absorb periphery techniques and command even larger audiences (in the case of some newspapers) is in part related to issues of trust but also increasing media concentration which ensures that the democratic spirit of digitalisation on the web remains inconclusive. The choices users make are framed by businesses with shareholders which have co-opted daily routines, such as Facebook and Google, but more importantly some users’ choices are limited by a ‘digital divide’ at local and international levels (Curran & Seaton 2010:275; Krotoski 2010; Strover 2003), relating to technological access but also social, economic and political ­contexts. See essays in The Information Society, 19:  2003. According 41

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to Nic Newman and David Levy (2013:66), participation and interaction online varies from country to country, with US users more than twice as likely to comment on news stories as UK users, even if overall participation rates for both countries fall below one third. Newman (2013) argues that ‘The culture of a country is the main driver for how we engage with online news – playing an even greater part than the technical tools and devices we have to access it’. Furthermore, this underrepresentation of those who do not participate – research suggests that much of the content and commenting comes from only a minority of users (Barnett 2009; Nielsen 2006) – raises questions over how representative UGC actually is in a discussion of the online cultural and media environment. It is clear that a utopian ideal of empowering web technologies may be overstated; this is especially so when further consideration is given to such technologies potentially being dominated by capitalist interests (Curran & Seaton 2010:252). These interests will now be analysed in relation to the media industries, journalism and PR.

Commercialisation An analysis of the dynamics of internet power and the continued dominance of major media conglomerates is important not only because some of these businesses produce films but because it is important to contextualise the online environment where some contemporary schools of film criticism operate. As has already been shown in relation to potential reasons for the latest crisis, commercial pressures on film criticism is a concern for practitioners. It is, therefore, prudent to ascertain the respective scope of those commercial interests in the digital media environment. The concept of a reinvigorated public sphere in which parity is achieved can also be undermined by capitalist interests who promote profit over ideas. Almost as often as democracy is raised as a concept in digital age literature, commercialisation is a theme which follows as a threat to those democratic interests (Curran & Seaton 2010:288; Dahlberg 2001; Dimitrova & Nezanski 2006; Goldberg 2011:741; Kitchin 1998; Manovich 2001:6; Marshall 2004; Monaghan & Tunney 2010). Miller (2012:2) argues there are ‘somewhat tired explanations of media 42

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commercialization’ contributing to the journalistic crisis. However, often that which is obvious is in need of closer examination and commentary the most. Zizi Papacharissi (2002:12) questioned at the turn of the century whether the revolutionary spirit of the internet would ultimately be absorbed by a mass commercial culture threatening any hope of a virtual public sphere. At the time, Papacharissi (2002:22) mooted the possibility of public space but not yet a public sphere because there exist ‘several culturally fragmented cyberspheres that occupy a common virtual public space’. Since then many virtual public spaces have combined to constitute examples of a public sphere, as evidenced when ordinary thought and citizen action (2005 London bombings, 2006 Tsunami, 2009 Iranian uprising, and 2011 Arab Spring) is equally accessible alongside official government statements or traditional media sources. Even before the popularity of social media networks, Habermas (2006; 2009) still argues for the existence of a (albeit poorer quality) public sphere even in the dominance of the media system over face-to-face debate. Habermas (1991) also argues that the public sphere needs protection from economic interests, protection which appears lacking, according to Lincoln Dahlberg (2001), as state and corporate controls have now ‘colonised’ the internet. This point has been reinforced over a decade later with Edward Snowden’s allegations that internet and technology companies, Facebook, Google, Apple and Microsoft among them, are colluding with governments by allowing surveillance of their customers. Concerns over the commercialisation of the web prompted scholars Curran and Seaton (2010:288), and founder Berners-Lee (Berners-Lee 2000; Cellan-Jones 2011), to argue that state intervention  – similar to the prevention of the total commercial takeover of radio and television  – is imperative. Greg Goldberg (2011) considers that nationalising the internet would have a similar limiting impact on the public sphere. Curran and Seaton (2010:288) acknowledge that there is now an increased emphasis on business online and Lev Manovich (2001:6) argues that as early as the beginning of the 1990s the internet was a site of commerce. For Greg Goldberg (2011:744–5) the idea of the internet being free or cheap has been ‘downplayed in new media scholarship […] problematizing the notion that commons-based peer production occurs 43

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outside  of the market’ (Goldberg 2011:745). He goes on to argue that internet participation is a commercial act because it contributes to an infrastructure which is paid for, eventually, by advertising (Goldberg 2011:747). This is effectively the business model for convergent media firms in Web 2.0, where ‘The users do the unpaid work of building and promoting the business, creating its content, and generating advertising material through using the service’ (Meikle & Young 2012:66). When companies such as Facebook then profit from this content, at the same time as also claiming ownership of it, content production and participatory culture has been commercialised within this space. With the exception of newspapers like the NYT or the Guardian, which do not generate huge profits, or sometimes any profits, there are more commercial reasons why some media institutions benefit from the Respected Space in which traditional and digital media cultures converge. Hudson and Temple (2010:72) claim that alternatives to traditional media sources are ‘notoriously unreliable’. However, there is nothing to suggest that, over time, new online media companies cannot build trust, as is clearly evident with the success of The Huffington Post. Thurman and Hermida (2010:47) find that the most popular websites are often owned by large corporations and Marshall (2004:51&102) argues that, while also investing in popular start-ups, powerful media institutions implement techniques to ensure that certain commercial websites attract more users than personal websites. Thus, there is minimal evidence of any shifts in the powerbase of media in the digital age, with the gatekeeper model replicated online (Allan 2006; Hudson & Temple 2010; Markham 2010; Marshall 2004; Monaghan & Tunney 2010; Nip 2006), with Meikle & Young (2012:36) even arguing that the web has actually served to strengthen some of these corporate media interests. Andrew Heywood’s (2007:233) Dominant-Ideology Model, which suggests that the mass media is always aligned to the interests of economic and social elites, may explain why, through shareholders, ownership and globalization, digital media may lack plurality. Currently there are seven major media corporations, Time Warner, Disney, Bertelsmann AG, NBC Universal, Viacom, CBS and News Corporation (Heywood 2007:233; Meikle & Young 2013:36), some of which are involved in convergence 44

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initiatives with Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo! and Google (Meikle & Young 2012:37). With such influence it is not difficult to suggest, as Martin (2008) also does, that these corporations, which also control Hollywood studios, seek to dominate the internet. As Marshall (2004: 103) argues, digital media do not ‘miraculously change this constellation of power and resistance that cultural studies has chronicled in all its subcultural manifestations and moments’. Although the continued growth of Facebook and Google will undoubtedly realign that constellation. Whether the power of seven organizations or commercialization more broadly can encroach upon the quotidian work of journalists at the ground level of media production is debatable, given the agency of everyone from sub-editors and scriptwriters to producers and editors, but that impact may be visible through filtering processes. Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman (1994:234) develop ‘five filters’ in which coverage of news may be distorted by the structure of the media in Manufacturing Consent. These include the business interests of owners, sensitivity to the concerns of advertisers and sponsors, pressure applied to journalists, and market competition and consumer capitalism. As has been shown in the previous section, some of these related pressures are already evident upon film journalists because PR companies and marketing arms are attempting to restrict free comment from film critics. The total fabrication of critical statements and even critical personalities to go with them, like fictional critic David Manning, created by Sony Pictures in an attempt to sell two of its movies (Basuroy et al. 2001:103), suggest that major corporations are even bypassing attempts at complicit journalism altogether in order to promote their products. Furthermore, commercial pressures from publications do affect the day-to-day business of being a film journalist according to North American and international critics polled in the Cineaste symposia in 2000 and 2005. Although there is evidence of the taint of commercial interests in film culture at least as far back as the 1930s (Arnheim 1935:90), if many of Chomsky and Herman’s filters do impact upon film critics in the media system then it follows that a substantial part of film criticism is about commodity rather than culture. In a fast-paced digital environment, traditional means of reaching audiences (such as journalism) are often supplanted by marketization 45

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and corporations using PR and media management (Boyle 2006:4). There exists a spectrum of impact, from the sports journalist afraid to question the football star for fear of future inaccessibility (Boyle 2006:116), or the film critic with similar fears over being too critical and thus denied access to press events (Lupo 2007:108), to the major homogenization of all media coverage bending to the will of commercial material (Davies 2009). Nick Davies (2009:59&70) labels the latter ‘churnalism’ by ‘churnalists’ (PR people) who, he claims, now outnumber the journalistic workforce in the UK and help blur the line between editorial and advertising. Although Roy Greenslade (2008) argues that ‘It is entirely conceivable that the digital revolution may, in the fullness of time, sweep the media mogul aside’, this is not a revolution which has been evident thus far. The technology of the web and its associative platforms, from comments to blogging and social media has fostered online inclusivity and participation in so far as offering a stage for anyone who has an opinion and wishes to express it, but increased media concentration and convergence with major internet businesses, alongside audience loyalties, helps to re-establish gatekeeper positions. While participation in networked digital media makes it difficult to separate content producers from the audience as producers – for instance, Meikle and Young (2012:2) argue that, ‘the media are now what we do’ – there exists a permeable prehistory which suggests the media are still those who dominate audiences and now users.

Conclusion This chapter has provided an overview of a contemporary crisis in criticism and film criticism specifically, positing that criticism is in crises many times over. As de Man (1983) argues as necessary, criticism must always be in continual crises in order to function and progress as a form of discourse; a continued rearticulating in order to remain relevant. Simultaneously, film criticism (as well as other forms of criticism) over the past decade has been dominated by a discourse which led to assertions that the critic is dead. Of note, there is a counter-discourse to this rhetoric which posits a revitalised criticism and where a Golden Age is espoused (Brunick 2010 & 2010b; McCarthy 2011; Keathley 2011:177; 46

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Koresky & Reichert 2011; Martin 2011; McCarthy 2011). For a variety of reasons, from declining print media sales to cultural studies, this may be one of the most intensive periods of crisis resulting in such hyperbole. Yet, while it has been shown that there are multiple reasons for increased exaggerations which are relevant to film criticism, it is the underlying development of the web which has affected journalism and media most. As, outwith academia, journalism and its media can be said to be the main arena through which professional film criticism is practised (or at least shares space with), subsequent fieldwork will ascertain the levels of impact that the key concepts of technology, participation and commercialisation have on contemporary film criticism. Particularly within a participatory framework, it will be important to consider the increased volume of amateur writing and the relationships between these critics and professionals. In examining the current discourse on journalism and media institutions, three things are clear. Journalism has been in crisis before and even though the relationship between the two arenas is almost two decades old, the web has been the main accelerant with poor management choices in a declining print industry with audiences reading, and in some cases creating, news online for free. Secondly, while anyone now has the ability to write in public there may be skewed representation of the numbers that do participate, with traditional media sources continuing to dominate in gatekeeping positions. Finally, some media institutions which do dominate are driven by commercial aims and have, in some cases, strengthened their interests in controlling the digital environment. The last two points relate to the interpretative framework of Respected Space, where traditional audiences have continued loyalty and new users are drawn to the media brand. While commercial interests help build audiences in some media sectors alongside audience trust, this is harder to determine with online press. For instance, in 2012 the Guardian chose to adopt adverts after years of ad-free video content; this is a direct result of increased readers and unsustainable online revenues. Either way commercialism wins. In the contested space between constancy and change, these are all elements closer to the former. From this point of view, the journalistic 47

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and media environments can now be described as characteristic of a digitally re-shaped landscape rather than linked to a digital revolution which has changed everything. Whether similar conclusions can be made about film criticism, and the significance of this, will be revealed by providing answers to the following questions: Are film critics perpetuating a crisis narrative? How have technologies such as computing and the web affected film criticism? Are film critics policing professional/gatekeeper boundaries the way media institutions are? And how widespread are the effects of commercialisation upon the working practices of film critics? Having contextualised the current digital media and cultural landscape within which film criticism exists, it is now important to acknowledge that, while film criticism shares a crisis period with journalism and media, it also equally shares one with all literary and arts criticism. It is this relationship with the act of criticism in general that the next section progresses as academic engagements with the ancient and modern origins of criticism are subjected to review and analysis. The aim is to understand the nuances of criticism as distinct from journalism by extrapolating two key functions at the core of the critical act, which can then be mapped onto the history of film criticism and, subsequently in the findings chapters, measured in terms of contemporary relevance. Also detailed, and in addition to these critical functions, are Six Schools of contemporary film criticism.

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The first aim of this chapter is to show that previous crises are not the only concept which links film criticism to criticism in general, by providing an overview of the ancient and modern origins of cultural criticism through the work of Noël Carroll and Terry Eagleton. Broadly speaking, and without entirely forsaking one or the other, these twin origins represent the binary of aesthetics and politics and can be found in debates over the functions of film criticism throughout its short history, beginning with two texts from 1896. Additionally, and based on an extensive period of research, the second aim here is to propose a model for the types of film criticism in existence today. This model will be of use throughout the findings chapters by aiding the correlation and framing of empirical data and by helping to reveal which critical schools individual critics are speaking from. In short, this chapter posits the core characteristics linking criticism to film criticism and shows that for any meaningful examination of film criticism to take place it must be fragmented into schools of thought rather than referred to as normative (or descriptive) of an entire heterogeneous practice. This is the approach taken by Bordwell (1989) in Making Meaning, as he examines the institution of film criticism prior to the networked digital media age. 49

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Ancient Criticism and Aesthetic Judgement Noël Carroll’s On Criticism (2009) argues for the return of criticism to its ancient Greek origins, which he claims valued judgement above all else. He makes a case for the foundation of criticism to have at its centre one key aim: objective evaluation. His views are what he terms a ‘philosophy of criticism’ (2009:1), arguing that no single theoretical framework can be established to say what criticism is or should be. He does not distinguish the journalistic from the scholarly and although his work does not explicitly exclude a social function to criticism, it is clear that he privileges aesthetic judgment. However, because Carroll has chosen to concentrate on this particular function of Greek criticism, that decision obscures the fact that criticism in ancient times also had a social function in which critics vocally conveyed their thoughts on arts to the public (Habermas 1991:3; Randall 2011:207). Carroll’s vision of criticism is based on an historical enquiry into ancient Greek language. His impetus comes from the antecedents of the earliest forms of criticism dating from the time of Aristotle (384–322 BCE), of which Aristotle’s Poetics (c.335–322 BCE) is believed to be the first sustained work of literary criticism in Western culture: a defence of tragedy and the epic as these forms were attacked by Plato in The Republic (Oates 1995:36), which shows a positive rather than negative dimension to the origins of criticism. Etymologically speaking, the term critic is a derivative of the Greek word kritikós: one who is able to judge, the noun use from the adjective, from krites judge, which is in turn from krinein, to separate, decide, judge (Barnhart 2003:236). Interestingly Crosthwaite (2011:1) also informs that ‘Crisis’ has its origins in krinein. Other scholars agree that from the time of Aristotle and Plato, evaluation has been – among other elements – a central characteristic at the beginning of Western criticism (McDonald 2007:49). In the 1930s, Leavis (1979:4) cites a passage from I.A. Richards in ‘The Principles of Literary Criticism’ which he says should be a locus classicus; in it Richards claims, ‘To set up as a critic is to set up as a judge of values.’ As he aims to reunite contemporary critical connotations to this central idea of evaluation, to judge and evaluate for Carroll is something which has been decoupled from arts criticism. 50

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If the role of criticism as judicial or evaluative is thought to be obvious, then for Carroll this is simply not the case. He references research conducted in 2003 by the National Arts Journalism Program at Columbia University, in which 160 arts writers were questioned. Of these, 75 per cent of respondents reported that rendering evaluations – their personal assessment of the art in question  – was ‘the least significant aspect of their work’ (2009:14). In a half-century appraisal of the art world, James Elkins (2003) also finds that evaluation has become one of the least important aspects of criticism. McDonald (2007:IX) attributes the general reluctance for critics to offer an evaluation towards the influence of cultural studies, which, he says, is suspect of the expert voice privileging one thing over another, where ‘best’ is a politically dubious category. McDonald (2007:21) points out that any cultural studies department will generally suspect an attempt to ‘separate aesthetics from politics as itself a political manoeuvre’. However, for Carroll, aesthetic evaluation of the artwork in question must take precedent in criticism above anything else. When discussing modern criticism in the eighteenth century, Carroll (2011:11) privileges the union of the arts as we know them today – literature, drama, dance, music, sculpture, architecture, subsequently the graphic arts (encompassing photography), and the moving-image arts (film, video, and computer generated visuals). Whereas for Eagleton (1984), this period signifies the rise of a socio-political function in literary criticism, for Carroll (2009:12) it is the act of incorporating many subsets of the arts under one umbrella that is the most pivotal event which shaped the modern practice of criticism. As Carroll (2009:42) argues, ‘to subtract evaluation from the critic’s job description is to change the subject altogether,’ he also recognises that many people are against his manifesto of objective, reasoned evaluation. He breaks this dissatisfaction down into numerous areas, but three are most relevant. Firstly, there is the most popular objection that criticism is never constructive. Secondly, many suggest that because critics are not artists they cannot possibly be in a position to judge. For instance, theatre critic Kenneth Tynan famously said that ‘A critic is a man who knows the way but cannot drive the car.’ (Young 2009b) Finally, and this is what he claims is one of the major assertions made from objectors, there are no 51

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critical principles or laws for the discipline, leading to the notion that criticism must always be subjective. To take the first point, that criticism must inevitably be negative and the preserve of an acerbic tongue, the Oxford English Dictionary gives primary meaning to the word critic as one who ‘carps, complains or back-bites’ while relegating the more judicious and impartially evaluative meaning of the professional critic to second place (McDonald 2007:41). Criticism will inevitably find and expose disvalue – a negative value or worth and a term inescapable from value in philosophical terms  – but Carroll argues that value is the overriding concern, not least because as a society we seek what is valuable to us rather than what is not. Carroll (2009:47) cites literary critic John Dryden who claims:  ‘They wholly mistake the nature of criticism who think its primary business is to find fault. Criticism as it was first instituted by Aristotle was meant as a standard for judging well, the chiefest part of which is to observe those excellencies which should delight a reasonable reader.’ While it is difficult to say whether the majority of criticism privileges disvalue over value, the popular discourse on critics is, as already noted, often pejorative. According to McDonald (2007:9), people have never regarded criticism as an honest day’s work and regard the critic as more like the ‘dog-in-the-manger or a parasite’ with popular opinion viewing critics as ‘snobbish and hypocritical people who live in a cliquish, privileged and smug social group.’ His words call to mind the late Vincent Price in Theatre of Blood (Hickox 1973), where his character theatrically murders, in evermore inventive ways, a Critics’ Circle matching just such a descriptor. McDonald (2007:11) notes a certain irony in that reliance nonetheless exists on the defamed critic. He offers a well-served example from Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot (1953), when Estragon begins a tirade of abuse towards Vladimir:  ‘Moron, Vermin etc.’ before ending with finality, ‘Crritic!’. The paradox here, argues McDonald (2007:11), is that if it was not for critics like Tynan and Harold Hobson this work would not have been hailed as ‘The most important play of the twentieth century.’ While criticism may well be viewed in the public sphere as somewhat elitist, examples like this and 52

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that of the earliest criticism of Poetics show that criticism brings value (and public value) to its task. On the second point, which presumes that critics have little understanding of how to create the art which they critique, there is no reason to assume that critics are uninformed in a field they have particular and historical insights into. A dedication is bound to exist, whether through professionalism or amateur passions, or both, that could suggest a critic to be more knowledgeable about the field he or she critiques than the artists within it. Also, there is nothing to assume that critics are not artists themselves. Critics have become artists and artists have become critics. Writers like Virginia Woolf or T.S. Eliot went on to become great literary critics; the Illinois poet Vachel Lindsay published one of the most important critical works on film in 1915 with The Art of the Moving Picture. French film critics of the 1950s became the directors of The New Wave; and the US film critic James Agee wrote the screenplay for The Night of the Hunter (Laughton 1955) and posthumously won a Pulitzer Prize in 1958 for his novel A Death in the Family. It is easier to agree with Carroll and refute the first two objections. For instance, many reviews of films are more nuanced than simple positive or negative grades and often contain within the texts moments of praise even if this is problematically framed by star ratings or aggregate sites such as Rotten Tomatoes. Secondly, there are still contemporary examples of successful filmmaker critics, such as Mark Cousins and a host of others creating films in video essay form, such as Matt Zoller Seitz and Steven Boone. However, the third point that criticism can be objective evaluation is more problematic. Although he provides little evidence to support his claim, in Carroll’s view there is a large amount of data showing more converging critical appraisals than diversity. In other words, more critics are showing less subjectivity and more consensus – a point which is backed up by some empirical evidence (Simonton 2009) and more recent anecdotal support which suggests that critical consensus is a last ditch attempt to save criticism (Gabler 2011). Carroll (2009:35) argues that there exists a ‘phenomenon of agreement’ rather than a phenomenon of disagreement; his view is that some artworks have near-universally agreed upon 53

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evaluations. He says: ‘Does anyone deny that Hedda Gabler is at least a good play?’ (2009:35). Actually, his example is flawed and serves better to show that over time evaluative measures can change because in 1890, when that Henrik Ibsen play was first staged, the work was ‘totally misunderstood’ and opened to negative reviews (Samuelsen et al. 1992:6). Perhaps more troubling is Carroll’s attempts to not only side-line subjectivity from criticism but remove politics, too. For him, ‘The object of criticism is the work as a product, the very artwork itself, and not the process made manifest in the artwork.’ (Carroll 2009:80) Carroll (2009:39) finds artistic value in Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ (2004) and Sergei Eisenstein’s The Old and the New (1929) because they both use cinematic strategy to ‘embody their themes’, but he argues that he remains politically unaffected – or his judgement is – because he is still an atheist and an anti-communist. Carroll (2009:80) claims he is able to resist any subjectivist viewpoint which would inevitably be a political one and concentrate on the artwork itself. Of course, atheism and anti-communism arguably connote secularist or capitalist political positions. Nonetheless, this means, at least for Carroll, criticism and critical judgement can be separated from subjective political concerns – on some level. This mirrors the comments Martin (2005) makes about flyers being distributed at press events where the critic is told only to concentrate on what he or she sees onscreen. From this interpretive return to ancient standards of criticism, it is clear that focus resides with an aesthetic (objective, in Carroll’s case) evaluation of the art work which privileges judgment above any other critical function and at times actively forsakes politics. The next section shows that there is a second, socio-political dimension to the overall function of criticism which forms part of a binary. This is a function which may also have lost significance, as Carroll has it that evaluation has, in recent decades.

Modern Criticism and Socio-politics This section argues that while critical evaluation of the art work in question is of importance, it is equally valuable to situate that art work in the 54

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culture, society and politics of its or any other time. In his 1984 book, The Function of Criticism, Marxist critic Terry Eagleton charts a history of European (beginning with English-language) criticism from the early eighteenth century. His work is sometimes referenced by respected UK film critics when discussing current concerns around criticism (Cousins 2008; James 2008). Perhaps this is because, as Mathew Beaumont (Eagleton & Beaumont 2009:XVI) argues, Eagleton’s work often shows a ‘consistent commitment to rearticulating the task of the critic’. Like Carroll, Eagleton does not discriminate between scholarly criticism and journalism, although his writing is more focused on a literary position than the general philosophising on arts writing that Carroll demonstrates. Eagleton borrows the public sphere theory, first developed in 1962 by Habermas in The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, as a guiding concept for his own approach and argues that the very first seeds of modern criticism were sewn through the use of literary materials such as pamphlets, journals and periodicals, as well as in actual physical locations such as clubs and coffee houses. These spaces and objects acted like tools with which the bourgeois could carve out new rules in the name of bourgeois reason. Eagleton (1984:10) states that, ‘Seen historically, the modern concept of literary criticism is closely tied to the rise of the liberal, bourgeois public sphere in the early eighteenth century.’ This is not a radical idea, as others agree that ‘The modern critic was born in the salons and coffee houses of the early eighteenth century.’ (McDonald 2007:53) All manner of things would be discussed in these havens for critical thought for ‘like-minded’ people, from modern social life, politics and economics, to literature and philosophy (McDonald 2007:54) and, as Carroll (2009:12) has argued, all other arts. In his own description of the origins of criticism, Eagleton (1984:9) notes that modern European criticism arrived due to a political struggle for recognition in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries against an absolutist state. From this initial discussion of the birth of modern criticism, Eagleton (1984:7) positions what he advocates as criticism’s key function at the heart of his argument: because modern criticism was born of socio-politics it therefore must fulfil a substantive social function. However, this is a role he thinks that contemporary criticism lacks in favour of public relations spin or retreats towards the academy. 55

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Eagleton (1984) opens with an account of a critic sitting down to write and being disturbed by questions such as, why write this criticism and who am I  trying to influence, shape or reach by it? Essentially, what is the ‘point’ in this critical act? Reflecting on his work, Eagleton (2009:196) claims that he was interested in raising meta-questions about the nature and rationale for criticism because there is an ‘a priori need to justify the whole enterprise of criticism – not in a guilty or grovelling way, but in order to make sense of it’. In light of the recent crisis of criticism and questions over the proposed death of film criticism, this ‘a priori’ need is once again at the forefront of the critical discourse at a time of uncertainty and proposed technological and cultural transformations. In the eighteenth century, two major publications are exemplary of the movement Eagleton positions as fostering a substantive social function via critical writing; they simultaneously fulfil the most important critical function he posits. These were two periodicals which constituted the emergence of the bourgeois public sphere: Tatler and Spectator. The first edition of Tatler emerged in 1709 with its founder Richard Steele, with Spectator following two years later as Steele was joined by Joseph Addison in its creation (Cowan 2004). Eagleton (1984:25) hints at their importance in the creation of quality journalism by noting that, although both titles were definitive products of the middle classes, they represented an ‘anti-bourgeois respectability, and were instrumental in legitimising journalism itself ’. Of course these specific publications were just two examples of many more similar journals of the time, but Eagleton argues that these two are the best representative examples, and relegates any others to the address of ‘lesser imitators’ (1984:11). In France, there was the Mercure de France and Journal de Paris, and in Germany there were the Propyläen and Kunst und Altertum publications (Carroll 2009:55). Addison and other critics would aid the public in becoming, to use Addison’s own phrase, ‘arbiters of taste’ (McDonald 2007:55). This was a key function of the critic at this time, in cultivating taste through the ideology of disinterestedness. T.S. Eliot’s ‘The Function of Criticism’ (1923) argues the case for the critic’s task as ‘the disinterested exercise of intelligence’ and ‘the elucidation of works of art and the correction of taste’ (Eagleton & Beaumont 2009:XVII). This is not to say the critic was lacking interest in the events, ideas or arts they 56

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critiqued, but rather that they claimed to renege self-interest, bias and partiality altogether. However, as it is dubious whether politics can be separated from criticism, as Carroll asserts, it is clear that those writing criticism at this time did so from a privileged position. As Eagleton (1984:16) points out, ‘only those with an interest can be disinterested’, which for many during the Enlightenment was impractical due to mass illiteracy. Eagleton (Eagleton & Beaumont 2009:198) argues that there has been a preoccupation with the ‘disinterested’ critic since that early period even though the role has now been ‘historically devalued’ and the extreme of technocracy has taken its place, which has ‘abandoned any hope of speaking more relevantly to a society beyond the academy’. Certainly with the commercial influences and corporate filters outlined above, especially within a niche, atomised digital culture with insurmountable data, it is difficult to broadly picture a disinterested critic today. The tension between objectivity (disinterestedness) and specialisation evident at the birth of modern criticism, and similar to the binary of aesthetics and politics, operates on a spectrum. While Carroll (2009:194) argues that ‘cultural criticism’ need not be separate from the critic’s specialised art, this dilemma persists today. Should criticism find a niche and expertise, or should it always have the ability to draw upon all of culture to comprehend and illuminate the topic under scrutiny? Although he recognises the improbability of such a return, Eagleton (1984:69) appears to advocate a modernised return to the eighteenth-century gentleman who had ‘no determinate occupation’ allowing for a certain detachment from specialisation and the ability to ‘survey the entire social landscape.’ Eagleton supports his argument through the historical evidence that the initial aim of the critic was to become a cultural strategist, rather than literary expert, resisting specialization at all costs in order to facilitate a socio-political role. He cites remarks made by Addison in Spectator 291: ‘The truth of it is…there is nothing more absurd, than for a Man to set himself up as a Critick, without good Insight into all the Parts of Learning’ (Eagleton 1984:18). The capitalisations are Addison’s own and indicative of the importance with which he, and subsequently Eagleton, hold early criticism to be informed by a wide-ranging cultural knowledge with a 57

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social conscience. Of course, it could be argued that a critic working today could be equally specialised in their field and have a wide-ranging cultural knowledge with a commitment to socio-political comment as well. Eagleton’s (1984) work is particularly politicised in terms of its advocacy for the origins and function of criticism grounded in the socio-political formation of the public sphere. Viewed in this way criticism, or its function, is thus inseparable from society and political motivations. Beaumont (Eagleton & Beaumont 2009:XV) comments that Eagleton has argued throughout his academic life that: ‘All criticism is in some sense political, both because it is shaped by the ideological conditions in which its various currents emerge and because, however scrupulously it posits itself as apolitical, it performs a tactical role in the dissemination and interpretation of culture that has inescapably political implications.’ The fact that criticism has been shown to have a discriminatory role even from a scholar who advocates its substantive socio-political function, acknowledging that his critical ideal of disinterestedness is flawed, opposes Carroll’s concept of criticism as mainly detached, apolitical evaluation. The differences between the pair exist in how much relevance these writers accord evaluation and socio-politics. Carroll foregrounds the former over the latter and Eagleton frames the latter over the former. A similarity between these two seemingly polar positions comes when both consider their respective advocacies of aesthetic evaluation and social function, respectively, to be lacking contemporarily. What an analysis of the work of Carroll and Eagleton shows is that there are twin functions to criticism which can be theoretically detached from one another, but which operate on a continuum. The next section will argue that this functional binary, visible from scholarly interactions with criticism from ancient and modern origins, continues to operate on a spectrum and is evident throughout the history of film criticism.

A Selected History of Film Criticism What follows is a selected history of film criticism because it is predominantly searching for one thing, to see if tensions between aesthetics and 58

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politics exist here as they have previously. In borrowing a phrase from Malcolm Gladwell (2002), these are historical ‘Tipping Points’ used to support an argument that the twin functions in criticism are evident in film criticism, and even in some cases drivers in previous crises. Uncertainty over what the cinema was, or who it was for, only reinforced the fact that early film criticism was preoccupied with the image or the impact upon culture and society such an invention would have. Two examples discussing the Lumière brothers’ work come from Russian writer and Marxist, Maxim Gorky, and a British writer, known only as O.Winter, both writing in 1896. Gorky, writing under the by-line I.M. Pacatus, witnessed a series of scenes shot by the Lumière brothers, which included:  women leaving a workplace; a couple having breakfast and feeding their young child; a man watering the garden and reprimanding his son for standing on his hose; three gentlemen playing cards, and some people demolishing a wall (The Lumière Brothers’ First Films, 1996, Lumière brothers). In his article, published in the Nizhegorodski listok newspaper, Gorky describes his surroundings where he witnesses these images: Charles Aumont’s, a high-class brothel, established by an Algerian-born showman and restaurateur from Moscow who introduced what he thought to be the Paris café culture to the East European city (Yangirov & McKernan 1996). The location serves to irritate Gorky and he brings one of the first socio-political viewpoints to film criticism by decrying the social ills of the place in which the Lumières chose to exhibit their work. He professes, ‘Why of all places should this remarkable invention of Lumière find its way and be demonstrated here, this invention which affirms once again the energy and the curiosity of the human mind?’ (Leyda 1960:408) Of the Lumières’ picture which displays female factory workers crowding out of the gates of their workplace he remarks: ‘This is too out of place at Aumont’s. Why remind here of the possibility of a clean, toiling life? This reminder is useless. Under the best circumstances this picture will only painfully sting the woman who sells her kisses.’ (Leyda 1960:409) His critique, asking why ‘victims of social needs’ (Leyda 1960:409) are shown unattainable images, is exemplary of film criticism performing a substantive social function. 59

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Figure  2.1:  The first American cartoon published about the movies in the comic journal Judge on 20 February 1897.

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A second example of sophisticated criticism around early cinema comes from the New Review writer, Winter, a few months after the first exhibited show in Britain in February 1896. In autumn 1982 Sight & Sound reprinted Winter’s article under the sub headline, ‘The first British Film Critic’. The magazine hails the piece as the first extended essay ‘Anywhere in the world in which films were held up as sustained criticism’ (Bottomore 1982:294). In witnessing the Lumières’ L’Arrivée d’un train en gare de La Ciotat (1896), the words of this writer suggest an early engagement with cinematic language. Winter’s critique raises the question of analytical editing years before this device becomes a mainstay of film, by suggesting the audience already does this with their own eyes and frame of reference. He states that the filmmakers would do well to do the same because these films were ‘neither so quick nor so changeful as life’. (Bottomore 1982:295) Where Gorky is explanative of his experience and provides commentary upon it, the overwhelming focus of Winter’s work is dedicated to an aesthetic critique that remains elegant, if judgmentally cool, to the new invention or ‘toy’ (Bottomore 1982:294&296). If Gorky’s article would please the critical leanings of Eagleton, Carroll’s philosophy of evaluation of the object is fulfilled in Winter’s analysis of the images. Winter brings in other art forms, pre-Raphaelite painting and literature in the work of Émile Zola, to support his or her assertion that realism has reached a pinnacle with cinema, as the writer laments, ‘We may look upon life moving without purpose, without beauty, with no better impulse than a foolish curiosity.’ (Bottomore 1982:296) If there is evidence of the duality of socio-political comment and aesthetic evaluation existing at the beginning of cinema in 1896, it is worthwhile investigating further into the short history of film criticism. Laura Marcus (2010:4) shows that in the first few decades of cinema, critics were preoccupied with either what cinema was aesthetically doing or what its impacts were on society, and sometimes both. From aesthetically evaluative positions, critics argued for film as art (Lindsay 1970) and for the pure aesthetic nature of cinema (Woolf 2006). In the 1920s, critics also questioned the social function and purpose of cinema. Lopate (2006:XIV) shows that from the silent period a ‘Clash arose between seeing movies as a lively universal entertainment – the people’s best friend – and 61

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as a dangerously numbing, escapist drug for the masses’. Some critics of the time were scornful towards cinema audiences. In 1926, Woolf (2006) famously referred to the public who attends cinema as ‘The savages of the twentieth century.’ There are examples from the middle period of film history too, in the pages of one of film criticisms most influential journals, Cahiers du Cinéma. Started in 1951, many of the articles within Cahiers are now standard reading for film schools around the globe. Bickerton (2009:88) suggests that the publication occupied multiple modes of address, from aesthetics and an academic tone to politics and journalism. Ironically, for one of the most political journals in the history of film criticism, it began life with a purely aesthetic goal that, while drawing accusations of right-wing criticism, was achieved in 1959: to define cinema as the seventh art (Bickerton 2009:1). It was over a decade after its inception that Cahiers addressed the issue of the Algerian war, ‘It was the closest Cahiers had yet come to articulating a political position’ (Bickerton 2009:35). After its first decade, and its recognised goal, Cahiers broke away from its old agenda in order to connect ‘with the changing social landscape’ (Bickerton, 2009:41). The shift in direction was positioned best by the words of Cahiers critic and filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard in 1967: ‘If it isn’t in the factories, we shall take it there. If it isn’t in the universities, we shall enter the universities. If it isn’t in the brothels, we shall go to the brothels. Cinema has to leave the places where it exists and go wherever it does not.’ (Bickerton, 2009:55) There are also English-language examples from the same period. In his 2009 film about criticism, Peary argues that Bosley Crowther  – a critic at the NYT– was the major authority on film in New  York in the 1960s. A democrat and liberal, Crowther provided sustained attacks on movie censorship, McCarthyism, and The Hollywood Black List (Haberski 2001:161). Anti-fascism and anti-prejudice took critical place over and above any discussion of cinematic style or direction before his ideas were challenged by Andrew Sarris and Pauline Kael, referred to as ‘Young Turks’ in the Peary film in a nod to their earlier counterparts at Cahiers. For a thorough description of Sarris and Kael, see Haberski (2001:122–143). Crowther’s preoccupation with socio-political ­criticism tested popular opinion when his newspaper was inundated with letters 62

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from the US public who vehemently disagreed with his critique of Bonnie and Clyde (Penn 1967). As the French critics from Cahiers were championing socially committed criticism some critics in the US were preoccupied with the aesthetics of cinema. In the same year, Crowther was retired, The New  Yorker hired Kael, who, ironically, praised the same movie Crowther had attacked. While Kael and Sarris had their famous disputes over auteur theory, Peary’s film argues that one point of shared interest was that they viewed Crowther’s politically aware film criticism as out of touch. Richard Schickel, who was also part of this generation and who is interviewed by Peary, describes their movement as looking at movies in an amoral way, because they simply wanted to say what the movie was (or was not) doing aesthetically. This period perhaps more than any other in film criticism highlights the false binary between aesthetics and politics because Kael and Sarris would not completely omit socio-political commentary of the period from Watergate, Vietnam etcetera. So, whereas Cahiers had established an aesthetic foothold in film criticism before turning to a political function the opposite, at least through the work of these critics, appeared to be true in the US. Similar debates are found in the UK, which additionally also perpetuate a crisis narrative of the time in criticism. This counteracts any ideas of a ‘golden age of criticism’ (Young 2009b). Certainly in the timeframe Young (2009b) speaks of there is evidence of a crisis in film criticism stemming from arguments around which of the two critical functions should take priority. A  debate in the pages of Sight & Sound in 1956 took place between John Russell Taylor, a critic for the London Times, and regular reviewer at the journal, and filmmaker, Lindsay Anderson. Taylor’s (1956:110) letter discusses his displeasure at the prominence Sight & Sound affords social criticism over aesthetics: Ultimately [criticism] seems to approach the news-reel outlook: that is to say, that if in a news-reel one sees victims of famine one is moved, but one is moved simply by their plight, not by the artistic representation of famine. Many of your critics seem to regard this as the height of cinema art – the camera simply records, and nothing stands between the audience and the events portrayed. To me this seems a betrayal of film art – it is rather as if one were to say

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Film Criticism and Digital Cultures that efficient journalism is the height of literary achievement…By all means let critics prefer committed, humanist films on contemporary subjects, but such moral judgements should be presented as what they are  – personal, subjective tastes, not the be-all and end-all of criticism.

Anderson (1956) responds with a lengthy critique of the discipline of film criticism called ‘Stand up! Stand up!’ a seminal article intended to, according to Haberski (2001:115), ‘shock complacent critics’ and ‘challenge the French school of avant-garde criticism’  – which is perhaps a comment on the aesthetic criticism taking place at Cahiers at the time. It is a piece which current editor James (2008:18) refers to as the most famous that Sight & Sound has ever published and a response to a ‘dispassionate English school of film reviewing’. This was a time when Anderson claims that not only was aesthetic criticism inadequate but that it was contributing to the crisis in criticism and to a downbeat reaction towards cinema in general. He refutes Taylor’s allegations that somehow being ‘committed’ must mean that the critic reneges style or becomes an inverted aesthetic snob. The best art, for Anderson (1956:63), does not separate content from form. Melanie Bell (2011:197) shows that this type of socially committed criticism extended beyond the pages of film magazines when she notes that some BBC editors around the same period informed radio-broadcast film critics that they should pay more attention to social aspects rather than technique. Anderson’s article inspired a sister piece six years later by the editors of Film Quarterly named, ‘Turn on! Turn on!’ (The Editors 1962) and then an eventual proposal for a parody document of ‘preening’ film critics discussing their practice entitled ‘Shut Up! Shut Up!’ (Pechter 1962:62). Haberski (2001:119) argues that many writers at the time were frustrated with the constant reiterations around critical function and crisis talk, but the inherent nature of debate around socio-politics and aesthetic evaluation has not been eviscerated in subsequent years. A 2005 international Cineaste poll found that some critics were more interested in the aesthetic components of films than politics, while others argued that both areas of criteria ‘are virtually indivisible’ (The Editors 2005b:4), with a similar question posed to a new generation of critics in the same magazine 64

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in 2013 with similar results (The Editors 2013 & 2013b). In 2010, three separate editorials in Sight & Sound discussed: the political implications of the digital age; anti-art, anti-cultural, and anti-intellectual motivations; and digital processes in filmmaking as the aesthetic is considered in terms of importance (James 2010b,c,d). In the same year, guests on the BBC’s The Review Show (12 March 2010) debated whether or not the Iraqi war film Green Zone (Greengrass 2010)  should be deconstructed socio-politically or admired and aesthetically judged for being a frenetic action movie. Thinking about these two positions is also on Rosenbaum’s mind when he says, ‘Film is an integral part of life and the world, not an alternative to life or the world’ (cited in Lee 2006) in an attempt to elevate socio-political critique. It is, therefore, clear that the duel functions of criticism, to a greater or lesser extent, still permeate film criticism in the twenty-first century. Throughout its history film criticism has operated on the continuum between the function Carroll advocates as purely aesthetic-based judgement and that which Eagleton supports as a substantive social function. Additionally, at least one of the periods in which debates over these functions have taken place has also contributed to a period of critical crisis. Unearthing these functions by looking at how scholars have engaged with criticism is of benefit because it posits the central aims of the critical act. However, in the next section it is argued that film criticism – writing about and discussing the most popular visual art form – must also be thought of from perspectives which are not necessarily academic or scholarly; but in additional terms which aid understanding of the contemporary practice beyond aesthetic or political functions.

A Six Schools Approach to Contemporary Film Criticism Having provided a theoretical overview of criticism and film criticism it is also important to note that film criticism connotes more than an intellectualised discipline of the sort detailed above as a necessary academic foundation to this monograph. For instance, it could be argued that not all audiences are aware that films exist as more than disposable 65

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entertainment, but they still have an understanding of film criticism – perhaps as entertaining writing or consumer reporting. Arguably all criticism operates on the spectrum of the twin functions already outlined and the varying degrees to which these functions are utilised by writers have to be recognised. It may be pedantic to suggest that if one critic is not writing as socially and politically aware, then they must be concentrating on the aesthetic, but it also means that the idea of the aesthetic is not just an intellectual one but a rudimentary denotation of what a film looks like and the effect that has on the critic. This is at its most basic level in some reviewing, a balancing of plot summary, character description and an eventual judgment. The argument here is that while these are the practicalities of reviewing, the levels to which this writing and other works are injected with more detailed ideas about aesthetics and socio-politics is largely dependent upon two factors, individuals and institutions, or, critics and publications. It is not only the general public whom may consider film criticism to be little more than telling an audience what they should or should not see. Inevitably some writers will work from the principle, as stated by the UK Critics’ Circle in 1923 (Cargin 2010b), that criticism is a creative art but, like any profession, others will simply see what they do as a job in journalism. Yet, film criticism also straddles the ideas of more sophisticated or literary writing as well as populist journalism and fan-based authorship – with historic battles to separate criticism and literature from journalism (Baldick 2000:156; Eagleton 1984:25). The point here is that what film criticism is for one disparate group of critics or publications or audiences may be different for the next. To assess what positions critics are coming to the topic of film criticism from, therefore, requires some framework. Some scholars on film criticism have attempted to bring certain classifications to the subject. In a seminar at the Valdivia Film Festival, Martin (2008) proposes three non-hierarchical categories for discussing film criticism:  Mass Media Journalism, The Middle Range, and Academic. Therefore, the first would incorporate newspapers like the Sun or the Guardian. The second, dealing with specialism, would see Empire or Sight & Sound grouped together and, finally, Academic relates 66

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to publications such as Screen. Clearly there are problems with a classification system which does not provide hierarchy, specifically in that broadsheets and tabloids are likened to each other, as are mass circulation commercial film publications and low-circulation non-profit cinephile journals. Like film criticism itself, Martin’s approach is one which fragments under analysis. Talking about film criticism in these three categories is restrictive and, especially for an idea which claims to be non-hierarchical, it almost entirely discounts the individual over the institution as well as any fan-based film criticism. To be fair to Martin, this is only a concept expressed at a film festival panel, not one actually committed to publication. It is important to touch upon two related works which are published, and which also help to reveal my own position on film criticism for the purposes of this book. These works are Making Meaning: Inference and Rhetoric in the Interpretation of Cinema by David Bordwell (1989) and TV Critics and Popular Culture: A History of British Television Criticism by Paul Rixon (2011). This work collapses the terms criticism and reviewing together for the purposes of an overall analysis and commentary on film criticism, as others have in their analyses of UK television criticism (Rixon 2011; Poole 1984). However, it is important to outline some historical and contemporary differences between the terms and where this work fits into these discussions. Bordwell (1989:21) argues that film criticism emerged out of early film reviewing, because the ­prototype film critic was a journalist charged with discussing the current output of the film industry. Yet the arguments made earlier in this chapter show a direct lineage from literary criticism to film criticism at its inception in the writing of Gorky and O. Winter. My view differs from Bordwell’s (1989) view of film criticism because I see the functions of a professional film critic (interviewing, delivering news, reviewing, writing essays etc.) as part of the many processes of the institution of film criticism. Where Bordwell (1989:35) considers a review as a piece of journalism in the ‘discursive category of news’ or ‘as a branch of advertising’, for the purposes of this book film critics writing reviews are performing a critical act (providing aesthetic evaluation and judgment and/ or socio-political context). 67

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In Making Meaning, Bordwell (1989) concentrates on what he calls essayistic (high-end journalism) and academic film criticism: ‘The journalistic reviewing of current films’ is a part that plays ‘almost no role’ in his book (Bordwell 1989:35). However, high-end journalism can also review current films, as ably displayed in Sight & Sound, Cineaste and CinemaScope. Furthermore, arguably, a review in the Guardian and a review in Sight & Sound, even if it is only the latter that provides a full synopsis and thus a form of ‘spoiler’, are both examples of film criticism. Reviewing is more popular than criticism and more restricted in what it can do, but reviewing is also just one dimension of film criticism. There is little agreement about whether or not to separate the terms from those writing about film criticism. Consider two examples from Chapter One: Bergan (2010) makes a distinction between film reviewing, which he says appears in newspapers, and film criticism, which he claims is more scholarly and academic. However, Doherty (2010) does not separate the terms and discusses film criticism as existing across film studies, film scholarship and the media landscape. To reiterate a point outlined from Rixon (2011:231) earlier, which is again applicable here, when he says that television criticism ‘is a complex and disputed activity’ with ‘little agreement on who is a critic, where they operate [and] in whose interest’. While journalistic film reviewing can be criticism, it is apparent that academic film criticism is never considered as reviewing. The art-centred film criticism which arguably exists outside of film studies now, referred to as ‘belletristic film interpretation’ by Bordwell (1989:207), has been prevalent throughout the history of film criticism. This literary influence, which privileges aesthetic value and is derived from the French belles lettres or ‘beautiful writing’, arrives in the film criticism of the 1910s and 1920s addressed to a cinephilic public but it can also be seen throughout the twentieth century in many film journals (Bordwell 1989:21 and 22). This style of criticism is viewed with suspicion in cultural studies because it is generally concerned with aesthetic reactions over aesthetic form. Ironically, however, the concentration on formal aspects, which is most prevalent in criticism within film studies, is also shaped by a literary analogue: the close-reading of a self-contained object inspired by New Criticism (Bordwell 1989:25). 68

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By the time film studies had firmly arrived in the academy in the 1970s, there was a visible division between the formal interpretative practices of the academy and more high-end impressionistic criticism (Bordwell 1989:53). Film theory is often referenced as the template through which film scholars ‘strike interpretations of individual films’ (Carroll 1996) and Lapsley and Westlake (2006:34) argue that these systematic approaches, beginning with semiotics in post-1968 film studies, provoked the biggest break away from the ‘film criticism establishment’ because using a scientific basis for aesthetic judgment threatened the continuation of impressionistic criticism. Rixon (2011:41) also recognises a historic split between criticism in academic writing and criticism in the journalistic sphere, as has also been noted of wider literary and arts criticism by Eagelton (1984) and McDonald (2007). The symptomatic interpretations of academic film criticism are not conducive to writing about film in daily or weekly newspapers, but there are critics who have attempted to bring these two domains closer. In discussing the widely-held perception that he is a film critic who blurs the boundaries of academia and journalism, Rosenbaum comments: In my career I’ve tried to be in between all these things. And so I  try to draw upon each of them, and draw them closer to each other, but sometimes it doesn’t work out that way. When I attended the Edinburgh film festival back in the 1970s I  was, in one way, trying to make connections between Screen and Sight & Sound, because I was the only person I knew who was spending time with both people. But sometimes what I was doing was criticising and alienating them at the same time. So even though I was trying to build bridges it became tricky because, I  think sometimes they didn’t want to connect […] I don’t feel completely at home in either sphere, and I don’t feel completely alienated either.

The approach to the study of film criticism in this book is best illustrated by structuring some differences from, and similarities to, both Bordwell (1989) and Rixon (2011). In his examination of ‘metacriticism’ Bordwell argues that interpretation is central to the critical act (alongside description, analysis and evaluation) but, having now mastered this skill, critics should move towards analysing form and style. For Bordwell (1989) 69

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the creation of meaning is a key function of criticism; for Carroll (2009) the central function is the provision of judgment and; for Eagleton (1984) it is the production of a social context. Arguably, evaluation and socio-political comment, to a greater-or-lesser extent, exist across all types of film criticism. However, interpretation in film criticism, in the sense Bordwell (1989) discusses, does not, as he himself remarks of journalism and reviewing. Of course, there are also similarities between his work and this monograph. For instance, Bordwell (1989:20) ­discusses how films are interpreted by a variety of individuals from various positions within ‘macroinstitutions’ (journalistic criticism, essayistic criticism, and academic scholarship) which have at one time or another shaped the development of film criticism alongside their formal and informal ‘subinstitutions’. Bordwell (1989:8) also develops various schemas through which a critic makes sense of films (Concrete, Abstraction, Symbolic, Involuntary or Symptomatic) and he also borrows methodological frameworks from Classical rhetoric (1989:35 and 36). Rixon (2011) omits academic criticism from his examination of TV criticism. He argues that this is an area already widely covered and that the study of television criticism outside of academia is under-researched (Rixon 2011:2; 2012). I also argue that, although academic film criticism and cinephilic criticism have been covered by scholars (Bickerton 2009; Bordwell 1989), research into professional and amateur film criticism remains underdeveloped. Rixon (2011:2) argues that this may be because participating in a specialised area such as criticism means that critics are not ‘straightforward’ journalists, and therefore are not the responsibility of an academic field of inquiry like Journalism Studies. He discusses ‘soft criticism’, areas that others may not consider criticism or reviewing but these are activities which contribute to ‘the way many understand and make sense of television’ (Rixon 2011:4). This is similar to the arguments here that film criticism is defined by many practical functions which can be classified as existing within the discourse, from reviewing and long-form essays to podcasting and micro-blogging. Rixon (2011:15) also develops a spectrum for criticism. He refers to this as an ‘axis’ upon which critics operate, from being controlled by industry and publicity at one end to the freedom of independence at the other, with fans and cult 70

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magazines between the two points. Rixon (2011:21) also recognises the necessity for his approach to become more multi-disciplinary:  ‘As one moves one’s centre of attention away from the programmes, audiences, institutions or production, the focus of the work becomes less one solely on television, and increasingly one that touches on a disparate range of discourses.’ This is what has been argued of an enquiry into film criticism in the digital age in the opening chapters that draw in other disciplines, from literary and arts criticism to journalism and digital media. There are noticeable differences between his approach and that taken here. Although useful for considering the relationship of established professional criticism to the arrival of online criticism, Rixon (2011:8–9) argues that there exists a national community-ritual of reading criticism in the press through material objects such as the Guardian’s ‘Guide’ which he claims ‘is more real than what is on offer via the internet’. There are two problems with his assertion: the assumption that what is experienced on the internet is not ‘real’ and the presumption of a national community as still in existence in the UK today. The sense of community offline in reading famous critics like Charlie Brooker (his given example) and commenting on this with family members or friends is arguably no more valid than that of a social media community online. Rixon (2011:20) also focuses mainly on UK press critics, whereas this work examines both popular and more subversive or cinephilic forms of criticism across the professional and amateur spectrum in the UK and North America. A discussion and analysis of the works of Bordwell (1989) and Rixon (2011) is important because it shows related literatures which both attempt to create taxonomies for criticism but also because it helps to position my own intervention into the field with a further classification model for contemporary film criticism. This research differs from these approaches more broadly because, while not forsaking textual analyses or sustained desk research, interviewing and observing practitioners are a major focus. As this book will detail interviews with a variety of critics from diverse publications, many of whom write for a number of outlets, it is important from the outset to understand which schools of thought are in existence today. Although no traditional media studies methods of technical content analysis were performed, 133 sources of film criticism were viewed over a two 71

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year period with the aim of identifying patterns across a broad range of media:  25 newspapers and alternative weekly newspapers, 43 magazines and journals, 27 websites, 21 individual blogs, and 17 other carries of film criticism such as podcasts, distribution companies, curatorial projects and exhibitors including a repertory theatre and on-demand streaming services. Researching these publications and institutions (found in the appendix) which carry written film criticism either as specialisation or general i­ nterest, in printed media and online, it is possible to detail a ‘hive’ of Six Schools (Figure 2.2). Perhaps ‘honeycomb’ might be a better description of its visual appearance but ‘hive’ offers up a more accurate connotation. While this model is more discriminating and hierarchical, its fluxed nature must also be stressed as it supposes the agency of the individual over time and within professional career rhythms. To each school, individuals or institutions can belong intermittently, interchangeably, simultaneously and even conversely of one another. The hexagonal, ‘hive’ form of my classification model suggests a visible separation between these school categories but also the connected and fluxed nature of practitioners. A critic may write across schools at any one time for populist, trade and sophisticated publications as UK critic Ed Lawrenson does for The Big Issue (populist), Screen International (trade) and Sight & Sound (sophisticated). Institutions may occupy more than one mode of address (a website such as AICN is an example both of populist film criticism as well as fandom), and critics may not be defined by their publications’ categorisation(s). For instance, it is unfair to label critics such as Manhola Dargis or Peter Bradshaw as entirely populist just because they write for large circulation outlets as the NYT or the Guardian, respectively. There are multiple axes of categorisation and the hive structure is modular in that each school remains distinct; but tabular in that each category contributes to the overall study of film criticism in this monograph. The missing hexagon with arrows, while implicitly indicative of other schools to be attached which have not as yet revealed themselves through this data, also has a more explicit role in serving to indicate the interconnectedness between schools, not capped at either end: the academic film critic might also write consumer comments on IMDb and it is generally acknowledged that scholars write criticism for newspapers. The descriptions at the top and bottom right of the model require further 72

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Figure 2.2:  Six Schools of Contemporary Film Criticism.

explanation. They represent the common binaries which often characterise, or more accurately caricature, critical writing and film criticism specifically: whether film is entertainment, industry or something more artistic; whether writing about film is journalese or a distinct literary branch, etcetera; and these are historically formed around the cultural hierarchical categories of high and low (Bourdieu 1984). Furthermore, there is no dominant school because it is impractical to quantify and compare the amount of material belonging to each but logically putting the populist school at the centre seems most appropriate. Socio-political and aesthetic functions are not made explicit because these can and do occur at all levels to a lesser or greater extent, although arguably the spaces for this to take place are more restricted in some schools. For instance, the trade school may privilege the film object before any 73

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socially aware criticism and the academic school may situate the object in socio-political terms before offering any verdict on its artistic merit. Functional criticism from consumers and fans does, on the surface at least, seem preoccupied with the most basic aesthetic of what a film looks like and what it shows onscreen – although it is wrong to generalise about the level of detail some fans go into in their work, which could be considered to have a socio-political theme. It is likely that comprehensive socio-political critique takes place atop the hive but this is not a general rule as the often socially aware criticism of Peter Bradshaw writing at the Guardian shows. This book makes little reference to the academic school of film criticism, predominantly because it investigates criticism and critics from the journalistic realm. However, the fluxed nature of the model recognises that academics also contribute to the sophisticated and populist schools. Although arguing that intellectual connections have diminished, McDonald (2007:IX) notes that many arts critics from academia still write for newspapers and although talking about poetry, Perloff (1997) notes the similarities between ‘literary journalism’ and academia. There is no dominant school because it is improbable to quantify and compare the amount of material belonging to each. Hierarchically, the schools which adhere to more self-reflexivity and intellectualising over the functionality of criticism appear uppermost. Elitism may suggest this structure is based on perceived quality but arguably, especially as film criticism has to serve a function for a larger audience than film scholarship, there is better quality writing to be found in the lower placed sophisticated school than in academia. For instance, the criticism which appears in CinemaScope is accessible, entertaining and detailed in its discussions of intellectual ideas. It is with retrospectively analysed empirical and observational data, also informed by exposure to a wide variety of writing on film that I propose understanding both this research and future work into film criticism from a typology of Six Schools of Contemporary Film Criticism because in order to understand which areas of film criticism interviewees spoke from it must be fragmented into a schools of thought framework rather than referred to as normative (or descriptive) of an entire 74

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heterogeneous practice. School is defined here as a group of writers or institutions sharing similar ideas and methods, and although they may simultaneously contribute to and occupy multiple schools, their critical manifesto (how they operate in the sphere of film criticism at base level) is determined by the dominance of one school. Therefore, it is important to outline what these characteristics are in detail, beginning from the bottom of the model, but proceeding in no particular order, with an important signifier of film criticism in the digital era: consumer reviews and citizen reportage. The functional aspects of star-rating aside in mainstream reviewing, this school is largely categorised as writers wishing to convey their views on cinema and individual films; this can take the form of lengthy reviews/reports on comment threads and IMDb, as well as more recent micro-blogging statements and debates. It can be difficult at times to distinguish this school from the school of fandom because writers will at times have been motivated to contribute and participate in the dialogue in such a way which exposes their partiality via a positive endorsement or active defence. Marc Verboord (2014) has recently published detailed work into the discourses in this domain through the framework of Rotten Tomatoes. However, fandom, which generally indicates strong interests or admiration and essentially a bias towards a given genre, filmmaker or actor, is more purposeful in that contributors are dedicated to the craft of writing; sometimes this passion is for writing about cinema as a hobby more than any specialisation or deep engagement with specifics. Fandom is often negatively framed as fan-boy writing which is not always conducive to critical thought, and this does little to promote the quality which exists. A more objective critical voice can (sometimes) be found in this school, for instance Charlie Lyne writing at the UK blog Ultraculture. Lyne comments ‘My work certainly isn’t half as intellectual or well-reasoned as that of a lot of “professional” critics, but I don’t think that’s what people are looking for from my blog’. However, more often than not the dominant tone in the School of Fandom is not just personable or informal because at times whatever is inventoried or discussed is an endorsement in itself. Here the critic as agent becomes less important as the object takes precedence, although those who trade off their personalities (as Lyne does) 75

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counter this notion at times. Beyond the written form there is also this closeness to the object found in particular in the some forms of audiovisual criticism, of course no critic is going to dedicate the time to produce a video on something they regard as unworthy of their time. Often these schools are transitory periods for writers, who in some cases progress into the realms of populism via more established media or simply fade into the ether: when contacted some fans no longer wrote, with some showing self-effacing behaviour, as indicated earlier with Matt Weatherford, AKA The Filthy Critic. Although in his case, as of early 2015, he has resumed his online duties among the amateur ranks of fandom after a sustained period of absence. One area not lacking in scholarly attention is the study of fan cultures. Although it is not the intention here to focus on one school, more schools will inevitably be represented than others. The study of fandom has been widely covered elsewhere more than the professional/cinephile spectrum which will constitute much of the scope of this work. An important scholar in many disciplines, Henry Jenkins has written extensively about fans in a number of his own works and other edited collections. He has addressed the theme of fandom specifically in Fans, Bloggers and Gamers: Exploring Participatory Culture (2006) by looking at fan writing around television. In Convergence Culture, where he focuses on some case studies of Harry Potter fans, Jenkins (2008:170) argues that ‘None of us really know how to live in this era of media convergence, collective intelligence and participatory culture. These changes are producing anxieties and uncertainties, even panic, as people imagine a world without gatekeepers’, although, through the concept of Respected Space, such a world has already been shown to be unlikely. Meikle and Young’s (2012:103–126) discussion of ‘Creative Audiences’ considers fan studies in the context of new interpretative frameworks around remix, collaboration and sharing, as well as through reimagining the concept of an audience in the digital participatory age. An earlier work by Matt Hills (2002) at the turn of the millennium, a period which witnessed resurgence in the attention paid to audiences and fan studies in academia, looks in depth at theories around the study of fandom and many associated methodological issues. Fandom: identities and communities in a mediated world (Gray et al. 2007), which has 76

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an afterword by Jenkins, includes chapters on epistemological questions about why the study of fans is important, authorship, and fandom across disciplines like sport or art forms like film, music and computer games. Sharon Marie Ross (2008) deals with the ways in which audiences now interact with television programmes beyond the event or scheduled show itself, mainly in an online environment, and Ross and Louisa Ellen Stein (2008) bring together a collection of essays on programming in fandom primarily dealing with teen culture and television. Arguably, the bias towards a certain style of film or filmmaker which takes place in fandom also transpires in the sophisticated school in the form of cinephilic writing – certainly at the level of video essays as indicated above. But as a general rule, the sophisticated school distinguishes itself in being able to interpret complex issues via certain experience or knowledge and it is, at times, less clear whether strong partial interests exist towards what is being critically engaged with. At the same time, this school’s publishing is most closely related to Martin’s (2008) Middle Ground idea, in that it promotes intelligent writing but also has an awareness of the non-specialist reader who it tries to compel if not also entertain. This school often blurs the distinctions between amateur and professional film writing and can be found in publications like Cineaste or the US online magazine Reverse Shot which started in 2003 and has been referred to by influential New York critic Eric Hynes as ‘now very much the establishment of US film criticism’. This type of criticism can also be found in individual blogs, such as that written by chemical-engineer-bytrade cinephile Girish Shambu at . In terms of criticism, and not just film industry news, the trade school deals primarily with publications and writers working for those publications who are attempting to predict, firstly, an audience for the film and, secondly, whether that audience will make the film a financial and or critical success. Scholars have contextualised the trade school in the past through the ways in which audience taste is discussed there. In his examination of Kinematograph Weekly in the 1930s, a trade newspaper for the UK film industry, Robert James (2006: 229) suggests a widespread but problematic perception that film trade personnel ‘were supposed to know [audience taste] best’. This perception holds today as film critics 77

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writing for this school are aware of the expectations placed upon them to use their expertise as a predictive tool for publications such as Screen International. A freelancer to that trade outlet, UK critic Ed Lawrenson admits to having failed to predict a market for the US remake Funny Games (2007, also directed by Michael Haneke who made the original) and then it bankrupted distributor Metro Tartan in 2008. Fellow UK film critic and Screen International contributor Allan Hunter remarks on trade criticism generally: ‘I suppose it’s a gut feeling based on however many years you’ve been seeing movies and reviewing movies. But you can still be spectacularly wrong. And spectacularly right!’ More implicitly, writers working in this trade sphere also distinguish the relative merits of different types of cinema and genres. For instance, historically the focus of Variety or The Hollywood Reporter has been on American studio movies but more recently publications such as IndieWIRE exist to cater for Independent filmmakers and their audiences. Although with the expansion of online publishing and worldwide film festival coverage to fill that desire for content these categories tend to bleed into one another now. The populist school relates to content which is reaching large readerships as part of entertainment, news sources or journalistic institutions with a certain heritage or legacy. Perhaps more than any other school, publications and writers here consider audiences over and above critical or intellectual thought processes because this sphere is bound by strictures of capitalism. More often than not this means instantly consumable and entertaining information which can be easily understood with minimum effort. This is arguably the school where the individual critic’s voice is least distinguishable unless, perhaps, they are a celebrity or star critic working for a large organ, such as A.O. Scott or Manohla Dargis at the NYT. Although, according to Rosenbaum, this is just as likely to be the voice of the institution rather than the critic: ‘All I know is that when I reach millions of people I’m the least effective. Because it’s not me talking anymore it’s the New York Times or whatever mass market magazine it is. What’s often called criticism is really advertising.’ It is worth stating that, based mainly on observations of journals, the Academic School is the least concerned with audience or commercial pressures and works almost disinterestedly, often with in-depth specialisms the other schools 78

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(with the exception of the Sophisticated School) may only ever allude to. I have not found there to be a loosening up of language and more jargon free content from the 1970s to the present day in a broad sense – this seems to be only a trend relative to the chosen style of the respective contributors at any given time. Within the hive there are no claims to a correct or preferred model of film criticism, and worthwhile criticism can be found at all levels. In this view, there is no quotidian reality of film criticism that alienates or prejudices certain types of journalism (for instance the mainstream) as being the everyday; each school has its own everyday. While this research does not set out to study these schools specifically, they do inform what types of film criticism exist as studied through the unit of the critic. Establishing this model aids an understanding of which areas are more proportionately represented than others. The model exists to help gain a perspective beyond the proposed twin functions discerned from an analysis of the academic literature, because there was a disconnect between such views and the sample at large, and, in turn, such a model allows for a framing of the critical responses when analyzing their data further.

Conclusion A pattern of continuity, detailed in the first chapter where it is argued that the concept of a continual crisis in criticism exists and which also links film criticism to the recent disruptions in journalism and media, recurs in this analysis of some of the academic engagement with the historical functions of criticism in general. As crisis is intertwined with criticism, even being etymologically linked (Crosthwaite 2011:1), so to the twin functions of aesthetics and politics run through the Mobius strip of film criticism history. In examining criticism through the work of three scholars in the main, it is ironic that McDonald (2007) and his book The Death of the Critic offers the most positive outlook, with Eagleton (1984) and Carroll (2009) arguing that contemporary criticism is lacking social awareness and evaluative measures, respectively. Additionally, all three make the point that a large reason for this  – or this perception at least  – is the 79

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influence of marketing and increased academic esotericism. McDonald (2007:42) contends that writing a history of criticism that would withstand all theoretical scrutiny is impossible and that criticism has a habit of considering its ‘own proper agency and purpose’. This chapter has provided one understanding of criticism through a consideration of that agency and purpose. Due to the difficulty in attempting an ecumenical definition or summary of film criticism, perhaps because of changing fashions of the period in which it is deployed, it has been more beneficial to excavate innate critical characteristics of the critical act applicable to film criticism. However, film criticism as it exists today is also more than the sum of these functional parts. The necessity to shift focus tangentially into the scholarly history of criticism in general, due to the lack of substantial academic literature on the topic of film criticism specifically, further strengthens the notion that the subject under scrutiny is one which requires more than a single (in this case academic) approach to its overall disparate shape. Therefore, positing Six Schools which contribute to the conceptualisation of film criticism helps gain a perspective beyond the proposed twin functions discerned from an analysis of the academic literature and, in turn, allows for a framing of the critical responses that will be documented and analysed in the following chapters. From this overview, it is clear that empirical evidence can help answer the following research questions:  how relevant are aesthetics and politics to film criticism now and what other functions and debates are transpiring? Providing answers here, and to the other micro questions detailed at the end of Chapter One, will contribute to conclusions against the macro enquiry of what exactly is happening to film criticism in the digital age. Both opening conceptual chapters deploy a framework which suggests that much of what is thought of as new or transformed is, in fact, continuous, cyclical or discernible from past practice. However, to fully understand the minute detail of what might be happening in contemporary film criticism requires a comprehensive and empirically grounded study. This approach is shaped by interviews with practitioners and informed by their institutional affiliations as well as their interactions with technologies which are 80

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impacting on the wider digital media landscape. In this environment, there are undoubtedly some new and distinctive changes transpiring in the twenty-first century, but it is equally important to see some proposed changes as part of a longstanding continuity in the culture of media, journalism and critical practice. With this in mind, the following empirical chapters will begin with an examination of the older medium of print and print film critics. The following chapter builds the argument that within a disruptive media environment, which has been categorised in crisis and which destabilises the denotations of what a print institution actually means, film criticism is as familiar as it has been in the recent past through the constancy of audiences to gatekeeper media and the commercial pressures on that media to produce homogenous content. From these constants in the institutions of print film criticism, I then turn to the newer online environment and shifts in the pace of delivering film criticism as it intersects with web technologies, and then finally to developments in form, in the newest convergent media techniques beyond the written word.

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3 Film Critics in Print

The opening chapters propose, firstly, an overview of the current state of English-language film criticism and the digital media environment in which it operates and, secondly, two key historical functions in the critical discipline, as well as schools of film criticism in existence today. This chapter draws upon detailed interviews with print critics, comparing empirical data with crisis and transition narratives, as well as theories of gatekeeping and commercialisation, and has four key arguments. Firstly, print film criticism is an unstable term in the era of the web, which mirrors the variance of practitioner opinions on what film criticism is. Secondly, although attempts are made to move away from a crisis narrative, monetary concerns mean that film criticism is still characterised by the wider crisis in print media, even if the realities in the profession do not synchronise because most interviewees work professionally. Thirdly, regardless of instability, print film criticism holds a certain amount of prestige by occupying Respected Space between physical print and what legacy print institutions symbolise as they move online. This is demonstrated by the evidence of hierarchical procedures at film festivals, industry activities and the self-image of the critics. Finally, the contemporary print domain is dominated by populism and PR, ensuring that sophisticated film criticism remains in the margins with low-circulation 82

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outlets. The implication here is that mass readerships are exposed to non-progressive film criticism as homogenous content is written under market pressures. The arguments relating to a continual implicit crisis, active gatekeeping and similar commercial concerns as existing in the past contribute to the overall thesis that film criticism in the digital age is shot through with continuity.

Variations and Correlations The arrival of the web and the crisis that it perpetuates in media, journalism and criticism does not obliterate film criticism in print or its continued importance among writers. A Cineaste survey of critics under 35 finds that a ‘number of talented young writers still work either exclusively in print or alternate between print publications [and websites]’ with many stating a preference for writing in print (The Editors 2013). Because a piece of written film criticism or journalism can exist in print and online simultaneously, the word print has taken on different connotations which symbolise quality or past failures, rather than denoting only a physical medium. In the last decade utopian and dystopian discourses have announced both a revolution in journalism and the end of one-way communication or the death of traditional media such as print and broadcasting. The online/offline dialectic has attracted media analysts and researchers for over a decade (Skogerbø & Winsvold 2011:215) and it is important from the outset to classify the majority of the critics interviewed as print critics rather than online critics, because they come from print institutions which have developed a web presence. All of the critics who write for print have at least some of their work put online and some online critics can be found in print: For instance, Charlie Lyne of Ultraculture writes for the Guardian. The convergence of print and online in media culture is a process which film critics are keenly aware of because of institutional drivers. In many cases figures for print readerships have now been fused together with page views online. For instance the National Readership Survey’s Print and Digital Data survey (NRS PADD) achieved this measurement for the first time in late 2012 (Datablog 2012). This 83

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is just one example of the ways in which online media has contributed to the transformation of media industries locally and globally, an argument which is found in much academic literature (Skogerbø &Winsvold 2011:214). The absorption of most print institutions and practitioners into participating in an online environment makes any definitive statements about a print sphere alone difficult because it is increasingly complex to think of print in absolute terms, as many publications have a symbiotic relationship with an online self. Paul Bradshaw (2010:104) argues that some traditionally print publication owners now view their business models as that of a web presence first with print editions attached. According to Film Editor at the Guardian, Andrew Pulver, his traditionally print institution is now more concerned with concentrating its efforts in online production when in the summer of 2011 the newspaper ‘announced that it was angling towards a majority digital publication. The idea that the website and the printed page were in sort of harmony with one another has now been irrevocably tilted in favour of the website. So that’s across all kinds of journalism, not just film.’ However, there are examples where print still takes priority over online, as with different charitable models who cannot give away digital content for free and rely heavily on cover price, such as The Big Issue magazine. But the trend towards online coverage is evidently increasing, Film critic for The Big Issue and contributor to Time Out London, Ed Lawrenson, states that all the critics’ reviews at his latter publication go online at the same times as the print copy. Robert Koehler, a film critic contributing to Variety, Cinema Scope, and Film Comment, argues that Variety ‘Has a global reach, as a print publication. For me Variety has always been a print-based publication, first and foremost a newspaper. But at the same time, I’ve been at Variety through its evolution into a fundamentally web-based publication.’ Now that ‘Digital First’ is a business mantra in the mainstream media (Sterling 2011), it may be problematic to label any writer solely a print journalist, or critic, unless they only ever write in that medium. However, the focus here is ­centred on those critics who are from institutions, such as the Guardian, from print origins continuing in print, regardless of whether they have also developed 84

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extensively online. That this foregrounds the requirement for an extension of the roles of print critics will be explored in Chapter Four. An analysis of interview material reveals that print is not the only term which is unstable as most practitioners do not agree – even when belonging to the same school  – what it is that they actually do. Of course, there is no reason why they should, and the significance here is that it prohibits any generalisation about the entire field of film criticism, as argued against by the production of the Six Schools model in Chapter Two. Just as the model shows the variety of schools in operation today, there is rarely consensus over what the interviewees consider film criticism to be. There is only one theme which could loosely be mapped to some responses and that is film criticism as subjective (Xan Brooks, Tim Lucas, Richard Porton, Andrew Pulver, Amber Wilkinson). Others make explicit different types and disparities that exist within film criticism (Kevin B.  Lee, Damon Smith, Gail Tolley) and some promote the idea of simple opinions given weight by certain publications (Ed Lawrenson, Allan Hunter). Other functions include facilitating a discussion (Rosenbaum, Sean P. Means), appreciating the goals of the filmmaker (Mark Peranson), allegories of criticism as a cave which the film critic/envoy must explore (Mark Cousins) or writing for the ages rather than the moment (Nick James); as well as more theoretical positions which consider objective truths balanced with subjective assessments (Adam Nayman) or positing a variety of complex functions for the ideal criticism (Girish Shambu). In partial support of the arguments made by Eagleton (1984) and Carroll (2009) of contemporary criticism lacking social commitment or evaluation, just 11 critics mention anything about socio-political functions (four) or offering a verdict (seven). That in most cases these were minor inferences further renders any collective statement about the practice of print film criticism problematic. If one trend is visible it is that those from the sophisticated school (not always print) are, unsurprisingly, more likely to intellectualise what they do, whether that is to acknowledge the duel functions of criticism underlined in Chapter Two or to posit some of their own. The majority opinion from the newspaper critics and the populist school is perhaps surmised 85

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best by Lawrenson and Allan Hunter, a critic for the Daily Express and the trade newspaper Screen International. Hunter actually laughs when asked to consider that press film critics may have a level of self-awareness of aesthetics and politics in what they do, stating ‘I wouldn’t have thought any kind of mainstream folk like me would have that as much of a consideration.’ Lawrenson places film critics in the wider context of professions by saying that ‘It’s not very important what we do, it really isn’t’, before adding in more detail: I’ve got to be reasonably entertaining, because people are reading it. I’ve got to give an accurate summation of what the film’s like. Only then do questions of aesthetic judgment come in. And they’re never especially elevated. They boil down to, is this worth spending a tenner on, you know? So there’s not much scope for Aristotelian first principles to creep in there.

Although both critics are clearly aware of the intended purpose of their criticism, they and the majority of others rarely consider their criticism as deeply as Eagleton (1984) has his fictional critic do by asking why write it, who is it for and who is affected by it, as part of a ‘consistent commitment to rearticulating the task of the critic’ in the public sphere (Eagleton & Beaumont 2009:XVI). For Adam Nayman, a film critic for The Grid, The Globe and Mail and a contributing editor to Cinema Scope, the a priori need to discuss film criticism of late is a very insular event, whereas in the past it may have had more resonance in culture at large. His comments call to mind Pechter’s (1962:62) quote about ‘preening’ critics from Chapter Two when he argues: ‘I think post-1980 the discussion that you’re having is one that you’re very likely to be the only one having, which is people who are specifically practicing or doing research on film criticism. Most people couldn’t give a shit.’ Pulver also argues that there has been a move away from intellectualised or intellectualising criticism when he says: I’m always amazed when I read Francois Truffaut articles in Cahiers du Cinéma in the fifties and he’s getting so steamed up. I  mean, what the fuck are you getting so wound up about? I mean, it’s obviously because there were schools competing with each other and

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His comments are representative of practitioners in the populist and trade schools that rarely intellectualise what they do compared with those in the sophisticated school. Audacter et Sincere is the motto of The Critics’ Circle in the UK, meaning ‘boldly and frankly’, and this is reflected in the idiosyncrasies which prohibit a practitioner consensus on the purpose of film criticism. However, when given the most open of questions, being presented with a figurative soap box from which they could speak to other critics about what is important, a correlative theme emerges:  openness and stricter criticism are two recurring topics. For some critics, the fight appears to have gone out of film criticism; its functions are no longer fought over, it has become segregated, and what it critiques, especially in the mainstream, is all too readily accepted (positively or negatively) without actual criticism. David Ansen and Nick James insist there are no longer any camps or battles, like that of auteurism, yet arguably there are more battles being waged today than at any other time. For instance, the death of the enterprise versus its rejuvenated golden age, journalism versus criticism, blogging and micro-blogging versus Slow Criticism, and cinephiles versus fanboys, are just some examples to this end. The Hangover Part II (Phillips 2011) is mentioned by a number of UK critics, including film critic for the Scotsman, Alistair Harkness, Film Editor of The List and BBC critic Gail Tolley, as well as Hunter and Lawrenson, as an example of how helpless critics are against marketing and an inbuilt audience. It received almost blanket negative or lukewarm reviews (Rotten Tomatoes 2011) and yet grossed almost $600 million at the box office worldwide (Box Office Mojo 2013). The concern coming from some critics is that this and similar productions are now ‘critic-proof ’ (David Ansen, Allan Hunter, Ed Lawrenson, Kevin B. Lee, Robert Koehler, Amber Wilkinson); and in some instances there are no preview press shows. This lack of critical ability to affect cultural output from major studios and media organisations manifests itself as a critical call to arms for more 87

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honesty and the ability to challenge norms and consensuses and to be, in essence, more critical of everything – cinema, art, industry, each other. These were the two main responses to a ‘soap box’ question posed to critics where they could state what matters to them most and then, hypothetically, relay that to fellow critics. When they can broach almost any subject, this dominant uniformity from isolated interviews is perhaps not as surprising as it appears considering that it emerges at a time when critical authority is threatened: by promoting their own expertise and openness about subjective positions in film criticism at a time of crisis, with claims that the critic is dead or everyone is a critic, the collective argument is for experts to remain custodians of culture but perhaps with more humility and a recognition that theirs are opinions among many. This is a pattern which reflects both change and continuity in the critical discourse: a digital-age democratic openness tempered with traditional expertise. In one way this undermines Carroll’s (2009) argument for objective criticism by prioritising honesty and what subjective position the critic is coming to his or her conclusions from. However, critics also counterbalance this response with the idea of being detailed and thoroughly critical in terms of analysis, investigation and interpretations: who can be more thoroughly and rigorously critical today than an experienced critic? It is particularly telling that these traits are applicable to discourse on the blogosphere in two different ways: complementary and pejoratively. Firstly, that a more personable and open style of criticism has emerged online and, secondly, that more often than not the majority of criticism of this type is fan-related and therefore uncritical. This does not, however, mean that the interviewees themselves are more honest or critical; but that they desire their practice and colleagues to be enabled in this way. However, that shared agenda once again fragments when analysing the self-perceptions of film critics as writers. Some critics, like Lawrenson, Tolley, Xan Brooks, Eric Hynes and Sean P. Means, are also journalists, while others, such as Harkness and Rosenbaum, consider themselves as critics before journalists. Pulver acknowledges the quasi-literary tone of criticism as separate from journalism altogether. Some writers are adamant of the difference between criticism and reviewing, for instance, James, 88

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Rosenbaum, Koehler, Mark Cousins and Gerald Peary, while others, like Hunter, are not entirely sure that there is a difference. Just as the Critics’ Circle classified film criticism as an art in its own right back in 1923 (Cargin 2010b), two UK critics (Brooks, Amber Wilkinson) and three US critics (Damon Smith, Peary and Koehler) position what they do as a creative art. This discord speaks to the way in which the act of criticism has also been separated from that of journalism in the conceptual chapters. The notions of criticism being separate from journalism are not new and go back to the term ‘hack writer’ first recorded in 1826, with the meaning to-be-employed-as a hack writer first found in Sir Walter Scott’s Letters in 1813 (Barnhart 2003:460). When Tatler and Spectator were seen as legitimising journalism in the 1700s by displaying a literary flair and respectable essay writing (Eagleton 1984:25), it did not take long for other, more populist forms of journalism to rise up, prompting critics to attempt to ‘Reconnect the boundary wall between true literature and mere journalism before it was overwhelmed by the rising tide of journalese and its huge repertoire of clichés’ (Baldick 2000:156). While these opinions still exist with film critics today, there are no discernible tabulations to be made from the schools in relation to how groups of critics refer to themselves. For instance, not all populist newspaper critics consider writing reviews as separate from criticism nor do all those from sophisticated schools view themselves as critics before being journalists. This initial variance of opinion on themselves as writers and their practice is perhaps the reason why there is a distinct lack of literature which attempts to say what the field of film criticism actually is. The amorphous nature of the practice is keenly visible in culture, for instance, teaching the subject is rare. Teaching film criticism is distinct from teaching film studies, in that film criticism is generally accepted to serve a purpose in engaging the public through, predominantly, writing. Film criticism can be and is deployed in film studies, but all too often it lacks the subjectivity and evaluation (McDonald 2007) or engagement with the colour of language (Clayton & Klevan 2011) which are necessary to film criticism’s relevance in the public sphere. Critic Jim Hoberman (2012), also a teacher in film studies, is unsure you can teach good writing but suggests 89

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that you can relay some practicalities and prepare students for ‘the terror’ of freelancing. While there are a variety of classes around the world, there was only one Masters Degree on the subject of film criticism/journalism, taught at the University of Glasgow from 2006–2014. When most interviewees and other critics encountered learn of this, admiration and scepticism are the two responses. Some are thankful that attempts are being made at pedagogy in applying certain standards to their practice but others question the relevance in terms of whether film criticism can be taught or to what end education might enable employment. Of the more positive approach, Nayman claims: I’d love to teach a class on criticism. A colleague of mine, a very good friend Jason Anderson, who’s the other writer at The Grid in Toronto does teach that class at UFT. Young film students, even people who want to make films, should take a half credit on criticism to know how to engage with what is eventually going to be written about their stuff. As a profession, not as a discipline or a series of notions and what it means, as a profession it comes with an awful lot of pitfalls and things that are good but dangerous.

Nayman is also equally aware, however, of ‘one of the stickiest, most contentious, ugliest arguments that happen around film criticism: what the fuck qualifies you to do it.’ How one might write film criticism or any arts criticism and be qualified to do it from a practical position is also something which is lacking from some institutional training initiatives in the broad field of journalism. As of 2013, the BBC’s otherwise fully resourced and detailed articles and exercises on their College of Journalism website has no identifiable content for arts critics, and only one article of any kind relating to theatre critics, which it uses to highlight the necessity for the use of social media. In an article which may be indicative of the lack of journalistic support for critical authority, it claims journalists should now seek the opinions of 699 of the 700 people who viewed the performance, not just the critic’s response (College of Journalism 2013). While some critics like Ronald Bergan (2007) have written articles pertaining to the minimum qualifications to be a film critic, Nayman remarks that those are simply ‘the minimum qualifications for being Ronald Bergman’. Practitioners themselves have recently taken to teaching the 90

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next generation of film critics the machinations of their profession; consider, for instance, the Locarno Critics Academy established by Chief Critic and Associate Editor at IndieWIRE, Eric Kohn, which is expanding to other festivals such as The New York Film Festival and the Sundance Film Festival (Khatchatourian 2013). While print coverage takes on new connotations in the digital age, film criticism is amorphous and means a variety of things to its practitioners. While there are some critics who seek to intellectualise their practice and recognise the aesthetic and socio-political functions, most are content to offer idiosyncratic perspectives and simple descriptions of the quotidian. Where consensus does exist appears to be in a collective voice struggling to regain critical authority, by being more open and honest about subjective positions. Certainly there appears to be a correlation between the variance of reflections on critical functions and the calls for more transparency of subjective positions:  a collective self-awareness that what they each do is subjective and it needs explicated as such. This comes at a time of renewed crisis and transition for criticism, in the discourse at least. That crisis manifests itself for film critics as mainly monetary, as will be outlined next.

Monetary Concerns and Myths The idea of film criticism as in flux, alongside the drive for critics to be more open and critical, takes place against the backdrop of crisis. What this crisis tends to signify most for some critics is a fear that they may no longer be able to make a living at what they do – apprehension which takes place when they are still being paid to write film criticism in print. Although it is significantly less than in recent years, the association of print and crisis still permeates the media (Lawson 2013; Peranson 2012). As the creator of a key blog which inspired the creation of this book, it was important to make contact with The Salt Lake Tribune critic Sean P.  Means. He discusses the driving force behind starting his infamous list of sacked critics in North America, inclusion upon which acquired some critics a pariah status: ‘When I started the list of “The Departed” I intended to illustrate the shrinking of the newspaper industry in general, 91

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and the decline in specialised knowledge. I could have done a list of environmental reporters, book critics or sports copy editors. I just chose the field I know best.’ Means’ list is a familiar cultural object to interviewees but he is one of the few critics, alongside Pulver and Koehler, to contextualise the crisis in film criticism against the crisis in journalism and printed media. Koehler also takes into consideration the wider economy and argues: Print-driven publications did not prepare for the web revolution and they got swept up in a huge global change. Management of these newspapers and publications was an abysmal failure and reflected a larger story, which is that management across business, across industries has been a story of abject failure and abject misjudgements, in the financial industry and the newspaper industry and all sorts of industries. That inability to foresee change in the newspaper industry in particular had a profound impact on film critics. Because I was freelance, I was able to survive being swept away with the tsunami. For staffers, especially older staffers, they were very vulnerable. The fact that these organisations had poor management that failed to see the future destroyed a lot of careers. So that’s the dark side of what we’ve seen in the change over the past ten years.

That no other critic goes into as much detail as Koehler may be indicative of moving past this crisis narrative or ‘dark side’ but it is also surprising, given that these are the underlying events which inform many of the interviewees’ concerns for the future of their profession. In fact, any talk of crisis is often avoided altogether and rarely made explicit. Very few critics recommend film criticism as a career choice due to future monetary concerns. Print critics from such diverse outlets as the Scotsman, the Daily Express, the Guardian, The Big Issue, The List and Sight & Sound in the UK, and The Salt Lake Tribune, The Boston Phoenix, The Village Voice, Newsweek and CinemaScope in North America have concerns over being able to make a living from writing film criticism in the future. Harkness comments that he would not be a film critic if he was no longer being paid, ‘I consider myself very lucky to make a living doing what I do. I wouldn’t do it for free. Certainly not now, because I’ve worked too hard to do it for free.’ Peary also contends that: 92

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Critics are symbolically linking the identity of a critic to the receipt of payment as they fear that professional film criticism may become obsolete. This certainly reflects a view which has been perpetuated in recent years. The highly regarded Japanese critic, Shigehiko Hasumi claims that at the beginning of the twenty-first century, the professional film critic is a ‘quasi-fictional’ figure (Fujiwara 2011). This monetary concern is the overriding factor relatable to any current crisis envisioned by critics, more than any of the other contributory factors detailed in the opening ­chapter  – even if, as noted, the explicit mention of crisis is rarely discussed or heard in observation. It is clear that concern over the encroachment of amateurism does, however, occupy the mind set of some critics. The next chapter expands on this within a framework of the terms cinephiles and fan-boys, but it is worth noting the superior tone towards amateurism here as some critics police the boundaries of their practice. Harkness comments: I’m having a weird thing about it at the moment because I’ve made a career out of it and it’s that thing of people describing themselves as a film critic when they’re not. I play guitar, I wouldn’t describe myself as a musician, or a guitarist. I  do a bit of cooking but I wouldn’t describe myself as a chef.

While all critics are aware that poor quality film criticism resides in print as well as online, patrolling these professional boundaries also serves to reinforce their credibility. It is not always evidenced as blatantly as the quote above but often implicitly revealed from post-transcription analyses. For instance, when considering the increased numbers of new faces at the National Press Shows (NPS) in London, Hunter offers a lengthy contemplative pause before reluctantly or carefully selecting his descriptor: ‘Certainly in London screenings these days you see a lot more…eh…bloggers.’ It is unclear whether the lack of explicitly mentioning any crisis is reflective of moving past such concerns; there are times when the topic of 93

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crisis is implied. In reflecting upon interviewer/interviewee perceptions and the impact on evidence, it is notable that the critic for The Times and Sight & Sound, Mark Cousins, gestures an apologetic stance when he says, ‘I know I’m being very positive here!’, the implication being that this research is concerned with the negative narrative of crisis. On the one hand, of course film critics are correctly worried about their jobs. Established high-profile print critics are still losing jobs; Jim Hoberman was fired in January 2012 from a thirty-year post at The Village Voice. Some equally acclaimed freelance critics who intended to participate in this book could not due to losing regular paid assignments, such as Glenn Kenny who had to scramble to make up one-third of his revenue (personal email communication 15 November 2011). Harkness recognises the steep decline of arts coverage at the Scotsman and Pulver admits to having fears over whether or not the Guardian will be in business in the next couple of years. In the wider picture, certainly Scottish printed media continues to struggle to sell to audiences in 2013 as figures are ‘again uniformly down’ (Administrator 2013). Yet there is an equally compelling argument to be made for relatively little transformation to the monetary practice of film criticism. Almost all of the critics interviewed have been, and continue to be, paid for their work, and the majority make a living out of being film critics. They will do a great many things, from writing features to programming or teaching but they are still making money by being film critics. A recent Cineaste symposium shows that this is also reflective of a new generation of film critics who are forced to do many more activities (not always related) to supplement their income (The Editors 2013). This may explain the additional fears from some established critics who see a younger generation motivated in many different areas beyond a staff position. However, some critics are actually making more money today than they ever have by writing freelance, such as Rosenbaum, contributing to Film Comment, Sight & Sound and Slate among many other international film publications. Moreover, when one closely examines the job losses it is possible to see not the demise of film critics but perhaps the end of full-time staff critics in printed media. Hoberman (2012) argues that many critics who have lost full-time positions do so from streamlining publications where these 94

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critics are among the highest earners. Means argues that the main reason for stopping his list of departing film critics was that most of the listed writers have found new jobs elsewhere, including online – as Hoberman also has. Additionally, according to James, the redundancies in the UK were small by comparison to those transpiring in North America. This may indicate that a degree of Americanisation has influenced the British discourse on the crisis in film criticism alongside the wider journalistic crisis and proposed digital media revolution. A trend towards freelance is reflected empirically, as almost all of the 30 interviewees work this way. Historically, however, critics contributing to the field of film criticism may always have occupied an unsecured tenure. Bell (2011:197) argues that, in the UK at least, film criticism has always been a ‘flexible’ role; with the majority of writers working in freelance positions and that this mirrors the practices of journalism in general. There are other reasons why continued fears over the future of professional film criticism are exaggerated. Film is still strong culturally, but also economically, so it makes little sense to assume writing about the medium would become the sole preserve of amateurs. International box office for Hollywood set a new record in 2012 (Stewart 2013) and UK ticket sales enjoyed similar record success in 2011 (Leftly 2011). The fact that the NYT is the second largest newspaper viewed online in the world (Greenslade 2012) and was replaced on the Standard & Poor’s 500 index of stock exchanges in the States by Netflix (Hopper 2010), may indicate that film is still popular and only paid for newspapers are not. Certainly the popularity of film festivals has never been stronger, even to the point where cinema and its coverage at these events can mask the socio-political concerns of the host cities: Nayman remarks of his hometown festival, ‘This city of three million people which has a lot of stuff wrong with it stops dead for ten days in a way that nothing else is apparently happening in Toronto right now.’ His comments may be embellished but they were reaffirmed in observations and casual conversations with other Torontonians. Another contributory factor is the exponential growth of the school of fandom and consumer reporting, as job losses coincide with exaggerated ideas about the number of people now writing film criticism. 95

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Although writing with a sardonic inflection, associate editor of Cineaste Robert Cashill (2008) is reflective of much critical and media opinion when he writes, ‘There are an estimated 113 million blogs out there, and 112 million of them seem to be about film.’ There are more people writing about film today than ever before, yet film criticism has never been a large employment industry, even in the so-called golden age of cinema. Selfe (2012) shows that in 1941 there were only 62 film critic members of the Critics’ Circle in the UK from all the major publications. The oldest organisation of its kind in the world, the Circle now has 140 film critic members but this list also includes journalist personalities and very occasional film critics such as Mariella Frostrup (The Critics’ Circle 2010). The Online Film Critics Society only has 179 members registered since January 2000 (ofsc.org 2012) which, given the minimum term served for membership is to be working as a critic for three or more years, may indicate a lack of commitment or financial support for film criticism online. A specialisation such as film criticism also has to be placed in the larger context of journalism in general, with the BBC alone having over 2000 journalists working worldwide (Snoddy 2011). BBC Movie Café critic Tolley admits to being under the illusion only a few years ago that securing a job in print would be a job for life but now suggests that ‘In the whole of the UK there must be less than fifty people who make a living from being a film critic.’ Opportunities for everyone who wants to write film criticism today to be paid for it may be limited. In the sophisticated school of film criticism, where more work is required per article at least in terms of larger word counts, gravitas and research, it is rare that recompense at monthly or quarterly publications such as Sight & Sound or Cineaste or CinemaScope (even regularly and combined) would support a critic’s career alone. For example, Rosenbaum writes a column for CinemaScope called ‘Global Discoveries on DVD’ because he gets lots of free DVDs instead of any substantial pay and Cineaste pays $50.00 for 1500–2000 word reviews and $100.00 for 3000 plus word articles. When Chris Fujiwara (2011) argues that a financial hole exists between those paid to write and those numbers writing freely, it has to relate mainly to those writing in an online environment because there have never been huge numbers writing in print, 96

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for free, before. Fujiwara is from a school of sophisticated film criticism where pay has always been miniscule and those print critics contributing in this sphere often occupy more substantially paying roles to supplement their incomes – as Fujiwara does as Artistic Director of the EIFF. But the majority of critics sampled do work at film criticism full-time and have not been subsumed by amateurism as much as they have been touched by the fear of its encroachment. It is unlikely that, anytime soon, film criticism will become the sole preserve of amateurs. Print film critics can be defended for having accelerated fears over the future of their profession due to high-profile job losses and growing numbers of amateurs online. The changing nature of the journalistic landscape results in fewer full-time staff positions at paying print publications – yet those roles do still exist. These critics occupy a medium which has recently been characterised by crisis and uncertainty through the trinity of problems facing newspapers  – dropping sales, dropping advertising spend, and how to make money on the internet, after bad media management choices – and it now also implies more than materialistic copies of physical media. However, many film critics who lose jobs find work elsewhere and film criticism is still a paying profession in print. The next section shows that print film critics actually have many positives to take from belonging to the medium as it provides security in a continual cultural gatekeeping role.

Print Matters: Respected Space As the popularity of networked digital media grows there is increased importance placed upon creating content for online audiences. For newspapers, and to a lesser extent magazines, this has greatly reduced the visibility of physical print copies. However, as the material objects which once embodied these brands diminish, the legacy and symbolic value of some print institutions continues on the web and, in some cases, surpasses previous audience share. While they remain trusted sources of information because of a history of news provision in print, they now also represent (especially when freely accessible) a legitimacy and fresh respectability online. Therefore what has been created between the shifts 97

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from physical print copies towards online digital publishing is what can be termed, as noted earlier, a Respected Space. In short, this means that media which are established brands in print carry varying respectability with them into a converged online environment. As noted, the Guardian and the NYT are among the top news websites accessed around the world (Greenslade 2012) and institutions such as Sight & Sound, which have steady circulations around 20,000 over the years, are also growing their audience on platforms such as Twitter, with over 52,000 followers (Sight & Sound Twitter account viewed 3 February 2014). Because these spaces are trusted, and have a history of accountability with legal frameworks in place, most report accurately and fairly and contemplate the consequences of providing misleading information in ways that some published writing online does not. For example, an article by What Culture! co-creator Peter Willis (2013) states ‘Terrence Malick Snubs THE TREE OF LIFE Press Conference’ but fails to mention that the director rarely speaks to the media and was not actually in Cannes at the time (Chang & Debruge 2011). Of course there is another example of print media, actually the most visited newspaper website in the world published by The Daily Mail as the Mail Online (Greenslade 2012), which rarely follows fair and proper publishing rules. It often demonstrates faux outrage on issues for sensationalist appeal and concentrates on highly selective reports to evoke reader responses. However, almost two decades into the common era of the internet, legacy media still dominate (Curran 2011; Hudson & Temple 2010; Snoddy 2011) whether they are respected brands belonging to quality newspapers or popular tabloids dealing in gossip, sensation and celebrity. This means that critics writing out of those publications retain similar gatekeeping roles. Regardless of how free from commercial pressures some bloggers, citizen journalists and online start-ups are, there are issues of audience trust built over decades in print which many web-based initiatives do not, as yet, have the luxury of utilising. McDonald argues that ‘trust’ (2007:17) is the single biggest element in how we consume art today. In arts criticism this manifests itself at times as suspicions over publicist and artist involvement in writing bogus and anonymous or avatar reviews. It is a precedent recognised by critics in the 98

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world of literature and theatre (Lawson 2013) and is a topic occasionally raised by interviewees and others in informal chatter at Edinburgh and Toronto. Many are dubious about certain user-reviews of films appearing on a variety of websites, which could be classified as consumer school reviews or those from the school of fandom. The main implication is that publicists write content incognito as a recognised strategy. A typical example, anonymised at the critic’s request and reflective of a perceived loss of authority in film criticism, is as follows: Some of the comments which underline bad reviews from critics, especially bad reviews of small British films are a bit fishy. You know, it’s like ‘I saw this film, and it’s marvellously acted’ etcetera. You just wonder about the provenance of these responses, whether they are from the PR or from the film crew. Sometimes you can’t see through it which is the worrying thing.

Without evidence it is difficult to ascertain the scale of such problems but that suspicions about this practice are coming from critics at least shows critics to be defending the sanctity of their own critical credibility by highlighting such measures. Still, one should not be quick to forget insularity in print’s history – at least in literature – of author friends reviewing each other over the years or plays on words relabeling the New York Review of Books, ‘The New York Review of Each Other’s Books’ (Bloom 1987:327; McDonald 2007:5). This is a common practice in British criticism at least since the eighteenth century according to James, where ‘Culture is to be mocked and that criticism comes out of an amateur tradition, of amateur gentlemen reviewing their friends and their enemies. Going back to Alexander Pope, whose poem is probably the best thing you’ll ever read about criticism.’ Pope’s (2013) ‘An Essay on Criticism’ was one of his first poems and is concerned with the contemporary behaviours of writers and critics of his time. Regardless, print still matters in the Respected Space between its heritage and the web. There is a cultural significance attached to print institutions which the web has not eradicated. Although there are Google News, Yahoo and The Huffington Post, the top ten news websites are still dominated by traditional broadcast and print media in 2013 (eBiz 2013). On Rotten Tomatoes an aggregation of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey 99

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(Jackson 2012), shows that from their ‘Top Critics’ list of 18 which reviewed the film, 14 are from print institutions (Rotten Tomatoes 2013). Film criticism is not so much being shaped by print critics as it is by some institutions’ continued strength. Hoberman (2012) argues that, although destined to be assimilated by the online ‘cloud’, collective endeavours like newspapers and magazines have more authority because of their varied readerships and the ability to pay their writers. The links between gatekeeper media, cultural authority and contextdependant appreciation of art are served well by the following example. When the world famous violinist Joshua Bell played for free during morning rush hour at the L’Enfant Plaza Metro Station in Washington D.C., 1,097 people passed by in 43 minutes as he played six classical pieces; a total of seven stopped for at least one minute, with just 27 contributing to the $32 he made (Weingarten 2007). When tickets to his concerts can be hundreds of dollars, rush hour permutations aside, this illustrates the importance of context which gatekeepers provide in whatever form, word of mouth, criticism, or marketing. Trying to quantify the value of art to society has been a longstanding problem of cultural policy (Belfiore & Bennet 2010). It also causes an age old question to resurface: whether art can exist without authority, and reminds of fascist sympathiser Ezra Pound’s (1956:56) famous statement that ‘Good art weathers the ages because once in so often a man of intelligence commands the mass to adore it.’ Print institutions, as gatekeepers, have sustained their status in the digital age as that trusted barometer of news and, through critics, if not taste, then at least substantial audience attentiveness. Print critics in gatekeeping roles, therefore, hold the most influence in the public sphere in relation to film criticism even if, paradoxically, most of their audience reads them online. It is extremely difficult to say categorically that one type of critical writing is somehow better or more valuable than another from looking at the writing detached from its source (author or publication). Being entertaining seems to be the key distinguishing factor for many critics in the populist print school. Harkness claims, ‘The one thing you can’t do in a newspaper is to be very dense. You have to make it entertaining and assessable and punchy.’ Pulver says, ‘A newspaper article is there to 100

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be read once and to be entertaining’, while James suggests that very little separates one review from any other apart from it being entertaining, ‘In the end, a film review is a film review.’ As noted, the NYT website is the second most popular in the world (Greenslade 2012). Therefore, with the exception of being an accomplished writer, A.O. Scott’s profile is elevated because he writes for the NYT. In other words, it is with the aid of the Respected Space which his publication occupies in its print transference to online that he occupies an important role in film culture. Hunter comments that it is perhaps only the large numbers of readers who are attracted to print institutions which gives the critic any authority, ‘film criticism in newspapers and magazines, traditional media, is just your opinion of a film, being given a certain weight by being in something that sells 800,000 copies [his newspaper, the Daily Express’ average readership] and therefore no more or less valid than absolutely anyone else’s opinion.’ The Guardian is the world’s third largest newspaper online with regular monthly page views of its film content alone above half a million (Shoard 2012b). Many of those users are coming to read the newspaper for free and because it is has a history of being a trusted source of information, as much as for the status of critics such as Peter Bradshaw. However, as trusted news sites in print and broadcast media dominate over lesser known publications online, the story is slightly more nuanced with film criticism as it now shares more equal space with newer initiatives. Consider the fact that now the Guardian/film, Empire and Total Film share top billings with Yahoo! Movies, IndieWIRE, or IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes which blur the boundaries of print institution, online publication, and audience (Alexa 2013b). A print legacy in film culture is evident in more than loyal readers. The importance of print is evident at international film festivals today, where all Six Schools of film criticism coalesce. Print still clearly carries a reputation from the point of view of two of the world’s most important film events. I was fully accredited for my print publication that has a long history, Tribune Magazine, at the TIFF, even though I rarely practise film criticism. Kevin B. Lee, editor of Fandor and online film critic for a number of years, was refused full accreditation, even after getting the director to write on his behalf. The Cannes Film Festival operates a similar 101

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class system according to Tolley, who comments, ‘They’ve got a very, very strict press hierarchy. So they have something like four thousand journalists who go there. Colour coded, so there’s about five different stages. It’s like a very strict class system.’ Hunter expands on this hierarchical preference for tradition when he says: Cannes is quite elitist in terms of who it allows access to films and who it gives accreditation to. If you have a white press pass you can get into anything. You can murder someone and they’ll clear it up for you. So, Roger Ebert or Peter Bradshaw or whatever would have a white press pass. And then there’s a pink press pass with a yellow dot, which is the next one down. Then there’s a pink pass. Then there’s a blue. And then there’s yellow, which is kind of photographers, hangers on etcetera. And if you get a yellow, it’s basically like a ‘you-shouldn’t-have-bothered-coming’ kind of pass.

The lower pass at Cannes does, in fact, allow you to participate in the same events and access the same screenings and areas that other passes do according to Tolley: ‘You do a huge amount of queuing. They let the queues in in order of whatever your pass is. So if you’re at the bottom you’re going to be last in the cinema and you’re going to get a rubbish seat.’ Hunter’s exaggeration does, however, highlight the fact that he positions two major critics on both sides of the Atlantic above all others and outlines a respected symbiosis historically between the event and print heritage. In one respect this is simply by default, because print has been around longer than online. Beyond audience and international film festival trust in print brands, Hollywood and other mainstream industries still hold print in high esteem. Harkness states that he can secure longer interviews if publicists know his article about their talent or product will go into print, ‘If you’re doing a print interview, you get like bottom end 15 minutes but top end 30–45 minutes. If you’re writing for a national newspaper, sometimes an hour or sometimes you get to go out to dinner with them.’ Tolley argues that there is a strict hierarchy often dominated by traditional institutions in securing interviews, ‘If George Clooney comes to town, they’re only going to give three interviews and it’s going to be to the top three print critics.’ Similarly, Cineaste editor Richard Porton argues that 102

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print still matters to industry but only from ‘a large organ such as the New York Times, that they can use for a blurb’ because smaller magazines such as his are often only invited along to mainstream screenings ‘quite grudgingly’. Print institutions still enjoy a beneficially mutual relationship with industry in that movie publicists enjoy the Respect Space granted to their film’s credibility, and the publication gains free exposure on posters, radio or television which is often widely circulated. Hunter recognises the trends towards becoming a ‘quote whore’ as he claims some of his colleagues have become but also the importance of industry relationships with the Daily Express: ‘Papers quite like the fact that their name is on a poster or advert that’s gone everywhere. And more often than not, it’s just the number of stars that you’ve given it that they want.’ A ‘quote whore’ is often a term attributed to critics who consistently allow their names to be placed on marketing alongside a star rating or simple adjectives such as ‘brilliant’ or ‘unmissable’. Some critics have even had their names put onto made-up quotes, as happened to Damon Smith with March of the Penguins (Jacquet 2005). He remarks, ‘They had invented a quote for me:  “Don’t miss it”  – which is something I  had never said or written.’ Kohn remarks of the importance of such pull quotes in print coverage for mainstream American cinema: ‘On a larger scale, print and advertising is essentially the way to sell a movie to an audience.’ Even those print institutions which stand or fall by integrity and have relative freedom from intense market pressures, such as the not-for-profit Sight & Sound, have their print heritage and Respected Space recognised. In talking about a pull quote of his which adorned the first poster advert for No Country for Old Men (Coen Brothers 2007) James remarks: It’s perverse, but I’m very proud of that. And this is where you can say there’s a certain amount of possible complicity here in that, of course, that’s the biggest free advert Sight & Sound has had for a long time. That was in big American magazines and newspapers with our logo at the top.

The quote was actually a series of statements taken from his feature in Sight & Sound, creatively meshed together to form a lengthy promotion 103

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paragraph. James claims that his admiration for such creativity was the motivating factor in allowing the advert to be published, ‘One had to admire the skill with which they had put this paragraph together out of bits and pieces of my article. And they said, “Can you approve this?” And I thought, well, how could I not? It was really, really well done.’ Print heritage clearly still matters to the film industry as well as to international film festival organisation and media audiences. Regardless of the drive for material to exist digitally, print institutions and critics occupy Respected Space which is a reflection of the continued dominance of gatekeeper media. The next section now turns to the question of how much freedom film critics have when working in print, a medium which can be audience-driven and thus entertainment- or marketing-focused.

Print Strictures: Homogeneity A number of factors are coalescing in print culture which further threatens to alienate any forms of serious or sophisticated film criticism from public relevance, signifying the populist arena as dominated by homogenous content and commercial interests. Specifically, these are a reduction of dedicated space, editorial compliance with Hollywood product, marketing pressures from industry, and a historical resistance towards expertise. Peter Cargin (2010b) asks that those with concerns over the future of all criticism today take a look at this 1923 statement from then President of the UK Critics’ Circle, S.L. Littlewood: ‘Criticism is passing, as many of us know, through a difficult phase. Its field is becoming more and more restricted. There are fewer papers than there were before the war and less space even in these.’ Space in the populist sphere, whether its expansion and contraction has occurred previously or not, as James argues, remains a concern for all critics today. The constrictions of space devoted to film criticism in mainstream media magazines in the US is of particular concern for Porton, who questions whether sophisticated film criticism can ever really be relevant to a mainstream audience. the Scotsman’s dedication to arts criticism has been in decline since its shares plummeted at the end of 2007 after 104

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poor management choices from Johnston Press who took over in 2005 (Macmillan 2012). In Harkness’ nine-year tenure as a film critic there he has noticed that ‘There was a while where there was tons and tons of arts coverage and I used to do loads more reviews but because of budgets and cuts I do fewer now.’ This is a point echoed by Koehler of his time at Variety when he states, ‘There was a dramatic shrinkage of our review coverage starting in 2007. I’d go to a given festival, and the previous year I might have thirty films to review, and now it was 15! It was a 50 per cent reduction in some cases. And it came on suddenly, with very little lead-in time.’ Additionally, Newsweek critic David Ansen says he had to fight harder in his later years there to get coverage for foreign films and documentaries; academic and The Boston Phoenix critic, Gerald Peary, bemoans losing his regular cinema column to one dedicated to video games. Noel Murray, a film critic for The Onion, remembers the luxury of writing 1800 words on Pulp Fiction (Tarantino 1994), whereas now he writes around 400 words per review for the print edition. Nayman recalls longer pieces appearing in The Globe and Mail and Toronto Star, reduced now to a similar count. Cousins states that word length has dropped in general and notes that The Sunday Herald has ‘massively reduced its film criticism. Which is really, really bad for Scotland. If we want to have film culture here our quality newspapers need to recommit.’ Shrinking word length and editorial interference with the content of his criticism is what Rosenbaum cites as reasons for leaving his staff post at The Chicago Reader. It is clear, then, that print film criticism across newspapers and general interest magazines is certainly shrinking. Increased commercialisation and its impacts on editorial control is also a common thread in the narratives around film criticism today. Writing in CinemaScope, that magazine’s founder and Editor, Mark Peranson (2012), attributes much of the contemporary crisis in film criticism down to restrictive editorial decisions; during a discussion of CinemaScope in his interview at the TIFF he states: Lots of magazines, you read them and it feels like everything is written by the same person, or that the editorial hand is so hard. Of course what I assign in my magazine relates to what I like because

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Editors, in turn, are under pressure from the wider publication system and owner agendas, which Porton and Hoberman (2012) describe as happening at The Village Voice, as Rosenbaum also does at The Chicago Reader. Nevertheless, editors have the ability to shape the nature of film criticism perhaps more than critics do. Even film editors themselves, such as Pulver, question how much control critics have over their own work: ‘When you’re writing a file to the editor, you never have any say in how it’s laid out or designed at all. Unless you’re like really, really famous and can demand to see a proof of it.’ Hunter openly discusses editorial influence at his newspaper: I usually choose the films but it’s pretty self-evident that it has to be the big new American film that comes out that week. Unless it’s The King’s Speech [Hooper,  2010]. But there was a week recently where it wasn’t the most exciting of weeks. I led with Little White Lies [Canet, 2010], which is a French ensemble, great cast including Marion Cotillard. So I thought, we’re probably okay because they’ll have heard of La Vie en Rose [Dahan, 2007] and they’ll know who she is because she won the Oscar. And that’s what appeared on the Friday. But I did then have an editor say to me, ‘Don’t lead with a foreign-language film again. Because the editor has said that we shouldn’t really be doing that’. And I’m thinking, is that not the same audience that’s watching Wallander [2005–2010] and Spiral [2006–2010] and The Killing [2007–] on BBC 4 and not having an issue with subtitles?

It is unclear what motivations his editor has for not supporting his choice, be it a press culture of appealing to the lowest common denominator and assuming that audiences will be put off or commercial pressures to lead with Hollywood product. Tolley argues that ‘The whole dumbing down thing sounds so clichéd but there is a sense that there’s a little bit of that within film criticism.’ Yet there is also evidence of widespread commercial pressures put upon publications by American studios as shown from two separate Cineaste symposia (The Editors 2000 and 2005). In that publication’s most recent symposium, with next-generation critics, it is argued that this viewpoint is now taken for 106

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granted (The Editors 2013). Of course, neither reason need be mutually exclusive; it is also possible that Hunter is speaking from a metropolitan mind set because Little White Lies was only released in key cities in the UK and therefore did not have the nationwide distribution that, for instance, the television programme Wallander enjoyed (FDA 2013). Some critics do not view such editorial relationships with industry and editors as problematic but merely as the machinations of their job. Nayman comments, ‘Often we do take shit from bosses in terms of editors but when someone like Adrian Martin, who I’ve never met by the way but I’ve very mixed feelings about, when he talks about how hounded he feels, one wants to say “cry me a river, we do not have the hardest job in the world.” ’ His remarks do put the profession of film criticism in perspective, most simply, that a person is paid to regularly watch and write about films. If space is already diminishing and a foreign-language picture cannot be foregrounded over Hollywood output for a readership already attuned to such visual work, this places clear restrictions on critics in the populist print school. Although he feels free to go against the grain and foreground something like a Michael Haneke film, Harkness also acknowledges the pressures of leading with not only American releases but often audience-appropriate content at the Scotsman:  ‘Sometimes I  will write a bigger review of a film that might be more suited to the Scotsman audience. It wouldn’t change my opinion of that film but it might be something they are more likely to be interested in.’ Both Harkness and Hunter are at times, therefore, bound by thinking about the reader, which is institutional pressure that they see as unproblematic. Yet other critics have to escape that world, as freelancer and regular contributor to the Birmingham Post and Reverse Shot, Damon Smith argues: When writing for commercial publications, the Time Outs the Boston Globes, the whatever, all I’m thinking about is the audience because I’m getting paid to think about the audience. I can only tell you that for me personally it drove me absolutely fucking insane and I couldn’t do it anymore. And I could only put my heart into something that for me felt purely expressive. I just wanted to say what I wanted to say. I didn’t want to think about any of these other things, even if it meant I wasn’t going to get paid to do it.

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Smith’s actions may be an extreme response to the homogeneity of popular print culture but the restraints on critical independence are of concern to critics who acknowledge that everyone seems to be writing about the same things now. Hunter comments that critics and media outlets can feel like part of a publicity machine rather than an independent voice and recounts anecdotes from older colleagues Derek Malcolm and David Robinson, who say that the one thing that has changed since the 1970s is that they were encouraged to find fresh talent, champion films or be individualistic in what they were writing about, ‘And now they say the editorial ethos seems to be very much they just want you to write about what everybody else is writing about. So, you write about the big American film that comes out that week.’ This is mirrored in North America and Ansen’s remarks about previous editorial encouragement in being sent to report on Werner Herzog movies or Roberto Rossellini’s The Rise of Louis XIV (1966), even if they were not being released widely, because of their cultural importance: Editors said people will want their horizons expanded. Thirty years later, it was all about what is the audience going to be going to see, what is the big hit? We should be writing about the movies that are going to be selling. Editors started to think like movie producers, what’s going to sell our magazine, what are we going to put on the cover? So instead of putting Robert Altman on the cover we’re going to put Pearl Harbor [Bay 2001] on the cover, even though the movie sucks!

Of course, in the UK at least, the trade body Film Distributors’ Association (FDA) also plays a part in what films can be written about by critics as they choose what to screen at NPS in London and Scottish Press Days in Glasgow – this is dictated by all film distributors, not just Hollywood. A common understanding between film critics interviewed is that they, or certainly colleagues in the past, used to be able to write intelligent film criticism at mainstream newspapers and general interest magazines but that this no longer happens. Ansen, Harkness, Hunter and Peary nostalgically discuss lengthy reviews by Kael and Sarris in the 1970s at a time when cinema occupied a more central role before the subdivision and fragmentation of cinema audiences. Porton is in the minority in offering 108

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a critique of this nostalgia by pointing out that much of the readership for film criticism then would be university students who were accustomed to attending repertory theatres and reading that sort of detailed criticism. Being particularly careful not to name anyone specifically, Lawrenson argues that increasingly the dominant form of film journalism that is practised in Britain is enthralled with celebrity: There are certain journalists who style themselves as critics – I’m not going to mention any names – but who are, as far as I’m concerned, gossip columnists. They just report on stupid parties and what they drank and stuff like that. I just think that’s pathetic. And if you’re doing that and you’re hobnobbing with all these celebs and then also at the same time reviewing… it’s an odd set of priorities really.

As much as this is the nature of populist film criticism, at times geared to pleasing mass audiences enthralled with celebrity and stardom, it is still something which perturbs critics like Lawrenson. Others such as Pulver accept ‘the anti-criticism agenda’ at any mass media outlet catering for the broadest appeal, arguing that many British newspapers are instantly disposable and ‘just a bit of a waste of time’. In some ways, these commercial pressures on film criticism in the public sphere remind us of Rudolph Arnheim’s (1935:90) assessment of early US criticism as editorial favours in exchange for adverts, where any more serious engagement may harm the marketing. Anonymity omits specifics because the critics in question do not wish to be directly named or have the stories become traceable to them, but two examples can be mentioned in broad terms. The first is that a major UK distributor boycotted a well-known London publication, which it regularly contributes ads to, because of a bad review of a film it handled in 2011. Secondly, a critic at a popular UK newspaper in 2006 had his negative review replaced just hours before publication due to the extensive advertising coverage bought by the Hollywood studio that produced the film. These are practices which are hidden from the public sphere and which call into question whether such film criticism can be considered as public discourse. It is clear that, even if the majority of critics do not share similar anecdotes, they are all aware of an unnerving 109

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background influence at times impinging on editors and publications – almost as accepted nonchalance of just what happens. Anecdotes are offered about stand-up rows at screenings with publicists and distributers and one critic was actually punched in the face by a producer. It correlates to a wider understanding of film marketing as a by-product of film journalism, whereby critics are tolerated as long as they promote the product. Dana Linssen (2011) argues that ‘So much film journalism has turned into a hype-machine, a recycle-industry, a playground for marketers.’ Rosenbaum (2009) states that ‘the same big companies are doing the same things everywhere’ and that the individual critic’s voice is lost because of this, which is why he now only attempts to exert influence at the level of individuals: There’s a kind of gameplay within the industry and within mainstream criticism that you have to reach millions of people. All I know is that when I reach millions of people I’m the least effective. Because it’s not me talking anymore it’s the New York Times or whatever mass market magazine it is. What’s often called criticism is really advertising. And I acknowledge that, part of what I had to do was, in effect, work for the studios. If there’s an article on a new film in Vanity Fair this often gets worked out in advance by the studio that chooses the writer, so it’s advertising. So it’s advertising, or mind control or planned culture or whatever you want to call it, it’s not simply public discourse, even though it goes by that name. There are, regularly appearing in most newspapers, things that are planted by publicists and they are not perceived of as such. Most people often don’t know the difference between what they call infotainment and criticism and they are right in not thinking there is that much of a difference, sometimes they are the same thing in terms of how they function.

Speaking from a position of considerable experience, he makes a convincing argument, but it has to be noted that of course he and other star critics can still have an individual voice within mass markets and would rarely have their own reviews pulled. Examples of criticism from the Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw and the late Philip French often show socio-political critique (Bradshaw) and concentrated detail on films as aesthetic objects in the grander scheme of canons (French). 110

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Nayman reiterates Rosenbaum’s point and states that what he often does is simply the work of the publicist by other means. He goes further to suggest that problems arise when criticism crosses over into journalism, because journalism (interviews, reports, profiles) must inevitably interact with industry. Of course not all interviews with filmmakers take place with studio influence, Cineaste’s regular profiles and interviews are not hampered with such concerns but the sophisticated school of criticism is less influenced by PR  – which in itself can be problematic, as will be detailed momentarily. However, all of these concerns over editorial, commercial and industry pressures are all relational points to those expressed by Martin (2005) and O’Hagan (2004) and the wider influences upon journalism by media conglomerates detailed in Chapter One. These factors combined with empirical data suggest that there has been an intensification of commercial strictures on film criticism in print in the populist school, which hinders attempts to provide more sophisticated forms of criticism to mass audiences. The numbers of direct quotes in this section also act as indicative of the strength of opinion on both sides of the Atlantic that serious film criticism is now removed from public consciousness. This is caused by a trifecta of reduced word counts, increased industry pressure and editorial capitulation to an increased reliance on advertising from major media conglomerates. It means that film criticism which attempts to escape such pressures is forced into the margins and the dangers of public sphere irrelevance because, as the next section now argues, expertise and film criticism are at times oxymoronic terms in the populist print school.

Experts and Niches There continue to be examples of serious film criticism being written regularly at populist publications in British and US newspapers. Yet at the same time, printed space is diminishing and, via commercial and editorial pressures, UK and US film industries seek to control populist content. In addition to this there exists a pre-history of newspapers overlooking specialist film critics and more recently a general suspicion of critical expertise. McDonald (2007:16) argues of all arts criticism that ‘Priorities 111

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have shifted towards “personality” writers with no background in their subject.’ The appointment of culture columnist, Kate Muir, as the chief film critic for The Times in the UK caused former editor of the Guardian Peter Preston (2010) to claim, ‘Ms Muir’s movie canon seems to begin, and end, at taking her six-year-old son to a Harry Potter premiere.’ A.O. Scott drew similar resentment after taking up his film critic post at the NYT, with Ebert famously attacking the publication for appointing a ‘book critic’ and non-specialist. There is historical precedence for newspaper editors not treating film criticism seriously. When Dilys Powell was appointed film critic for The Sunday Times in 1939 she remarked that she got the job simply because she was there and succeeded someone who did not know the difference ‘between a film and a sponge’ (Bell 2011:196). Arguably the dedication to film coverage has become broadly more serious since this period but this perception at least still holds. It is certainly difficult to be more detailed and assume knowledge at a newspaper or generalist magazine but this has been evident for some time, with newspapers often refusing specialisation (Rosenbaum 1995:261). Rosenbaum (1995:291) cites an article written in 1992 by French film critic Serge Daney, in which he states that ‘The media no longer ask those who know something (or love something or, worst of all, know why they love something) to share that knowledge with the public…Instead they ask those who know nothing to represent the ignorance of the public and, in so doing, to legitimise it.’ That he begins with ‘the media no longer ask…’ signifies that he contemplates a period when the mainstream media did consider serious film criticism publishable. While not using the strong language Nayman does when he describes some populist criticism as ‘evil’, Tolley and Smith claim that critics for some major publications may not actually lay claim to that title at all in having minimal experience writing about cinema. Although speaking from a sophisticated perspective, an analysis of James’ comments is particularly instructive with regards to specialisation of film criticism across the schools: In the end, a film review is a film review. And of course a film review by Jonathan Rosenbaum is going to be a lot better than a film review by someone who writes for the Sun. I  was trying to

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James is reacting to a slight from an academic who argues for their own specialisation in film over Bradshaw’s. While James is talking about the pragmatics of newspaper reviewing in the main he still recognises the need to be entertaining and accessible at his specialist journal of record Sight & Sound: I arrived here as someone who was supposed to take Sight & Sound out of its Ivory Tower and I felt that we needed to educate as we went along, rather than assuming, as I  feel that my predecessors did. They assumed that the readers had seen as many movies as the writers. We don’t do that anymore, we want to encourage as many less experienced readers to read the magazine as possible. So we do tend to explain the things that need explaining, to relative newcomers to cinephilia. So that’s one change that’s happened since then. But over the time, I think there’s been a loosening up of language.

However, with a magazine such as Sight & Sound a certain level of specialisation is sought after. This is not the case at the Guardian because Pulver claims that he will almost automatically not back anybody with an academic style over someone who can write entertainingly well: ‘That’s what I mean by showmanship, it’s about sort of grabbing people by the lapels, making them laugh and that’s it. They’ll chuck it away and won’t read it again.’ However, given that today print articles move online and become easy points of reference this is a debatable position. Nayman remarks that because he knows too much about cinema certain publications will only 113

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allow him to review books about film, ‘They won’t let me write film criticism but The National Post will let me review books…interesting’, which alludes to a more serious approach taken to literature than the cinema in mainstream newspapers in Canada. Arguably, specialism in the context of, or in opposition to, promotion and entertainment can be thought of in two ways: a deep knowledge conveyed about cinema and/or a deep knowledge conveyed about all culture, arts, politics etcetera. Whereas Eagleton (1984) separates these as specialisation and the disinterestedness of the gentleman critics, they can be considered one and the same when considered against lay populism. Journalistic film criticism is rarely hermetically sealed, refusing to draw on other aspects of culture, especially when one considers how often film is said to encompass and draw upon all of the other existing art forms from its inception (Marcus 2010). A  relationship between film and all arts at all levels is advocated by Haberski (2001:190) and a relationship between all arts and culture at large is equally championed by Carroll (2009:196) as ‘cultural criticism’. While this is the critical ideal, aesthetic judgements, based on sound historical and contextual knowledge, with an awareness of society, arts and culture at large, specialisation can also be (the most specialised) academic criticism, focusing on one area in particular. While the sophisticated criticism in Cineaste, CinemaScope and Sight & Sound often draws upon all ‘Parts of Learning’ that Eagleton (1984:18) advocates, as well as a wealth of specialisation in cinema from its writers, it is only the media space in which this takes place which is problematic. It does mean the danger of greater irrelevance to the public at large because the print platforms where this criticism is performed are only marginal enough to affect small numbers. McDonald’s (2007:12–16) argument against the blogosphere as ‘a dangerous attenuation of taste and conservativism of judgement’, can equally be applied to sophisticated print film criticism. This is because niche interests in an anatomised culture do little to contribute to a common cultural collective other than the fragmentation which opposes Hollywood. McDonald (2007:16) goes as far to say that ‘organs and venues of communication need to be limited’ for the act of criticism to thrive. One interpretation of that, if to 114

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avoid further remote specialisation, is that these organs need to be places to visit en masse, that is, places in the populist realm. Arguably, and regarding demographics, it would not seem too startling to the reader to have a double-page spread film review transported from the printed pages of CinemaScope or Cineaste to appear in the printed versions of the Guardian or the NYT. A niche in print film criticism has existed since the beginning, with the more serious writing always in the minority but this culture currently exists against a backdrop of fragmentation in the media landscape and the decentralisation of cinema from the centre of popular culture (replaced by television and now the web). In some of these magazines, an alternative voice is given to that of the mainstream while not forsaking critique of popular culture or being too esoteric – yet they are still only able to affect small numbers. Writer, film critic and regular contributor to Sight & Sound, Tim Lucas, and his wife Donna, founded the magazine Video Watchdog in 1990 which still circulates to a small but interested group of loyal readers/critics in a more intimate way than larger film magazines can. Lucas argues that in a post-literate society where ‘most American cinema is built so that criticism of it becomes unsustainable’ readers and critics have to work harder to find spaces in which to be nourished. In discussing the heyday of film-zines in the early 1990s and his ‘cut-and-paste-and-Xerox’ Cashiers du Cinemart (1994–2007), Mike White (2011) states, ‘Today, anyone and their cousin can go online and find any number of alternative film websites or even start their own – but back in 1994 we were forging new territory.’ Even though Cashiers du Cinemart was particularly lucky in being distributed throughout Tower Records around the world, most zines did not travel beyond national borders in the way the internet now allows, hence the reduced numbers of film-zines now in print circulation. But the web has not as yet heralded a surge in readerships for existing specialist print publications with an even higher profile. The Editors of Cineaste and CinemaScope respectively, Porton and Peranson, both question whether the public see a necessity for film criticism to require any expertise and whether specialism can be transcended by public intellectuals or is doomed to be an elitist preoccupation. The 115

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main reason Peranson talks about initially publishing CinemaScope was to ‘fill in a gap’ where vibrant film criticism pushed against the homogeneous print culture in North America of ‘consumer advice and star-ratings’ but he is frustrated with CinemaScope’s reach over a decade on: I don’t think there are that many readers, frankly. Just judging by sheer numbers of subscribers, we’ve nearly been going for 11 years and there’s only 600 subscribers in the whole world. I’m sure there are still people out there who don’t know about the magazine but I still think that for this point, 11 years, 600 subscribers, that’s an example of the respect that people have for film criticism today.

Peranson is being slightly self-effacing in that many of his magazine’s subscribers are film institutions and universities where the readerships would combine to be significantly larger than 600. However, trying to affect the public beyond cinephile readers and convey their own worldview of cinema to wider audiences does clearly occupy the minds of some sophisticated critics. For instance, Porton remarks: One dilemma is to figure out whether you’re just shouting in the dark; you can feel that film criticism is a somewhat elitist pursuit because you’re just preaching to the converted. How would someone who might just ordinarily see Spielberg films be tempted to see something more ambitious? I  think that’s the real challenge and I think the challenge of the future will be to reach people like that and have some sort of dialogue with them. At our magazine years ago, one of our more radical members published an editorial where he said he wanted to print a magazine that was accessible enough that a worker might pick it up at a supermarket. I think that seems wildly idealistic. As if some autoworker is going to pick up a magazine discussing very esoteric films in the same way he or she might pick up a tabloid. But I  think not just whistling in the dark and preaching to your own brethren is important.

While his point is understandable, the broad generalisation which Porton uses as, ‘some autoworker’, does indicate a certain amount of posturing or elitism which may itself put off anyone willing to read more sustained film criticism. An individual autoworker may also occupy the position of film buff, amateur critic or cinephile reader (the latter of which is historically a rare group anyway). Ansen also notes this critical distance when 116

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he argues that there is a growing irrelevance between the average film goer and the desire to read serious film criticism (which was not true in the so-called Golden Age): because there is a gap widening between the ‘cineaste sensibility and the audience’ where hardly anyone cares to know who Béla Tarr is. Discussing UK film criticism, Lawrenson is also perceptive about the dangers of critics becoming irrelevant in the populist sphere because if ‘Criticism is associated too closely with advocating a serious culture, then it becomes pompous, a bit sort of patrician’. Sophisticated film criticism (which is unrestrained by little more than the critics self-determination as opposed to the commercial determination of populist film criticism), can function as a private club or attempt to bring other communities in for continued relevance. The danger is that a niche pushed to its logical conclusion becomes irrelevant or at best rarefied. According to critics like Smith and Peary, commercial pressures, as he himself outlines, have driven a critic like Rosenbaum to insularity. As the interview with Smith concludes, which is why a direct quote is not possible due to the Dictaphone being turned off, Smith remarks that Rosenbaum now writes about films no one is ever likely to see or sometimes even able to see. Peary argues that Rosenbaum has ‘real problems’ with a portion of his film which examines the US print crisis and argues for a period in which film criticism mattered more. Peary suggests this is because Rosenbaum is too esoteric: Jonathan loves today because he says that criticism matters as much as ever but he doesn’t care particularly about reaching mass audiences. Criticism to me matters when it actually puts people’s butts into seats. Where it really talks to a lot of people and can really bring people to see movies they wouldn’t normally see. So while I am nostalgic for an earlier age, Jonathan is extremely happy today.

Considering the foregrounding of subjectivity by critics mentioned earlier, whether a single critic could have such power is unlikely unless they enjoy the Respected Space highlighted above and thus also be restricted in writing considered criticism of non-mainstream films. Critics of the mainstream cannot improve film if they are only reacting to product assigned to them by editors or industry and those reactions are actively being controlled. Learn to live with marketing 117

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or embrace the niche seems to be the message. Those from populist print publications, like the Scotsman, the Daily Express, the Guardian, Newsweek and Time Out, are all too aware of having to provide consumer information before any critical position that may require deeper reading or demand more from the reader. Outwith market pressures obviously sophisticated film criticism can take place due to less strictures and more compatibility with an idiosyncratic voice, something endorsed by the three editors of Cineaste, CinemaScope and Sight & Sound. While there may be an accelerated rate of the detachment of serious film criticism from the public sphere, it is a problem which has been facing all arts and literary criticism for decades according to scholars. McDonald (2007) talks of the two polarising types of criticism today as niche academic jargon and extraneous public relations criticism for the masses, but these are the same problems Eagleton (1984) discusses almost a quarter of a century earlier.

Conclusion This comprehensive analysis of print critics and their institutions has primarily focused on examples from the schools of populism and sophistication. It is unclear, especially as crisis is barely mentioned directly, whether the variance in what critics consider it is that they do is linked to a discourse of crisis. Arguably, their foregrounding of concerns over a professional future, increasing commercial pressures and their ability to be experts in the print mainstream can all be read as part of a crisis narrative comparable to the variety of reasons explicated in Chapter One. A consensus for more open criticism about subjective positions, tempered with an implicit promotion of critical expertise, is reflective of a period in which the professional critic’s practice is being challenged by many voices online. Concerns about the monetised future of criticism are also linked to this notion of a growing amateurism or consumer voices on the web, but it is problematic because all print critics interviewed make a living from film criticism and overall the numbers who do so have not drastically altered. What have declined in recent years are full-time staff positions. 118

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In the face of diminishing sales of physical copies, the printed press are no less popular with readers. While print film criticism now shares its audience more widely with online initiatives, print critics still enjoy the luxury granted in the Respected Space between print and online. Through reader loyalty, relationships with international film festivals and the film industry, it is possible to say that many print film critics remain just as authoritative and in positions of gatekeeping strength as in any previous years. Evidence has also been provided which shows that the populist school of film criticism is beholden to a variety of print strictures such as word counts and industry interference often incumbent of market pressures. This can lead to homogenous film content restricting the critic’s ability to perform at a sophisticated level or individually as a writer. The impact that this has is that any film criticism which moves beyond brevity and catering for the layperson is forced into the margins, with inflated elitist positions or in niche publications reducing relevance within the public sphere. It is, however, not clear whether there has ever been a time when more serious film criticism was a staple of the mainstream, as a number of critics argue. As printed media brands convergence with the web  – and with the exception of actual job losses – the narrative created here by film critics is one of continuity from past practice. If not financially, print heritage remains symbolically strong, and anxieties around the loss of authority and space to provide serious film criticism are not new. While these opinions may be intensified, they are also recurring. It was important to begin with the older medium of print because this is the area perceived to have suffered the most during the crisis; while this is true in terms of redundancies and media restructuring, film critics find new jobs, freelancing has a long history in journalism, print institutions still carry influence, and there is a rich heritage of specialisation beyond newspapers. The next chapter focuses on a main accelerant of crisis, drawing again on analyses of in-depth interviews and examining how film critics are working within the newer medium of the web and the culture of online. Although continuity is once again visible, early signs of transformation are also. 119

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This chapter explores film criticism online by deploying qualitative research in three key areas: mapping and evaluating amateurism; documenting immediacy in working practices and; observing and analysing participatory culture and gatekeeping models. These frameworks are chosen by amalgamating analyses of the narratives created by film critics during fieldwork with the concepts around digital media and journalism outlined in Chapter One. I begin with the argument that, although amateurism is not new, there are now more people contributing to film criticism for free which has weakened the idea of quality, overshadowing more sophisticated forms of highbrow amateurism. The differences between the rise of amateurs who are not being paid to express themselves and the amateur critic as a historical figure are rarely made explicit. However, even though the latter is not always recognised, there is additional evidence which suggests a battle to reclaim amateurism as a cinephilic pursuit. I then provide examples of why the pejorative dominates, by examining the ethics of free content creation and the working practices of Harry Knowles and Ain’t It Cool News (AICN). Further shifts in working practices are then detailed, with half of the interviewees showing an interest in usability, where they consider the form that their work takes online. While this amounts to a change 120

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in routines for only some, almost all critics acknowledge the speed at which they are expected to formulate and publish opinions now. This new immediacy and expectation of an instant response, sometimes generated on platforms like Twitter, before moving onto the next critique, is not always welcomed and has led to a countermovement, Slow Criticism, a manifesto for considered thought and the continuation of long-form writing. This arc, where critics are reacting against pace and digital disruption, is then extended by arguing that interactivity and participation is not always representative or democratic in the utopian sense outlined in the opening chapter. Although the web has increased contribution to film criticism in a broad sense, it is argued that women remain under­ represented and that some trends and memes which develop online are not any more representative than trying to understand culture offline, because they often only relate to small numbers of participants. Furthermore, by examining the idea of two-way communication and measuring the involvement of film critics in comment sections and social media such as Twitter, it is clear that the ability for audiences to engage with critics is being limited by professionals who actively retain gatekeeping roles.

The (Return of the) Amateur: Fan-boys and Cinephiles The web has perpetuated a consumer school of film criticism and extensively swelled the ranks of fandom. The growth of these areas dominates interviewee opinions on amateurs, often referred to as fan-boys, which reflect wider cultural pejoratives. In other words, and even if they are aware of a more nuanced argument, many film critics position an amateur as someone who receives no money for what they write above the amateur as a highbrow critic. Amateurism in both literary and film criticism is not in itself a new development. During the twentieth century, when film criticism became monetised with the arrival of professional journalism, there has been a longstanding pejorative which positions amateurism as inferior to professionalism, as well as a counter-discourse. In his discussion of the expert during the course of the twenty-first century, Philip Schlesinger (2013:32) notes the rise of professionalism as a 121

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signifier of expertise after 1945, but Leslie A. Fiedler (1950) argues, less than a decade later, that literary critics had begun to lament the loss of amateurism. That notion of amateurism as a high-brow pursuit is one which is today replaced by amateurism as a pejorative in the shadow of professionalization. Because most interviewees are positive about the web, in many ways the debate has moved on from the myth that all print film critics attack internet film criticism (Brunick 2010; 2010b), to a more complex idea which sets professionals and amateurs in opposition, where examples of amateurs as ‘fan-boys’ are more prevalent and dominant than examples of amateurs as highbrow critics. When film critics talk about film criticism online some are aware of the nuances and the variation in quality. For instance, Means is fairly representative when he claims ‘Online film criticism is as broad as offline film criticism’ before adding ‘and there are dumb fan-boys who reduce everything to how hot the leading lady is’. Critics recognise a spectrum of quality, for instance critic and editor of Eye for Film , Amber Wilkinson, claims that, ‘There’s a lot more amateur writing in the world and some amateurs are better than some professionals and that’s a fact. And vice-versa.’ Rosenbaum also reflects on the false dichotomy between the labels:  ‘I don’t really see a meaningful distinction between professional and amateur. Because people who have the status of professionals, so many of them know nothing about film, and I know a lot of people who are of amateur status who know a lot about film.’ However, far more commonly expressed by critics is the default descriptor of amateurs as fan-boys or inferior. The term fan-boy is not used here as a descriptor from me as representative of fandom or consumer reviewing, but by the critics themselves. This ranges from descriptions of fan-boys lacking intelligence (Means, Pulver) and loving films no matter what (Hunter, James) to attacking more established critics they do not agree with (Harkness), but more often than not the term underpins the idea that a film critic is someone who is paid professionally rather than an unpaid writer online. For instance, Harkness states that ‘The rise of blogging is a kind of rise of amateurism.’ This is, of course, inherently false as amateurs 122

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have existed before blogging; it also discredits the progressive film criticism online which delivers new styles of engagement:  the video essays of Lee or the deliberately open-ended micro-essays of the cinephile blogger Girish Shambu. Despite this the stigma attached to amateurism persists because the argument ad populum often recognised by critics themselves, even if they do not subscribe to it, claims that amateurism is a threat to critical standards. Occasionally film critics conflate the schools of film criticism, for instance, Armond White (2008; 2010b) is the most high-profile outspoken critic on amateurism online but rather than concentrate on examples of quality (amateur) criticism that he is purportedly trying to protect, White is often accused of merely ‘picking the low-hanging fruit’ by attacking consumer reporting and fandom (Brunick 2010). There are more implicit undercurrents which contribute to the interminable defaming of amateurism, with critics framing the importance of their own opinions. Broadly, they highlight their expertise collectively, as noted in Chapter Three, more specifically, they also state that their individual opinions on films have a higher value than others. The idea that one opinion is as good as another, which has become dominant in recent years according to Alison Croggon (2011), manifests itself for many film critics today as quite the opposite. A typical response comes from Kohn when he states, ‘All opinions are equal but some are more equal than others, right?’ Only four critics consider all opinion to be equal, three from the UK, Hunter, Lawrenson and Wilkinson, and only Murray from the US. This may be indicative of the seriousness with which US critics have been said to take film criticism as opposed to their UK counterparts (Romney 2005). Some argue that professional film critics are more competent than amateurs overall because they are either also trained journalists, creative writers or that they know how difficult the art of writing actually is and are able to spend the time honing their craft  – points raised by Wilkinson, Lawrenson, and also critic at Box Office Magazine and Rotten Tomatoes, Sara Maria Vizcarrondo, when she states the necessity for her to work at her craft because when she started out she was a better observer of films than a writer. Many critics both at the EIFF and the  TIFF are 123

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keen to point out that the process of writing is not an easy one and it is a skill which they are continually developing. Two main issues seem to colour judgements on amateurs: that they do not have to follow professional protocols and that they may also be compromised. Further analysis of this latter point will be extrapolated in the next subsection. Tolley, Cousins, Nayman, Kohn and Murray all have or know of issues with increasing industry embargoes on films. Kohn recognises that amateurs regularly flaunt embargoes – where a film critic cannot write about a film before a certain time – without punitive measures while still having the same powers as professionals: The problem now is that anybody who wants to get this kind of access probably can. Not necessarily through a reliable method. So if you write for “randomwebsite.com” and get access to a press screening that also people from other larger publications have access to, and there’s an embargo on it for a certain reason, and then you write about it and the embargo is broken…So you essentially have the same power as everybody else in that room.

Kohn’s statement reflects a general perturbation that amateurs do have more power today without accountability, although he concedes that the embargo has no legal basis and is an industry construct. There are others, in the minority, who see value in any sort of amateur contribution to the sphere of film criticism, Cousins remarks: I’ve seen a lot of people with steam coming out of their ears over the fact that there are 10,000 people all trying to review the new X-Men film. If a consenting adult wants to spend their time reviewing the new X-Men film then that’s up to them. It doesn’t make me furious with the person, even if that person can’t write or has never seen any other Sci-Fi movies. I think this is wholly good.

Of course, not all amateurs can be described in this way. Film criticism has a familiar history with quality amateurism, in fact those critics mentioned as writing from a previous, supposedly, golden age, Sarris and Kael, began writing for very little or no money at all (Brunick 2010). Martin (2008) claims that some of the greatest publications of film criticism were ‘proudly and defiantly amateur’, a point reinforced by James, Lawrenson and Tolley. Lawrenson comments that ‘Professional 124

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criticism is a relatively recent phenomenon. It’s contemporary with a certain kind of popular journalism which started in the early twentieth century. Before that criticism was a sort of gentlemanly pursuit and maybe we’re just going back to that. It’d be sad if we were.’ He is correct in that financial attachment to writing can be seen to coincide with the rise of popular newspapers in the early 1900s (Miller 2012:5) but it is unlikely that film critics will not be paid in the near future. Chapter Three shows that they are still holding onto paid (albeit now freelance) positions in the face of perceived fears about a lack of pay; yet there are more people writing about film than at any previous point in history, which may distort the landscape and offer challenges to established critics’ future commissions. The idea of amateur culture which denotes a lack of quality or expertise reflects a wider pejorative which also exists in academia. For instance, Sean Cubitt (2000) discusses the ‘limited aesthetic’ perception of amateur culture and Greg Goldberg (2011:742) notes that there are many who now reference ‘the quality objection’ (that amateur cultural production impoverishes, rather than enriches culture). In the media there has been a widespread discourse which actively separates ‘traditional media’ and ‘tweeters’ (Lawson 2013) and ‘a serious critic and a blogger’ (Crompton 2013) as well as a recognition that amateur and professional labels are not neutral descriptors (Croggon 2011). The word amateur derives from the Latin verb amare, to love, and this is often the concept which accompanies a discussion of cinephilia as an individual or collective ‘interest in the love of cinema’ (De Valck 2010:132). It is mainly critics from the sophisticated school who positively raise the term. Cousins enthuses about ‘a beautiful piece of work’ by a cinephile who made a mash-up which ‘showed all the moments in Wilder that were related to moments in Chaplin’. Peranson discusses how some small North American publicists are easier to work with because they ‘are cinephiles and part of this grander circle’. In the broader setting of film criticism beyond the interviewees, there is an active engagement by some critics to stitch together the discourses of cinephilia and criticism (Koresky 2011; 2011b), even claiming there to be no such thing as ‘non-cinephile criticism’ (Jones 2011; 2011b), which may be a reaction to the perceived dominance of 125

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consumer or fan cultures. In such statements past elitism is visible from when cinephilia was labelled ‘quaint, outmoded, snobbish’ (Sontag 1996) but it is an identity that some critics understand to be out-dated. For instance, Michael Koresky, co-founder of Reverse Shot , would rather call himself a cinephile than a critic. Martin (2011b) argues that film criticism has returned to its ‘true and rightful place: the shadows, the margins’ but the alienation or strangeness that some critics still feel over their love of cinema is evident in the example of Lucas, who discusses a memorable encounter: One of my favourite memories of a reader encounter was with a fellow blogger, who thanked me for my work, stepped away… and then stepped back to whisper in my ear, “What I really meant to say is, ‘Thank you for letting me know that I’m not alone.’ ” A comment like that can put wind into your sails.

Lucas’s comments, alongside discussion boards on sites like MUBI, illustrate that it is not only consumers and fans that have found and established communities in the digital age but likeminded cinephiles too. Shambu (2011) claims that in pre-internet film culture, there were relatively few critics writing for large numbers of cinephile readers. Stevens (2012) discusses recent ‘real world interactions’ between critics who now seek out individuals worldwide who share cultural interests and Martin (2011b) discusses ‘a connected multitude’ of isolated unpaid cinephile critics. Academic and cinephile blogger at , Zachary Campbell, comments: ‘I’m currently a doctoral candidate in film and media studies, so many cinephiles and critics would not consider what I write professionally as criticism. I don’t mind that, it provides me with a sense of freedom.’ Unsurprisingly, then, it is sophisticated amateur writers themselves who are most aware of the history of the amateur critic as highbrow or disinterested. The reasons why perceptions of the amateur are tilted in favour of the derogatory fan-boy over the dedicated cinephile descriptors is related to early stereotypes of online writing being unpaid and unedited. Although, prior to the dot com bubble burst, there is evidence of money for writers online. Kohn discusses how IndieWIRE managed to survive this and still 126

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pay its writers and Harkness reflects on being paid to write for Channel 4’s website when he first started out. Reverse Shot is an online film publication which has been described as this generation’s Film Comment or Sight & Sound (The Editors 2013), and by Eric Hynes, a contributor to that outlet and a critic at The Village Voice, as ‘the establishment of online film publications’. Reflecting on the origins of Reverse Shot in 2003, Koresky and his co-founder, Jeff Reichert, (2011) note that online production was antithetical to intellectual legitimacy because there was a stigma that writing on the web was unedited, uninteresting and ‘The purview of geek hacks who didn’t know how to undo the caps lock on their keyboards’. As already noted about Cashill’s (2008) comment on ‘112 million’ film blogs, there is the impression that, perhaps because film is arguably the most popular art form, that most blogs are about film. While this is not accurate in the face of news, politics, literature, and many other topics, many of the first bloggers were programmers and web designers proficient in the language of the internet and writing about computing or their second passion, movies (Allan 2006:49). Additionally, the numbers continue to be considerable; in 2010 alone Total Film relayed to their readers 1200 film blogs of apparent merit that they ‘may have missed’ (Goodswen 2010). Given the amount of film content regularly written for free, and considering the Samuel Johnson (2013) quote ‘no man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money’, netizens are finding reasons to write on film beyond financial recompense. Whatever the reasons, from cinephilic aspirations to keeping a blog on Jim Carrey, these are complexities which contribute to the meaning of the amateur in online film criticism. Some critics question whether there actually is a spectrum between fan-boys and cinephiles at all. James claims that he will ‘Often militate against the religious fervour of cinephilia that you get with so much film writing now. Where it’s worship rather than criticism. Yeah, there’s an awful lot of fan-boy writing. Including in our magazine. But I try to ameliorate that and make sure there’s at least a mix.’ Of course, amateurism is a more problematic concept at Sight & Sound given that they pay their writers. Others such as Wilkinson are clear on the differences between the two when she says: 127

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Film Criticism and Digital Cultures Your average cinephile may come to it with a passion, I  mean we all come to certain things with a passion. There are certain filmmakers that I adore, and I almost certainly know I’m probably going to like what they do. But I think there’s a difference between coming to something that you’re quite passionate about and then writing about it in terms where you’re justifying what you’re saying, and coming to something where you’re only saying, ‘It’s great…I really love it!’. It’s that why. It’s that question of why. And some of that sort of more fan-oriented criticism doesn’t really ever tell you why.

Arguably, those described as fan-boys know why they love something just as much as a cinephile does; the difference is perhaps the levels of detail in which the latter is able or willing to express this in their writing. The amateur critic is not new. What the web has accelerated is the numbers of amateur film critics and the mid-twentieth-century narrative against amateurism in favour of professional, paid expertise. While some film critics are aware of the nuances of amateurism and strive to reclaim it from the pejorative, most also police the professional boundaries of their practice and value their own expertise above all other opinion. When this is considered against the findings of Chapter Three, and the fears critics have over film criticism becoming demonetised, it is perhaps understandable that they do not promote the idea of quality amateur film critics. This trend of negativity towards fandom and consumer criticism continues when critics discuss the ethics of online publications exploiting free writing and the working practices of some amateur critics.

Ethics and Ain’t It Cool News So far an analysis of the narratives film critics are creating around online amateurs has revealed that, through ignoring cinephilic examples in the main and elevating ‘fan-boy’ criticism, quality amateurism is overshadowed by the idea of paid expertise. A further contributory factor which sees fandom and consumer schools dominate the discourse on amateurism online among film critics is the popularity of writers such as Harry 128

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Knowles. An analysis of his website AICN highlights a problematic relationship between Knowles accepting and soliciting Hollywood industry gifts and junkets while reviewing the films of those who are giving him the gifts. Again, however, amateurism has to be placed in context with some sophisticated film critics striving to retain their amateur status. There are many online initiatives which make this increasingly problematic, such as micro-advertising, crowd-sourcing, PayPal donation and other contribution methods, among other pay models. In August 2014 on IndieWIRE’s Criticwire, Sam Adams wrote about a new trend whereby professional online writers and also fans are contacted by publicists on behalf of films and asked to write about specific movies in a film equivalent of what political activists call Astroturf, using money to create the appearance of a grass-roots campaign (Adams 2014). Even with as little as $0.10 on offer each time a reader clicks the embedded link offered within the given writer’s article, holding onto pure amateurism or indeed clearly delineating the lines between marketing and journalism is now a complicated affair. There are individuals and publications online, more often than not from sophisticated leanings, which can embrace the freedom offered by amateurism because they work as professionals in other capacities. For instance, Shambu is an Associate Professor of Management at Canisius College in Buffalo and Koresky is a staff writer and associate editor at The Criterion Collection. Shambu states that he does not accept screeners or go to press screenings or have adverts on his blog because he likes to ‘retain that amateur status’. Tolley claims that: I’ve got friends in London who have their own blog who go to all the press screenings and make contact with the publicists, they have their normal nine-to-five job and then outside that they’re film bloggers and they have a great time and they love it. But I think that’s just something quite different.

Arguably, what this ‘something quite different’ signifies is her segregation of the realms of film criticism as hobby and the space which she occupies as a professionally paid film critic. Of course, there are critics who are amateurs who also do not have professional backgrounds, for instance Lee discusses his more talented film critic friends who ‘live in 129

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quasi-poverty conditions’ because it gives them the freedom to write what they like. Although one assumes it does not impact on his amateur writing at Reverse Shot, Koresky’s role at Criterion, a specialist DVD packaging film distribution service, does raise interesting parallels between sophisticated film criticism which helps sell DVDs and distributors expecting positive reviews or pulling adverts from newspapers:  they are both affected by commerce which attempts to profit from film. Lee recognises this pressure with his editorship of a similar business model which streams independent cinema at Fandor: On the one hand some people may consider this to be shilling, like you’re basically just doing film criticism as marketing copy, and that’s a very interesting line to explore – because the gold standard in that regard is probably The Criterion Collection. They’re not doing those liner notes for their health, it’s to add value to the DVD packages that they’re selling and to elevate the status of these films by getting these top named critics to write essays about these movies, but it’s still marketing.

Arguably these lines have become increasingly blurry, but it is unlikely that Fandor or Criterion forsake critical substance for a sales-driven business model alone. Other amateur film critics do have ambitions to achieve professional status. Some ask their readers to financially support what they do via crowd-sourcing, as Maryann Johanson (2011) does at FlickFilosopher . Many amateurs are now writing within a practice, as outlined in Chapter Four, which has historically been very small in terms of the numbers being regularly paid. As Pulver argues, there is only a small amount of product to go around to a huge number of writers online: I always find it very instructive comparing the film industry and the music industry. The film industry has a very small amount of product which lots of publications are all trying to get a piece of. The music industry has thousands, and thousands of things released all the time, and critics and writers are sort of drowning in what they write about.

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Of course, if one takes financial distribution out of the equation then thousands of new films are released online and at festivals around the world, too. It is problematic that so many web publications exploit writers with no financial incentive – at least when one is sought. Harkness comments that, ‘There are a number of people that are so desperate to be film critics that they will write for free, for anyone’, and he cannot understand why amateurs would not bypass these publications: There are some people who will write for these websites like HeyUGuys. I’ve no problem with websites like that existing but then you’ve got lots of people writing for free for them. In this day and age when it’s so easy to self-publish and create your own site, why would you do it for somebody else? You’ll get exposure or you’ll get free access to movies but I think that’s wrong, I think you should put a value on what you do.

What many websites have – and not necessarily only mass review sites such as HeyUGuys  – is free access to films and the chance of exposure which self-publishing may not provide. These publishing models are what Mike Everleth, online critic and creator of the Underground Film Journal , refers to as ‘Websites whose businesses are built around conning writers into providing free content’. Given that the traffic generated by internet users and content providers through participation is used to generate revenue (Goldberg 2011:746) and may actually be empowering the applications more than the users (Beer 2009:999), somewhere along the line profit is made from the huge swathes of content being written for free about film every day. Sometimes industry incentives can be a lure for individual film critics; when this happens often the initial freedom afforded to amateurs becomes commensurate to commercial publication pressures. Harry Knowles’ site, AICN – named so after a catchphrase from the film Broken Arrow (Woo 1996) (Olsen 2011) – is perhaps the most famous example of a fan website lured by the trappings of professionalization (or at least free industry gifts). Ethical concerns are therefore raised that online critics can be compromised and, while many critics are reluctant to allude to 131

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him specifically, it is often implied that Knowles and writers at AICN are examples of collusion with industry. Knowles’ complicity with industry is something which was noted only a few years after AICN began (Wells 2000). In his critique of the ‘renegade e-fanzine’ that has now become ‘part of the system it was originally trying to buck’, Mark Olsen (2011) claims that AICN is too scattershot to be considered either journalism or criticism and that its creator has ‘Shamelessly accepted (in fact, demanded) gifts, trips and preferential treatment, all the while insisting that his objectivity and credibility are not being influenced’. At the 14th edition of ‘Butt-Numb-a-Thon’, the annual film festival/birthday party Knowles hosts at Austin’s Alamo Drafthouse theater, A-list appearances included Peter Jackson in person and a birthday greeting video from Brad Pitt, who sent it along with a preview clip from World War Z (Forster 2013) (Espen & Kit 2013). It is debatable how different this is to the pre-net print history and Orwell (1946) arguing that film critics would be expected to sell their honour for ‘a glass of inferior sherry’. James comments on ‘going to see films at six thirty in the evening at the NPS in London in the nineties, and there would always be sandwiches and booze’ even if he also says that this no longer happens. Porton remarks on the uneasy relationship of accepting festival junkets: It’s expensive going to a festival like Toronto, and as a critic sometimes you are invited by a festival and they pay your way and they put you up at a hotel. Of course, you wonder to a certain extent if that’s a bit corrupt, because you’re accepting a junket. But whenever I’ve done that I haven’t refrained from being critical of the festival if I think it deserved criticism.

Knowles (2012) does not always refrain from criticising Hollywood output and is not afraid to attack the comic book and genre films he is supposedly supporting, as his review of The Dark Knight Rises (Nolan 2012) shows. AICN is now 17 years old but this type of website is still positioned as novel by most critics. Hunter claims that large numbers of the amateur online community have been welcomed by studios that were at first perplexed and Olsen (2011) notes that writers from AICN ‘Initially gave the 132

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Hollywood establishment hives because they were beyond conventional influence’. For instance, it was only after realising that these writers had the attention – in Knowles’ case – of millions of their target demographics that major studios then, as recognised by Pulver, Harkness and Kohn, invited them in. AICN is a website which has a current value of $43,155 and a domain listing of 7,818 (from 30 million domains worldwide) compared to a similar website in the UK run by Charlie Lyne at Ultraculture which has a domain listing of 376,414 and a value of $5,415 (WebStatsDomain 2011). AICN may not be in such a strong position now and is no longer listed on WebStatsDomain which may relate to the financial hardship its owner has recently encountered with unpaid tax bills (Espen & Kit 2013). Regardless of what critics think of him, and it is evident from observations and interviews that this amounts to little, Knowles influences the discourse of film criticism mainly by the popularity of his extreme personalization and colloquialism in film reviewing. Nayman offers an alternative perspective on Knowles’ fandom at the TIFF when he states that Knowles (who attended the festival) ‘is actually also probably smarter than a lot of the people reviewing films at this festival, even though he acts dumb because it’s very profitable for him to do so’. Pulver comments that Knowles was the first amateur who really made an impact on the internet and subsequently on him when he states: In 1996 when things like AICN started I  remember thinking, “Christ I  could be out of a job in six months’ time”. Have some guy whose entire review was just cool with a hundred Os. You’d think, god, in the same way that Tarantino seemed so refreshing. The downside of that school, the nerdy school, they want to love what they are watching. That’s their default position, “we love it, we wanna love you”. And that’s not a good position for a critic. And it means they are very compromised. As Harry Knowles turned out to be. They don’t want to be outside. They want to be part of it.

Being part of it is what the studios offered: Drew Morton (2011) notes a pertinent quote that stuck with him during his research with studio marketing heads: ‘The best marketing decision the studio ever made was inviting the online community into the backlot.’ With US marketing costs 133

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soaring in order to accommodate upwards of 3000 screens (Olsen 2011) and those costs being between a quarter to a third of Hollywood production budgets (Osterweil 2011), it is easy to see why allegedly courting bloggers in order to access their audiences is a cheaper option than running adverts. Knowles is not representative of all online amateurs who seek to influence large audiences, for instance many with respectable readership numbers often struggle for the type of access the AICN writers enjoy (Olsen 2011). Everleth comments on a similar relationship with industry and frustration at not having his work recognised: For my website I don’t deal with very many publicists. The types of films I write about can’t afford them! I get such little traffic and exist so far outside traditional film channels, they don’t seek me out too much. I am on the mailing list for a few distributors, but I don’t really interact with them on a personal basis. Although, that’s probably because I don’t push the relationships.

His remit of only dealing with micro-budget indie films, rather than the big-budget American releases covered by AICN, is a contributory factor. Everleth does, however, represent an amateur critic working online today which does not comfortably fit into the polar opposite descriptors of fan-boy or cinephile. To summarise this section, the manner in which Knowles is referred to by some critics does reflect the wider generalisations of negativity towards amateurs. This also perpetuates the idea of the superiority of professionalization. There are also problems with so many publications profiting from huge swathes of content being written for free online (even if those writing have no desire to ever be paid). Additionally, while some critics seek to retain this amateur status others actively pursue financial recompense or industry incentives which can be offered for access to their large readerships. This latter group, specifically the example of Harry Knowles and AICN, are often implied as to be unethical by many interviewees. From an analysis of critical perspectives on amateurism the following emerges: (1) There are more people writing than at any previous point in history and the idea of an amateur film critic operates within the polar 134

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extremes of fan-boys and cinephiles, (2) film critics are policing the professional boundaries by defaulting to the position that amateurism is inferior, (3) some sophisticated critics are trying to reconnect to the old idea of amateurism as a quality pursuit and or cinephilic, (4) even though these critics strive to retain amateur status, and there are complex variables between writers wishing to be paid or not, and publications able to pay writers or not, the motif of unethical fan-boys colluding with industry dominates. Therefore, amateur film criticism online is stigmatised by a lack of clarity on contributions across the spectrum of schools, from the consumer to the sophisticated. Over 15 years after AICN began, the concept of an online amateur film critic still seems unusual and inferior to some professional practitioners. Given this timeframe and the above narratives, the most accurate assertion to be made is that amateurism is, at best, slowly pushing back against the twentieth-century notion that a film critic is someone who is paid to write about films. The next section explores further potential shifts in the working practice of film criticism by detailing how some critics are interacting with their writing on the web and how most are now influenced by, or reacting to, the immediacy of digital media.

The Digital Critic There is a clear divide between interviewees who either consider usability techniques in their work, or find this area of interest to them, and those who suggest they have a relative detachment from the form their writing takes online. Where real change and transformation is most visible in the practice of film criticism, in the opinion of critics working today, is with regards to the rate at which critics are expected to formulate and share their opinions; this increasing trend toward instant response leads to a counter movement, Slow Criticism, which promotes considered thinking and long-form writing. The values of the long-view will be examined by analysing the critics’ opinions on instant appraisals of The Tree of Life (Malick 2011). Journalists have been interested in usability for a number of years in relation to how their work is appearing to readers online (MacKenzie 135

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2009). Jakob Nielsen (2012) defines usability as dealing with readability and design issues on the web and as ‘A quality attribute that assesses how easy user interfaces are to use’. There are very few established critics who also have to produce their work online, even at the most basic level of inserting hyperlinks. Rosenbaum has his own website to promote his work and claims that he takes pleasure in the opportunity to insert his own hyperlinks to older pieces in order to give them added clarity; when writing for websites like Slate, which encourage writers to interface with usability techniques, he states, ‘The fact that I  can do it all myself and I don’t have to get someone else to do it is a bonus.’ However, for most critics writing for larger media organisations there is a noticeable distance between the writing the critic submits and the form it takes online. Even critics who do partake in an array of critical forms other than writing, such as the Guardian critic Xan Brooks, with his video reviews and podcasts, are not tasked with actually putting the content online. This is a process often undertaken by publications’ specific web content teams at such diverse outlets as the Guardian, the Daily Express, the Scotsman, Sight & Sound, The Salt Lake Tribune, The Onion, Variety and IndieWIRE. Pulver states that: Because newspapers publish an enormous amount online, the design is controlled and is very simple. A  simple template. the Guardian’s is slightly less shit than the Daily Mail. The design has to be really simple because there’s all sorts of different types of material being shoehorned into the space. The thing with newspapers is that there is separation between the writer and the producer. With self-publishing you can design your own thing. But when you’re writing a file to the editor, you never have any say in how it’s laid out or designed at all.

As the Guardian’s Film Editor, he has little control over the layout of his content because it is strictly controlled in a template which further removes any direct input his stable of writers have on how their work is displayed. Critics writing for a variety of major publications are not invited to engage with the ways readers will encounter their work. However, and even if critics have little control over layout, due to its innovative and converged digital media environment the example of the 136

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Figure 4.1:  The Home/Index Page of the Guardian’s film website.

Guardian is a complex one in terms of how writers interact and create content within that online space. Therefore, this publication is worthy of further investigation. An in-depth analysis of digital film criticism at the Guardian film section reveals its considerations of online usability and interactivity. The sheer volume of content, released 24/7 averaging 20–40 published items daily, framed in a host of sections through a variety of multimedia, prohibit any linear textual analysis. These frameworks and a relatively simplistic (if rather crowded) template serve to keep users interested and entertained within the media space. Due to this volume of content this short investigation of the website 137

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(accessed from a desktop computer) will concentrate on four categories: home page, text content, converged media, and interactivity. The home page (Figure 4.1) is a visible link to print newspaper history because its design is similar to that of the front page of many quality British newspapers with clear column-focused typography. Most links to content on this index page carry three items:  an image or thumbnail, a text blurb, and (if there are any) a link to comments. Two thirds of the left-hand side of the page are dominated by these links, with the main story appearing uppermost with the largest headline and the largest picture, with the next most important articles directly below side-by-side in four columns. Considering Nielsen’s (2006) heat map which tracks web-users’ eye movements, it is clear that those designing this layout have done so either conscious or unconscious of usability concerns. This is evident since the top information appears in the exact place where the users in Nielsen’s test would be looking most: the 90 degree angles of the F-shape. Below this point the columns split into two larger sections with headings which range from ‘Latest Film News’ to ‘On Film’: a short list of what is most popularly being read by users, appearing at the bottom right. Given the fact that it takes roughly ten scrolls of a mouse wheel through a host of other links to reach this list, the gatekeeping role as custodian of what information is important is more clearly defined here than at a similar media site such as the BBC, where scrolling is less of an issue and it is easy to see what content is popularly being accessed. Adverts appear at the very top of the page, and on the right-hand side, as they do within the articles themselves and, when sold, in the white onscreen spaces either side of the main page. Therefore the right-hand side, where Nielsen shows that users look least, consists of far less text, larger font links to more content and in some cases larger pictures trying to attract the attention spans which may only glance. There are a variety of text-based ways to deliver digital film criticism on the platform. They range from interviews and features to first look reviews, box office analyses and blogs. In any of these areas, it is extremely rare that a single paragraph would be longer than 150 words. Text interviews are normally 1500 words in length and broken up by two or three images, a statistics box or, less frequently, by film clips. Features 138

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can be longer at around 2000 words (the upper limit of most content) and will have an extra image to break-up paragraphs. Reviews (complete with star ratings out of five) can range from 250-word capsule critiques to 500-word first look reviews from festivals to 800-word standard reviews for newer releases. Ironically, given the fast-paced nature of digital media, it is actually a form of blogging which comprises the largest word counts and which also highlights the convergence of text, instant response and interactivity. Standard blogs (posted by both staff and regular freelance critics) are usually short think pieces designed to stimulate debate, such as the value of trailers versus giving away too much plot, and will be no longer than 300–500 words. However, since the summer of 2013, live blogging of a film on television, voted for by readers, is carried out weekly by the writer Stuart Heritage who contributes to the film, music and television sections. This consists of a running commentary with updates every couple of minutes, generally in a funny or flippant tone about the films in question. These can be successfully responded to (200+ comments) or not (three comments). For what is essentially a text-based DVD commentary this is an impressive skill regardless of whether or not substantial preparation has been carried out prior to live publishing. This engagement stands as a fully converged form and perhaps cannot then be compared to Nielsen’s arguments of a comfortable reading speed, as the other text-based forms of criticism can. Given Nielsen’s arguments of a comfortable reading speed of 200 words per minute, and that most paragraphs average 120 words, there is no other form of text content that would take longer than 10 minutes to read. With the live blog, however, the user is not reading consistently but participating in viewing a film, and if they wish to, commenting on what they are reading as it is being published. The site classifies its own multimedia as, ‘Video’, ‘Audio’, ‘In Pictures’, and ‘Interactive’. ‘Video’ is generally across four categories, consisting of trailers, interviews, festival reports and the weekly ‘Film Show’. ‘Audio’ is misleading because it is generally the soundtrack to the now-filmed ‘Film Show’ which started out as a podcast only: ‘Film Weekly podcast’. ‘In Pictures’ consists of a picture gallery of images on a variety of topics, anything from looking at Awards Season (30 pictures) to focusing on the 139

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career of stars such as Angela Lansbury (16 pictures). The ‘Interactive’ section includes an infographic tribute to Peter O’Toole and the ability to build your own character from 2013 films. There are over 600 trailers, some with accompanying text reviews by Heritage, who took over from Xan Brooks when he moved to more sustained video criticism hosting the weekly ‘Film Show’. Although there are other impromptu videos such as reports from festivals or reactions to events such as the Golden Globes or Oscars, as well as interviews with directors and stars discussing their upcoming movies lasting around five minutes each, it is worth looking in more detail at ‘The Guardian Film Show’ which appears each Friday and lasts for roughly 20 minutes. The standard format has the host Brooks joined by other critics like Peter Bradshaw and Andrew Pulver to discuss the big releases that week: usually British or US output and no more than three films. The format this review show takes is normally a mix of straight-to-camera addresses from Brooks, with clips from promotional material from the films in question, followed a discussion between the host and the other critics. The camera frames are limited to showing a medium shot, of all those involved sitting on a couch with a small widescreen TV in the background, or a close-up, of the face of the critic who happens to be talking. In terms of participatory frameworks the site is very user-orientated; every film story published can be commented on (after registration and agreeing to house rules). In the general section of the newspaper online, it is clear that a strong emphasis resides with comments from users. the Guardian website in 2011 had 450,000 page views per month for film content alone, with a year-on-year growth of 23 per cent predicted across the platform (personal email communication from Catherine Shoard, 03 September 2012). The ‘Comment’ section appears third in the headed tabs after ‘News’ and ‘Sport’ and before ‘Culture’ (where the film content can be found). In an example of the convergence of gatekeeping and immediacy in digital culture, most content that is text-based (following the headline, subhead and author’s name) invites users to follow the critic on Twitter, if applicable and if not to follow @guardianfilm, with a new BETA test for email updates as well (Figure  4.2). Immediately after this, and before the article begins, there is a small red button with 140

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Figure 4.2:  A typical text-based article on the site with links to social media and comment sections.

a white speech bubble inside offering the option to ‘jump to comments’. Beside this is an option to promote the content and thus the media brand via Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, or LinkedIn without having any need to read the writing beyond the first paragraph. Although comments can be written and published at any time, there are specific days for other participatory themes to encourage users to engage with the site. On Tuesdays a reader selects five clips to illustrate a chosen topic. On Wednesdays readers review their local cinemas. Each Friday readers help pick five highlights from an actor’s film career and during award season users are encouraged to vote in the the ‘The Guardian Film Awards’. Even if critics are having little impact on the design of this site, for instance Pulver describes the template as ‘really simple’ and laughs about the idea of writing with readers scanning in an F-shape in 141

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mind, this is clearly a website which does adhere to many of Nielsen’s theories even if that is unconsciously so. It is possible that from the time of interview and the date of publication Pulver’s awareness of usability (even if he does not mention Nielsen specifically) has contributed to subtle changes in what is a more user orientated space. In their ‘Accessibility Statement’ it is mentioned that they have spent two years, since 2011, working to create the best possible design compatible with modern browsers. the Guardian website is not simply a copy of the print edition or an online archive for previous articles in much the way an online newspaper version of the Scotsman currently functions. Its film site is a substantial resource for film writing, reviewing, news, features and festival reports and is integral to the overall publication according to Pulver, who comments that ‘film is obviously a part of what the Guardian is all about. And it uses it to attract readers.’ It can be subscribed to via RSS feeds and, on 28 January 2014, has over 45,862 ‘likes’ on Facebook. The film section also functions as an exemplar of the converged digital media environment by delivering new formats for covering film criticism, from picture galleries, tweets and live blogs to developments in 24/7 film news resources. In the words of Pulver:  ‘We never used to be able to see news. Film news. Unless it was going on the front page or front section of the newspaper you couldn’t do it. Now we’ve got a website with endless amounts of pages dedicated to film news’. Delivering this content is part of the role of the twenty-first-century film critic, especially in the populist school, and thus an important facet in trying to understand film criticism as a conceptual whole. There are a group of critics that are more aware of usability. Commenting on the work of Nielsen, online film critic Michael Agger (2008) argues that the implications of usability are not for the reader but about how the writer must change. Nielsen’s theories  – such as reading online is 25 per cent slower than reading from paper (1997) or that 79 per cent of web users scan in the shape of an F instead of reading (2006) – are among the most publicised but many others find similar results: Shaikh and Chaparro (2004) discover that for larger articles users tended to print the sources, and Ziming (2005) finds there to be less time spent on 142

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concentrated or in-depth reading and more time devoted to scanning and selective reading. About 50 per cent of the critics interviewed do care about usability even if it does not directly impact, as yet, on their work. There is no clear trend in saying that this group is only online or amateur or professional or from certain schools. Rosenbaum intellectualises the historicity of date stamps on his pieces; Wilkinson breaks up text and makes use of space; Smith might break up text more online as opposed to print; Cousins argues that critics are becoming more aware of form and scanning versus deep reading; James talks about usability as something he will be more aware of in the future as Sight & Sound offers more digital content; Shambu comments that the structure of his blog writing is just as important as design choice; and usability for Lee is a constant concern as he composes text and images at Fandor. Where one single aspect of usability does overlap with the concerns of all critics in the digital age is with word counts. It is a truism that one can write as much as they wish online (just as they can on paper) but whether anyone is willing to read it is another matter. Undoubtedly with shrinking word lengths in print the internet does, as Ebert says (McCarthy 2011), allow for the opportunity of more esoteric film writing with ‘no length restrictions’, however it does depend on the publication and audience. The assertion that space on the internet could be used to counteract the lack of intellectually ambitious film criticism in print with newspaper ‘blurbmeisters’ (Erikson 2000; Lambert 2000)  – the sort of commercial homogeneity argued in Chapter One and Chapter Three – dates back to the millennium. Certainly in consumer, fandom or sophisticated schools one can write at length but where populist and trade critics are concerned the notion that one can write screeds online needs tempered with the consideration of reading journalistically well in a publication that is read widely and consistently. Writing at The AV Club  – the only serious section of The Onion with its own dedicated website  – Murray is one of the few critics outside of Rosenbaum who talks about being able to write at length online when he says: When I have an idea that I want to write 2000 words about a movie, out of the confines of the regular review section, the editors will say

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Not many editors are willing to allow their critics to write at length and often rely heavily on the journalistic principles of old to engage audiences anew in an online environment. As reviews editor at Rotten Tomatoes, Vizcarrondo states, ‘I definitely lean on the journalistic order, of 25 word sentences, a lead in which everything is stated, and details follow, paragraphs that don’t exceed a degree of inch. I still think those old principles about keeping attention are viable.’ Nielsen (2006) argues that the optimal amount of text users will comfortably read is, assuming a reading speed of 200 WPM, 600 words for short articles and 1000 words for longer articles. Tolley and Wilkinson talk about being aware of a similar optimization for reading online and the latter, in her stewardship of Eye for Film, is willing to allow her writers as much as 1200 words if the review or article warrants it. Rosenbaum, perhaps indicative of the luxury of space he enjoyed in print, is ambivalent about upsetting readers with lengthy articles. When talking about writing for Moving Image Source he remarks that they do not usually want any more than three thousand words, ‘But that hasn’t prevented me from putting very long articles on their website.’ Of course Rosenbaum is now an older-generation critic who has built a reputation over almost fifty years in film criticism. Not all critics can as yet enjoy the acclaim he does, in which his freelance contribution is sought after by many online publications, as he commands an audience. Every critic interviewed knows who Rosenbaum is, but it is debatable whether his cultural profile extends beyond film industry circles, as Shambu comments: I teach in a college and I have people teaching the liberal arts disciplines in my college. And I can tell you that very few of them have actually heard of Jonathan Rosenbaum, who I consider to be the leading English-language film critic in the world. And very few of my colleagues who all have PhDs, who teach university courses,

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Each of these critics works on staff at publications which enjoy Respected Space through print and online. The correlation between usability awareness and usage seems to be more so from film critics who do not work, at least regularly, at such large publications. This group is more aware of how readers will view their work digitally, not just in terms of word counts but content display; this impacts on the form their writing takes at times, more than simply relinquishing control of a word processed file to the editor. In the next section, this hint at change through increased awareness of written form for some, manifests as disruptive change for almost all, who acknowledge increased pace and immediacy as impacting on their working practices.

Immediacy and Slow Criticism The manner in which we communicate has become faster in the digital age which promotes an aphoristic culture (at best) and a world where attention spans have suffered (at worst). It is now common for Britain’s most high-profile professional film critic, Mark Kermode (2013), to perform an instant-response video blog, as he did with Django Unchained (Tarantino 2012). The arts critic Mark Lawson (2013) claims that a publicist actually ‘sighed’ when he stated that he would like to read the book she had given him to review before offering her an instant opinion on it. There is a perceived expectation in culture to have an instantly formed opinion about something before moving onto the next topic. What this amounts to is a trend of immediacy where little time is given for reflection on overall perspectives, where the notion of cultural life is ridiculously abridged and overwhelmed by consumption as the next object in line awaits rapid examination, as does the object behind that and so forth; it is a pattern referenced by almost every critic. This is unsurprising, given that ‘convergent media tend towards acceleration’ (Meikle & Young 2012:163) and that, since the 24hr news media, cultural 145

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commentators have been said to have ‘no time to think’ (Rosenberg & Feldman 2008). Many critics note the rapidity with which film culture is expected to be reported now as a major change. Kohn discusses the problems of this immediacy at the expense of quality and how he changed his mind throughout the course of the year after a negative instant response to Inglourious Basterds (Tarantino 2009); Pulver comments on the problems of the Guardian readers expecting instant interaction from critics; Lawrenson argues that digital culture ‘demands’ instant feedback; Murray claims that he overcomes the rapidity of working quickly by stating that reviews from festivals are reports from the field and can and do change. James talks about writing instant response blogs occasionally and how some critics, such as Jonathan Romney from the Independent, can excel at this type of criticism. He also argues that film criticism, like all journalism today, is being pushed in the direction of instant response. The consistency with which this theme of rapidity is discussed in interviews or noted in observations allows me to state that an accelerated pace (or at least its perception) is impacting on the practices of film criticism in the digital age. What, at least partly, contributes to the idea of a necessity for instant reactions in film culture today is, paradoxically, the oversaturation of content on the web which is swelled by consistent, rapid publishing. Writer and critic, Frances Morgan (2011), argues that the pressure to be first with an opinion and to show that you are abreast of a particular argument extends beyond film criticism to all cultural criticism, and Everleth (2011) argues that the internet actually was a slow repository of detailed information at one stage before it became: A marketplace where everybody has to be up on every late-­ breaking-oh-my-god-this-is-so-important piece of minutiae that zips by at supersonic speeds […] Facebook status updates. Twitter tweets. RSS news feeds. It’s all so much to keep up on that it’s no wonder that we have to start pigeonholing each other. These are the fan sites over here. These are the cinephilia sites over there.

When analysing film criticism in the digital age it is, however, beneficial to ‘pigeonhole’ to some extent if one wishes to say anything meaningful 146

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about the parts which make up the whole – as has hopefully been achieved with the schools model and the empirical evidence here. Online culture itself has become faster, as evidenced in the short lifespan of blogs which have become quicker, more instantaneous and shorter. There are now blog-a-thons, live blogs and micro blogs. In a digital world where Tom Hall (2011), a blogger since 2004, discusses his site, The Back Row Manifesto , as being too slow because social media has made it ‘much easier to say things quickly and in real time without the idea of blogging crossing my mind’, it is easy to see a clear challenge to keep alive any long-form criticism. Some critics recognise that the audience has less time in the increasingly fast-paced digital culture. Discussing his early experiences of writing on the web, ironically in an article that didn’t become available online until three years later, Rosenbaum (2007:77) admits to being initially amazed by the metrics of 100,000 readers per month on the fairly esoteric film website Undercurrent   – three times the readers of print equivalents Sight & Sound and Film Comment – until finding out that the average length of time spent by each reader was just two minutes. It is not a quantifiable finding which bodes well for the counter-cultural movement to immediacy, Slow Criticism, which has begun to repurpose itself in recent years as social media usage grows. First coined by Dana Linssen (2009) as ‘The Slow Criticism Project’, and now in its fifth annual edition in De Filmkrant, as a reaction against homogeneity and promotion-driven criticism in print, Slow Criticism connotes a reaction to instant responses published on social media like Twitter and the oversaturation of online film content in general. Twitter was introduced in 2006 as a short message system, primarily to serve as a mobile phone application with micro messages (Lasorsa et al. 2012:21), known as tweets, comprising no more than 140 characters. It is now more commonly known as a micro-blogging site. Just as blogging has become common in media and public life (Domingo & Heinonen 2008; Lasorsa et al. 2012), in 2013 micro-blogging is commonplace. The idea of a Slow Criticism (Linssen 2009; 2010; 2011; 2012; 2013; Guillén 2011; Smith &Taylor 2011) to counteract these developments has its own critics 147

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(James 2010b; Rizov 2010). Vadim Rizov (2010) calls it a ‘crockpot idea’ and argues, ‘Twitter’s a force for cross-pollination of ideas and serendipity; taking snapshots of its inanities proves no more about Twitter than porn does about the internet as a whole.’ Some critics contributing to the Slow Criticism discourse also see value in short-form instant response. Shambu is not against the rapidity and instantaneousness of social media and, although he states that his ‘heart is still in long form criticism’, he voices support for value in the microform: There is a vanguard function that some Tweets and Facebook status updates can perform. They can introduce seeds of new ideas in a brief way. You can take that idea and collect evidence from several films and expand it into a full-length essay. If you look at many essays, they begin from something small, they begin from a seed of an important or new idea and then build from that and expand on that. Without that wonderful seed of an idea you wouldn’t have a great essay.

Clearly, especially as many critics acknowledge that writing is hard work, the ability to make a short statement or aphorism in public is appealing in that it allows opinions to be heard prior to publishing or researching a longer piece. For one thing, it lets others know their reading of the film; in an environment where anyone can have an opinion, critics have become more protective of their own. James comments on the press screening environment in London: No one talks about the films, at all. So there isn’t, in fact, this viral influence going on. Bradshaw in particular is very firm about this. No one talks to each other about the films. In fact they’d rather do anything than talk to each other about the films. Because they prize their own opinion and their own instant response, more so now that the internet exists.

Often that instant response can now be tweeted to prove that it was theirs first and expanded upon later. When all critics are discussing the theme of immediacy and how they are expected to react and write in a short timeframe, Slow Criticism is a project not without merit in keeping long-form alive in the consciousness of the cultural public sphere. 148

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Although there is value in instant reactions and fast-paced criticism, as is even recognised by those championing the Slow Criticism movement, there are times when such speed is incompatible with the film culture to be critiqued.

Tweeting on The Tree of Life An examination of interviewees’ reactions to their fellow critics and industry responses to The Tree of Life at the Cannes Film Festival on the morning of 16 May 2011, reveals how the disruptive pace of digital impacts upon criticism. Two actions which contribute to this effect are the use of social media to instantly promote opinions and critics filing unprecedentedly quick reviews of the film. Winner of the 2011 Palme d’Or award, The Tree of Life is a semiautobiographical work, directed by the filmmaker Terrence Malick and starring Brad Pitt and Sean Penn, which mildly subverts conventional narrative and opens up a host of possible discussion points as to what a family drama set in the 1950s means, juxtaposed to meditations on religion, evolution, space and time. Although not the most challenging of cinema, it is a film worthy of contemplation: some US cinemas offered disclaimers when it was released saying that no refund would be given on tickets (Willmore 2011) – presumably for those ill-prepared viewers who had come to see the latest Pitt/Penn movie. Koresky (2011c) remarks that his favourite thing about running into people after screenings was their ‘Slack-jawed speechlessness:  whether they ultimately came out feeling kindly to the film or not, those moments of silent confusion are worth more than a million Cannes tweets.’ James argues that The Tree of Life is a work which ‘requires a few days thinking before you write about it’. Lawrenson remarks of the Cannes coverage, ‘digital culture demands that sort of instantaneous feedback. But we’re being short changed by that immediacy.’ Given the Cannes festival environment is often one which celebrates quick-fire responses to films up for awards or tipped for international sales, it is all the more surprising that many critics point to the reactions around this film as exemplary of the negative aspects of instant 149

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response and fast-paced digital culture on film criticism. Brooks places the responses in a wider context when he argues: First-look criticism can be instrumental in making or breaking a picture, or at the very least in establishing a consensus that can be argued and challenged down the line. This year’s Cannes film festival was a case in point. Early rumours were that The Tree of Life was a stinker and there was the faint sense that even its distributors and backers were circumspect about it. But the first reviews were by and large extremely positive (and even the negative ones took it seriously and praised many aspects of the film). I think this helped – both in changing the industry’s expectations for the film and also nudging it towards the Palme d’Or award.

It is possible that the instant responses to the film, which many interviewees dislike, are therefore a cathartic reaction to the initial negative buzz which suggested that the film was of a poor standard. That this sort of reaction is expected at film festivals such as Cannes still seems to perturb some critics who are uncomfortable with the effect speed is having on film criticism in general. Wilkinson states: Speed has become much more of the essence. Critics will come out of a screening and they will already be writing furiously that very second. Which is why there is this counter idea of Slow Criticism. I  mean, does the audience want you to come out of Terrence Malick’s Tree of Life and just dash off five hundred words of what you saw, I mean, did you see some of the reviews that went up that morning? One or two of them with very reputable organisations, Variety for example.

With the first press show at 8.30am local time, and the film running time at 139mins, the screening would have finished at just before 11am. Senior Variety critic Justin Chang (2011) filed his 1,348 word positive review less than two hours later and paradoxically writes within it: ‘And so it’s only fitting that The Tree of Life should demand a measure of patience.’ It is difficult to tell if his review has been altered in any way since (there is no indication of this), and although it is not written in the most captivating style, it reads as a functional piece of reportage which is an important trait of trade school film criticism. Lawrenson recognises this function 150

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when he comments, ‘Most of the reviews in the trades are really influential. Because if your film is rubbished in the trade that’s going to affect how it sells on to distributors.’ Of course this is a film like any other where one can have an instant response, but from a critical perspective whether you should immediately commit that response to publication is contested by critics. Andrew Grant (2011) argues that there is more pressure on online-only outlets to turn in copy but that events reached ‘ridiculous levels’ at the screening in Cannes because reviews were published while the film had thirty minutes to run. Namely, Fabrice Leclerc’s (2011) 335 word review appearing on the L’Express site, which compares Malick to Stanley Kubrick and the film to 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968), and is again functional and mostly descriptive. Grant (2011) states: ‘No idea how that happened. Was he filing from the screening, or did he decide he’d seen enough around the ninety-minute mark? Regardless, reviews began appearing all over the net within the next few hours. Here’s a work that took nearly forty years to make it to the screen. Doesn’t it deserve something more than knee-jerk criticism?’ Tree of Life is a film which is conducive to debate, as highlighted by the long-form symposium approach taken by Reverse Shot, who are also an online-only outlet not bound by being first with reactions to films. Their writers contributed 1500 words or more, each dealing with a theme from the film:  religion, nature, evolution, dinosaurs or childhood, but were very much the exception to a wave of quick-fire reviews and opinions. Lawrenson remarks on how ‘ridiculous’ it is that most reviews were up within two hours but also comments on a discussion he had with one sales agent who said ‘during the screening she could see a consensus building around this film. So other sales agents were watching the screening and tweeting about it. And once a film gets a reputation that affects the price.’ Ansen argues that this behaviour reflects the wider culture and is true of the audience as well as the critics: ‘I’ve seen kids sitting in a screening texting each other in the same row when they thought things were a little slow in the movie and they stop watching and text their reactions. It’s scary.’ The impact of technology upon the working practices of the film industry is, then, visible at times at press 151

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and industry screenings:  it is now common to witness many in the audience tapping their smartphones or typing on laptops in the dark. In an extreme overreaction to such transformations in press screening culture, film critic Alex Billington (2013), from First Showing , actually called 911 to report the activity in one screening at the TIFF 2013. Of course, in such environments distributors, potential buyers, and other industry representatives with vested interests in reporting quickly on the films also operate. New social media platforms such as Twitter have accelerated the necessity to publish opinions quickly. Of course, all of these reviews mentioned on The Tree of Life are longer than the 140-character tweets which linked to promote some of them but they are exemplary of the need to react and publicise that reaction, which is what the social media framework is built upon. Collective tweets can now turn a film from the best ‘buzz’ of the year into an absolute flop in the space of a week (Contrino 2011) and some in industry are beginning to recognise this power. Director and former film critic Rod Lurie, in an interview with Fred Topel (2011), argues that Twitter is about to become more important in getting people into cinemas than film critics because, ‘If somebody on their Twitter sees 1000 people telling them to go see a certain movie, they’re going to go regardless of what one person at The Tribune says.’ All opinions can now be aggregated with a democratic majority overriding critical expertise – even if this majority can also be critical expertise via aggregation on Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic. For Gabler (2011) the real threat to cultural authority has only just begun with the advent of social networking sites (Twitter, Facebook, myDigg, Yelp and more) where, via the sheer quantity of opinion, ‘The people are overrunning the Winter Palace of cultural elitism.’ Witticisms and humour aside, more often than not in 140 characters, or even less via a smiling or frowning emoticon, these opinions signify little more than positive or negative judgments without justifications. A  common argument against micro-blogs is that they are so short they often leave little room for nuance or balanced journalistic views (Lasorsa et al. 2012:30) but the increased importance of Twitter as a journalistic and critical tool has been embraced by most critics 152

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interviewed. A discussion about the promotional role of Twitter in professional critical practice will follow shortly. There is, of course, a history of this concise judgment in film criticism before Twitter. Nayman argues that much of North American film criticism has been adversely affected by the thumbs up and down approach popularised by Gene Siskel and Ebert: ‘That’s what Siskel and Ebert was, you could mute the talking head bits, they were almost a pretext to the thumbs.’ Critics, as will be detailed further in the next section, are mainly using social media to link to their longer and more considered pieces, even if those have been written in a matter of hours. Clearly this is not always the case because there will be those who have considered reactions, even in 140 characters, if not progressing these thoughts any further. Then there will be critics who do not promote their opinions or work in this way through social media and simply write at unrushed at length, such as Peary. What an analysis of some film critics’ reactions towards the critical reaction of The Tree of Life shows is that they consider some film culture not conducive to instant response. Of course, these critics would also have had an instant response even if they did not decide to share it immediately. That so many critics reflect upon the absurdity of reviewing a complex work with such immediacy is a positive sign for the considered approach to film criticism. This section on the digital critic demonstrates that there is now an identifiable transformation in film criticism in the digital age which privileges the importance of communicating via technology with speed. Firstly, there is a clear engagement from a significant number of critics concerning usability: how they consider their writing in a digital environment. More importantly, there is almost universal acknowledgment that instant reactions and quicker writing is having an impact on quotidian working practices, alongside the drive to promote opinions using social media. This rapidity and immediacy has led to a concurrent manifesto of Slow Criticism, which appeals to the more reflexive train of critical thought, and also highlights the incompatibility of instant response and complex works. Of course one can have an instant judgment on The Tree of Life as one can on any other film, but 153

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whether that translates only a few hours later to an appropriate review of the work is a moot point. Through increasing numbers of amateurs and increasing pace, the online environment and its delivery devices, such as smartphones, continue to impact on the working practices of film critics to greater or lesser extents. However, the level of involvement by critics in online culture will now be subjected to further analysis in relation to the themes of democracy and participation outlined in Chapter One, in order to place online culture in context and also to reveal visible habits and norms in film criticism.

The Myths of Participatory Culture In Chapter One, participation was given as a key trope of the digital media age. This theme and its wider characteristics of democratic inclusivity, beyond solely political definitions, will now be applied to a reading of the empirical evidence. This will show that, firstly, while film criticism has been opened up to a virtual public sphere with more amateur writers than ever before, it is still a male-dominated practice and should also be placed in the context of how representative online culture actually is. Secondly, even in the shift from a one-to-many to a many-to-many communication model, professional film critics still actively seek to retain their historical gatekeeper roles more than amateurs do. These arguments strengthen the case for a more static rather than dynamic period for film criticism. The internet has been mooted by many scholars as enhancing democratic principles and facilitating a return to/bringing into being an ideal public/virtual sphere (Papacharissi 2002; Goldberg, 2011; Jeffres et al. 2011:60). Goldberg (2011:739) asserts that more than an interest to scholars, the public sphere is a preoccupation; with New Media & Society publishing forty articles related to the public sphere as a central theme since it began. The internet, however, is not the first mass medium to be met with the notion that it would bring about improved democratic ideals. Papacharissi (2002:18) shows that these ideas formed around radio and then television, which, she argues, have succumbed 154

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to more commercial modes. Critics of the public sphere have argued that it never truly existed because social groups were excluded or their contributions were minimised (Goldberg 2011:742), both points which are of concern to film criticism online. That more people can participate – start a website or a blog, write on a comment section or review on an aggregate or VOD site, post on Twitter or Facebook etcetera – in film criticism than ever before is the most obvious democratic change (Roberge 2011:448). Even if many professional critics fail to consider quality amateur output, this contribution is inherently a positive and progressive step for film criticism. It is important to place participation and inclusivity online in context. For instance, Nielsen (2006) offers his theory that 90 per cent of users do not participate online but ‘lurk’ with 9 per cent offering the most basic comments and 1 per cent producing most of the content in a rule he calls 90-9-1. It is a rule visible at times when researching film criticism online as the same user names frequent a variety of websites. For instance, the same names (CrazySphinx, Greg x, Jirin, Matt Parks, Patapon) writing in response to an article by White (2010b) in the New York Press are found commenting on the P:NC website in 2011, as well as other MUBI threads. Nielsen’s (2006) theory does seem to have longevity even as more people begin to use social media. A  Harvard Business School report finds that only 10 per cent of the users on Twitter do 90 per cent of the tweeting with 300  million subscribers from its estimated 500 million users completely inactive (Barnett 2009). While it is important to contextualise the online environment in this way, it does not complicate the measurements of the impacts of web technologies on film criticism any more than taking an offline sample is definitive of all English-language film criticism. This book can only deal with the empirical and secondary evidence that has been sourced specific to this work. As this is the case it is also impossible to say whether patriarchal dominance persists online, as it does in some evidence from the profession of film criticism historically. The spirit of a democratic film criticism opened up by the web would imply that the practice, if not profession, 155

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was open to anyone. In the past, there have been famous examples of women film critics such as Dilys Powell, Penelope Houston, Iris Barry and Susan Sontag, Pauline Kael and Molly Haskell in North America. While Britain has always had a rich history of female film critics, post-1970s, UK film criticism fell more into line with the rest of the film industry as males dominated in larger numbers (Bell 2011). Even though, through his analogy of film criticism as a cave, Cousins remarks that ‘It tended to be white males who got in in the past but that has all changed. There are a lot more people in there now’, the practice is still visibly dominated by male voices. In that respect the complaints levelled at film criticism for being ‘male, pale and stale’ with a lack of women or BME writers are still valid ones. For this book I canvased 94 critics with a profile in film culture in which 15 were female with only four female participants from 30 respondents. At both festivals in Edinburgh and Toronto it is difficult to ascertain – with the inclusion of industry delegates – just how many film journalists are male or female. However, in areas restricted to journalistic access, at press conferences for instance, it is clear that there exists a dominant male presence. Throughout her research Bell (2010; 2011; 2011b) shows that women film critics often had to fit their work around childcare responsibilities: this may explain their low numbers at events such as festivals, which are rarely childcare friendly. In addition to the above factors, the masculine signifier of amateurs as fan-boys is not lost, and there is still disparity between the sexes in film culture as well as related fields like journalism. For instance, the contributor list to the P:NC event in Edinburgh shows 20 per cent participation from women, which is something which co-curator and critic for Electric Sheep, Kate Taylor, claims that she is disappointed about because she actively tried to seek out more females. This also reflects a wider concern in the British film industry where women are under-employed and female directors are, ‘Rarely considered to direct the hot scripts’ (James 2012). There remains an under-representation of women directors and writers with numbers actually decreasing in the UK film industry in 2013 (Wiseman 2013). Moreover, males can still be seen to dominate journalism in general, 156

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especially in UK newspapers (Sedghi & Cochrane 2011). Certainly evidence today suggests that a gender imbalance remains in film criticism, although of course it would be difficult to say, without extensive research, whether or not this is the case in amateur film criticism. There are high-profile female film critics, both professionals and amateurs, who have a dedicated following due to their online work in publications or blogs, for instance Stephanie Zacharak and Catherine Grant. Yet there is some evidence to show that a female influence on film criticism is in further decline in the digital age (Lauzen 2013). The latest Cineaste international symposium which announces ‘Film Criticism:  The Next Generation’ (The Editors 2013; 2013b) offers little promise for gender equality in the future with 18 male respondents and only three female. These reminders are still necessary even with recent headlines such as an all-female nominee list for the Pulitzer for criticism in both 2014 and 2015 – with Zacharak among those shortlisted. The lack of females in film criticism is never raised as an issue in the interviews; on occasion it was a topic in casual conversation. Vizcarrondo conveyed her frustration that there were few females writing film criticism, but there was a casual acceptance of the situation (off the record) by some of the older-generation critics at the TIFF. Here opinion seemed to suggest that there were plenty of women in the field, often referring implicitly to those in positions of power, such as Manohla Dargis at the NYT (also shortlisted for the Pulitzer in 2015). This endemic characteristic of film criticism is certainly visible when looking at the practice in the UK and North America today but it does not present itself as problematic to the critics, which may connote ignorance, acceptance or reflect the male dominated sample. Perhaps that not all interviewees are from privileged backgrounds is the most democratic change to the critical establishment, as Cousins argues: It feels to me that any overall democratisation of a field, in this case film criticism, is necessarily going to improve it. And those people like me who came from a very working-class background with no cultural connections whatsoever, and didn’t know there was a real job as a film critic. I think it’s easier in the modern era for people like that to get into it.

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On highlighting the democratisation of intellect as a result of access to information, Telly Davidson (2011), also argues for a change from the US ‘Golden age of (overwhelmingly white, upper-middle and upper-class, Eastern Established or Hollywood-based) public commentators’. Although, for Mark Ravenhill (2013), there is still the perception in UK that critics are mostly male and belong to a higher social class, which is why they remain out of touch with audiences. The film critic as highbrow intellectual or as white bourgeois male has been an inadequate assessment for many decades in the late twentieth century and arguably throughout film history. Yet as a utopian discourse forms around the web to open up culture to critique by anyone, disparities still remain. Firstly, participation in online culture cannot be said to be representative of a macro concept, such as society, or a micro specialisation, such as film criticism. Furthermore, females are underrepresented in film criticism as they are in in the film industry and journalism in general; as they were when Habermas (1991) first theorised the eighteenth-century public sphere. Further research into amateur film critics online may reveal whether or not technology can eventually erode patriarchal dominance in film criticism. The next subsections continue the narrative tensions between amateurs and professionals by showing that some professional critics refuse to interact in comment sections, with amateurs – or those from amateur backgrounds  – showing more willingness to interact with audiences on social media.

‘Flaming’ Anonymity We live in a digital culture which promotes sharing and communication: 12 million Britons share or receive 67 million pieces of content every week with one fifth of those surveyed sharing information about films (McGuinness, 2013). However, professional film critics are often reluctant to engage with an online film culture which is eager for interaction. For Croggon (2011) the fact that all critics can be challenged and argued with is ‘the democratisation of opinion’, but in order to be challenged and argued with critics have to participate in the debate. On both sides of the 158

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Atlantic, there is little evidence of motivation to relinquish the custodian of culture role which has benefited film critics throughout the twentieth century. The embedding of Facebook and Twitter into everyday critical practice has allowed simpler interactions to transpire, such as a ‘Like’ or a ‘Favourite’ in response so something communicated towards the critic but the dominant mode of the critic putting out the news to be consumed is the main continuous behaviour. The first reason for a lack of participation relates to online etiquette and user comments, what has become commonly known as the shorthand, trolling. Habermas (1991) argues that critical reason and rational debate constitute a public sphere; however, literature on the virtual sphere is dominated at times with complaints over the nature of communication. In The Cult of the Amateur, Andrew Keen (2007:1) argues that Web 2.0 is where ‘Ignorance meets egoism meets bad taste meets mob rules’. Irrational and heated linguistic attacks which take place online at times have been referred to as ‘flaming’ (Papacharissi 2002:10), with the contemporary label, ‘troll’, currently at the centre of debates over the moderation of Twitter. However, fans of films can be just as emotionally unreasonable without intentionally setting out to destabilise a forum for debate (as trolls characteristically do). A staunch supporter of online film criticism, even Rosenbaum (2010) highlights the ‘brain-dead’ user comments on IMDb. Peary comments, ‘Certainly the anonymity of being a responder on the net has brought out the worst human beings. Writing just anti-intellectual crap and just insulting the reviewers, that’s too often the case.’ A defender of ‘erudite’ criticism, White (2010b) argues against film culture’s democratisation because even though there is more writing it has actually ‘Weakened our cultural foundation and decentered aesthetic and political authority. As uncredentialed experts multiply and flounder, we’re all victimized by hype.’ Serving to reinforce his point, his article generates many passionate and sometimes nasty responses, including ‘This fucker gave Resident Evil: Afterlife [Anderson, 2010] a fresh tomato’ from the user Patapon (2010), who is, interestingly, now listed as a moderator on MUBI. Of course there are examples of websites where considered and respected debate between contributors is often reached, Dave Kehr’s 159

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website , MUBI, Greencine Daily and Shambu’s blog, yet even in the most amenable and rational environments questions are raised over whether anyone is truly communicating. One of the contributors to the P:NC event on MUBI, Greg x (2011), questions whether the online roundtables are discussions at all or just random riffs being ignored by everyone out to push their own viewpoints. Of course commenting on film culture does not always amount to film criticism but there are counter-reviews and opinions, often at length, from fans and consumers which appear below the line of the established critics’ reviews. Still, the overall impression of this space is that it is not an area conducive to reasoned debate. Tolley is fairly representative when she states: I haven’t found meaningful dialogue online in terms of the articles that I’ve written. You get people writing stupid comments. The anonymity of online is that you get – people call them trolls – people just writing crap comments. Which is really frustrating and that’s not a dialogue. Where I have had a dialogue with people, it tends to be people I know in the real world. We might talk about it in the pub and then we might go online and respond to something I’ve written. Yeah it’s pretty rare to get that. I think that people should put their name to the comments that they write; I think that’s really important. Or you just get a tendency of people writing abusive stuff. You know, if you go on the Guardian [website] you just get a whole load of abusive people.

Her comments on having a dialogue with people that she knows echo an argument that Shambu makes when he says, ‘I have a feeling that film critics read each other, a lot. The public at large… I’m not sure how much serious film criticism they actually seek out.’ Perhaps the threat of being attacked anonymously perpetuates critical cliques in the digital age; that critics band together in groups at festivals, even setting themselves in opposition to other groups of critics, is a point raised by Wilkinson from her experiences at Sundance. On occasion abusive comments represent a conflation between the schools where a critic writing at a sophisticated level is attacked for the dismissal of a film by fans of that style of film. Harkness reflects on 160

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colleagues being deluged with negative feedback on Rotten Tomatoes for their critical reviews of The Dark Knight (Nolan 2008) and states, ‘You’ve got these kids who are trashing Anthony Lane from the New  Yorker. They’re not New  Yorker readers! He’s writing for a very erudite kind of audience.’ As has been argued in Chapter Two, film criticism cannot be treated as a single entity because so many different interests persist within its sphere. This is something which the rise of aggregation in the digital age has done little to promote. A reader/user can now visit Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic on their mobile and ignore the once visible cultural hierarchies between publications. Because on these sites film criticism is one entity without nuance (or encouragement to actually read the review), the user can see that the New Yorker position does not correlate with that of AICN, for example, and proceed to direct their displeasure at Anthony Lane. Some critics are able to put such heated comments in perspective, even citing the 90-9-1 rule from Nielsen (2006). Pulver notes, ‘Basically you’re listening to 200 complainers instead of 300,000 people who are just sort of quiet and don’t necessarily respond.’ But for most, that they can be attacked for their opinion more readily is reason enough not to enter into dialogues in online forums and comment sections. This is not true for all professional critics in the sample; Murray is enthusiastic about the comments pages at The AV Club. And on occasion high-profile critics such as Kermode, Bradshaw and Ebert in the past have been known to be active in exchanging views with the audience. There are some critics who actually point out the benefits of comment sections, for instance Kohn remarks:  ‘I certainly look at all the comments when there are some and sometimes people point out factual errors, which is very helpful’, even if he also claims that he tries ‘not to get too involved in that stuff because you could spend all day Googling yourself and trying to figure out what kind of life you have on the internet and trying to control it.’ It is, in part, a lack of control over how their opinions are now read and responded to and argued against that perhaps perturbs some critics. It is not only that some consumers, fans and amateurs behave in this way which limits interaction. Often combined with this incendiary 161

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behaviour comes, as has already been alluded to, increasing anonymity, whereby the remarks cannot be attributed to any named individual. Papacharissi (2002:21) argues that we conduct ourselves differently online because, ‘We transcend physical space and bodily boundaries upon entering cyberspace.’ Perhaps the lure of anonymity stems from a lack of accountability otherwise unlikely in debates on older media forms such as letters to the editor. Harkness comments: If you’re going to take the time to write to the newspaper you have to supply your name and address, and your name gets published after the letter. This is the problem I have with online forums:  nobody does that. I’m putting my name on my opinions. I’m not embarrassed about what I’m saying. But they’re too much of a coward to, when slating me or praising me (very rarely does that happen). I don’t understand going to the effort of posting a comment that you have no stake in. In a way it’s kind of nice because they are really passionate about it. I mean it sounds weird for a critic to complain about somebody complaining right? And I’m not, I don’t really care, I have no problem with these people slating me online because I’m doing the job that I like. I do think it’s weird that they comment without having the guts to put their name up on it. Because clearly they want people to know their opinion.

It is evident from Harkness’ tone that it is clearly uncomfortable to have your work readily attacked without justification. Anonymity is raised as an issue because it is confrontation without accountability, where users set out to make a name for themselves but paradoxically no-one knows who they are. Cyberspace is at once public and private space (Papacharissi 2002:20), and anonymity comes from wanting to still be able to separate the private from the public and is therefore counterproductive to the spirit of debate in a public sphere.

Gatekeeping The second piece of evidence which supports the assertion that most film critics are not interacting or participating with readers relates to their usage of social media. In some of the more recent advances in social 162

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media, the notion of reaching a consensus is often, positively, displaced by thriving argument (Kunzru 2011). Habermas’ (1991:234) nightmare democracy is the absence of rational discussion but also the instability of a public sphere where some interests are able to express their will more than others. This theory is prominently framed in the digital media age on Twitter and the ability for established film critics to swell their profiles. There are unique cases, such as the late and much-celebrated Roger Ebert, the most popular English-language film critic in America. In early 2013 he had 811,552 followers but others continue to have a not insubstantial following, such as Kermode (128,485), Knowles (44,699)  and Cousins (12,864) with many of the other critics interviewed, such as Nayman, Koehler and Lee, having around a few thousand followers or more each (Twitter profiles accessed, 22 February (Ebert) and 13 June (all others) 2013). Twitter has become integral to the work practices of journalists and its cultural significance has even been captured in physical form. Masha Tupitsyn (2011) composed a paperback book made entirely of tweets on film and television, intended as a comment on ephemerality being captured materially, because Twitter initially warned users about losing tweets after the first two thousand. What is absent from Tupitsyn’s Laconia:1,200 Tweets on Film (apart from a useful index), and is symptomatic of a great deal of critics on Twitter, is that she has no interaction or exchange with others – there is no thriving argument present apart from her own interaction with scholarly and cultural texts. In the first large-scale quantitative study of its kind, with over 22,000 journalists analysed, Dominic L.  Lasorsa et  al. (2012) show that established journalists working out of ‘elite’ broadcasting and newspapers are less inclined to relinquish their gatekeeping roles (providing transparency about their job or engaging with other tweeters, for instance). This is in line with much of what has been argued in Chapter Four with legacy print media and Respected Space ensuring that those who operate in these domains do so from a privileged position. These results, of micro-blog usage by journalists, also mirror those from research into the blogging phenomenon at its inception; for instance, see Singer (2005). 163

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Pulver is again aware of usability and participation research online when he claims that ‘Something like 80 per cent of all tweets are put out by about 20 per cent of the people on it. Twitter’s all about consuming. Very few people actually use it. They just follow their famous people and read what they write. So all those millions of people that are supposedly on it are mostly inactive.’ His comments suggest that, although appearing online instead of print and being promoted by technology such as Twitter, the gatekeeper media model still stands for individuals as well as institutions. Film critics interviewed, that use Twitter and Facebook, use these as platforms to promote their work above and beyond engagement with other users. Hynes sees Twitter as a tool for journalism whereby he reports film news on the platform, and this is a similar function noted by almost all established critics:  Nayman remarks that he has a profile to maintain; Peranson uses it to promote his magazine’s online reviews and Harkness states he needs it to promote himself because the Scotsman’s digital content is ‘not very good’. These film critics do not foreground any form of engagement with followers on the site. This perspective shifts however when the responses of amateurs, or those who started out as online amateurs, are considered. Sam Clements and Lyne note that, for The Picture House Podcast and UltraCulture respectively, Twitter has been vital for building and interacting with a fan base; Wilkinson discusses the writers from Eye for Film debating with readers over their work in this way because their site offers no comment function (due to fears over anonymity and sniping); for Shambu interaction is key to his development as a critic and (although professionally obliged to and circumspect about 140-word opinions) Lee, as well as Everleth, both recognise the merits of interaction on the site. It is clear, then, that while established professional critics seek to retain their authoritative position, some amateurs are far more accommodating to audience interaction and engagement. Not all interviewees use Twitter but the majority of those that do use it to promote their work or profile to large groups of followers rather than interact with them; perhaps the reasons behind this are logistical, due to those large numbers of followers as well as being busy professionals. 164

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Nayman comments on the difficulties in trying to engage with large numbers of followers: I have a Twitter personality to maintain, it’s depressing. So you get this incredibly complex web of opinions, counter-opinions, put-downs, dismissals, re-tweets, people ignoring each other, and there’s been no film criticism at any point in this discussion. The assertion of opinion, some of which may be correct, is very insightful by some of these people but it’s not down on the paper. It’s not quite The Paris Review, with people going back and forth and taking issue with each other at great length. Not that that’s always intelligent either.

When discussing Twitter use, the argument is more nuanced than film critics not interacting with comment sections. Critics may interact from time to time, especially with other critics now, and there are examples of other professional critics who do this more regularly, such as Bradshaw at the Guardian. Arguably, because Twitter makes it easier to respond directly rather than having to scroll down comment threads beneath reviews and articles, critics are more likely to engage with readers here. On 9 August 2013, a listener to the BBC’s Radio 5 Live Film Review tweeted from a cinema to ask critic James King whether they should see The Lone Ranger (Verbinski 2013) or Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa (Lowney 2013), to which the critic advised on the latter. There is evidence of interaction between critics and audiences in the digital media age, however small, but empirical evidence gathered here rarely amounts to any sustained two-way dialogues, often celebrated as a product of the internet and particularly Web 2.0. Moreover, many critics still do not use the platform in 2013, such as the older generation of critics, Ansen, Porton and Peary, with Rosenbaum only joining in late 2012. Transference of critical knowledge rather than exchange best describes communication procedures between critics and audiences contemporarily. On the one hand this is because of audience anonymity or inflammatory remarks (at times trolling and derailing debate), on the other there exist impracticalities of a professional critic being able to talk to everyone that engages them. The role of the critic on Twitter is to maintain a consistent profile as the opinionated focal point and major content producer; to act as the stimulus for debate amongst other users. 165

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For these reasons, it is possible to argue that film critics still maintain an authoritative position which perpetuates the historic roles: Critic>Reader. This section has shown that any discussion of online and participation must be placed in the context of who is actually contributing to that discourse and who is not. Additionally, through user behaviour and gatekeeping norms, film criticism online cannot be mapped to ideal participation or communication models in the public sphere or, indeed, a crisis discourse of critics losing authority. Moreover, it is amateur critics who are more likely to engage with audiences regularly, perhaps because they are trying to build a following which is normally inbuilt with established critics.

Conclusion This chapter has revealed the embryonic stages of transformation taking place in the culture of film criticism as it intersects with the web, showing increases in amateur numbers and faster working practices, but also norms and habits of past practices in terms of critics maintaining cultural authority. The creation of a consumer school, the exponential growth of fandom, and cinephilic writing have swelled the ranks of amateurism. This positive step has been overshadowed by professional critics’ stereotypes of amateurs as unedited fan-boys typing swathes of content for free or, indeed, unethically. Placed in context, amateurism is not something which can be seen as entirely new, especially as some critics are actively trying to reconnect amateurism to the historical concept of highbrow intellectual rather than the pejorative descriptions which have accompanied the idea in recent decades. Awareness of the form that their writing takes in an online environment is of importance to half of the interviewees, while all were keenly aware of word counts in cyberspace as either uniquely long or comparable with those in print in order to maintain attention. Equally attributable to all film critics is that they acknowledge having to adapt – or react via the philosophy Slow Criticism – to a milieu which promotes immediacy, instant responses and faster publication before moving onto the next topic. While this rate of change is not always conducive to works such as The Tree of Life, long-form criticism of such works still exists online at publications such as Reverse Shot. 166

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While both of these developments tilt film criticism online towards trends of disruptive change rather than a visible continuity, it is also argued that film criticism must be placed in the wider context of exposing myths around representation and participation on the internet. Film critic demographics, as the label of fan-boy in part suggests, have changed from the colonial perspectives of a critic as a privileged white bourgeois male; yet there remains an underrepresentation of women in the craft. Furthermore, participation research suggests only small numbers of web users are the most vocal. If there was a scholar who would approve of the idea of everyone being a critic it would be Habermas; but film critics remain authoritative gatekeepers even in an environment where anyone can express an opinion and direct it at them. Most interviewees perpetuate the narrative that comment sections are places to be avoided and only amateurs praise the virtues of interaction on Twitter before detailing its functional use as a tool for promotion of critical profiles and identities. Therefore, discussions of open democratisation and participation brought about by the internet are premature in relation to professional film criticism online. Perhaps it is unsurprising that an analysis of the narratives created by film critics about their practice online has heralded more transformation topics than analysis of the anachronistic print medium. Arguably, however, the fact that amateurism is not new and that most interviewees fail to notice this means that speed is the most identifiable actual change in the practice. The next chapter continues the momentum of sequential newness to its logical conclusion of newest yet: converged digital media which shape the practice beyond websites, blogs and social media to the very form film criticism takes beyond writing. The central argument follows the perspectives of Meikle and Young (2012:33), that technological developments are an on-going process and not an event: the internet has not yet been invented but keeps on being added to – which, of course, is change in itself from what the web looked like, for instance, before broadband. Through comprehensively analysing three converged media forms, with particular attention paid to the video essay, it is clear to see antecedents in previous media systems. Furthermore, while 167

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contemporary culture may be dominated by the image, the interaction and engagement by interviewees with these converged forms denotes the continued dominance of the written word rather than any technological transformation in the form of film criticism in the digital age.

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The preceding chapters show that while there are disruptions and transformations in contemporary film criticism, such as job losses or the speed at which many practitioners are working, there are customs and norms in working practices which are shot through with continuity, from negotiating commercialisation to gatekeeping and cultural authority. This chapter continues the line of enquiry into how technology, institutions and, as will be shown, legal frameworks are impacting on the very form film criticism takes in the digital media age. By analysing convergent media forms which are used to carry film criticism in an online environment, with specific attention paid to the video essay, it is argued that these media are not entirely original or, in drawing upon analyses of the extensive interview material, being engaged with by many of the interviewees who have never worked with them, seen few examples of them, or are confused by what they mean. There are transformations continually underway, such as the convergence of Public Service Broadcasts on cinema, with essay films, with experimental visual art, with laser discs and DVD commentaries which produce concepts such as the video essay, and which juxtapose the idea of a slow evolution, outlined in Chapter One, prevalent in Williams’ (1973) concept of a long cultural media revolution. These media forms 169

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do have the potential to augment the practice of film criticism beyond the conventions of the written word, particularly the podcast and video essay, but the fact remains that there is still a reliance on writing first and foremost which dominates the work of film critics interviewed in the UK and North America. While these convergent media developments offer promise for the future, they are discernible from older media and remain underused; as such they do not yet herald a shift in the paradigmatic form of film criticism. It is for these reasons that it is proposed that instead of new, these types of film criticism be considered as ‘other’ because they remain decentralised from the epicentre dominated by text.

A Brief History of ‘Other’ It is important to acknowledge technological and cultural change brought about by digitisation which impacts upon on film culture and in some cases transforms interaction with the film object. DVDs and now Video On Demand (VOD) services, as superfast broadband becomes normalised, have both contributed to the growth of amateur criticism and affected the daily routines of established film critics:  for example, screeners in digital code or disc negate the historical necessity of having to preview films at press shows. In fact, critics no longer need to attend festivals at all to see some films showing on the film festival circuits due to the arrival of ‘Festivals on Demand’ services such as Festival Scope . Consider, also, that Cousins’ The Story of Film:  An Odyssey (2011) or A Story of Children and Film (2013) may not have been possible had he not had access to easy time-shifting technological formats in DVDs, other computer hardware and software as well as digital distribution channels. They could theoretically have been made in the analogue era but with restricted access, technology and distribution would have taken an unquantifiable time to create, have cost far more to produce and reached a greatly reduced audience. The examples above are delivery mechanisms which help film critics do their jobs, but criticism itself has always been dominated by text. Other delivery media such as radio, television or oral curating have been less significant and best described as ‘other’ by comparison. The definition 170

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of ‘other’ here relates to that which is not dominant or exists only in small quantifiable numbers compared to that which exists in larger quantifiable numbers. Undoubtedly, there are important contributions to film criticism from these mediums; the argument here is that these forms are significantly less impactful in the short history of film criticism than writing. There are scholars working in the field of film criticism who show the importance of radio as a medium for UK film critics (Bell, 2011:194) and indeed for the UK and US film industries who sought to control critical opinions on the medium (Selfe 2011). In the US Ansen reflects on listening to the in-depth criticism from Kael on the radio which shaped his early career, ‘She attacked some of my favourite movies at the time, I  hated her! She had a famous diatribe against Hiroshima Mon Amor [Resnais  1959], which was one of my favourites, but there was something about the quality of her voice that compelled me to listen.’ There are also popular radio broadcasts in the UK today, consider Mark Kermode’s and Simon Mayo’s Film Review on BBC Radio 5 Live and initiatives such as BBC Radio Scotland’s The Movie Café, hosted by Janice Forsyth. But many of the critics on these shows also work in print or online with written critiques and features, which is something which radio critics in the UK have always done. For example, Selfe’s (2011) historical examination of radio critics makes clear their newspaper affiliations. Film criticism on television has been even less prolific, as it attempts to navigate a terrain often dominated by commercial aims and promotional agendas, with dedication to non-Hollywood product greatly reduced over the past 20 years in the UK (Thomson 2012:8). Beginning with the Picture Parade (1956), the BBC, as a public service broadcaster, has been the most consistent at least. It was at this institution that Cousins presented informative introductions on Moviedrome (1988–2000) before moving on to present Scene by Scene (1996–1999). In the Moviedrome (1988–2000) series, Cousins took over hosting duties from director Alex Cox (Mark Kermode currently performs a similar introduction function on Channel 4’s Film Four network). Scene by Scene is a show which he discusses as detached from the promotion cycle, ‘Whether it was Sean Connery or whether it was Bernardo Bertolucci, whether it was somebody quite famous or somebody not 171

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famous, it was roughly always between 900,000 and a million people watched. So I  drew the conclusion that there were roughly a million cinephiles in the UK.’ Su Holmes (2005) investigates the development of film criticism on British television from the 1950s with programmes with very few surviving archived extracts, such as Current Release (BBC 1952–3), Picture Parade and Film Fanfare (ABC 1956–7). In particular she discusses the contested agendas of those sponsoring such works and complicity in publicity in return for access to the necessary materials to produce a broadcast, which is relevant to the historical commercial challenges in print discussed in Chapter Three. Certainly, televised film criticism is currently popular with UK critics according to Pulver and Tolley, who exaggeratedly claim that every one of their colleagues auditioned for the role of co-presenter on the BBC’s perennial Film programme. In the US the seminal thumbs up (and down) approach to film reviewing, Siskel and Ebert and the Movies (and its various guises, 1986–2011), influences, not always favourably, film culture there:  Nayman is frustrated that Ebert, in Life Itself:  A  Memoir (2011), never talks about it, ‘I was waiting and waiting for him to talk about what that show did to American film criticism.’ Considering other remarks and his tone here, he judges the show’s influence to be negative and perhaps responsible for the current star-rating approach dominating film criticism. Speaking to the public about cinema is also something which has historical form as part of a film critic’s repertoire. Consider, for instance, the curating involved in programming, exhibiting and dissemination of films in a social context, as the French film critic André Bazin is celebrated for doing in ciné-clubs and workplaces (Davega 2013) and which was also Godard’s manifesto for criticism at Cahiers (Bickerton 2009:55). One additional trend, as noted in Chapter Three, and perhaps due to more freelancing than secure staff positions, is that a number of critics today do more than just write. For instance, Fujiwara (2013) argues that a critic who is not also a programmer today is an exception to the rule. A number of interviewees actively participate in such programming and curating at festivals (Ansen, Clements, Cousins, Hynes, Koresky, Lawrenson, Peranson, Smith, Taylor) or in the classroom (Peary, Porton, Shambu, 172

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Rosenbaum, Vizcarrondo) or in regular public engagements (James, Nayman). Without being pedantic, radio, television and curatorial roles often require some form of written text, at least to begin with, in preparation for the events. Writing is often positioned as the default formal function of film criticism by film critics. Fujiwara (2011) argues that ‘criticism can only be writing’, a point he emphasises again a couple of years later on discussing his role as a critic and programmer (Fujiwara 2013). It is this foregrounding of writing that is often echoed by many critics in interviews or in casual encounters and observations. Film critics may perform ‘other’ criticism in the form of programming or public lectures, or less likely appear on television or participate in radio programmes, but they do privilege the writer motif, specifically by saying things like ‘I’ve always been a writer. A word guy’, as Kohler does, and ‘I’m married to the word’, as Vizcarrondo claims. Video essayist Lee contemplates this textual dominance: I wonder if some theorist has ever come up with this term, the tyranny of the text. I  feel that for centuries, text as a medium of communication has just been such an essential and irreplaceable element of our culture, and now we’re at a phase where we’re starting to realise how limited that approach has been all along.

Lee’s view, however, is evidently still in the minority among film critics. When Manovich (2001) talks of a culture where text is subsumed by the visual image, this is not something which is readily applicable to film criticism as yet. This text-based dominance also takes place against figures which suggest that in 2015 almost 90 per cent of content on the internet will be images and video (Morrison 2013). It is surprising that critiques of a visual medium have historically not used more visuals as the language of their cultural interface. According to Thompson (2008), even image and still use in film literature was something of a rarity as recently as the 1970s. Providing a few well-known examples of radio and television criticism compared to the (at least) hundreds of similarly well-known publications which deal with cinema, in part or as their main remit, supports the argument that the written word dominates film criticism 173

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historically. While the convergent media landscape has clearly increased the opportunities for change in film criticism online, the critics themselves privilege their positions as writers first. The next section begins to examine some of these convergent media forms of film criticism in detail and the relative lack of engagement with them by interviewees. It is argued that these forms, such as picture essays, podcasts and video essays, can be seen as extensions of older media in newspapers, radio, cinema and television.

The Picture Essay and Creative Criticism Marshall’s (2004) theories, in which he argues that any innovation in contemporary media is brought about by the convergence of older media in an interactive and producer-led environment online, further strengthen the argument for newer media forms to be treated as extensions of past incarnations. Digital picture essays, sometimes known as photo-essays or slideshows, which are a series of pictures intentionally displayed to tell a story or evoke some thought or emotion, have been the preserve of print journalism for many years. In his study of American journalism, James Miller (2012:3) notes that as early as the 1950s newspapers began to make the image a more central facet in storytelling by increasing the size of photographs. In film criticism, picture essays are often a single still or series of shots and may also be complimented by a short caption or essay. Performing such image-play in a sophisticated way with little reliance on text are blogs such as David Cairns’ Shadowplay or Mathew Flanagan’s Landscape Suicide , but other blogs, such as Campbell’s, do use this method of engagement in-between textual posts from time to time; websites like Reverse Shot (Koresky & Reichert 2011) and Fandor sometimes have their writers talk to a single or series of stills (Cairns is also a filmmaker, co-directing the documentary Natan (2013) with Paul Duane). But this is something the late Gilbert Adair did back in 1995, writing around one shot from each year of production in his book celebrating the centenary of cinema, Flickers. 174

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According to critics Taylor and Smith, this online form of criticism has become more popular with critics across all arts – taken up quicker, they say, than its more glamorised cousin the video essay. Taylor remarks, ‘Beyond the video essays there’s also the picture essay, which has become incredibly prevalent in terms of online criticism and blogs, which use a still or a selection of stills. I think that’s been taken up by critics much quicker than video.’ Although such an assertion has to be questioned in light of the large numbers of video essays (admittedly not all by critics) now available online, her comments do relate to the ease with which a critic can capture a still and write about it (or not) as opposed to composing a video in any coherent way to say something meaningful. However, in more general ways the picture essay form is clearly plentiful today as it also shares its affinity with print. This type of work has been the staple of editors in journalism for many years, whereby they might display an image which aims to fulfil the cliché of speaking a thousand words, or print a series of images relaying a significant event either in tragedy or celebration. However, critics interviewed are less familiar with it as a critical tool and make only minimal mention of it. Apart from Taylor and Smith, the two film editors, Pulver and Lee, alongside Cousins, are the only critics to touch upon this type of work. Pulver is impressed with what can be revealed about a film from a picture gallery, claiming, ‘One of the interesting things about the digital development, which I see as a majorly positive thing, is creating new formats for coverage. Even something as simple as a picture gallery.’ Lee often commissions his contributors to write to an image as a precursor to video essay creation, he remarks: One sort of in-between step for my writers, who don’t know how to make video essays, is to encourage image essays. It works like a video essay in that they are speaking to scenes or images from a film but I’m using screen grabs as opposed to actual footage and then run their analysis of their images in between. This is what the web has over printed criticism:  it allows you that kind of malleability of elements. I just feel that web criticism itself hasn’t been explored to its full potential, where you can just bring images and align them with text in all kinds of interesting ways that I haven’t even conceived of yet.

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His comments support the idea that change and transformation, certainly at least in the form of film criticism, is at an embryonic stage with much still to be uncovered. Not many editors, however, are encouraging critics to work in this way. Cousins states that, although he would like to be approached to conduct such works, no editor or publication has ever commissioned him to work with picture essays: What I’ve never had and would very much like to have is somebody who would say, “Can you take this image of Jafar Panahi’s new film and write about that image?” Occasionally I’ve done that in my own work and if I do a website about a project that I’m doing. My last film I chose about 20 images and just wrote about the story behind the individual images. I  would much prefer that, to do it that way. And that would lend itself to an online style of reading.

Arguably, the style of reading he is talking about is in visual language, in the vein of arguments made by Manovich (2001) that the future will privilege the image over text, or by Nielson (2006), that reading text on a screen is more difficult than on paper. However, that deep reading and long-form film criticism, at the heart of the counter-movement Slow Criticism, may suffer may be something which is changing with the rise of mobile technologies. As smartphones and tablets unbind users from their desktops, statistics show actual rises in the numbers of people reading long-form digitally (PEW 2012). But Lee argues that the premise of the iPad is convenience so it is antithetical to deep engagement when he comments, ‘I’m currently working through a thousand-page novel on my iPad, interspersed with bouts of emailing and YouTubing, so it’s just not the same experience as when that work was originally created.’ Working with images as a key element of publication in print and online is arguably alive and well in journalism in populist publications, but working with the image as critique is a preserve of more sophisticated, cinephile or amateur leanings. Individual blogs and more cinephilic publications online are where most examples of picture essays can be found. More commercial publications in the populist and trade schools do little to move beyond an image gallery with captions. This is perhaps due to the demands which a series of stills from a film alone can place upon the 176

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reader/user, to critically engage with what they are viewing, and relates to the historical arguments of some populist film criticism as appealing to the lowest common denominator. Whether or not moving images compel critics to work with convergent media more than still images will be analysed momentarily with the video essay, but it is also important to locate the picture essay in film criticism as part of a new wave of engagement with critical thought and practice, at least in the margins, which includes both image and text, and which Martin (2011) labels, ‘creative criticism’. Although still reliant on language-based addresses, specific images can take up a central role in critiquing the object at hand. Martin (2011) explains that in early 2009 Nicholas Rombes, on his blog Digital Poetics , launched a project called ‘10/40/70’ – an experiment in writing about film which selects three different time codes with such ‘constraint as a form of freedom’ as a guide to writing about film. Rombes (2014) has since developed his concept into a short book outlining his ideas in more detail with various examples in practice. This is the same effect in film criticism that Laura Mulvey (2005) discusses for film studies as new ways of seeing movies that were otherwise impossible before the widespread ability afforded in the digital age, from home video and laser discs to DVDs and capture software, to slow down frames, pause or even manipulate the image in other ways. While it cannot be said that specifics like the picture essay are revolutionising the practice of film criticism, there is now a broader and deeper engagement with the images from films. Images are more accessible and they are easier to interact with but they are also sharper which leads to its own innovations in how some critics are performing ‘creative criticism’ and writing about film. Lucas comments: I’m discovering myself, with Blu-ray, that there are whole new levels of appreciation being unmasked by this unparalleled clarity, so that I’m no longer simply conscious of the bones and musculature of cinema (acting, direction) but becoming increasingly aware of cinema at a more cellular level (lighting, set decoration). I  find this very exciting, and what excites me I  can communicate with excitement.

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What extends criticism beyond plot and performance descriptions and privileging the director (at all times) can only be progressive. While not exactly new or being undertaken by critics in great numbers, the importance of the recent trajectory of the picture essay is certainly noteworthy from more sophisticated examples of its usage in areas where considered reflection, or Slow Criticism, is encouraged. A more immediate converged media form, perhaps more characteristic of the inherent nature of blogs to be regularly updated to maintain audiences, the podcast is more conducive to mainstream and populist film criticism. It has been adopted by critics in the wider film culture but, as the next section will show, it is equally ignored by the majority of interviewees.

The Podcast Podcast (a neologism formed from the term broadcast and Apple’s iPod and applied to audio – and video – transmissions online) has clear antecedents in the traditional medium of radio in that it is an audio broadcast. Although film podcasts can be as diverse as what anyone with a microphone and an opinion can come up with, the more successful broadcasts share an affinity with radio formats. There are examples of general chatter by groups of individuals talking about films they have seen and whether or not they liked it there each week, for instance Movies You Should See, but there are many other examples which mimic radio broadcasts. The following podcasts regularly include reviews, interviews, features, contests, and special guests:  /Filmcast, Filmspotting, Criterion Cast and The Picturehouse Podcast. Some podcasts, such as The Projection Booth are brand extensions of print editions since expired (Cashiers du Cinemart 1994–2007) and supplement broadcasts with clips, which sometimes include the entire movies that they discuss. There are other examples of the freedoms online to become more specialised, such as KCRW’s The Treatment by Elvis Mitchell, which focuses on in-depth discussions with directors, writers and actors. There are other good examples, such as The Documentary Blog (focusing on that genre only) or Slate Spoiler Specials (for those who have seen the film) or Creative Screenwriting (focusing on script 178

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critiques). Of course, there are also many podcasts which mimic the many infotainment-style shows or writing that Rosenbaum discusses as being prevalent in traditional media, such as Kevin Smith’s Hollywood Babble-On. It should be evident from this list that the film podcast is far more dispersed across the schools than the picture essay. Any radical disjuncture from past practice in producing an audio broadcast pre-digital age obviously comes at the levels of distribution and technology:  podcasts can be accessed anywhere there is an internet connection and produced with minimal barriers to entry in terms of price or technological know-how. For instance, one would need only a laptop, a microphone, and software such as Apple’s GarageBand or Cakewalk Music Creator for the PC and a few hours spare to learn the interfaces. However, while individuals have the power to create their own audio broadcasts and distribute them online, the irony is that these often resemble and mimic the traditional formats made popular by radio broadcasts. Complete with Jingles, guest spots and regular formats, The Picturehouse Podcast in the UK is distributed through Picturehouse Cinemas, RSS Feeds and iTunes, and produced and presented by Sam Clements and Simon Renshaw. For Clements the beauty of the podcast is its convenience, in that you can do it almost anywhere from La Croisette in Cannes or in a bar after an IMAX screening (discussion at Project: New Cinephilia 2011). As an example of how film criticism can actually benefit a critic when it is dislodged from a reliance on the written word, former projectionist Clements claims that he started recording because he found his writing process to be too slow. Essentially he could articulate much quicker by simply talking about films rather than finding or spelling words, using the correct syntax and grammar. The increasing popularity of his show is reflected in the fact that both presenters are now accredited members of the UK press and regularly invited to screenings. Everyone from Kermode and Empire magazine critics to up-and-coming bloggers have not only spoken publically about listening to the show on Twitter and Facebook but have actually appeared on it. This means their podcast has not only built an audience through social media but, according to Clements, ‘absorbed’ it as well (discussion at Project: New Cinephilia 2011). 179

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Podcasts do have advantages over radio in the ability to become more specialised but one trait is particularly consistent between radio and film podcasting:  collaborative discussion on the artwork in question. It is rare to have one critic tell the audience what they think of a film without some reaction from another voice in the broadcast space. Editor of online journal Off Screen, Donato Totaro (2010b), writes that the podcast is ‘Another recent new form of criticism […] where one or more critics usually take an issue(s) to task in the good old-fashioned way of radio, the difference being they are always available to download and listen to at the person’s leisure.’ The notion that different opinions can be expressed on one topic is a rarity in written form, although this does happen at Reverse Shot, but it is a mainstay of traditional television, radio and now podcast transmissions. This is a benefit of the podcast which echoes that which Rosenbaum advocates as the very purpose of film criticism: ‘My own definition of what a film critic does, is someone who facilitates the discussion of film. And this, I think, existed well before the internet and it continues to exist.’ There is a wealth of research into podcasting but it is dominated by the practicalities of production in general (Geoghegan et al. 2007) or specifically in relation to educators (Villano 2008). While these can be practical in treating the form as new in terms of user development, looking at equipment and tools, encoding software, the editing process, getting listed in podcast directories or even making money with podcasting (Geoghegan et al. 2007), other works indirectly focus on more universal traits of good radio broadcasts such as ‘Be prepared’, ‘Focus on sound’, ‘Edit wisely’, ‘Be consistent’ and ‘Follow the leaders’ (copy what the best examples out there are doing) (Villano 2008). The most consistent and widespread work into the impact of podcasting in general culture is performed by the research company Edison (Webster 2012) but is only applicable to the United States. Seven reports in as many years attest to a growing familiarity with the term podcast and increased usage since 2006, with 29 per cent of Americans having listened to one in 2012. Podcast or podcasting was not a topic included in the latest Oxford research report into internet usage in the UK (Dutton & Blank 2011). However, a 2013 report from the Reuters 180

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Institute at Oxford does recognise the importance of podcasting in terms of the audio and video consumed each week by almost half (47 per cent) of all UK internet users with increasing usage of podcasts on mobile phones (Newman & Levy 2013:15&30). Worldwide estimable numbers of podcasts in general run into the hundreds of thousands but because they are being produced does not always mean they have an audience (Olmstead et al. 2011). In 2013, there are 173 directories alone listed which house podcast titles, everything from All Podcasts and iTunes to Women in Podcasting and ZENcast on the podcasting resource and listings website . Searching iTunes (UK) reveals 120 podcasts under the banner TV & Film (Searched iTunes application on 15 February 2013). This illustrates an importance in the culture of the form online if not with established film critics working today. Analysing the empirical data from interviews mirrors secondary sources from relevant Cineaste polls from 2000–2008, in which no critic mentions podcasts at all when discussing the contemporary state of film criticism in the US or internationally, or when considering film criticism and the internet. Apart from Clements (who actually creates a regular podcast) only Brooks in the UK and Lee from North America mention them. Brooks talks about it in the context of actively being asked by his employers at the Guardian to partake in the form: Today we are expected to be able to write features, reviews, news and blogs, and also to record podcasts and shoot videos. It is an interesting and challenging time. On the one hand, the traditional newspaper and magazine models are breaking down. On the other, there are so many more things you can offer. No doubt a lot of this content will shake down over the next few years. But right now we are at the stage of throwing things at the wall and seeing what will stick.

Although in the minority, his comments do suggest that film criticism is beginning to be influenced in new ways, at least in the very early stages, as visuals, moving images, audio, and text converge in the one media space. Lee discusses podcasts as just one of the many things film criticism now is: 181

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For Lee and other next-generation film critics such as Kohn  – who remarks that any sort of analysis or advocacy is criticism – the form that film criticism takes is less important than the fact that the discourse, in whatever form, has an audience. Beyond social media usage, it is rare for any interviewee to mention increasing personal or professional pressures to perform the various types of criticism that Brooks discusses. Like the picture essay, the podcast is not an entirely new form. Even though the podcast is readily accessible and interactive it is, as Marshall (2004) theorises of most ‘new media’, touched by a visible influence from traditional radio broadcasting. There is certainly more film content being broadcast than ever before in specialist ways which were not possible before the web, but the format these take relies heavily on the legacy of radio broadcast templates. The impact of podcasts on film criticism in terms of production and exhibition has not been negligible, as the numbers of those being created shows, but it is difficult to assess audience impact. Certainly with the critics interviewed, and in comparison to other critics canvased in various Cineaste symposia, it is possible to see that although audio broadcasting has been democratised by the web, many film critics are not as yet working with this form. The next section will examine a third convergent media form used to carry film criticism in the digital media age in greater detail than the previous two, primarily due to its publicised importance in contemporary film culture.

The Video Essay It is important to once again offer the caveat that it is ingenuous to ignore the impacts of new digital technologies on film culture. In terms of a discussion of digital video alone, video essays would not have distribution 182

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without the web and subsequent broadband internet innovations. Digital video publishing is now a mainstay in the festival sphere both in the media, through the abundance of video reportage and commentary overlaying clips from outlets such as the Guardian, and from festivals themselves such as the EIFF and the TIFF by promoting brochures and content, with even the live streaming of curated films now broadcast online from Locarno. Additionally, Digital cameras have allowed social impacts to become part of film culture, for instance consider the videos made by young filmmakers uploaded by the Ciné Institute (2010) in Haiti, documenting from within the chaos and fallout from the earthquake there in January 2010. In many ways digital video has affected the working practices of film critics and film culture at large, but the argument here for more considered continuity than disruptive change relates to few interviewees working with video and the visible lineage which has contributed to the converged media form of the video essay. The video essay (inter alia audiovisual or visual essay) differs from the previous two forms analysed because of the emerging scholarly film literature on it and because the form itself signifies criticism about film (and to a lesser extent television) more than any other art. It has also come to dominate some discussions or ‘progress reports’ on film criticism in the digital age (Keathley 2011). Christian Keathley (2011:180) argues that at present the video essay is the most common form of multi-media film criticism, a point echoed by others who recognise its considerable growth in the past five years (Lee and Pantenburg 2012; Shambu 2012; Totaro 2010b). Celebrated critics like Rosenbaum advocate, ‘I feel that some of the very, very best film criticism that is being done now, is being done on video.’ There has been an increase in sites willing to host these initiatives, with IndieWIRE’s Press Play, Fandor’s Keyframe, the Museum of the Moving Image in New York’s Moving Image Source, and the Catherine Grant-curated Audiovisualcy project with both YouTube and Vimeo channels. It is therefore important to analyse the video essay at length and, while recognising its innovation in terms of technology and distribution, build upon the argument throughout this chapter by showing its media evolution. 183

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Video essays are short critical films about cinema, films or artists, in one or a series of online clips usually lasting no more than 15 minutes each. For another definition, see Keathley (2011:189). More often than not, because the film at least has to pique the interest of the essayist on some level and because no one is going to spend time editing and manipulating content only for a few easy swipes, these forms of film criticism are positive and championing pieces of engagement. Therefore, as noted by Martin (Martin & López 2014), ‘Maybe there should be more audiovisual essays which are critical of their subject. We all operate in a mode of love. It would be interesting to use an audiovisual essay to prove that a film is badly directed.’ Like film podcasts, examples can be found of usage across the schools in the broader culture of film criticism. However, much of the concentration on video essay work, as opposed to that which can simultaneously be called a mash-up or remix, comes from academic and sophisticated schools in particular. While this contributes to the argument that non-text based methods of film criticism exist on the periphery, there are tentative signs that this may change in the future as more ambitious, related projects, such as Cousins’ cine-essay A Story of Children and Film (2013), receive more serious attention in the popular press with five-star reviews (Bradshaw 2013). There is a current discourse which posits the video essay as a new form (Grant 2012; Lee 2011; Smith 2011; Totaro 2010b) even if some of those same commentators also recognise its descendent status from past practices. Linguistically speaking, it might be antithetical to say that video essays (as with the term podcast) existed in older media forms, but only because of the terminology. The compound noun Video Essay is certainly new and newly adopted in film culture, and in the micro history of the web; it has not as of 2013 made it into the Oxford English Dictionary. However, the form that it signifies has a discernible ancestry. As with any perceived nascent form, writers have sought to produce initial category definitions (Grant 2012; Keathley 2011; Smith 2011) but there remains uncertainty in film culture over what constitutes or merits the label of video essay. In search of coherence and clarification some academics and critics have begun to construct first principles because ‘video essay’ is an umbrella term which shelters everything from Mike Stoklasa’s (2007) 184

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epic and crude critiques of Star Wars (Lucas 1999–2005) to scenes from Andrei Tarkovsky’s Mirror (1975) edited to Arvo Pärt’s Spiegel im Spiegel (Mirror in the Mirror) (PrimusInterInpares 2008). All video essays mentioned can be found in the bibliography, listed by author. The speed at which these works can be created and distributed means that video criticism is an important new practice, at an early stage of development. Totaro (2010b) argues that while video essays may not be new they are an example of how film criticism can be expanded beyond conventional paper publication. It is the manner and rapidity with which they can be created which critics notice as innovative; Kohn remarks, ‘Video essays are not exactly a new form. The way that they can be created in a very short space of time and spread across the internet is certainly new.’ It is appropriate that current definitions are broad and non-restrictive. Damon Smith (2011) coins the phrase Standard Video Criticism – which he claims is no more than an authoritative voiceover paired with footage – and Nonstandard Video Criticism – which he describes as reliant on the tools of cinema beyond the film under consideration. Keathley (2011) provides a more detailed continuum between two different registers, the explanatory – which is analytical and language-based – and the poetic which is expressive and battles against language with a collage of images and sounds. Lee and Volker Pantenburg (2012) organise themes under which the current types of video essays in existence can be discussed in terms of their content, from auteurist works to obsessions with a single scene to remixes of found footage. The uncertainty some critics have over what constitutes a video essay may, in part, be due to the varied trajectories of previous media which have shaped the form. The most common assertion by critics is that the video essay shares an affinity with the essay film, a term coined by avant-garde filmmaker Hans Richter in 1940 (Smith, 2011), but even the essay film is a form which encompasses a wide range of examples. Since Chris Marker and Alain Resnais created a landmark essay film Statues also Die (1953), Timothy Corrigan (2011) argues that the sheer breadth of films which may be labelled in this category, from Werner Herzog’s Burden of Dreams (1982) and Marker’s Sans Soleil (1983) to Slavoj Zizek’s The Pervert’s Guide to the Cinema (2006) and Banky’s Exit 185

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Through the Gift Shop (2010), precludes adequate definition. Chief blogger of Criticwire (part of IndieWIRE), Sam Adams (2013), has compiled a useful resource of many essay films. Yet, while the essay film might take anything as its subject, more often than not the video essay has the subject of film at its centre. There are other developments from cinema history which link the video essay to past practice beyond the essay film. The do-it-yourself filmmaking style of video essays – particularly if you are shooting original footage – can be traced back to Dziga Vertov at the end of the 1920s, so it is perhaps not incidental that more than 80 years later his Man with a Movie Camera (1929) is named as one of the top ten films of all time by Sight & Sound in 2012 and then as the best documentary of all time by the same publication in 2014. For instance, at a time when amateurs are experimenting with film and video more than ever before, this work of non-fiction which mixes documentary and avant-garde technique mimics the spectrum of content and form which video essays cover; it is a film described by Vertov ‘as an experiment in the language of pure cinema’ (Everleth 2013). That not all video essays use original footage reveals yet another antecedent, this time in remix culture. Remixing footage has been part of experimental cinema and contemporary art for decades. Lee and Pantenburg (2012) trace remix culture further to Joseph Cornell’s Rose Hobart in 1936, while Jonathan McIntosh (2012) has written ‘A History of Subversive Remix Video before YouTube’ highlighting thirty political video mash-ups beginning from World War II. Lee and Pantenburg (2012) argue that most of this audiovisual legacy, or precursor to the video essay, remains overlooked or locked away in archives. They pick up Catherine Grant’s term ‘videographic film studies’ and apply it pre-internet to television of the 1970s with filmmaker Robert Gardner’s The Screening Room (1973–1980). This prehistory is echoed by Kohn when he comments: If you look at documentaries about film history or about a certain filmmaker that have been airing on PBS or whatever over the years, I think the roots are there and also in clip analyses in classrooms. In the way that in an academic paper you’re supposed to describe what a filmmaker does before you can delve

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A key difference in the video essay is that the critic does not need a television studio or crew; they alone can be the expert author of the work as they most often are in text – of course, doing it alone may require the acquisition of those media skills. Editing footage itself became democratised with the introduction of video technology in the 1970s and 1980s (Michelson 1990:  22  – cited in Grant 2012) but even some of the earliest classes on video essays at the start of the twenty-first century did not actually allow students to manipulate the image but simply to add commentary to scenes (Stork & Bergstrom 2012). These were narrations based on those of DVD commentaries, which themselves have slowly evolved from 1980s laserdisc special editions, for instance Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull (1980) where director and editor Thelma Schoonmaker discuss their work together (Frazer 2000). In 1984, Criterion continued to expand the genre of supplements on laserdiscs (Bordwell 2012) almost 15  years before the now-ubiquitous DVD commentaries by filmmakers and, particularly with Criterion releases, film critics as well. Other contemporaries to the video essay from art and cinema often raised by film critics include Christian Marclay’s Telephones (1995) or The Clock (2011), Mark Rappaport’s Rock Hudson’s Home Movies (1992), Thom Andersen’s Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003) and most recently Cousins’ ambitious alternative history of world cinema in The Story of Film (TSOF). Cousins acknowledges the relationship between his film and the video essay form via one of its antecedents in the DVD commentary: I think of TSOF as just one big video essay, basically. And I think that one other area that’s relevant to this idea of the essay is the director’s commentary. What I  have in effect done with TSOF is a commentary, even though I didn’t make all these films that I’m talking about, I’ve done a commentary over the top of them. Only half way through this process did I realise that it’s the DVD extras director’s commentary or actor’s commentary that has influenced what I’m doing.

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Further evidence towards the continued importance of the written word as central to film criticism is provided when it is considered that the book version of his film, The Story of Film (Cousins 2004), came first, with the commentary for his film in part relying upon it. So the video essay has ties to much visual criticism in the past as well as contemporarily, which helps shape its current form, from the essay film and avant-garde filmmaking to remix culture, public service television and home video content. As noted, this allows much material to be described, or at least linked to, the video essay label. The concept of what constitutes a video essay is further complicated by the fact that these types of work can be viewed as not only criticism but creative art. This draws into focus debates around the very function of criticism and its purpose in the public sphere. Due to the creativity often found in such work, particularly the abstract poetic criticism which Keathley (2011) advocates, it becomes prudent to ask two questions which are not dissimilar from those which Eagleton (1984) has his fictional critic ask: is this criticism or art, and if it is the latter, then what purpose or function does it serve in the public sphere? Arguably, while both Mirror being set to a classical composition (poetic) and a deconstruction of the flagrant misuse of continuity in The Dark Knight (explanatory) contribute to the sphere of criticism, the latter serves a more important function. To put it another way, only the latter serves a substantive social function through explication. There has to be a balance between creative art and public relevance, between open and closed meanings in critical works. A judgement or evaluation can be difficult to grasp in poetic video essays but it should be acknowledged that historically film criticism is also a creative art in its own right. Consider, for instance, the work of Agee, Manny Farber or Kael being inducted into the Library of America and the countless examples of art which might otherwise be considered criticism. Perhaps a description of the video essay as art is context-dependent. In this way, perhaps a project like ‘Movies in Movies’, by Clara Darko and Brutzel Pretzel, which is not difficult to understand in an abstract or poetic way but was commissioned by the National Media Museum, should then be considered art rather than video essay. Yet this video contributes something to film criticism both by its overall form, 188

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which celebrates the narrative structure of mainstream cinema, and its content, which inherently evaluates films by indexing them within the work. This is interesting to consider against the ways in which film criticism now functions in the digital age:  as a creative outlet, an esoteric and niche specialisation, or something which appeals, and is accessible, to the public. It, of course, can be all of these descriptors but if criticism does not explain then it loses a key function. A poetic video essay is perhaps even more demanding of an audience than a long-form piece of critical writing. Keathely (2011:182), in his discussion of Paul Malcolm’s poetic essay, ‘Notes Toward a Project on Citizen Kane’, is forced to do more than view or read, he is obliged to perform his own critique because it is not explained to him; he needs to mediate for his own reader and then we need to mediate for ourselves, through gaining extra knowledge, intimate knowledge – (Malcolm’s own quotes interspersed with Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space (1958) – and research (the soundtrack is by Icelandic band Sigur Rós sung in Vonlenska, a non-literal language without fixed syntax). That only part of this information appears in the credits of Malcolm’s video further serves to illustrate the true inescapability from language in criticism stated at the beginning of this chapter. A textual analysis of two types of video essays, I term micro (dealing with single scenes or sequences from a single text as the main focus) and macro (comparatively dealing with more than one film), will detail my own viewpoint on what constitutes the form: Jim Emerson’s ‘In the Cut, Part I: Shots in the Dark (Knight)’ and Christian Keathley’s ‘Pass the Salt’ in the first instance, and Steve Santos’s ‘A Tale of Two Bad Lieutenants’ and Stoo TV’s ‘Raiders of the Lost Archives’ in the second. These categories are not exhaustive or rigid because micro examples can contain other texts (both filmic and non-filmic comparisons) but, arguably, both categories are representative of the majority of video essays which currently exist. Director Christopher Nolan’s work often manipulates time beyond a linear framework. Paradoxically, it is The Dark Knight – the only film in his Batman trilogy which plays as a conventional narrative with a beginning, middle and an end – that critic Jim Emerson (2011) deconstructs to show major continuity errors. His 20-minute video essay focuses intently 189

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upon a chase sequence in the film and he begins his critique by offering a visual text quote, which he reads aloud, from the editor of The Dark Knight Lee Smith:  ‘It’s quite easy to overcut a sequence:  make it visually exciting and lose track of what is happening and who the characters are… Where you can’t follow action, it’s not just action, it’s the whole movie you can’t follow. Action… has to be very carefully planned and conceived’. When the first slow-motion shots from the chase sequence begin, Emerson’s voiceover then qualifies the opening statement by claiming that what the editor is describing is, in fact, one of the film’s ‘painfully obvious shortcomings, its visual grammar is a mess and sometimes that results in scenes which are incoherent.’ Emerson distorts the timeframe of the eight-minute chase by slowing it down or pausing the frame and he then overlays his own annotations (Figure 5.1) which focus on visual-orientation errors at first, such as characters entering the back of a truck and sitting on one side but then being shown to be on the opposite side in the following scene. In places his analysis becomes pedantry or refers to a question of style by removing certain shots rather than continuity issues. In discussing a scene where the Joker shoots a policeman and highjacks a truck, key for understanding where he has come from in the sequence, he comments, ‘It would have been much more ominous just to go into the next shot’ when the chase sequence begins. However, his subsequent close textual reading of the sequence and the glaring continuity errors within are extremely convincing. Emerson’s tone is of a serious critique which is on occasion tinged with flippancy, especially at the end when he asks: ‘Did they just take all the footage they had and just throw it all up in the air and then stick it back together like a William S. Boroughs cut-up?’ Obsessions with a single scene or sequence can also reveal new information external to the text. Again narrating alongside visuals onscreen, Christian Keathley (2011b) tells the viewer about a scene in Otto Preminger’s Anatomy of a Murder (1959) that he simply ‘can’t stop thinking about it. It seems pretty straight forward but I can’t help but feeling that I’m seeing in it, more than is being shown to me; let me tell you about it’. Unlike Emerson’s analysis, in his eight-minute 190

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Figure  5.1:  Emerson overlays the film image with his detailed annotations and narration.

Figure 5.2:  Ben Gazzara and James Stewart acting in the scene Keathley (2011b) ‘can’t stop thinking about’.

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video essay ‘Pass the Salt’, Keathely feels motivated to tell the viewer the plot of the movie, which is less well known that the Batman film. In this US courtroom-crime drama starring James Stewart, the scene in question is where Stewart’s character has lunch (which consists of a bottle of beer and a hardboiled egg) with his lawyer colleague and friend at a roadside luncheon stand. In the backdrop there is an industrial overhead crane and the occasional passing train (Figure 5.2). The scene lasts for 1min 30secs, and has some short dialogue. Stewart’s character peels the shell from his egg while discussing taking a potential legal case, while his colleague has already peeled his and shakes some salt on it. Keathley begins his analysis with focusing on the salt shaker, before moving to a detailed interpretation of the soundtrack and background noise in the scene. He informs us that the film is set in the town of Iron City with its famous railroad yard, where trains are loaded by the crane-shovelful with the iron ore which is mined nearby. He draws out the link between the salt and the iron, discussing the machinery of the legal system and Preminger’s lawyer father: ‘Young Otto used to visit the courts to watch his father and the judicial system in action.’ He argues that the scene re-enacts what may be the first debate about ‘the governmental basis of law and punishment’ and then offers a historical perspective on ancient Chinese legal history represented symbolically in each of the characters; a history founded on a document called ‘The Discourse of Salt and Iron’. The second category of the video essay looks beyond a single or series of scenes in one film. In what might ordinarily be termed a remix out with the video essay frame here, Steve Santos’s (2010) ‘A Tale of Two Bad Lieutenants’ splices scenes from the Werner Herzog film The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call – New Orleans (2009) and the Abel Ferrara film Bad Lieutenant (1992). This ten-minute video compares and contrasts the respective visions of two directors working from the same basic idea: a character study of extreme police corruption. Although this work is in a more poetic than explanatory register, Santos puts a textual introduction on screen which reads ‘A video remix showing how two filmmakers can envision the same idea in ways both similar and different.’ Furthermore, 192

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Figure 5.3:  The end sequences of two Bad Lieutenant films blended together.

the inescapability of language is evident throughout, not in visual text or narration but from the diegetic sound of the characters’ voices and some vocals from music which is non-diegetic. However, Santos does assume a certain cinephile or fan-based knowledge from his audience because he provides no indication who the filmmakers that he is critiquing actually are. Santos’s work uses compositional elements by editing shots from the two different movies to appear in a linear sequential fashion in order to compare and contrast each. This consists of the two respective protagonists, played by Harvey Keitel and Nicholas Cage, snorting cocaine and indulging in other drug-use, gunplay and sexually deviant behaviour. On occasion Santos overlays the image from one film on top of the other which comments on some of the strange scenes from the Herzog film with the drug-induced hallucinations from both texts. At times it is clear that Herzog is mimicking the earlier film but Santos also seems to argue that there is an acknowledged difference between the projects. For instance, Cage’s character does not descend into sustained heroin abuse in the way Keitel’s does, so Santos intercuts the scenes of the latter’s drug abuse with those of Cage talking about a silver spoon (a symbol of wealth made subversive as it is used to cook heroin) – this adds a different layer of meaning to what is an awkward scene in the Herzog film. The sequences used are almost in chronological form, building to a visual 193

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Figure 5.4:  Indiana Jones’s famous leather jacket and fedora as seen through film history.

comparison of the different endings from both films. At its close the essay overlays the end sequences of both films for its final analysis: where Keitel’s character is shot in his car on a busy New York street a ghostly figure of Cage’s character sits against the vehicle, forced to live on with his own demons (Figure 5.3). In a somewhat larger project a similar image-play is created, which compares and contrasts Steven Spielberg’s Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) with a visual history of the jungle adventure genre. The 13-minute video essay, which the uploader Stoo TV (2010) calls ‘a love letter to Indiana Jones and the films which served as inspiration’, consists of a shot-by-shot comparison of Raiders and scenes from 30 films released between 1919 and 1973. Ironically, for a video that has now lost its soundtrack (taken from the Spielberg movie) due to a contested copyright infringement, the juxtaposition of the scenes, literarily played out side-by-side, initially seems like an accusation of plagiarism. This is due to the careful and rigorous archival work over two years by the author, finding scenes which mirror many moments from the first Indiana Jones film. This footage is mainly in black and white, shown on the right, played alongside footage from Raiders, shown on the left (Figure 5.4). During the video we witness:  expedition parties walking through dense jungles; local artefacts and ancient ruins; maps read and pieced together; guns drawn from holsters; bullwhips used with precise timing to disarm opponents or swing

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across caverns; the famous leather jacket and fedora shown on a number of different characters; booby traps being sprung, skeletons revealed and large boulders tumbling through almost identical caverns; white men captured by indigenous tribes before escaping into chase sequences through dense foliage with spears flying, and so on. Raiders is played at normal speed; only on occasion is the other footage on the right slowed down to match some of the action taking place on the left. The effect all of this has is that it provides a key contextualisation of the Raiders film and its place in film history. Even if the blatant influence of early film adventure serials on George Lucas’s creation was common knowledge among fans, the video is still uncanny and shows how deep influences can be relatively easily revealed through researching in digital culture. It is clear from the rest of this user’s videos that they are an avid Indiana Jones fan, with clips from interviews with Harrison Ford to discussions of Indiana Jones on TV. The user does not credit the work used in their video which makes it problematic to understand the mechanisms behind the project or verify the claim that it took two years to complete. Perhaps in this poetic register, again, a certain cinephilic knowledge is assumed where viewers might be tested to identify the works being shown. All of these examples show varying degrees of detail and research going into each production. That the latter two are poetic is just indicative of the different styles of video essays, because the explanatory register (which is the most dominant) also exists in the macro category dealing with themes from a variety of films or a director’s oeuvre. These video essays are also from a variety of individuals: Emerson and Santos can be described as professional film critics, Keathley as a film academic and Stoo TV as a fan or cinephile. Of course, all concerned could also be described in the latter categories. A comparison which may be drawn in terms of their reception is that generally the more popular the film discussed, the more popular the audience numbers: 1,816 plays for Keathley’s, 3,049 for Santos’s, 29,887 for Emerson’s Batman video [this number is conservative because this visual essay has been removed and put back up] and 323,591 views of StooTV’s work on Indiana Jones. Vimeo and YouTube accessed

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(2 February, 2014). This may also be related to the exhibition space, given the popularity of YouTube (which hosts the latter) versus Vimeo (where the former two are displayed). The video essay is discernible from previous and existing modes of visual media and criticism but is distinguished in the way this convergent media form can now be produced and exhibited online. It is a form which can refer to many different types of film criticism but one which academics and critics currently try to, albeit broadly, classify from their own critical school positions on what does and does not constitute the label. Simultaneously, as the next subsection will show, it is mainly academics and scholars who have driven the discourse for the potential in video essays forward, either in practice or research, alongside only a handful of film critics.

Academic Critics Broad categorisations of the video essay, as well as an avatar culture of representation when posting work which may be considered video essayistic, prohibits saying with any certainty that few film critics work this way. Equally so, it is difficult to quantify its production in relation to podcast or picture essay forms; however, the time constraints of recording, capturing and editing video compared to speaking on a podcast or posting stills on a blog are considerable. Lee remarks of Seitz’s Press Play blog, ‘Matt created a blog dedicated towards video essays and he thought there was just going to be this wave of submissions and activity which would populate the blog but it hasn’t really happened. So he’s had to revert back to text pieces to keep content fresh.’ Moreover, the video criticism which is most pertinent to the label, ‘essayistic’, is often an authored project because these works are created with high production values where the producers are generally proud of what they are exhibiting. Therefore, there are recognisable professional film critics working in this way, from Jim Emerson at The Chicago Sun-Times, to freelancers Seitz, Karina Longworth and Steve Boone, as well as Lee who are, in the words of Ebert (2011), ‘New Media to their bones’. Yet within the interviewees there is a serious 196

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gulf in uptake compared to (at least a very general) awareness of the video essay; this builds upon the argument levelled at the previous two forms, discussed as having a characteristic otherness in relation to the dominance of written film criticism. While most film critics know broadly of video essays, around half of those polled have seen none at all or very few, with over two thirds never having created or collaborated on one: although some, like Brooks, admit this is because they are simply not actively seeking them out, ‘Shamefully I have seen very few video essays. The NYT books section has an extremely good (odd, funny, insightful) series of video essays but so far I have yet to see the equivalent on film. No doubt this is entirely my fault; I’m not looking in the right places.’ This lack of exposure to or participation in the form is magnified further still with UK critics more than their North American counterparts and is perhaps due to few recognisable pioneers to champion in the same way video essayists Seitz and Lee are celebrated there. Lee is synonymously linked with the term video essay by almost all the critics interviewed and encountered on the topic in Toronto. The two main reasons for a lack of overall participation by critics, lacking necessary skillset and the complexity of intellectual property, will be detailed momentarily. However, there are other minor issues which are specifically raised by critics which may explain their lack of engagement. Sceptics Ansen, Lucas, Murray, Nayman, Porton, Smith, and Vizcarrondo, all see writing as more beneficial than video essays for a variety of reasons, including the poor standards of examples they have seen, the sheer assortment of video types under this umbrella topic, no existing framework to suggest when one might be best used over writing an article, and, from a reader perspective, the decreased ability to control the pace in video that one can easily do in text. Of one example viewed, Ansen comments, ‘It was a visual essay with narrative about the editing style of action movies. It didn’t tell me anything that I hadn’t seen in print or written about but it was enhanced by the visual examples.’ Lucas also comments, ‘This is quite a large umbrella topic, covering everything from Chris Marker features to DVD supplements. I’ve seen brilliant work in the field and also a fair amount that’s half-baked.’ Murray’s claims are worth detailing at length when he says: 197

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Film Criticism and Digital Cultures I’ll be honest, as somebody who consumes criticism as well, when I come upon something on my RSS feeds, and I see that somebody has put up a video essay I tend not to look at it. You know, because I’d rather read it, or because when you read something you kind of control your pace at which you read it. If you have a five minute video essay, with no text just all video then you’ve got to give up five minutes of your time right then and there to watch it. And I don’t always know that I have that five minutes.

Temporality is clearly not only a concern for the production of video essays but also in terms of their consumption by audiences as well. Vizcarrondo also claims that the medium is less convenient than reading text when she says: ‘I would be totally dedicated to the review and then only occasionally look at the video essay.’ Nayman also foregrounds the tradition of writing when he states: I’m a believer in the written word as a way of suggesting and illuminating what you watch but I’ve learned a lot from video essays that I’ve watched. […] I think it’s very valid, I think it’s very interesting and I think like everything, the vast majority of it is probably horrible. Vast majority meaning for every Kevin Lee or Matt Zoller Seitz on YouTube you’ll find stuff that’s not as good. I shouldn’t say horrible, I  should just say less serious. Whoever that guy is who does the Star Wars reviews, they’re too long and they’re not always funny, but some of it is great and it’s good film criticism.

From the majority of those who have an awareness of video essays, however, there is broad enthusiasm for the form, even if relatively few are engaged with it. However, uncertainty over what constitutes a video essay was certainly evidenced by some interviewee responses. Harkness and Wilkinson initially consider the term to represent video clips or straight-to-camera addresses, confusion which continued in some conversations, more in Edinburgh than in Toronto, which again suggests greater awareness in North America. There continues to be interest in the related area of the essay film in the UK, with the BFI’s ‘Thought in Action: The Art of the Essay Film’ series in 2013 as well as Lee being commissioned to write an article, with accompanying video essay, in Sight & Sound reflecting on this form (Lee 2013). This is a process which is illustrative of the complex slippage between the terms and forms, here 198

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Lee has been tasked with creating a video essay to discuss the essay film, but it also reflects on its own form and lineage in doing so. In effect, equally as much as some notable film critics that have become proponents of the video essay online there are cinephile academics, such as Grant, Keathley, Nicole Brenez, Bordwell, Thompson, Shambu, Rombes and authors like Tupitsyn who are pioneering this work either in advocacy or praxis or both. Grant (2012) contends that most of these video essays are produced outside of academia due to ‘the strictures of written academic discourse’. But a workshop on video essays entitled, ‘Video Essays: Film Scholarship’s Emergent Form’, at the 2012 Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS) conference is further evidence that the form is now receiving serious academic attention. The tenth edition of Film Art: An Introduction (2011) has a video essay project attached to it in an online partnership with The Criterion Collection – even if the creation of those essays was outsourced to a professional filmmaker rather than completed by the authors themselves (Bordwell 2012). But film scholarship is not the same thing as film criticism; film criticism has to exist for the many as well as the few and working outside the parameters of academic ‘strictures’ this is something which many of these video essay advocates appear to realise. Similar to the middle ground of criticism sought by Eagleton (1984), Carroll (2009) Martin (2008) and McDonald (2007), Bordwell (2011) has always talked about the stark divisions between academia and the critical community and the necessity for these gaps to lessen. Certainly video essays appear to achieve this, with scholar-critics such as Grant and critics such as Lee not only complementing and hyperlinking to each other’s work but entering into debates and contributing to the discourse. There are visibly more academics who are now also cultural critics online. However, academics who are also amateur film critics may operate in the shadows of stereotypes labelled against academia, which has historically been generalised as esoteric and lacking dynamism by non-academic film critics. James states that: Academia itself is in a little bit of trouble, in terms of film studies. I think there is a kind of feeling that the Laura Mulvey-inspired direction has played out. And that audience studies is no great replacement

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Arguably the ascension of the video essay is an exciting development for both film criticism and film studies. Of course hierarchical perceptions of other schools also work across the model, as one newspaper critic, who wishes to remain anonymous, claims that James ‘always looks down’ on their newspaper’s coverage of film. James himself acknowledges an accelerated distance between his magazine and academic readers today when he illustrates the overall Sight & Sound readership as a triangle of cinephiles, academics and industry: ‘The academia side of the triangle has shrunk a little; the industry side of the triangle has grown a little.’ This coincides with a rise in academic bloggers with social media personalities and who contribute to cultural and critical communities online with an academic inflection, such as with the lolcat concept, Loltheorists page (Meikle & Young 2012:117). Additionally, this ease of self-publishing is evident in many new open-access journals, highbrow online publications or individual websites where academics can now write film criticism. Consider, for instance, the sophisticated criticism of Grant over the past decade at . Undoubtedly, as was remarked by the Cineaste editors in their next-generation symposium (The Editors 2013), there are now so many new channels and avenues for writers of sophisticated film criticism outside of traditional institutions such as Sight & Sound and Film Comment. Far from cinema or its criticism being forgotten or dead, video essays remind us, in their merging and convergence of film and digital media, that the Moving Image as an institutional term testifies to the wider, more complex definitions of what cinema now is (Churner 2011) and repositions those who have spent their entire careers studying it to a central role (Grant 2012b). In some ways, film studies has embraced the video essay far earlier than film criticism, with one or two honourable exceptions, such as Transit Cine, a site run by critics in Spain that has championed the form since its inception in 2009. However, we can see engagement with video essays some years prior to this with Bergstrom at UCLA teaching a class on the video essay beginning in the winter of 2004 200

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(Stork & Bergstrom 2012). Since then journals in film studies now devote entire issues to the possibilities of video criticism, as the inaugural edition of Frames Cinema Journal did in July 2012, while others such as Audiovisual Thinking, and the media commons/Cinema Journal project [in] Transition encourage submissions only in multimedia form. A central part of cinema studies since its inception, the potential for using moving images in a critical context to engage new audiences is not lost. This is why sites such as TED-Ed have become popular with its academic video presentations in recent years. The visual form as a mode of learning is something which Arnheim – the gestalt psychologist who held a theory of perception which stressed visual thinking (Lopate 2006:90) – would have approved of. Mulvey (2005) also discusses how various digital tools significantly enhance film scholars’ research and teaching. Charles Acland and Haidee Wasson (2011) show how education and film have coalesced throughout history in ordinary life situations from factories to advertising. For a particularly instructive insight into cinema as an educatory tool outside of the classroom also see the anthology Learning with the Lights Off (Orgeron et al. 2012). Moreover, Marshall Poe (2012) has argued provocatively that every monograph should be a movie because reading is not a natural act for humans, the logic being that an academic or sophisticated work of intellect might appeal to a broader audience if it was simply something one had to look at. Therefore the power of the visual medium as a delivery mechanism for learning has rarely been in doubt and has historical precedence. Video might just tempt someone to look into the films of Hou Hsiao-Hsien and the Taiwanese New Wave more than a 2000-word article can, and inform the average film fan that there exist cinemas beyond Hollywood which can be equally compelling. Any film student since the 1980s will testify to the importance of clips in understanding something as opposed to merely learning it. Furthermore, the video essay offers the chance for aesthetics and socio-politics to co-exist seamlessly in engaging, entertaining and instructive ways, for instance, consider Lee’s (2013b) video essay on radical filmmakers and their politics, ‘What Radical Filmmaking Really Looks Like’. Although aware of the video essay, if sometimes rather convolutedly, participation levels among film critics in working with this convergent media form are poor and often acknowledged as such. This is a specific 201

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point noted by Cousins, Hunter, and Smith (2011) in his article about video criticism. When asked if it surprises him that more critics are not working in this way Lee comments, ‘Yeah, it does. It really does. I’m shocked that there isn’t more being done.’ Counter to these lower levels of engagement, there are cinephile academics (not all from film studies) championing the form, if not practising it as well. To understand why video essays have not as yet been adopted widely as a form of film criticism by film critics, the following subsections will detail two major restrictions.

Skillsets The first reason why film critics may not be working with video essays is to do with a lacking skillset, which encompasses more than just technical know-how, although this is also a factor. In creating a video essay critics often have to reveal something otherwise hidden in written text, their actual voice and or, on occasion, their physical presence. The second reason is that there are so many legal complications with regards to intellectual property and copyright that critics and publications are uninformed on their rights and as such are perturbed by the possibility of being sued if they do not seek expensive rights clearances for clips. To expand on the first restriction, it would be possible to say, as Tynan euphemistically does with his car analogy noted in Chapter Two, that some critics know nothing about how to create what they critique. Rosenbaum agrees when he states, ‘It is true that generally film critics are not that knowledgeable about how to make films but on the other hand people that know everything about it can be inhibited and limited in certain ways, too.’ Therefore the mechanisms of filmmaking, how to establish shot compositions, editing techniques, etcetera, are often unessential to the critic. Unsurprisingly, then, the best examples of video essayists are from those critics with filmmaker backgrounds or with experience in television production such as Steve Santos, Seitz, Lee or Jeff Reichert at Reverse Shot. Reichert was a driving force behind the inclusion of video content at the magazine (conversation at Project: New Cinephilia 2011). That the process of criticism in a video essay brings the 202

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critic into close connection with the practice of filmmaking is perhaps the reason why it is mainly those with such experience that serve as the most famous examples of video essayists thus far. Lawrenson argues that, ‘In order to make a complex argument I think you need to be a good filmmaker. Otherwise it’s a DVD commentary.’ What he is essentially saying is that originality has to come across in the video in more than the critic’s opinion, in terms of footage and the use of primary material. This latter aspect, gained only through (often archival) research, is something which Stork and Bergstrom (2012) argue is absolutely essential to high production values in video essays even if only specialists would be able to tell the difference. Some critics counter this argument, such as Peranson, when he says creating a video essay should be easy because of the ease with which anybody can make a movie today. But Lawrenson argues that it is technically complex to make video essays of any decent standard and perhaps there are certain ‘psychological obstacles’ which prohibit greater critical engagement, in that critics would be exposing themselves by making a film. Of video essays currently, Smith comments that this form is in an ‘embryonic’ state and that ‘Critics are critics, meaning they write. But now they have to teach themselves video production skills. And in a sense, pick up a little on the language of cinema.’ This idea of exposing their filmmaking talent is implicit in what some critics are saying but it is an apprehension that is rarely explicitly acknowledged. Pulver certainly relays his trepidations when tentatively talking about his own video essay project: With Night and the City [Dassin, 1950] I managed to secure two minutes of footage from the BFI – seeing as they’d published it and put the DVD out – which I could take from the film. So I just did this sort of silly little, it was essentially a video essay in the way that you’re talking about it. I did it about the locations. So we went to Soho and Hammersmith and filmed what it looks like now. I could send you the link if you want but obviously I look like a complete fucking knob head.

Pulver’s choice phrase to describe him in the video speaks to his insecurities which would otherwise be masked in print or text-only criticism. 203

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Many critics do not have the skills to perform on camera or project their voice in a captivating style, and this is a concern when attempting to create video essays which adhere to the explanatory register. Certainly these types of video essays are the dominant form (Shambu 2012), regularly created by pioneer essayists such as Lee – an amateur critic who found professional status due to the recognition of his videos. With over fifty videos complete he rivals the best performance prose but his voiceovers are never going to be as captivating as Don LaFontaine, and probably should not be, given his chosen tone of address in the sophisticated register. This reliance on narration can be a drawback even for someone who is relatively engaging as a critic in broadcast media. The commentary for TSOF runs to 500 pages, and is spoken by Cousins, to the discord of some US audience members who candidly told him they would have preferred Morgan Freeman instead (Cousins 2012:13). Godard, who famously said that filmmaking and writing a critical article are two versions of the same thing (Keathley 2011:179; Rosenbaum 2010; Smith 2011), has said in the past that he dislikes the idea of language dominating a filmic essay (Martin, 2010) – which is perhaps why there is so little reliance upon narration in his essay film Histoire(s) du Cinema (1988–1998) – or at least his voice here undulates and blends with the imagery; it is not didactic. Yet narration is essential to the explanatory mode if film criticism is going to have an impact in the public sphere, because not everyone is able to participate in very esoteric readings of essays in the poetic register. It may be difficult for a critic used to writing to liven up their performance by lifting it off the page. Wilkinson sees a difference between critics who may be good on paper but who are less so when being recorded: ‘Reading something aloud is different to reading it on paper and the way you might talk about a film might not be the way you would write about a film.’ Not exactly video essays, but serving to support the argument that the form encompasses a great deal of video criticism for some critics, Pulver comments on Brooks’ trailer reviews for the Guardian. His editor and friend  – perhaps giving him a sense of entitlement to comment  – Pulver argues that, ‘He’s a great, great writer. But, as much as I love him, 204

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he’s not particularly great on TV. He’s just not got that presence. When he does his voice-overs, you know, they’re quite amusing but you realise that people who are good on TV have got a talent which actually makes them watchable.’ It is rare, however, for film critics to also appear on camera in their video essay work. Clearly to make certain types of video essays in the explanatory register, writers also have to become performers. Although video essays can be viewed as single creative activities, where critics show their expertise as they would in a written text (Stork & Bergstrom 2012), collaboration is an inroad for critics who otherwise do not have the performance skills or technical wherewithal to create them on their own. Conceding a lack of expertise in the form, Rosenbaum collaborated with Lee on a video essay which compared Gertrud (Dreyer 1964) and The Sun Shines Bright (Ford 1953). This is also a testament to Lee’s desire for collaboration. Lee (2010) states that, ‘I realised early on that I  couldn’t possibly come up with interesting insights for all of the videos’, so he worked with many other critics like Rosenbaum who provided him with (in some cases too much) content for free. This speaks to a favourable distribution of tasks to various individuals in what can be time-intensive work. To create the high-end pieces Lee and others do would take not only days of training but many multiple hours to produce. For an accomplished essayist like Lee, it can take him anywhere between eight hours to one month to make a single video. During the course of fieldwork it is apparent that many critics are aware of consumer-grade editing software even if they are not using it to create video essays. Time constraints or not being asked by their employers to partake in such works contribute to a lack of motivation but almost all acknowledge the necessity for a certain amount of technical expertise as prohibitive. Murray comments that technophobe aspects are a reason why video essays are not used more, claiming that not every critic is technologically inclined, a point echoed by Nayman about his own skills, as well as Peary who claims that a younger generation would have to show him how to do it. Nayman comments, ‘I dabble with them in that I’m good friends with people who make a lot 205

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of them. I know Kevin Lee quite well, Matt Zoller Seitz, Steven Boone, I’m sure you recognise some of these names as people who do this stuff a lot. I like it but I’m not technically adept enough to do it.’ His comments also serve to reinforce the previous point about collaboration perhaps being an inroad for many critics who do not have the skills to create an essay individually. Cousins also contributes to the argument of critics lacking technical skills when he says, ‘The reason why most critics don’t do video essays is because they don’t have the training. They don’t know how to edit and I think most of them wouldn’t know how to source. I’d be surprised if Bradshaw or Rosenbaum or any of those people knew how to do that.’ Cousins is correct in that Rosenbaum did have to collaborate with Lee’s technical expertise. Additionally, the editors of Cineaste and Sight & Sound both point to a lack of resources and technical know-how for reasons why these institutions have not developed video essay work. James comments that: We’d need to have much more resources than we have currently to create video essays a lot. It’s something that we were really excited about and wanted to do a lot of when we brought Nick Bradshaw in, the online editor. In fact we’ve discovered that editing things just takes up way too much of his time out of the equation. So I think video essays will have to be from people who do their own editing and then submit it to us.

With not many critics possessing the skills to do this it is unlikely that Sight & Sound would be a repository for this sort of criticism any time soon. Of course, it is linked to the BFI website in general which does carry a lot of other video criticism under its remit. A lacking skillset from critics – who are writers first and foremost – consisting of an unwillingness to open up their own filmmaking skills to critique or having limited knowledge about the filmmaking process, as well as having to perform engagingly and learn about software, prohibits many from engaging fully with the video essay. However, even if critics did begin to embrace this form more, their avenues for distribution of such works via publications and other institutions may be somewhat limited by the next topic under analysis, that of copyright and legislation over intellectual and creative properties. 206

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Legality Copyright was established in the United States in the late eighteenth century with the fair use of other people’s material allowed for the purposes of criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, or research (Goldberg 2011:740). The practicalities of carrying out a video essay, or essentially films about films (most of the time), are problematic because they are creative endeavours which rely on material created by someone else and often under copyright. The opinions of most film critics reflect uncertainty over whether or not carrying out a video essay would be legal. Perhaps indicative of the majority view is Koehler when he argues, ‘I think it’s very important to always clear rights. If a film is on the festival circuit you don’t have to worry about rights clearance. But once the film goes into the commercial sphere, you absolutely have to get rights clearance.’ Of course, there are examples of works which do not have rights clearance and which operate on the festival circuit before moving into commercial and broadcast realms, such as TSOF screening in the UK and the US under Fair Dealing and Fair Use Defences. Patricia Aufderheide and Peter Jaszi (2008) argue that ‘Fair use, an important part of copyright law for more than 150 years, is a right to reuse copyrighted works without a license in some circumstances  – most broadly, when the value to society is greater than the value to the copyright owner.’ Of course questions of value, especially in relation to the creative industries, never provide answers which are absolute. In the current remix culture there is a generational attitude from those raised with the web that visual images accessible online belong to anyone within that space willing to manipulate them. But content is not always used in this way and piracy looms large online, clouding judgment on what is remix, criticism, or theft. When Chris Anderson (2009:229) provocatively argues that ‘anything of value in digital form will eventually be pirated and then freely distributed’ it is equally understandable that content producers from major media corporations are tirelessly trying to protect their content. Industry defence mechanisms such as watermarking, steganography  – invisible codes embedded in commercially reproduced audio and video, where automatic software 207

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detects when it has been reproduced or posted online – are new ways in which entertainment conglomerates aim to control their material (Seitz 2009). Rosenbaum argues that critics have nothing to fear from working with copyrighted material when he says: A lot of the studios don’t even want to test the laws because unless it was really fixed they might lose. It seems to me that you are bringing value to certain things, that if you don’t get permission to use a clip from a film, but it’s a film most people haven’t heard of, then you are actually increasing the value of it; you’re not taking money away from anyone. A lot of people are still in the habit of thinking they need to clear all these rights just to protect themselves.

Some of the examples he goes onto mention in the video essay form, but probably closer to the essay film, such as Los Angeles plays Itself, actually did go on to be commercially published by Criterion. Fair use laws and supporting discourse in the UK and US seek to draw a distinction between theft and cultural comment. There is a growing body of work which seeks to educate the public on fair use see, for instance, Aufderheide and Jaszi (2008; 2011); Lee, (2009); Lessig (2008); McLeod and Rudolph (2011); Seitz (2009) as well as the CSM publication, Recut, Reframe, Recycle: Quoting Copyrighted Material in User-Generated Video, the open-source documentary RiP!: A Remix Manifesto (Gaylor, 2008) and the more polemical Steal This Film (unaccredited 2006) and Steal This Film II (unaccredited 2007). The increasingly complex control procedures by content owners are being countered by equally composite arguments taking place in academia which argue the case for Fair Use. Jaimie Baron (2012) argues, through her concept of ‘direct quotation’ rather than ‘reproduction’ or ‘illustration’, that the quotation or citation of moving images is no more problematic than the quotation or citation of words because they are never direct copies or only direct copies. For instance, in quoting from a novel one might use a different typeface or font size and in citing a film frame the image will be equally manipulated in a different format or colour palette etcetera. Therefore the viewer of the work experiences it differently, in the case of video essays a temporal shift occurs because a brief clip or series of clips contributes to a different experience from seeing the film as a complete text. For Baron (2012) the 208

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video essayist, then, is not someone who replicates culture for no purpose other than reproduction but someone who ‘interferes’ with the text in order to quote from it directly and say something meaningful about it. However, even she recognises that currently, ‘Those who pursue charges of copyright infringement, however, do not profess to care about citation. Rather, they simply assume that visual media cannot be “quoted” since the term “quotation” is associated only with words.’ Generally, with the exception of Cousins, the critics that seem at ease with potentially creating video essays under Fair Use are predominantly from North America. Perhaps this is because most critics from this region know more about the form, or have worked with it in some capacity, or, indeed, because Fair Use is more firmly established in the US than in the UK. Rosenbaum argues that individual critics have so little money that industry would not pursue them legally and Lee notes that there is now a ‘tidal wave of activity’ in favour of using material in video essays. Lee is especially knowledgeable on the subject as he had 300 plus minutes of his video essays removed for copyright infringements from YouTube in January 2009, which were then reinstated a week later after he argued the Fair Use Defence. For Smith the line between criticism and theft is a pretty visible one: The Centre for Social Media [CSM] is really, really supportive of Fair Use and it’s run by two lawyers who work in Washington. They know the law, they know the system. They know that these usages are covered under the law. If you’re repurposing something; if you’re judicious in the amount that you use and there is some component to it that can be understood as essayistic, no problem.

Smith’s confidence in Fair Dealing in the UK is also evidenced by his use of multiple clips (not all video essays) without clearance at his co-curated P:NC event in Edinburgh. After analysing the empirical evidence and triangulating that with broader knowledge of the publishing landscape, the two positions taken on the use of copyrighted material in video essays are not only polar extremes but often identifiable as coming from critics with ties to the populist realm and trade school and others with less commercial pressures in the sophisticated school. The former group is tentatively afraid 209

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of penalisation and the latter attempts to educate and set precedents by encouraging more usage. It is, in part, commercial reasons which prohibit the current use of video essays at many publications. Therefore institutional restraint also plays a major role in the lack of participation by critics. The challenge to copyright laws and commercial interests deployed in using video essays does connote a certain freedom from promotion, interference or capitalist pressures, if the work is able to be defended through Fair Use or Fair Dealing. To this end, it may be a pure form of disinterested film criticism, but as such it alienates itself from wider appeal in commercial publication. Harkness understands the concerns of newspapers in engaging with film footage because they can be held easily accountable by those who seek to charge for the use of their content when he says, ‘I understand why it’d be in the back of the mind for a newspaper but not if it was my own website.’ This is a similar concern raised by Pulver at his newspaper when he says that video criticism is: Something that I’d always try and pitch to the video department at the Guardian. We want to do X, Y, Z, and then we always come up against this thing of securing the footage. Anything not on release, it costs an enormous amount of money to use footage from a film. The industry, by its practice, is sort of blocking that happening.

Even organisations such as the Glasgow Film Theatre (GFT), which is traditionally a charitable institution, have difficulty clearing rights for projects which can be considered works of criticism and so, according to Tolley, writers end up not being able to use the footage they would like to. In discussing an interactive online film map she is working on she says, ‘I’ve tried to get video clips in the past for this GFT project that I’m working on and it’s really difficult to get rights to use a film clip, which limits what you can do.’ With video essays being created online by individual academics and cinephiles, it is surprising that the not-for-profit major film journals have yet to be convinced. As already noted of a reluctance to digitally engage, this is a question, in part, of minimal resources. Even though he sees video essays as ‘the future of film criticism’, James only alludes to, potentially, more content like this from Sight & Sound in the future. In the time since his interview it is clear that in 2015 this form has 210

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become a sporadic fixture on the online version of his publication with video essayists such as Lee commissioned on occasion to produce such work. Porton is uncertain that this is a future direction for film criticism when he remarks: I was speaking to Kevin Lee about that. He’s done a lot of pioneering work. I think there’s a future for it. We haven’t really done much of that at Cineaste because we don’t have the staff or the technical capabilities at the moment. He was actually suggesting that if it’s a priority for us then we could partner with some other outlet like MUBI. I don’t know, I can’t say that all of it that I’ve looked at has been brilliant. Sometimes the commentary I’ve seen online has been a little banal. But I think it has potential. I don’t know if that’s the future of film criticism but I think it’s one tributary.

Yet as not-for-profit organisations these publications are not taking advantage of the fact that they, more than others, are protected by using fair use laws in relation to film content. James comments on the relative security that the BFI enjoys from those pursuing copyright infringements: Somebody’s going to get sued sometime. It’s unlikely to be the BFI. Because I think that would be sending a bad cultural message from any major movie studio. But it’s more likely to be some individual somewhere who gets sued. We have a lot of people working on rights here. And we have some Fair Use agreements in place. I  think, being an educational institution, and not a profit-based publication, we can get away with Fair Use in a way that Empire can’t, for example.

If video essays can but are not being exhibited within such spaces for film criticism then they are even less likely to appear in more commercial publications. This effectively restricts populist film criticism once more to not only producing homogeneous content, as outlined in Chapter Three, but being less likely to engage with progressive forms. This is problematic in that, while every attempt should be made to treat any work of art under critique with respect, it allows corporations to dictate the ways in which the culture they create may be examined. It appears that doing anything more sophisticated than slotting in micro clips around critics talking to camera at populist publications, as they do 211

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regularly at the Guardian, involves expensive rights clearance or a bold defence of fair usage. The complexities of defending the use of copyright material in a commercial environment remain but for individual pursuits the situation is freer and video essays are being created under Fair Use and Fair Dealing. Cousins describes TSOF as a project he did not request clearance rights for and one which may test the boundaries: Boy is it going to be tested with this! I’ve got a thousand film clips, all Fair Dealt. All. And LA Plays Itself [2003] has just been approved by the Stanford University lawyers recently. So this field is moving fast and Stanford is really pushing it. A lot of people are afraid of Fair Dealing. They don’t understand it, they don’t really feel it properly. I now consider myself one of the experts because I’ve done it so often: I probably Fair Deal thirty times a day at the moment.

TSOF may not have happened without DVDs but it certainly could not have been made without the ability to capture images from those cultural objects and argue for the right to edit that material for the purposes of criticism. Although not exactly typical of the type of video essay work on the web, at least in terms of length, the questions of ‘for profit’ or commercial purposes are certainly interesting in Cousins work. After a festival tour his film played on More4 and was released on DVD in the UK in 2012 as well as being bought by Studio Canal for markets in France and Germany – incidentally, regions which never bought the rights to the book from which it is adapted (Cousins 2012:13). Therefore what separates Cousins’ work, which makes a profit, from that of a similar but shorter project on the Guardian, which is a charity but operating on a different business model from most, or Empire, which is a commercial publication which aims to make a profit by reaching mass audiences, is problematic at least in the first two examples. Such complexity may well be down to individual litigations, certainly in terms of the amount of material used, according to Smith, who comments that it ‘would be in the eyes of a judge if you overstep your bounds. In other words, if you’re trying to illustrate a point that can be illustrated in two minutes of a clip, and you’ve used 12, then you’re screwed. It’s just a matter of balance.’ Perhaps more pertinently, as has been outlined earlier, it 212

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is other action by industry (unwritten laws in screening bans or access to talent being denied) which would hamper these publications more than individuals such as Cousins. For instance, Hunter posits that critics may be afraid of being ‘injured in other ways, like not getting access to movies’. Additionally, Koehler, Lawrenson and Peary note just how much time, money and resources Hollywood dedicates to pursuing copyright infringements even to the point of pedantry. It is clear that although there now exists a wealth of resources which anyone can draw upon when considering forms of visual criticism which use copyright material, there are only a handful of critics who are confident enough to carry out video essays in practice and champion their usage. These critics are generally those who come from sophisticated schools of criticism which have less intensified commercial pressures than those from the populist and trade schools. Indeed, it is the latter groups of critics who are most removed from an engagement with video essays in usage, awareness or advocacy due, in part, to apprehensions over repurposing copyright material. This is only in part, because there are other limitations which have been argued, such as a writer’s inability to become an instantly engaging performer or someone familiar with the technology of making films or editing or using computer software. While these issues continue and as long as the video essay in its current form can be understood as a product of many previous and current visual forms, it is appropriately assigned space in the periphery of film criticism as ‘other’. More specifically, this means that there has been little radical change in the dominance of the written text; it remains film criticism’s main form.

Conclusion The major disruptive change of immediacy impacting on film criticism, foregrounded in Chapter Four, also affects convergent media forms such as picture essays, podcasts and video essays in as far as the speed with which they can be created and exhibited by individuals, unlike print publishing, radio or film and television broadcasting before them. This method through which visual images and audio can now be 213

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communicated at pace is a significant change but these forms, or at least what they represent and signify, remain clearly discernible within their older media ancestors. Some of these antecedents, such as radio and television criticism, have been historically marginal to print, a trend which continues with interviewees privileging the written word in that medium and online, with minimal engagement and participation with these convergent media. Even though the empirical evidence here reflects that in other interviews conducted in Cineaste symposia, the importance of the podcast as an outlet for film criticism in the broader culture beyond the interviewees cannot be underestimated. Perhaps more than the other two forms, it has become widespread and opened up significant discourses on popular film criticism and specialisation akin to the impact of digital video on film culture in general. A more focused examination of the video essay has taken place here because this is a form regarded with some importance of late in growing academic literature. Although linked to essay films, remix culture, public service television and DVD commentaries, the importance of the video essay as a metonym for video film criticism, more than the criticism of any other art, cannot be underestimated. Alongside a few notable film critics, cinephile scholars are also at the forefront of the most competent examples of video essays in practice as well as in discussions over functionality. Although film critics across schools do acknowledge that they would like to work in this form, on closer inspection it is apparent that the sophisticated school has fewer restraints than other schools bound by commercial protocols. While it has been shown that video essays could reconnect serious film criticism to the public sphere, and at times offer the best examples of film criticism which is at once concerned with aesthetic and socio-political comment, there are significant barriers to entry. At the level of the individual, film critics may not wish to expose themselves in becoming filmmakers or even possess the technical ability to do so. Should they desire to create video essays then other performance abilities, such as holding an engaging voice, must also be considered. Then there are editing and software skills requiring a certain amount of competency with 214

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computers. At the level of individuals, film critics are free of copyright constraints if they are versed in Fair Dealing and Fair Use, but at the level of the institution the use of copyright material in video essays has to be considered much more intricately. The resources of cinema can now be deployed in order to critique that medium; this has implications which are not yet fully understood. The rapidity with which these convergent media can be produced, exhibited and accessed is certainly new but the video essay is illustrative of advancement in technology before the culture of film criticism is ready to fully embrace it. The written word still dominates even if, as Manovich (2001) suggests, culture in general is beginning to be subsumed by images. An analysis of ‘other’ forms of criticism and the critics’ interaction with them shows that any discussion of transformative changes at the level of form in film criticism is able to be contested.

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With faster and more powerful devices, and innovative applications as constant standard, it is difficult to stay abreast of digital cultures. If you can believe it, even Twitter turned ten in 2016! The originality and importance of this snapshot of film criticism in such an ecosystem is evidenced by the fact that this is a positional book making an enquiry into a new area and is supported by substantial empirical data collected from a significant group of practitioners. The overall inflection of this book is to negate the rhetoric of crisis and revolutionary transformation by taking the long view in a grounded study into contemporary film criticism and film critics. Change is all around in the digital media age, from websites altering templates to be more compatible with tablets to KDM security encryptions delivering press shows to journalists’ smartphones. Some advances have been beneficial, such as enhanced scholarship through digital archives, with others somewhat less inspiring, such as the allegations that Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Skype and YouTube are complicit with the NSA and GCHQ in obtaining personal data on citizens without consent. On the one hand, it is logical to take a historical perspective in an era of such transformations in culture. On the other, this approach provides a certain security as 216

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well. While this book has taken such a view as its overall argument I have only reported on and analysed opinions coming from the evidence provided. What this book proposes is that change has been less significant in film criticism than the norms and habits which still permeate its practice. Whereas Bordwell’s (1989:XI) examination of film criticism suggested that it was important to ‘pay less attention to what critics say they do and more attention to their actual procedures of thinking and writing’ I have listened to film critics and interpreted their ideas alongside written work from a variety of disciplines. Therefore this research is multi-disciplinary, supported by historical and contemporary concepts in criticism, film, journalism and media from scholars and practitioners, through institutional frameworks and technologies. Through comprehensive analyses of the narratives created by interviewees, it is possible to assert a dominant trend towards continuity in the practice of film criticism. In a technologically driven culture impacting public and private lives, these social formations show, as Meikle and Young (2012:34) argue of the broader networked digital media landscape, that technical possibility is only one dimension of ‘the contest’ of proposed change. These continual behaviours are visible in terms of: (1) the various subjective positions on what each of the critics understand their practice to be, which equates to the lack of historical literature able to say collectively what film criticism is or is not, (2) the continuation of an implicit crisis narrative which questions the future of the profession, (3) the continued relevance of print institutions and their critics occupying Respected Space, with audiences and industry, across media, (4) the perpetuation of historical concerns over commercialisation, market-driven journalism and the homogenisation of film criticism and the alienation of the practice from the public sphere, driving specialisation into the margins, (5)  critics reinforcing cultural authority and expertise through both projecting their own self-image and also when they are interacting, or choosing not to interact, with online audiences and social media, and finally, (6) continuity is visible in the historical trajectories of so-called older media which produce the convergent forms of the picture essay, podcast and video essay, which 217

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few critics interact with; and in an image-era, where opportunities are afforded with convenience to dislodge textual dominance, written film criticism is still the dominant mode of address as interviewees privilege text-based engagements. While the correlations between what is happening now and what has happened before favour continuity, it is also worth detailing inconsistencies in the findings which challenge this overall argument. Even within this monograph change has not been insubstantial in relation to: (1) the exponential growth in the number of amateur film critics and the ability now for anyone to practise film criticism online, (2) increasing awareness of usability techniques and the manner in which film criticism is consumed on a screen as opposed to a printed page, (3) the pace with which film critics are expected to react and publish responses to films written only hours after screenings, as well as the increasing micro-criticism visible on social media and, (4)  the speed with which convergent media forms can be created and exhibited. Of course, digital technologies have affected film critics in other ways which are not often discussed by the interviewees specifically but broadly noted in terms of impacts as the influence of ‘the web’ in general, such as the implications of digital research resources and DVDs or internet streaming and mobile technologies on the practice of film criticism. Beginning with an overview of crisis, media and journalism and a comprehensive analysis of criticism, the implications from the conceptual chapters in relation to the research question, thesis and empirical data are thus. Most obviously, traditional media, journalism, film and its criticism, and all arts criticism are on-going when their various deaths have been proposed. It is clear that a crisis narrative was not being explicitly created by the interviewees and this coincided with a significant reduction of crisis discourse from the media. Implicitly, however, the data shows that critics in regularly paid positions do perpetuate a hyperbolic concern which correlates to the perpetual crises in criticism over its continuation and professional future. While this may be exaggerated it is understandably so, due to many colleagues who can no longer draw a salary or have to work harder to supplement freelance incomes. Moreover, a collective critical voice revealed 218

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by analyses of the interview material reacts against the recent crisis by promoting expertise. Today’s film critic knows he or she must adapt to a personable digital culture which promotes transparency and simultaneously elevate their own expertise. In other words, ‘This is my own position, but this is my experienced justifications for such a position’. In an era when everyone has a publishable opinion, their own becomes more sacred especially when there is a trend towards instant response and rapidity in publishing online. That interviewees also express their idiosyncrasies and subjectivity when questioned on their practice (as well as when positioning themselves as critics, journalists or reviewers) provides counter-evidence, at least from practitioner perspectives, to Carroll’s (2009) assertion that arts criticism can be objective. Of course, polyphonic responses may be expected when questioning any professional body of workers, not just film critics. The historical functions of criticism unearthed from scholarly engagement with the subject, through the ancient and modern origins and the ideas of Carroll (2009) and Eagleton (1984), highlight a disconnection between having to build a solid academic foundation in a relatively new area and then relay such intellectualising to practitioners. Although some sophisticated school participants do recognise the functions of criticism as aesthetics and politics and do intellectualise what they do, the majority of critics rarely consider their practice in this way. The contemporary evidence for the existence of these twin functions, outlined in Chapter Two, reflects this position in being sourced from sophisticated examples. Moreover, that very few critics privilege evaluation or socially committed criticism, and that when probed further, more critics acknowledge the necessity to deliver a verdict rather than to connect the work to wider society, suggests that critics are unaware of their politics or are unwilling to express socio-political views. This evidence is apposite to the points made by both Carroll (2009) and Eagleton (1984), who argue that these functions are largely absent in arts and literary criticism. Given the numbers of verdicts passed on films regularly today, it is perhaps more accurate to say that these functions are absent, in part, from the philosophising or theorising of film criticism by its own practitioners. 219

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The findings chapters follow an ascending order towards technological newness or novelty, with print signifying older, online as newer, and convergent media forms, or ‘other’ criticism as the newest. Yet there are more continuities than contestations to be found in each of the chapters, perhaps with the exception of Chapter Four and its topics on amateurs, immediacy and usability. Yet even here there is a significant amount of evidence which perpetuates a trend of gatekeeping with – professional more than amateur  – critics rarely participating in dialogues with the newly enabled users of film culture online, choosing instead to promote their own opinions and thus the historical distance between critic and reader. This mimics the broader journalistic and news media culture whereby authority is actively maintained by self-promoted interests on social media as well as minimal interactions with other internet users. Of the transformations in film criticism, the growth of amateurs is perhaps most pertinent and representative of a stimulating period. The theme of immediacy is no less important, but is perhaps understandable given that the digital age has accelerated many other professions and practices as well. It is clear that the web has allowed a new generation of critical voices to merge and contrast with established ones in order to debate functions and purpose, previously restricted to low-circulation journals and fanzines. That more disparate communities have a visible interest in the practice allows dialogues in print, blogs, tweets, audio and video to contest binaries such as death/golden-age, fan-boys/cinephiles, professionals/amateurs; print/online, slow criticism/micro-criticism, text/visuals. Although amateurism is not new, this growth has been largely interpreted as a threat by professional critics who police boundaries by promoting expertise and inflating the idea of fan-boys as representative. It is equally misguided to speak of online film criticism monolithically, as some critics do as a default for either fresh or exciting or unedited and uninteresting developments, because all schools exist here as they do offline. The reality is far more nuanced, with a spectrum existing from consumer reviews and fandom to more sophisticated criticism and cinephilic pursuits, a sort of cosmopolitan film criticism not possible before shared cyberspace with its connections and convolutions. The digitisation of film criticism fosters competition between every actor in the entire heterogeneous field 220

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where there may not have been points to coalesce before. For instance, consumers and fans attacking erudite New Yorker critics or sophisticated critics bemoaning a loss of standards, condemning amateur fans for not performing the criticism they aspire to. Participation has been shown to be a most useful interpretative framework, from a discussion of journalism and the digital media landscape to how critics do/do not interact on the web. Most media and cultural organisations do now find themselves within the online environment, which they occupy alongside the public, competing and sometimes partnering to produce, curate and interact in shared cultural experiences. Of course, even with these new interactions, a great number of these media brands enjoy Respected Space where they remain custodians of cultural output and have continued strength in setting information agendas. Any discussion of online in general also has to be tempered with two considerations: those not participating in the dialogue or content creation and those not operating within this environment at all. In broad terms, online culture cannot as yet be considered as any more representative of culture at large than vox populi, because only a small number of users are shown to produce the most content. When journalists promote their stories through legacy media sources on social media and film critics do the same with their own writing, it is not difficult to suggest that most content creators in the digital age on platforms such as Twitter are those who are professionally paid to deliver information to the public and not the public itself. Even when non-professional users, amateurs and writers do create content it is often within the space of major corporations such as Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo! Google and Facebook who ultimately have control over much of that content. It is also evident that the interaction of critics and institutions with technologies convolutes the assertion of change, or ‘contest’, in the culture of film criticism. From the narratives created it is possible to suggest that some film critics are technophobes as they tentatively engage with convergent forms and promote writing as the central act of criticism. Even with the implications of increasing commercialisation on gatekeeper populist publications which carry film criticism, they still offer innovative converged media within their online spaces, such as the absorption 221

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of blogs, podcasts, video channels on YouTube and now mobile apps and social media profiles, which may initially bode well for the future of the video essay. But there appears to be little motivation to take such a risk with existing legal uncertainties and complexities where not clearing rights may agitate the film industry. The way that established critics are engaged with podcasts and video essays can be said to be no more or less than critics in the past have made forays into broadcast criticism on radio or television. With regards to the video essay and its increasing importance in the eyes of film academia, and given a new generation of critics will be more familiar with new software technologies, perhaps it shows the most potential to offer a shift in the way film criticism is produced and consumed. Yet, apart from the legal issues, there are inherent factors about the differences in performing in prose as opposed to performing vocally or in person onscreen. Furthermore, whether writers would want to expose themselves as filmmakers open to the critiques of other film critics is a questionable factor which may serve to perpetuate the form’s otherness for some time. From the schools model outlined in the conceptual chapters, which is modular in that each retains its identity even if critics and institutions manoeuvre between them, it is clear that the areas represented most in this book are that of the populist and sophisticated schools. Therefore, further research may conduct a similar enquiry investigating the narratives from other schools underrepresented empirically. Of course, as is the nature of the digital age, with new developments and increased pace in technology and thus public and private activities, further research may look again at a broad range of film critics occupying a different landscape from the current one which has coincided with social media micro-blogs such as Twitter and new tablet technologies and smartphones. If Twitter or Facebook are not the dominant networks at the end of this decade some other development will be; indeed a research project which examines critics solely through their social media communications may prove useful in the future to analyse interactions with each other and/or other communities. More specific research in the interim period may consider the following: how scholars are beginning to implement video essays in film studies departments and what the relationships 222

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are between academia and criticism; or the concept of a professional film critic entirely when there are reduced staff positions and increasing portfolio careers, whereby critics seek or are forced to pursue tangential roles as filmmakers, programmers, curators, educators etcetera. Perhaps further work into the area of amateur film criticism can unearth data on representation and whether technology can indeed overthrow patriarchy in film criticism or in the wider journalistic culture. Apart from Rosenbaum’s material, all empirical data used in this research was sourced in 2011, the year which celebrated the half-centenary of Williams’ The Long Revolution, his contribution to media and cultural studies which proposes that continual developments in those arenas are difficult to grasp when writing about them contemporarily. While I set out to discover what is happening to film criticism in the digital age and while it may be rudimentary to state the case for change and continuity, this answer has been sufficiently nuanced: even if the overall arc aims to convince the reader that the narratives created by practitioners working today sways more towards the latter. What can be stated with certainty is that what is happening to film criticism is relative to those voices and institutions represented here alongside their analyses and triangulation with other sources. At the same time as signifying a macro trend of continuity in norms and practices there is also a micro detail which recognises, through the Six Schools model and its hive structure, disparate voices with competing and overlapping interests. Rather than suggest the impact of film criticism on the public sphere it is perhaps more useful and accurate, to borrow a concept from Nancy Fraser (1992), to suggest that film criticism has multiple public spheres with varying degrees of power and recognition, as each school does. Crisis is where this research began, so to come full circle is to say that crises are generally linked with upsetting the established or natural order of things. Film criticism has witnessed some dramatic changes in that it has been opened up for anyone to participate within, with technology accelerating its practice and the pace with which its functions can be publically debated. More schools, more writers, more content, more speed. Yet within this disruption there exists a through line of continuity, in recurring crises which continually attempt to give purpose to the 223

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future of the practice, in assertions of authority and expertise through the heritage of older media and gatekeeping, as well as in perpetuating one-way communication models, and which is also visible in the representation and form film criticism contemporarily takes. Only further investigation into this emerging field of enquiry will reveal whether these continuities remain dominant or if early signs of transformation will continue to develop.

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Appendix

Film Critics Interviewed, Listing Main Affiliation Name

Date

Location

Affiliation

Ansen, David Brooks, Xan Campbell, Zach Cousins, Mark Everleth, Mike

13 September 2011 8 June 2011 27 October 2011 8 June 2011 18 November 2011

TIFF, Toronto Email Email EIFF, Edinburgh Email

Harkness, Alistair Hunter, Allan Hynes, Eric James, Nick Koehler, Robert Kohn, Eric Koresky, Michael Lawrenson, Ed Lee, Kevin B. Lucas, Tim Lyne, Charlie Means, Sean P.

19 June 2011 18 June 2011 16 June 2011 13 July 2011 17 September 2011 9 September 2011 16 June 2011 17 June 2011 10 September 2011 7 October 2011 10 June 2011 7 December 2011

EIFF, Edinburgh EIFF, Edinburgh TIFF, Toronto Telephone TIFF, Toronto TIFF, Toronto EIFF, Edinburgh EIFF, Edinburgh TIFF, Toronto Email Email Email

Murray, Noel Nayman, Adam Peary, Gerald Peranson, Mark Porton, Richard Pulver, Andrew Rosenbaum, Jonathan Shambu, Girish Smith, Damon Taylor, Kate Tolley, Gail Vizcarrondo, Sara Maria Wilkinson, Amber

9 September 2011 13 September 2011 11 July 2011 15 September 2011 17 September 2011 17 June 2011 4 November 2009 15 September 2011 21 June 2011 21 June 2011 21 June 2011 9 September 2011

TIFF, Toronto TIFF, Toronto Telephone TIFF, Toronto TIFF, Toronto EIFF, Edinburgh University of Glasgow TIFF, Toronto EIFF, Edinburgh EIFF, Edinburgh EIFF, Edinburgh TIFF, Toronto

Newsweek Guardian Blogger The Times Underground Film Journal Scotsman Daily Express Time Out: NY Sight & Sound Variety IndieWIRE Reverse Shot The Big Issue, Fandor Video Watchdog Ultra Culture The Salt Lake Tribune AV Club, The Onion The Globe and Mail The Boston Phoenix CinemaScope Cineaste Guardian Film Comment, Slate

23 June 2011

EIFF, Edinburgh

225

Blogger Birmingham Post Electric Sheep The List, BBC Box Office Magazine, Rotten Tomatoes Eye for Film

226

Appendix UK and North American publications studied 2010–2012 Newspapers Alt. Press

Magazines/ Journals

Websites

Individual Blogs

Birmingham Post

American Ain’t It Cool Cinematographer News

Other

Bordwell, David (http:// Creative www.davidbordwell.net/ Screenwriting blog) The Boston Artforum AV Club, The Campbell, Zach (http:// Criterion Cast Phoenix Onion elusivelucidity.blogspot. com) The Chicago The Big Issue BBC Dumas, Andre (http:// The Criterion Reader horrordigest.blogspot. Collection co.uk/) The Chicago Box Office DVD Everleth, Mike (http://www. The Sun-Times Magazine Beaver undergroundfilmjournal. Documentary com/aboutBlog undergroundfilm-journal/) Daily Express Bright Lights Film Electric Sheep Grant, Catherine (http:// Fandor Journal filmstudiesforfree.blogspot. co.uk/) Daily Mail CineAction Eye for Film Hill, Katrina (http:// /Filmcast actionflickchick.com/ superaction/) Daily Record Cineaste Film.com Hudson, David (http://daily. Filmspotting greencine.com/) Daily CinemaScope FilmJohanson, Maryann (http:// Find Any Film Telegraph Philosophy www.flickfilosopher.com/) Edinburgh Cinema Journal Film Threat Kehr, Dave (http://www. The Glasgow Evening News davekehr.com/) Film Theatre Evening Times Close-Up Flixter Kenny, Glen (http:// Hollywood somecamerunning.typepad. Babble-On com) Financial The Dissolve The Grid Kittle, Alex (http://www. KCRW’s The Times filmforager.com/) Treatment Globe and DVD Monthly Frames Lee, Kevin B. (http:// Masters of Mail Cinema alsolikelife.com/shooting/) cinema Journal Guardian Empire HeyuGuys Lisanti, Tom (http://www. Movie Review sixtiescinema.com/blog/) Query Engine Herald Entertainment IMDb Lyne, Charlie (http://www. MUBI Weekly ultraculture.co.uk/) Independent Film Comment IndieWIRE Mann, Sarah (http:// The Picture cinema-splendor.blogspot. House Podcast co.uk/) London Film International LOLA Rosenbaum, Jonathan The Projection Evening (http://jonathanrosenbaum. Booth Standard com) Metro (UK) Film Quarterly Metacritic Shambu, Girish (http:// Slate Spoiler girishshambu.blogspot. Specials co.uk/) New York The Hollywood Moving Image Shamon, Danny (http:// Post Reporter Source dansmoviereport.blogspot. co.uk/)

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Appendix Newspapers Alt. Press

Magazines/ Journals

Websites

Individual Blogs

New York Times

Kinematograph Weekly

Reverse Shot

Observer

LA Weekly

The Salt Lake Tribune Scotsman Sun The Times

The List

Roger Ebert. com Rotten Tomatoes Rouge Salon Senses of Cinema Slant

Singh, Jai Arjun (http:// jaiarjun.blogspot.co.uk/p/ about-me.html) Weatherford, Matt (http:// www.filthycritic.com) Various writers (http://www. slantmagazine.com/house)

Little White Lies MovieMaker Monthly Film Bulletin The Wall Street The New Yorker Journal Newsweek Slate NYArts Yahoo! Movies Premiere Quarterly Review of Film and Video Rolling Stone Screen Screen International Sight & Sound Time Time Out: NY and London Total Film Tribune Magazine Tribute Vanity Fayre Variety Video Watchdog The Village Voice

227

Other

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Filmography

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), dir.: Stanley Kubrick, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), Stanley Kubrick Productions, USA and UK Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa (2013), dir.: Declan Lowney, Baby Cow Films, USA Anatomy of a Murder (1959), dir.: Otto Preminger, Carlyle Productions, USA Bad Lieutenant (1992), dir.: Abel Ferrara, Bad Lt. Productions, USA Bad Lieutenant: Port of call – New Orleans (2009), dir.: Werner Herzog, Millennium Films, USA Bonnie and Clyde (1967), dir.: Arthur Penn, Warner Brothers/Seven Arts, USA Broken Arrow (1996), dir.: John Woo, Twentieth Century Fox, USA Burden of Dreams (1982), dir.: Les Blank, Flower Films, USA Cats & Dogs (2001), dir.: Lawrence Guterman, Warner Bros., US and Australia Dark Knight, The (2008), dir.: Christopher Nolan, Warner Bros., USA Dark Knight Rises, The (2012), dir.: Christopher Nolan, Warner Bros., USA David Holzman’s Diary (1967), dir.: Jim McBride, Second Run DVD, USA Django Unchained (2012), dir.: Quentin Tarantino, The Weinstein Company, USA Exit Through the Gift Shop (2010), dir.: Banksy, USA and UK For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism (2009), dir.: Gerald Peary, AG Films, USA Gertrud (1964), dir.: Carl Theodor Dreyer, Palladium, Denmark Green Zone (2010), dir.: Paul Greengrass, Universal Pictures, Studio Canal, France, USA, Spain, UK Hangover: Part II, The (2011), dir.: Todd Phillips, Warner Bros., USA Hiroshima, mon amour (1959), dir.: Alain Resnais, Argo Films, France Histoire(s) du cinéma (1988–1998), dir. : Jean-Luc Godard, Canal+, La Sept, France 3 (FR 3), France Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, The (2012), dir.: Peter Jackson, New Line Cinema, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, USA, New Zealand Inglourious Basterds (2009), dir.: Quentin Tarantino, Universal Pictures, Weinstein Company, USA and Germany Kill List (2011), dir.: Ben Wheatley, Warp X & Rook Films, UK

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230

Filmography King’s Speech, The (2010), dir.:  Tom Hooper, The Weinstein Company, UK Film Council, Momentum Pictures, UK, USA, Australia La Vi en Rose (2007), dir.: Olivier Dahan, Légende Films, TF1 International, France, UK Little White Lies (2010), dir.: Guillaume Canet, Les Productions du Trésor, France Long Ranger, The (2013), dir.: Gore Verbinski, Walt Disney Pictures, USA Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003), dir.:  Thom Andersen, Thom Andersen Productions, USA Lumière Brothers’ First Films, The (1996), dir.:  Antoine and Auguste Lumière, Association Frères Lumière, USA Man with a Movie Camera (1929), dir.: Dziga Vertov, VUFKU, Soviet Union March of the Penguins (2005), dir.:  Luc Jacquet, Bonne Pioche, Alliance de Production Cinematographique, France Mirror (1975), dir.: Andrei Tarkovsky, Mosfilm, Soviet Union Night and the City (1950), dir.: Jules Dassin, Twentieth Century Fox, UK Night of the Hunter, The (1955), dir.: Charles Laughton, Paul Gregory Productions, USA No Country for Old Men (2007), dir.: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen, Paramount Vantage, USA Old and the New, The (1929), dir.:  Grigori Aleksandrov, Sergei M.  Eisenstein, Sovkino, Soviet Union Passion of the Christ, The (2004), dir.: Mel Gibson, Icon Productions, USA Pearl Harbor (2001), dir.: Michael Bay, Touchstone Pictures, USA Pervert’s Guide to Cinema, The (2006), dir.: Sophie Fiennes, Amoeba Film, UK Pulp Fiction (1994), dir.: Quentin Tarantino, Miramax Films, USA Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), dir.:  Steven Spielberg, Paramount Pictures/Lucas Film, USA Resident Evil, Afterlife (2010), dir.: Paul W.S. Anderson, Constantin Film Produktion, Germany, France, USA, Canada RiP!: A Remix Manifesto (2008), dir.: Brett Gaylor, Eye Steel Film, National Film Board of Canada, Canada Rise of Louis XIV, The (1966), dir.:  Roberto Rossellini, Office de Radiodiffusion Télévision Française, France Rock Hudson’s Home Movies (1992), dir.:  Mark Rappaport, Couch Potatoe Productions, USA Rose Hobart (1936), dir.: Joseph Cornell, National Film Preservation Foundation, USA Sans Soleil (1983), dir.: Chris Marker, Argos Films, France Simpsons Movie, The (2007), dir.: David Silverman, Twentieth Century Fox, USA Slumdog Millionaire (2008), dir.: Danny Boyle, Celador Films, Film4, Pathé Pictures International, UK Star Wars (1999–2005), dir.: George Lucas, Lucasfilm, Twentieth Century Fox, USA Statues also Die (1953), dir.: Chris Marker, Alain Resnais, Présence Africaine, Tadié Cinéma, France

230

231

Filmography Steal This Film (2006) & Steal This Film II (2007), dir.: unaccredited, Independent BitTorrent only, UK, Germany, Sweden Story of Children and Film, A (2013), dir.: Mark Cousins, Hopscotch Films, UK Story of Film: An Odyssey, The (2011), dir.: Mark Cousins, Hopscotch Films, UK Sun Shines Bright, The (1953), dir.: John Ford, Argosy Pictures, USA Theatre of blood (1973), dir.: Douglas Hickox, Harbour Productions Limited, UK Tree of Life, The (2011), dir.:  Terrence Malick, Cottonwood Pictures, River Road Entertainment, USA Wee Willie Winkie (1937), dir.: John Ford, Twentieth Century Fox, USA World War Z (2013), dir.:  Marc Forster, Plan B Entertainment, Apparatus Productions, USA and Malta

231

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Index

Ain’t It Cool News, 24, 120 ethics of, 128–35 amateur return of, 121–8 Apple products, 178, 179 surveillance, 43, 45, 216, 221 see also podcast Aristotle, 50–3, 86 audiovisual criticism, 76, 183–4, 186 Audiovisual Thinking, 201 see also video essays BBC Culture Show, The, 23 Film programme, 172 journalists, 40–1, 64, 87, 90, 96 Movie Café, 96, 171 Radio 4, 4 Radio 5 Live, 165, 171 Review Show, The, 65 Scene by Scene, 171 Bordwell, David, 7, 11, 67–71, 199, 217 Making Meaning (publication), 30, 49, 68 Bourdieu, Pierre, 1, 73 Cannes Film Festival, 98, 179 influence, 13, 101–2 screenings, 20, 149–51

Carroll, Noël, 22, 30, 49, 61, 65, 79, 85 cultural criticism, 114 judgement and interpretation, 69–70 middle ground, 199 objective evaluation, 50–8, 61, 65, 79, 88, 219 On Criticism (publication), 50 Cineaste, 3, 68, 77, 111, 114, 115–18, 211 editors, 14, 18, 96, 102, 206 symposia, 182, 214 2000, 30, 45, 106, 181, 182 2005, 45, 64, 106, 181 2008, 9, 181 2013, 83, 94, 157, 200 CinemaScope, 3, 18, 92 editorial, 14, 96, 105 function, 68, 74, 114–18 cinephiles, 67, 76–7, 116, 172, 176, 193, 195 academics, 199–202, 210, 214 and fan-boys, 19, 87, 93, 121–8, 134–5, 220 copyright, 20, 194, 202, 206, 207–13 see also fair use Cousins, Mark, 3, 18, 94 copyright, 209, 212, 213 creative criticism, 125, 175, 176, 187, 202, 206

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Index filmmaker critic, 53, 170, 184, 188, 204 function of criticism, 55, 85, 89, 156, 157 industry, 105, 124, 171, 172 Criterion Collection, The, 27, 129, 130, 178, 187, 199, 208 ‘critic-proof ’, 22, 31, 87 Critics’ Circle, 52, 66, 87, 89, 96, 104 digital age, 33–48 DVD, 25, 34, 96, 170, 177, 212, 218 commentary, 139, 169, 187, 197, 203, 214 Criterion, 130 Global Discoveries on DVD, 96 Eagleton, Terry, 21, 22, 49, 51, 66, 86, 199 critical crises, 23, 27 history of criticism, 55–8 social function, 61, 65, 70, 79, 85, 188, 219 specialisation, 30, 66, 89, 114, 118 Ebert, Roger, 11, 102, 112, 143, 161, 163, 196 Siskel and Ebert and the Movies, 153, 172 Eliot, T.S., 53, 56 expertise, 111–18, 152, 205, 206, 224 gatekeeping, 20, 88, 123, 217, 219, 220 niche, 57, 104, 125 professional, 78, 122, 128 see also amateur Facebook, 40–1, 141 commerce, 44, 45, 222 privacy, 43, 216, 221 use, 142, 146, 148, 152, 155, 159, 164, 179

fair use, 20, 207–15 see also copyright fan-boys, 19, 87, 134, 135, 156, 166, 167, 220 as pejorative, 23, 75, 93, 121–8 Fandor, 3, 18, 101, 130, 143, 174, 183 film festivals Edinburgh (illustration), 15 Film Festival Research Network, 12 Toronto (illustrations), 16 see also Cannes Film Festival golden age, 10, 46, 87, 158, 220 critics’ discussion of, 22–5 hyperbole, 1, 3, 20 nostalgia, 37, 63, 96, 117, 124 Google, 41, 43, 45, 216, 221 alerts, 10, 11 Google+, 141 news, 99 Greene, Grahame, 27–8, 32 Guardian, 3, 24, 36, 66, 68, 83, 92, 112, 115, 183 Bradshaw, Peter, 23, 72, 74, 110, 165 film editor, 18, 84, 94, 113, 136, 146, 210 illustrations, 137, 141 popularity, 37, 41, 44, 71, 98, 101, 118 website, 19, 47, 140, 142, 160, 181, 204, 212 Habermas, Jürgen, 39, 43, 50, 55, 158, 159, 163, 167 history 1887 American cartoon (illustration), 16 of criticism, 49–65 of video essays, 182–90 Hollywood, 102–9, 132, 133, 158, 171, 201 Babble-On, 179 Black List, 62

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Index Hollywood (cont.) box office, 95 budgets, 134 copyright, 213 Hollywood Reporter, 78 studios, 25, 28, 45, 114, 129 homogeneity, 104–11, 143, 147 IndieWIRE, 3, 4, 18, 78, 101, 134, 136 Criticwire, 129, 186 editor, 91, 126 Press Play, 183 intellectual property, 197, 202 see also copyright journalism studies, 3, 9, 70 Kael, Pauline, 32, 108, 156, 171, 188 career, 28–29, 62–3, 124 Knowles, Harry, 24, 120, 131, 163 perspectives on, 25, 129, 132–4 see also Ain’t It Cool News Leavis, F.R., 27, 28, 31, 32, 50 Martin, Adrian, 67, 107 amateur, 124, 125 creative criticism, 174, 177, 184, 204, 184 industry, 31, 32, 45, 47, 54, 111 middle range/ground, 66, 77, 199 metacritic, 2, 152, 161 money, 91–7, 127, 180 industry, 106, 129, 208, 210, 213 little money, 121, 124, 209 more money, 94, 126 MUBI, 10, 126, 155, 159, 160, 211 new media, 33, 43 Orwell, George, 28, 32, 132 othering, 170–4

participation, 6, 20, 44, 46, 47, 131, 214, 221 and democracy, 21, 33, 38, 121, 154, 167 from females, 156, 158 in research, 15, 18 in social media, 158, 159 164–7, 214, 221 as thematic, 7, 38–42 in video essays, 197, 201, 210 podcast, 139, 164, 170, 184, 214 detailed discussions of, 178–182 among other tools, 20, 70, 72, 136, 174, 196, 213, 217, 222 public sphere, 52, 119, 162–3, 166, 204, 214 criticism and the, 19, 86, 89, 100, 109, 111, 118, 188, 217, 223 history, 39, 55, 56, 58 internet, 40, 42, 43, 154, 155, 158, 159 Slow Criticism, 148 see also Habermas, Jürgen Pulitzer, 53, 157 quotidian, 45, 79, 91, 153 Respected Space, 41, 44, 47, 76, 82, 163, 221 application of, 97–104, 117, 119, 145, 217 explanation of, 6, 7, 19, 33 reviewer, 28, 31, 63, 159, 219 Rosenbaum, Jonathan, 3, 18, 94, 96, 113, 117, 173, 179, 223 academia, 9, 10, 22, 69 amateur, 122 Chicago Reader, The, 105, 106 copyright, 208, 209 function of criticism, 65, 85, 88, 89, 144, 180 internet, 25, 136, 143, 147, 159, 165

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Index mainstream, 32, 78, 110, 111, 112 transition, 27 video essays, 183, 202, 204–6 Rotten Tomatoes, 18, 75, 87, 100, 101 aggregation, 53, 99, 152, 161 editor, 123, 144

Twitter critics and, 140–1, 146–8, 159, 163, 165, 179, 221 gatekeeping, 20, 167 immediacy, 121, 152–153 usage, 40, 155, 164, 98, 216

Sarris, Andrew, 62–3, 108, 124 schools Six Schools, 7, 48, 65–81, 85, 101, 223 Six Schools Model (illustration), 73 Sight & Sound, 3, 18, 66, 72, 92, 94, 115 academia, 69, 113, 200 editor, 22, 118 frequency, 96, 98, 147 function of criticism, 29, 32, 61, 65, 114, 127 history, 27, 28, 63–4, 103, 186 internet, 136, 143, 198, 206, 210 spoilers, 68 Sontag, Susan, 28, 126, 156 star ratings, 53, 75, 103, 116, 139, 172

usability, 19, 120, 164, 218, 220 F-shape, 138, 143 readability, 135–6 writing, 142, 153

Tree of Life, The, 20, 98, 135, 149–153 Tribune Magazine, 11, 101

YouTube, 40, 183, 186, 198, 216, 222 copyright, 209

Variety, 3, 13, 18, 78, 84, 105, 136, 150 video essays, 20, 53, 77, 167, 177, 182–215 examples of, 189–96 illustrations, 191, 193, 194 Lee, Kevin B., 14, 25, 40, 123, 173, 175 Web 2.0, 1, 37, 39, 41, 44, 159, 165 Williams, Raymond, 4, 34, 169, 223

262