Local Gestures
because the personal is cultural
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Fucking a jock would be exotic, pumping Muscles and penis at the art studio, Stealing moments with strangers, paying For someone to touch you. (Butthole Costs a lot.) My generation invented This culture: exhibitionists without Pictures, men destined for greatness as Graphic designers exiting in plaid, depressing Single-person fondue as sad as a couple Holding each other at a shitty concert. Now a minor motion picture. I just like holding something in my hands That’s not my dick. Fuck the internet; Ask me the password to my heart. My best Memories are of things that never happened: A boyfriend who uses his penis as A bookmark, a soap opera without Antagonism, the beholder of my beauty, yes To everything that is being with you, a love So big it cannot be consumed and as silent As a power outage. We all but stand At the edge of a cliff, forever torn between Our ass and our heart, running into people We had sex with, getting over them By looking through their Facebook, taking Pictures of strangers and putting them on Instagram to pretend we’re not alone, liking Ourselves if only on Twitter, trying to find Oprah in a sea of dicks. Like Steven Seagal At his sexiest, love will not be denied, even Though it is silence: a sound I cannot Hear. I have had so many almost moments In my life, trying really hard not to look At your body, passport open to picture Page, remembering why I never wear That cock ring, trying to err on the side Of love, seeing your muscles from here. If you want to know love, always keep it Out of sight. Parfois Montréal me fait mal Fini qu’on offre de me crosser gentiment Je ne fais confiance qu’en la solitude Il faut contrarier la vie Je serai sage comme une image cochonne Il y a un labyrinthe en moi Personne n’en sortira Le seul espoir est une solitude errante Je vois encore ton cœur dans mon miroir Il faudra tout t’avoir en moi The Communist Manifesto, Karl Mark “You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine tenths. You reproach us, therefore, with intending to do away with a form of property, the necessary condition for whose existence is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society.” Fear and Trembling, Amélie Nothomb “The accountants who spent ten hours a day copying out numbers were, to my mind, victims sacrificed on the altar of a divinity wholly bereft of either greatness or mystery. These humble creatures were devoting their entire lives to a reality beyond their grasp. In days gone by they might have at least believed there was some purpose to their servitude. Now they no longer had any illusions. They were giving up their lives for nothing, and they knew it. Everyone knows that Japan has the highest suicide rate of any country in the world. What surprised me was that suicides were not more common.” Putain, Nelly Arcan “[...] vous savez bien que je n'en voudrai pas de cet homme car je ne veux que ce que je ne peux pas avoir, comme vous par exemple, je vous veux parce je ne vous aurai jamais, c'est simple et sans issue, c'est désespérément logique, le désir qui ne connaît de réalité que lui-même, et vous voyez bien que je mérite la mort pour cet entêtement de rat qui ne sait pas rebrousser chemin, pour cet acharnement de bestiole aveugle qui finira par crever d'avoir trop avancé, vous verrez bien, je mourrai de ce compromis que je ne veux pas faire, et tant pis pour tous les hommes sains et équilibrés qui m'aimeront et tant pis pour moi surtout qui en aimerai d'autres, on finit tous par mourir de la discordance de nos amours.” How Should a Person Be?: A Novel, Sheila Heti “Most people live their entire lives with their clothes on, and even if they wanted to, couldn't take them off. Then there are those who cannot put them on. They are the ones who live their lives not just as people but as examples of people. They are destined to expose every part of themselves, so the rest of us can know what it means to be a human. Most people lead their private lives. They have been given a natural modesty that feels to them like morality, but it's not -- it's luck. They shake their heads at the people with their clothes off rather than learning about human life from their example, but they are wrong to act so superior. Some of us have to be naked, so the rest can be exempted by fate.” Ce samedi il pleuvait, Annick Lefebvre “Ma langue va se délier pis splasher de l’acide généalogique sur le beau patio de polymère synthétique de Ludovic. Je vais faire corps avec la scie à chaîne pis tronçonner le tricot familial maillé serré qui nous soude faussement sous prétexte que nos souches sont les mêmes. Ça va faire brailler Julie qui va se rendre compte qu’elle possède la faculté de se répandre par spasmes de sanglots libérateurs, entre un buzz de BlackBerry, une névrose cheap pis une brochette de crevettes thaï grillées à point.” Silk, Alessandro Baricco “And a while later: ‘It is a strange sort of pain.’ Softly. ‘To die of yearning for something you'll never experience.’” The Skin of Our Teeth, Thornton Wilder “I didn't marry you because you were perfect. I didn't even marry you because I loved you. I married you because you gave me a promise. That promise made up for your faults. And the promise I gave you made up for mine. Two imperfect people got married and it was the promise that made the marriage. And when our children were growing up, it wasn't a house that protected them; and it wasn't our love that protected them -- it was that promise.” Headlight Sixteen “I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. I thought of all the invisible particles that constituted the world, like a cloud of tiny little seahorses. The face of a princess embedded in the fading rays of the sun. I listened for my heartbeat. Closely. Nothing. Everything was fine.” -Atli Bollason, “Sandy’s Gallery” Candida, George Bernard Shaw “Wicked people means people who have no love: therefore they have no shame. They have the power to ask love because they don't need it: they have the power to offer it because they have none to give. (He collapses into his seat, and adds, mournfully) But we, who have love, and long to mingle it with the love of others: we cannot utter a word.” http://www.localgestures.com/3/post/2013/01/in-which-we-talk-to-ourselves-out-loud.html Scrivener Creative Review Presents: Teen Poetry @ Brutopia Let’s face it, most readings play like they’re put on by writers who’ve never been exposed to any other kind of performance, nor had the pleasure of Israel’s cock. The folks at Scrivener Creative Review had the brilliant idea of having writers read material from their teenage years. In retrospect, the angst-filled writings proved hilarious, causing the audience to burst into laughter more often than at any other reading I’ve ever attended. Which caused me to think: what’s the point of working so hard on so-called good writing if it gets less of a reaction than our less self-conscious teen musings? Once, I heard a dance critic try (at least partially) to legitimize their practice by saying, “I see every show…” Though I do respect this critic, it certainly is not because they supposedly see every show. The statement is (though probably not consciously) obviously a lie. At best, by this the critic might mean two things: one, they see the shows that most fall under the heading of contemporary dance; two, they see the shows that most fall under the heading of professional shows. This critic can (at least partially) get away with this statement because it is foreseeable that someone could see almost every dance show performed in Montreal. However, when we transfer this argument to other art forms, it quickly falls to pieces. Imagine a film/music/book critic making the same statement. It would be laughable. Yet film/music/book criticism should obviously not be discredited simply by virtue that it is impossible for a critic to consume all that is released within their field. All this to say what should be obvious: that mass consumption does not legitimize a critic’s practice. So what does then? What is a critic? First it might be useful to ascertain what a critic isn’t. 1. As has already been established, a critic is not (necessarily) a mass consumer. Seeing a lot of movies does not make one a critic; it makes one a cinephile (at worst, and an experience-seeker at best). 2. A critic is not someone with good taste. The best thing I can say in regards to this point is go ahead and read the countless critics out there who visibly have good taste; then notice that your sole interest in their reviews is that you tend to agree with them. Your interest then is not in their criticism, but in your narcissism. 3. A critic is not an advertiser. To say that an album is “the best of the year” is to do nothing more than to encourage consumption in a way that requires no thought whatsoever. It is a readymade sentence that means nothing more than “you should listen to this by virtue that I think you should listen to this.” 4. A critic should not love their field unconditionally. When I go to a reading, I inevitably think, “Have writers never gone to any other kind of art performance in their life? This is unacceptable.” If there is no fence between different art forms, they can all be compared. If there is a fence between the arts, we need to be aware of how these fences affect what is produced within them. In other words, a dance critic should not be concerned with seeing every dance show performed in any given city, but with listening to all of the music being produced. It will make them a better dance critic. So, in less negative terms, what is a critic then? 5. A critic is a thinker. Though their encounter with the work of art first occurs at the level of perception and may primarily result in affect, it is thought that will enable the critic to translate their experience into words. 6. A critic must meditate. Because some works of art work on that level. A critic must do cocaine. Because some works of art work on that level. Extrapolate to include all human and non-human experiences. 7. A critic contextualizes. No artwork is produced in isolation. No artwork, no matter how personal, is produced outside of culture. Every artwork is produced either in accordance with the dominant culture or in opposition to it. Every artwork is a form of oppression or of liberation. 8. That is to say that a critic politicizes, or rather brings to light the politics that are inherent in any work of art. Otherwise art is meaningless. Otherwise criticism is meaningless. 9. A critic is someone who makes links with other works within their discipline, but also with works outside of it. A comparison between two artworks is not more meaningful simply by virtue that they use the same medium. I reiterate: a dance critic needs to be a music critic. 10. A critic needs to be aware that an artistic experience is necessarily a personal (and cultural) experience. Therefore, a critic must strive to be as aware as possible of how their race, gender, social class, and sexual orientation affect their perception of the work of art. A critic must not deny these facts. In other words, a critic must be as subjective as possible. A personal experience is not a unique experience. 11. A critic is a writer. This point cannot be emphasized enough. Though criticism is about a work of art, it must be able to live independently of it. If anything, this is the mark of good criticism. In other words, readers should be able to identify whether criticism is good without having experienced the work of art that said criticism is about. Criticism is an experience in and of itself. 12. A critic must not ask whether a work of art is good. The answer to this question is a simple yes or no, which requires no thinking or writing. A critic must not ask what the artist is trying to achieve. The artist is better equipped to answer that question (should they wish to). A critic must ask, “What does the work of art do?” I’m out of weed. I text the delivery service, but I don’t hear back from them. The concert is in thirty minutes. What do I have around the house? A flask of Balvenie Doublewood 12 y.o. Two cans of PBR that a way-too-drunk customer forgot at work. I don’t like drinking alcohol, not because of the taste, but because of the effect it has on my body. Still, I crack open a can and bring the flask with me. But it doesn’t work. Even when I finally feel drunk, I still feel like I’m dying. I stand in the corner of the room, looking through Twitter on my phone. I’m not a douchebag; it’s just the only thing that’s making me feel a bit better right now. When the opening act is over, I go outside to get some fresh air. When I come back some asshole is now standing in the corner. He doesn’t need to. He’s with someone. He doesn’t suffer from social anxiety. I go in the bathroom. I sit in the single bathroom stall, waiting for the headliner to finally go on. I curse the band under my breath for taking so long to get started. The internet barely works in here, and it’s not helping. I remember that, when my best friend wouldn’t be there in high school, I’d eat my lunch in a bathroom stall. Soon though, I would just drop my lunch in the nearest garbage can and go spend the entire lunch hour in the library. Even before I’d ever been to the city, I considered myself a city person. This was based on movies and television alone. I wanted to do things city people do. Now that I’m in the city though, I recognize that part of me (the core of me) remains a country person. I do city things but I do them in a country way: alone. I grew up on a dairy farm, far from my friends, whom I rarely saw outside of school. I had two older brothers, but we had a significant age difference: five and seven years. They were more likely to terrorize me than protect me. I remember an incident where my mother was scared of sending me to school because she feared that my teacher would think my parents were beating me up; I had bruises all over my arms. So I did things on my own. I read; I watched television, whatever movies they had at the shitty video store in town; I listened to top 40 radio because I’d never been exposed to anything else; I daydreamed. In the country, if you don’t do things on your own, you won’t do anything at all. In the city, I went to the movies, to restaurants, to concerts, to clubs, to bars, to dance shows, to plays… Most of the time, I did those things on my own. I still do. There are two social settings in which I need to smoke up: at a concert and at a club. I’m not entirely sure why. I feel mostly fine going to a restaurant or a theatre on my own. Sometimes I’ll notice that I’m the only person alone and I’ll feel a bit of social envy, but then I listen to the inane conversations of the people around me and I go back to reading the words of people long dead.
I think I feel fine in these contexts because my aloneness is assigned a table, a seat, a delimited space. At a concert or a club, the crowd is fluid, and their togetherness constantly threatens to butt up against my aloneness. My aloneness is in a constant state of shock. When I get stoned, I become invested in the sensorial experience of my surroundings. I don’t care that I’m alone. The tightness in my chest subsides. Words fill my head and, whether it’s actually true or not, my stoned self thinks I’m really witty. I can focus on the music, I can hear it, I can let it inside of me, I can feel it. Which man will Candida choose? MARCHBANKS: I know. You feel that you could love anybody that offered– PROSERPINE (exasperated): Anybody that offered! No, I do not. What do you take me for? MARCHBANKS (discouraged): No use. You won't make me real answers – only those things that everybody says. MARCHBANKS (hopelessly): Nothing that's worth saying is proper. One of the biggest realizations I’ve had this past year is that there are relationship people and single people. Relationship people continue to be so even when they are single; those periods are usually brief anyway. Single people continue to be so even when they are in relationships; those periods are usually brief anyway. In 1986, Newsweek caused a firestorm by claiming that women over 40 were “more likely to be killed by a terrorist” than to find a husband. "’The Marriage Crunch’ was based on a study by Harvard and Yale researchers that projected college-educated women had a 20 percent chance of getting married if they were still single at 30, a 5 percent chance at age 35, and just a 2.6 percent chance at age 40.” (Source: http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=2007889&page=1) Though the statement that women over 40 are more likely to be killed by a terrorist than to find a husband seems ludicrous, it is only so if one believes that a relationship is something that happens to someone, like getting killed by a terrorist or struck by lightning. However, if one looks at relationships as something that one is, it oddly starts making sense. Someone who was in a relationship when they were 25 is more likely to be in a relationship when they are 30 (or 35 or 40) than someone who wasn’t. Being in a relationship is not like playing the lotto; it is not a simple matter of chance. As if to confirm my beliefs, at the end of 2012, I happened to read George Bernard Shaw’s Candida. In some way – though more poetically, of course – I feel he is saying the same thing. Morell and Candida are relationship people. Marchbanks and Proserpine are single people. The play was first published in 1898, which proves that some things don’t change, except maybe the names we give them. For example, Marchbanks is a hipster. If you don’t believe me, read Shaw’s lengthy but appropriately revealing introduction to the character: "He is a strange, shy youth of eighteen, slight, effeminate, with a delicate childish voice, and a hunted tormented expression and shrinking manner that shew the painful sensitiveness of very swift and acute apprehensiveness in youth, before the character has grown to its full strength. […] He is so uncommon as to be almost unearthly; and to prosaic people [i.e. dudebros] there is something noxious in this unearthliness, just as to poetic people [i.e. other hipsters] there is something angelic in it. His dress is anarchic. He wears an old blue serge jacket, unbuttoned, over a woolen lawn tennis shirt, with a silk handkerchief for a cravat, trousers matching the jacket, and brown canvas shoes. In these garments he has apparently lain in the heather and waded through the waters; and there is no evidence of his having ever brushed them.” I’ll be perfectly honest: I might have overrelated to Marchbanks. If he lived in the internet age, Marchbanks would be at his computer writing “missed connections” on Craigslist, though in his hands they would magically manage to escape being utterly nauseating. (I, of course, have never been guilty of writing internet bullshit ripe for ridicule.) Though he feels intensely, he is crippled when comes the time to act out on his emotions: “You must be [shy]: that is the reason there are so few love affairs in the world,” he secretly tells Proserpine, projecting himself onto her, though he is not wrong in doing so. “We all go about longing for love: it is the first need of our natures, the first prayer of our hearts; but we dare not utter our longing: we are too shy.” Marchbanks realizes that love (I mean a relationship) is not something that merely happens, that it is conjured up in the least magical ways, as he continues: “I go about in search of love; and I find it in unmeasured stores in the bosoms of others. But when I try to ask for it, this horrible shyness strangles me; and I stand dumb, or worse than dumb, saying meaningless things—foolish lies. And I see the affection I am longing for given to dogs and cats and pet birds, because they come and ask for it. (Almost whispering.) It must be asked for: it is like a ghost: it cannot speak unless it is first spoken to. (At his normal pitch, but with deep melancholy.) All the love in the world is longing to speak; only it dare not, because it is shy, shy, shy. That is the world's tragedy.” He has no illusions about relationships. He understands that they are not (arguably because they cannot be) based on feelings alone; it would make them too vulnerable. The strength of such relationships can be found in that love cannot disappear if it were never there. It gives the relationship a stronger footing; there is no rug to be pulled from under it. MARCHBANKS (scrambling up almost fiercely): Wicked people means people who have no love: therefore they have no shame. They have the power to ask love because they don't need it: they have the power to offer it because they have none to give. (He collapses into his seat, and adds, mournfully) But we, who have love, and long to mingle it with the love of others: we cannot utter a word. Though he reverses cause and consequence, Marchbanks still has a sense that his unfulfilled love feeds his art. “That is what all poets do: they talk to themselves out loud; and the world overhears them,” he admits. “But it's horribly lonely not to hear someone else talk sometimes.” Of course, were he to hear someone else talk, he might no longer be a poet. Poetry comes from a lack. If everything were to be fulfilled, nothing would ever need to be written or spoken. We could all look at one another knowingly. The all-knowing omnipotent Candida also realizes the fundamental difference between Marchbanks and her husband Morell. When asked to choose between the two, Candida – with her motherly love – picks the weaker of the two. At this statement, both men are devastated. This proves that, despite his dramatic nature, Marchbanks is still more self-aware than Morell. CANDIDA: You remember what you told me about yourself, Eugene: how nobody has cared for you since your old nurse died: how those clever, fashionable sisters and successful brothers of yours were your mother's and father's pets: how miserable you were at Eton: how your father is trying to starve you into returning to Oxford: how you have had to live without comfort or welcome or refuge, always lonely, and nearly always disliked and misunderstood, poor boy! Candida understands that, despite all appearances to the contrary, Marchbanks is the stronger of the two, for he has learned to be alone, so he can be. By weakly trying to defend himself, he only proves her right: “I had my books. I had Nature. And at last I met you.” The things he has: not human beings; the human being he could only meet, never have.
Candida continues to outline the difference between the two men by turning her attention to her husband: “Now I want you to look at this other boy here—my boy—spoiled from his cradle. We go once a fortnight to see his parents. You should come with us, Eugene, and see the pictures of the hero of that household. James as a baby! the most wonderful of all babies. James holding his first school prize, won at the ripe age of eight! James as the captain of his eleven! James in his first frock coat! James under all sorts of glorious circumstances! You know how strong he is (I hope he didn't hurt you)—how clever he is—how happy! (With deepening gravity.) Ask James's mother and his three sisters what it cost to save James the trouble of doing anything but be strong and clever and happy. Ask me what it costs to be James's mother and three sisters and wife and mother to his children all in one.” Morell is the weaker of the two because he has never been alone and therefore has never learned to be alone. He couldn’t. He doesn’t love Candida with the same passion that Marchbanks loves her; but he has something more important working in his favour: he needs her; needs her in a way that Marchbanks will never need her, for the poet can be alone. Morell is not alone because he could not function otherwise. If Candida were to die, he would need to find a new wife as quickly as possible. As Marchbanks capitulates, Morell demonstrates that his own alterity still prevents him from understanding the poet: MARCHBANKS: Out, then, into the night with me! CANDIDA (rising quickly and intercepting him): You are not going like that, Eugene? MARCHBANKS (with the ring of a man's voice—no longer a boy's—in the words): I know the hour when it strikes. I am impatient to do what must be done. MORELL (rising from his knee, alarmed): Candida: don't let him do anything rash. CANDIDA (confident, smiling at Eugene): Oh, there is no fear. He has learnt to live without happiness. MARCHBANKS: I no longer desire happiness: life is nobler than that. Before he leaves, Candida attempts to rationalize with Marchbanks; but, with his poetic mind, he out-rationalizes her and even manages to have the last word: CANDIDA: One last word. (He stops, but without turning to her.) How old are you, Eugene? MARCHBANKS: As old as the world now. This morning I was eighteen. CANDIDA (going to him, and standing behind him with one hand caressingly on his shoulder): Eighteen! Will you, for my sake, make a little poem out of the two sentences I am going to say to you? And will you promise to repeat it to yourself whenever you think of me? MARCHBANKS (without moving): Say the sentences. CANDIDA: When I am thirty, she will be forty-five. When I am sixty, she will be seventy-five. MARCHBANKS (turning to her): In a hundred years, we shall be the same age. But I have a better secret than that in my heart. Let me go now. The night outside grows impatient. CANDIDA: Good-bye. (She takes his face in her hands; and as he divines her intention and bends his knee, she kisses his forehead. Then he flies out into the night. She turns to Morell, holding out her arms to him.) Ah, James! (They embrace. But they do not know the secret in the poet's heart.) Choose your pain Carefully Only sometimes Can the beautiful houses By the highway lead you to Recognize: you’d rather not get it Than not have it in this Beautifully designed, artless world And I am left To wonder Where one finds Comfort today, in a world Where the only people Who ever meet IRL Are barebackers – but, Of course, the problem With cumming is After The smallworldness of Everything can only be Glimpsed at in a foreign city Or on a pill, and even then It will only bring you The comfort of these words: You will always be As alone as this So you turn To a non-memory of A real love as you reach The limit of loneliness, you Turn to the thought Of a year of kissing, You turn to the floor – flat Against your back – and as tears escape Your closed eyes and slide Down your temples, you Realize: the humanness of me Cartoon by Lindsay Foyle 1. The only reader who cares whether you like an artwork is one who has the exact same taste as you. In other words, no one cares if you like an artwork or not. 2. One of the most overrated qualities in a critic is good taste. It is often a limited and limiting concept that ends up discrediting a lot of artworks that refuse to play by bourgeois or hipster rules. Art does not need to be well made so much as it needs to make well. 3. Avoid any sentence that might be quoted for publicity purposes. Criticism is not advertising, nor is it public relations. 4. Avoid empty rhetorical words such as “good/better/best,” “bad/worse/worst,” and their synonyms. Instead, use words such as “regressive/progressive”, “sexist/feminist”, “racist/anti-racist,” “homophobic/transphobic/queer-positive,” etc. These words carry weight, as they actually mean something. 5. The role of the critic is not to tell readers what is worth their time and money. Criticism is not consumerism. The role of the critic, much like that of the artist, is to create meaning. The critic should not be an informed consumer, but an informed thinker. 6. It is indeed hard to see the forest for the trees, especially when it comes to newer artworks, but that is precisely and imperatively what the critic must do. The role of the critic is to contextualize, to argue why a work is significant or relevant, or not. 7. It is a mistake to believe that good criticism can only be about good artworks. Criticism is a form of thought, and the artwork is not doing the thinking for the critic. 8. Like (hopefully) the artists they review, critics should have political and artistic convictions. These produce meaning, which is what a critic should be seeking. 9. Turn your hate for works you despise for artistic reasons rather than political ones into admiration. These works will haunt you for much longer than the ones you merely like, and works that fail to be remembered also fail to create meaning. 10. Reward risks taken by artists, even if they ultimately fail. There is no point in rewarding those who play it safe and simply copy the success of their predecessors. 11. Do not emulate the style of critics who put out generic reviews for mainstream publications. There is no point in putting out a review that could have been produced just as well by another writer with no personality. If you are replaceable, you will be replaced. When men talk fast, it's genius. “Critiquing is a lot of things,” recently wrote La Presse columnist Pierre Foglia, “but … it’s first an act of resistance. Resistance to trends, to taking the easy way out, to ideologies, to patronizing lectures, to one’s environment, to advertising.” If this is indeed what critiquing is, then popular criticism is all but dead. Though reviews appear in greater numbers than ever before thanks to the internet, the quality of said reviews is often just as low as the works they seek to discuss. In an interview with fellow critic Todd McCarthy, Roger Ebert said that the standard of film criticism is now “Better, because of the internet. This is a golden age of film criticism, although it no longer is a paying job. There are no length restrictions. Writing can be more esoteric or expert.” Though I agree with his basic premise, the average review I read on the internet gives me trouble in sharing his optimism. Helen Faradji of Québec cinema magazine 24 images is as skeptical as I am, noting the “deplorable return of the pithy judgment that can often be resumed to a sad ‘like it, don’t like it’.” There must undoubtedly be a good deal of quality reviews on the internet, but being able to find them is another story. As a foodie friend of mine once recommended, “If you want to find a good restaurant, go somewhere where the menu only has a few items. Sure, the place with the large menu might have some good dishes, but how are you going to find them amidst all the rest?” The same could be said of reviews on the internet. The lack of editors preventing the worst of writing from ever reaching human eyes means that most of what can be found online is nothing more than internet pollution. Yet print has little more to offer. Since it is impossible to escape the dominant culture, the role of popular criticism has been clearly assigned by it. It is just one more wheel in the machine of consumption. The consumer world is seen as overwhelming – too many books, too many movies, too much music – and, at worst, the role of the critic has become to help consumers navigate this world, to tell them what is worth their time and money. However, as Kaija Pepper writes in “Diving into Dance: A Critic’s Manifesto,” “The work of art should not be regarded ‘as simply another phenomenon and product in a world already crowded with them’, and it is the critic’s job to pursue the depth beneath the surface.” French philosopher Jacques Rancière also views criticism as a way to deepen, to extend the work of art into a continuous but alternative mindspace: “For me, film criticism is not a way of explaining or classifying things, it’s a way of prolonging them, making them resonate differently.” Unfortunately, such lofty aspirations are often left unfulfilled. At best, the contemporary critic is a tastemaker. And since, raised in the age of readily accessible media, keeners with good taste are a dime a dozen, newspapers can easily replace them by someone just as easily “qualified” (meaning nothing more than someone whose taste is just as good) for just that price. Gone are the days when film critic Jonas Mekas would push avant-garde cinema in his column in the Village Voice. Of course, that was in the 1960s, a much more political time. Today, it is impossible to tell the artistic and political convictions of most critics by reading their reviews. Hence the death of anything that is of value in popular criticism. Nowhere does this become more apparent than on websites that attempt to summarize the opinion of critics, the most popular being Metacritic. Given that the critic as consumption adviser is now the norm, Metacritic indeed bares its name well. There are now so many critics with contrasting views (“Who to believe??”) that we need websites to help us navigate through them, to read all of them by reading none of them. To offer a metareview is to effectively get rid of what little discourse there already is. Movies are no longer loved by some and hated by others; rather, they have merely received a lukewarm critical reception. The most critically acclaimed film of last year, according to Metacritic calculations, is The Social Network. Of course, the biggest feat of the movie about Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is just that: it deals with a currently popular subject matter. With its fast-paced dialogue, the first half of the film plays like a good episode of Gilmore Girls; the second, like a bad one. However, The Social Network does have a lot of testosterone, which made it easier for critics and audiences to elevate it above Gilmore Girls. Otherwise, The Social Network suffered from what has become David Fincher’s usual uninspired directing. It still managed to score 95 (out of 100) on Metacritic. On the other hand, Gaspar Noé’s Enter the Void, quite possibly the only feature-length fiction film that truly mattered on an artistic level in 2010, barely managed to score 69. Arguably, Noé’s 161-minute drug-like cinematic trip is not as easily likeable as The Social Network. And that’s precisely the point; as long as critics judge artworks by how much they “like” them – as though artworks were nothing more than a Facebook status – they will fail to reward risks taken by artists. As Jonathan Rosenbaum notes in “They Drive by Night: The Criticism of Manny Farber,” when asked what the role of evaluation was in his critical work, Farber replied, “It’s practically worthless for a critic. The last thing I want to know is whether you like it or not; the problems of writing are after that. I don’t think it has any importance; it’s one of those derelict appendages of criticism. Criticism has nothing to do with hierarchies.” If as I am hinting there is indeed a link between familiarity and likeability, maybe the movie most revealing of the times to come out last year was Banksy’s pseudo-documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop. In it, a graffiti artist groupie named Thierry Guetta decides to become a big name in the art world himself by creating, in the loosest sense of the term, works of art that are mere pastiche of pop art. His first solo exhibit is a success because the artworks are readily recognizable by those attending the vernissage. “I know this is art,” they seem to tell themselves, “because it looks like art I’ve already seen.” Even in art, it is familiarity that appeals to most. If in this manner critics are no different than the public at large, they have no reason for being. Their job should not be to preemptively tell us whether we would like an artwork, but indeed to “pursue the depth beneath the surface.”
Metacritic (and hence the most read popular critics) also fails to go beneath the surface when it comes to music. The highest rated release of 2010? Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, with a score of 94. Apparently, all you have to do to be exposed to the most innovative music being made today is listen to Top 40 radio. This also reveals that, if a pop record is only half bad, people are so pleasantly surprised that they will elevate it to the status of masterpiece. Given my negative outlook on popular criticism, one might be tempted to ask if there are any contemporary critics whose writing I do admire. In the vast polluted ocean of the internet, I have stumbled upon a few, sometimes in the most unlikely places. Some of the users on rateyourmusic.com often surprise me with their ability to perfectly capture a movie’s underlying themes in a most concise and witty manner. The Stranger’s Lindy West has turned her ability to see through Hollywood sexist bullshit into a hilarious trademark. Many of the writers at thisrecording.com have tackled 90s movies, such as The Hot Spot and Wild Things, in surprisingly insightful ways. Maybe twenty years are indeed needed to gain enough distance to see artworks more clearly. After a certain period of time, whether an artwork is “good” or “bad” ceases to matter. Perhaps we should focus our reviews on older works. It would certainly be a way of avoiding criticism that reads more like advertising. Again, Pepper argues that “a critic is neither a publicist nor the artist’s champion and, like any audience member, must enter into and discover the work on independent terms. Donald Kuspit in ‘Art Criticism: Where’s the Depth?’ (in The Critic is Artist: The Intentionality of Art (1984)), writes that art can only be significant if it is shown to connect beyond its appearance, and beyond what the artist might say about it, to the deeper world view and consciousness that it represents.” With regime overthrows in the Middle East and the Occupy Movements in North America, it does seem like maybe once again the times are a-changin’. As people politicize themselves, we can only hope that they will also ask to no longer be seen as mere consumers, but as thinking subjects in the artistic landscape, and that popular criticism will reflect these new attitudes. |
Sylvain Verstricht
has an MA in Film Studies and works in contemporary dance. His fiction has appeared in Headlight Anthology, Cactus Heart, and Birkensnake. Archives
October 2023
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