Posted on 07/27/2010 11:38:36 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
When you love a given film and the guy next to you doesn’t, what do you think? Who cares, right? After all, taste is subjective. Newsreal Blog managing editor David Swindle and I often discuss and debate films we’ve seen. Now, I’ve studied film formally for years. Does this make my opinion more important? Perhaps for some academics, but does this make Swindle’s opinion useless? Most certainly not.
My view of film is often based in academia and film history while Swindle’s is based in the comparison to other contemporary films. Both views are justified and have their place. We represent two different possible approaches to film criticism. There can be scholarly/historical criticism as well as journalistic/populist criticism. The latter is a much more useful approach when it comes to mainstream film criticism. The fact is anyone who takes their film viewing experience seriously is capable of having a voice as a critic. However, for some people like New York film critic Armond White, it is not that simple. For White, if a critic disagrees with him (especially if they don’t have a PhD in film studies) they are likely not very smart and should not continue writing criticism. White’s elitism has provoked him to attack fellow critic Roger Ebert, mostly because he doesn’t have a PhD in film studies. What White fails to recognize is that Ebert is writing film criticism for a newspaper, not submitting to a film journal. Ebert’s audience is not looking for the ideas presented in a doctoral thesis.
White attacks Ebert :
"I do think it is fair to say that Roger Ebert destroyed film criticism. Because of the wide and far reach of television, he became an example of what a film critic does for too many people. And what he did simply was not criticism. It was simply blather. And it was a kind of purposefully dishonest enthusiasm for product, not real criticism at all…I think he does NOT have the training. I think he simply had the position. I think he does NOT have the training. I’VE got the training. And frankly, I don’t care how that sounds."
White feels that due to his academic studies in film that he is a pedigreed film critic. This is wrong, he is a pedigreed film scholar, and there is a difference. While I spend a lot of time writing essays for graduate classes, I try to change my tone and focus when writing a film review. People reading film reviews aren’t looking for a journal entry and Ebert knows this. Inside Movies responded to the statements from White and broke down the differences between types of critics:
"The critics may quibble over those labels, but for this discussion, an elitist is a critic who believes his primary responsibility is to educate readers so they may better understand the film medium while a populist, using his knowledge and tastes, sets out to explain his responses to films. One assumes the voice of authority; the other assumes the voice of a confidant."
When we think of the pioneers of today’s film criticism who comes to mind? Certainly Pauline Kael (not a scholar) who was a major inspiration for both Ebert and White. Going further we can find a more scholarly approach to modern film criticism such as the work of Andrew Sarris and Robin Wood, but for most people reading film reviews they prefer the confidant over the elitist academic. Unfortunately, White has neglected the useful purpose of critics like Ebert.
It does not take a PhD to watch or understand a movie. Therefore, why can’t someone passionate about the art comment on it formally? White’s animosity to a less scholarly approach are ironic because many film scholars actually do appreciate the work Ebert has done. It is good to have useful non-academic film writing to balance out all of the dense articles that frequent film journals. For example David Bordwell, Professor Emeritus from the University of Wisconsin who has many influential books in the field of film studies, wrote a forward to Ebert’s 2006 book Awake in the Dark. Bordwell writes:
"Roger Ebert has blended prodigious energy, keen judgment, wide knowledge, probing insights, and a sharp sense of humor into some of the most perceptive commentary on cinema published in our time. In the tradition of George Bernard Shaw and Robert Hughes, he practices graceful and deeply informed art journalism. Some pieces he writes are ephemeral, but nothing he writes is trivial."
This is quite a complement coming from a scholar like Bordwell. One can also look at the blurbs on the back of this book from filmmakers like Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg and Robert Atlman to see that Ebert has certainly earned his platform as a film critic (whether you like him or not). Sure, in recent years his politics have become more of a threat to his credibility as a journalist, but not as a film critic. However, those movie buffs that don’t align with Ebert’s politics still have one thing in common – a deep love of film (it is this shared love that has allowed me to get along with even the most Leftist of film professors).
Just like I don’t attack Swindle’s outlook on certain films because he lacks a film degree, White shouldn’t discredit Ebert either. If someone is a good writer and serious film lover, they deserve a seat at the table. What can it hurt? Film critics are not tenured professors, who still have their journals and graduate seminars where the semantic debates rage on. If all reviews were written by snobby academics, no one would read them except other snobby academics. People like Ebert have helped bring film discussions into the mainstream for everyone to enjoy, we should at least be grateful for that.
Ebert has devolved into assessing if the film has the correct amount of libneral content.
i.e. Gay characters, ‘green’ plot, republican bashing, anti-smoking, obama worship...
Interesting.
Armond White is a tool. Ebert was an English PhD candidate and has written many books about film. He won a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism before he ever had a TV show.
Ebert’s finest moments were spent collaborating with the great Russ Meyer.
I knew Ebert in CHicago through most of the 1970s , when I was in theater. Good guy, and a lot of fun to be with....he
even complimented me on how much I knew about film. While I think there are more original critics out there, in re-reading a lot of Ebert’s collections and his ongoing film criticism, I am surprised once again how good it is, how much it holds up. And NO, he’s not a ‘film scholar’, nor would he want to be-—you can’t do that writing for a newspaper. And YES, his liberal politics sometimes finds a way into his overall judgements on a film, but just as often he keeps them out of what he has to say about a film. What he and Siskel pioneered in Chicago years ago was a very useful kind of upscale Consumer’s Guide to film, they told their readers among other things what was worth their time and money. THere are worse things they could have done.
And for anyone to attack Ebert now, with his severe and life-threatening medical problems, is just plain unconscionable. Not that anyone reads Armond White.
That is one reason why he seems to have almost no defenders.
Another reason is that he considers most popular trends in independent film to be part of what he calls "hipster nihilism."
Ebert’s politics didn’t start really affecting his work till about 10 years ago.
The writer (and White) both miss the point. Ebert’s background isn’t the issue, and no, just talking enthusiastically about movies doesn’t make one a good writer about movies.
It’s Ebert’s taste and phony populism that is the issue. He has pushed the blandest junk as art for decades, and popularized the view that a thumb pointing up or down is the ultimate goal of any criticism of movies, or art.
Boring taste and the critical version of “Talk to the hand” have ruined film criticism, and that is Ebert’s legacy—that and adding to the overwhelming PC labelling popularized in movies (villains are rich and white, gangs are multicultural victims of economic oppression, financial success via business = evil, acceptance of all kinds of leftist ideas as the way The Good Guys behave) and encoded in his reviews.
Worst of all...he’s boring.
Frankly I think Pauline Kael, as smart as she was, did much more damage to film aesthetics than Ebert.
It's ironic, since he made a name for himself playing snotty highbrow to Siskel's middlebrow or lowbrow, but maybe there was never that much to Roger's act to begin with.
He was always pretending to be more serious than he was and playing up to the powers that be -- whether they were avant-gardists and intellectuals in the 70s or Hollywood magnates and superstars today.
It's just that Ebert could conceal his subservience and obsequiousness in the old days and can't hide his toady's soul anymore.
Ebert's analysis has become increasingly cookie-cutter over the years.
The Thumbs up/Thumbs Down thing was a convention of the TV show that Ebert never liked. His true work is in print.
Ebert’s “severe and life-threateing medical problems” don’t stop him from attacking others, so don’t even think of trying to use that as a defense of him.
If he can dish it out, he can take it.
I wouldn’t defend Ebert’s work from the last 10 years at all. But I’m objecting to White’s contention that RE was somehow not ‘real’ criticism. I also dislike White’s tendency to bring in some tangential, minor detail that he percieves as a full fledged position on the filmmaker’s part and base an entire review on how much he dislikes that effect.
I think Armond White sees being a critic as being a hater more than anything. In particular he doesn’t seem to like Christopher Nolan movies. Weird as they have been pretty big critical successes.
FWIW, on Rotten Tomatoes Ebert agrees with the overall “T-Meter” 72% of the time and White 52%.
‘Hollywood’ originated and broadcast the ‘show’ they now so furiously object to.
Because the mind-numbed TV watching sheeple ‘follow’ Ebert’s proclamations, instead of having a broader and more informed ‘base’ upon which to decide how to spend their dollars.
THEY GOT WHAT THEY WANTED, NOW THEY DON’T WANT IT.
Just like spoiled little children.
So true. Ebert has devolved into the typical left-wing hack who uses his “reviews” to trash morality and patriotism. I guess we shouldn’t expect greatness or judgement from the “screenwriter” who gave us “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls”. At least he stopped writing for film after that.
Here's White's take, from November 2005:
"At no time in my experience reading cultural journalism was there a period when the culture was as hostile as today. Awful movies are foisted upon the public through critics' hypocritical confusion of bad taste and private interest. Propaganda for themselves. They automatically acclaim movies that align with their personal beliefs while shunning any intellectual challenge. Conflict-of-interest duds—from The Squid and the Whale to Good Night, and Good Luck—represent boomer vanity; their implicit values denote the backed-up sewage of the '60s counterculture's self-importance. These are films only people who fancy themselves New York intellectuals could love. Such lousy movies and their critical praise signify an attempt to create a cultural consensus. One social set's prejudices get validated based on the unexamined acceptance of particular class priorities. This hegemony is put into effect by pundits with no grace or humility, who assert their difference—their smartness—from the general public.
"We're a long way past Vogue magazine's candid yet mortifying 1986 disclosure that Hannah and Her Sisters was 'about our kind of people. The things we like to do, the places we like to go.' Today's smug media means to intimidate moviegoers into holding the same high-rent values that dominate the airwaves and press. Thus, thinking alike, pretending to be smart.
"Being smart about movies is a way to seem right about everything else. The media's shameful treatment of both The Passion of the Christ and Fahrenheit 911 [my note: White thought the media fawning over Fahrenheit 911 was shameful] taught a dire lesson that cinema has become part of the media elite's tool to bolster one empowered group's political ideology and their separateness from the common folk. The discipline of criticism was lowered to identity politics and alarmist name-calling. It reduced the legacy of the New York intellectual to an anti-Bush/anti-Mel lapel button and brandishing that little gewgaw took the place of thinking. The media's attempt to control mass opinion was a cultural catastrophe from which we have not yet recovered. The arrogance has only gotten worse."
Ebert’s show originated on a public tv satation in Chicago and remained there for about a decade after which it was syndicated by Disney.
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