Why all the hate for Critics?

[Housebroken Lunatic]

I was half expecting someone to bring this up. Here's how I see it...

Subjectivity is just talk referring to personal sensations, as opposed to objective, which is talk of the outside world. A subjective experience is pretty meaningless to someone else unless you can relate it to something objective. "I like it (subjective) because the characters are original and not stereotypes (objective (although because it is gathered from subjective experiences, it may not be true))".

The point I was trying to make was against the people that seem to connect "art is subjective" with "it cannot be meaningfully assessed".

Well, we kind of make a stumble in logic if we try to connect "objectivity" with a "meaningful duscission" in relation to art.

Art doesn't exist in the objective sense, so it's no use trying to interpret art as being objective in any sense at all.

As to the meaningful discussions, then objectivity comes into it again. What kind of discussion would be "objectively meaningful"? Can one really claim that any subject matter is objectively meaningful?

One couldn't really do that. We'll have to choose subjectively what we spend our time on discussing and what kinds of goals we try to pursue through those discussion. Objectivity doesn't come into it, unless we're trying to observe reality through scientific explanations.

Anyhow, art can be assessed, and people can even consider the assessment to be somewhat meaningful. That doesn't mean that anyone can actually hold any objective authority in the assessment of art over any other person.

Which leads us back to the main premise about the opinions of a critic is just as useful/useless as the opinions of anyone else...

 

[Housebroken Lunatic]

Opinions of critics can also shift depending on their mood, bringing up unnecessarily positive or scathing reviews.

You are correct sir. Just imagine Roger Ebert seeing and reviewing a movie sober, and then play the same movie while he's tripping on LSD and one can be damn sure that the reviews will be different.

 

[The Root Beer Guy]

I don't hate critics, I just don't care what they think. I figured out a long time ago that the only opinion that really matters to me is my own.

 

[Gasaraki]

I don't listen to most critics because a critic is basically just a professional opinion giver. It really depends on the critic though, for example I think we can all agree that Trent Reznor is better than Miley Cyrus, right? If a critic just goes "Miley Cyrus is some tweeny shit while Nine Inch Nails is a good band", well that's pretty much something that any NIN fan could say. If a critic actually analyzes the composition, the lyrics and all that stuff. That's a critic who's opinion I'll at least consider.

 

[The Procrastinated End]

The only critics I care about are the ones here on the Escapist because regardless of their opinions at least they can be funny.

 

[BlindTom]

cos them critics haters and haters gonna hate no matter what

 

[cheese_wizington]

Because they have an awesome gig.

Watching movies before everyone else can and then giving your opinion on them, and then have people take your opinion seriously, and GETTING PAID FOR IT.

Us non critics get none of these things.

In all fairness though, they probably suffer from the same problem as gynecologists. While they get paid to watch and review awesome movies, they also had to do the same to Baby Geniuses and Date Movie.

Don't forget horror films. Shaun of the Dead/Zombieland is the farthest I take horror. I hate being scared. (all the time, I don't like it here, I've decided I'm not going to stay. PS: Tell Haywood I'm sorry for putting a knife to his throat -Brooks)

I'm too good at quoting movies.

 

[Fallen-Angel Risen-Demon]

Because critics and reviewers gave Lesbian Vampire Killers 27% on rotten tomatoes

You are awesome for watching that movie and liking it!
OT: Because the gave resonance of fate an average of 46%.

 

[Lullabye]

Well, I don't hate critics, I love them.
Especially the ones that tend to have a similar opinion to my own, as it lets me trust their reviews more and skip alot of the unlikable stuff I would otherwise need to wade through in order to experience that which I love. Don't get me wrong, I dislike plenty of critics and find alot of them to be wrong in their judgment. But never would that alone convince me of critics being unnecessary.
I love that being opinionated is appreciated, and honestly I can't see anything inherently wrong with wanting people who present themselves and their works for society to experience and enjoy to strive for the highest level possible. And sometimes, we simply need a bit of criticism, constructive or cruel, in order to understand what we've done wrong and move on.

 

[Atmos Duality]

The only critics I hate are those who constantly insult or belittle their audience for not having the same opinion as they do.

Or they ultimately resort to some variant of this:
"If the industry only made what I liked, it would be a vast improvement for all."

No. No it wouldn't. Unless you can see into the future, that is in no way true.
What's interesting is that a critic will resort to that once s/he becomes popular enough to get a public ego. At some point, said critic will make a statement that contradicts popular opinion/response, and the backlash will force one of several possible responses:

1) Ignore the problem entirely. Continue with business as usual.
2) Respond to address the problem with a counter-argument.
3) Respond to address the problem, but blame the audience for everything.
2+3) Do a bit of both at the same time.

In the case of 3), we get what some call a "dethroning-moment". 1) can have a similar impact, but it's not nearly as overt.
2) is the most difficult to do, because it requires a degree of humility (hard to do with that newfound ego on your back) or a large amount of objective reasoning in a subjective field. Either way, good luck.

 

[GrinningManiac]

This perfectly sums up my opinion on critics.

Completely agree. And the critics that know this are the ones that are worth listening too.

This (even though I hate that strange one-word grunt of unified thought)

also, I enjoy the Funny Critics. The Yahtzee and Nostalgia Critic who just have fun poking things.

 

[ICanBreakTheseCuffs]

This perfectly sums up my opinion on critics.

what he said
[edit]no hate for Yahtzee

 

[the Dept of Science]

There are a few critics that i strongly dislike, but i guess i don't hate critics. I just think there entirely useless, and usually effect the arts in a negative manner. The problem is not that we have critics, but that we give them to much power. An art critic can destroy an artists career with one bad review, and similarly destroy an author or musician with a few less than flattering comments. Why anyone would care so much about one persons opinion astounds me, but still there are multitudes that follow critics as if there opinion is absolute. in the end people should decide for themselves what is good or what is bad by their own personal taste, and not the tastes of a stranger that claims professionalization in something as innate and talentless as having an opinion.

However, on the other hand, I think for every, say, film maker that has suffered because of bad reviews (even though most of the films that get bad reviews are probably going to make money no matter what critics say), I'm sure a lot of great artists would have gone by unnoticed were it not for critics.

I mean, can you imagine a film like Spirited Away getting popular outside of Japan or very niche circles were it not for its rave review scores? Or Pan's Labyrinth? Or City of God? I think its through critics that most people find out about foreign or independent films.
If I didn't look to critics for recommendations with films/music, then I have no idea how I would find out about the more obscure stuff (short of completely immersing myself in the film world, attending film festivals etc.).
To put it simply, I think if we were to just get rid of critics completely, I think we would have a lot more shitty marketable movies and a lot less of the challenging arty movies.

Also, it is very difficult to listen to/see/play everything in order to find out what you enjoy. Take games as an example, it is very difficult to gage the quality of a game just from trailers/previews. At this point, you could either read some reviews of the game or just go straight out and buy the game. If you were to buy the game, you may have spent £30 and at least a couple of hours of your time to find out that you bought something not very good. If you were to do this to every game, because you believe that only you can judge whether the game is worth buying, you would very quickly find yourself with not much money.
If however, you read some reviews, you can cut out a lot of the ones that you probably won't like, and save yourself a lot of time and money.
While it would be nice to think that everything I haven't played has the potential to be my favourite game ever, I'm not going to go through tonnes of Atari's ETs and Sonic the Hedgehogs to test this theory.

 

[fullbleed]

sinp

Couldn't agree more. Just becuase you don't agree with a critic doesn't mean that they are entirely without value, as Kermode said they can raise awareness of something you didn't know about. If I didn't listen to Mark Kermode I would never have even heard of Waltz with Bashir and that is my second favourite film of all time.

The fact is most of the time you've already formed an opinion on something before you've even seen it, heard it, or played it and a critic's opinion isn't going to change that. However it's those film's I haven't heard about before or that I'm undecided on watching where a critic's opinion matters, they can steer me away from something not worth my time or towards something that is.

What other option do I have? If I shouldn't trust the opinion of critics then why should I trust yours or anyone else's opinion? Should I just watch every film, or only buy whats in the charts? No that would be stupid, just because something is popular doesn't mean that it's the best and lets be honest the public doen't have the best track record.

It seems strange that so many people on the escapist dismiss the opinion of critics, it also seems strange that alot of people here dislike "artsy" films. Having artistic merit in a film is a bad thing because? "Not all films have to be high art man!" no but neither do all films have to be fucking stupid for me to enjoy them.

 

[the Dept of Science]

snip

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I disagree. a movie becomes popular because people like it not because a critic gives it a good review. About "Spirited Away" (a movie that i love by the way) now that we have the internet japan, and the rest of the world are connected, and knowledge through word of mouth through forum discussions by fans would have been inevitable. As for finding obscure music, what critic reviews anything obscure? i find new obscure music simply by googleing what ever genre i am interested in, and then finding songs by that band or artist on youtube, and trying them out. On to games, instead of reading reviews from critics i look up what gamers have said about the game, because i trust them more. still the only true blue way to see if a game is good or not is to play it yourself. i use gamefly to try out games without buying them and i like it. So in the end I understand your logic, but still have to disagree.

I think that unless you are a very dedicated digger, that can have the needle in a haystack factor.
Lets take music. MySpace has about 100,000+ bands for each genre. Going through them randomly truly seems like grabbing in the dark. There is a lot of music I have found myself dismissing initially, but on multiple listens growing to really enjoy. In other words, if I were to find them by accident on, say, YouTube, I would have listened to them once and not again, whereas if it has gotten some critical buzz attached to it, I generally give it more of a chance to show itself. Anyways, surely Googling a band gives the ones with the highest traffic ranking, ie. the most popular ones?

As a follower of critics, probably 95% of my favourite musicians I have discovered through them. I suspect lots of people get their knowledge about new bands this way. Arcade Fire and Broken Social Scene, 2 of the best bands of the decade (in my opinion and that of pretty much all critics and lots of fans) both attribute their success largely to the interest generated by Pitchfork. While you could argue that these sort of things happen anyway eventually, however I think its hard to argue that critics don't speed up the process some extent.

Ultimately, I don't think there is any one factor that decides whether a movie will be successful or not. Mostly its a mixture of word of mouth, advertising and journalism (ie. critis). Smaller movies will generally not have the advertising, so rely on a mix of word of mouth and journalism. While word of mouth can be important, its generally quite a small scale thing. I also find it has a similar problem to following "whatever is popular", ie. I trust the opinion of a professional critic more than "some guy on a webforum".