For one reason or another, critics today seem to be wholly enveloped with the concept of negative reviews. Once upon a time, climbing out of the yellow journalism that existed since the printing press had existed; a heavy weight was put on objectivity. This genius position accounts for much of the boring reporting you see in newspapers still today. It also, at one time, had the New York Times reaching out to the Klu Klux Klan for “their side of the story” when there was a lynching in town. I don’t know who finally woke them up to notion that this was madness, but Churchill once famously said “I fail to be impartial between the fire brigade and the fire.” By then, objectivity dominated the American media.
But today criticism is ruled by the negative. I would be lead to conclude that **** trait is picked up from academia where in an assault upon something means a well thought out understanding and command of the subject matter. To be more direct about it, it’s easy to show the failings of a new piece of art by comparing it to the masters of the craft. No painter is Van Gogh, no musician is Dylan, no writer is Shakespeare, and no Director is Orson Wells. This not only shows the critic has taste to the reading public, but also shows that what is being presented is terrible in comparison. There is a crisis of confidence in the young critical community.
For one thing, if you haven’t got the confidence to back up your intellectual chops, you shouldn’t be reviewing anything up to and including restaurant reviews on Yelp. But the important point I mean to convey here is this: If the modern day critic should aspire to anything, including an expression of one’s own intelligence, it must do so through praise, positivity, and, in the worst situation, a salvaging of the few decent points. To invent a word, we need more complimentarianism.
All bold statements should be followed with reason, so here goes. Negativity is at this point old hat. Theres nothing new, theres nothing deliberately valuable there, we know how things, without the blessing of time, stack up against the very inspiration to countless generations. What we need today is a critic willing to sit in the fire of terrible offerings from artists of all stripes, who’s willing to trail blaze through the thick grasses of rote, emotionless output and come back wounded, bleeding, and bruised with reports of any signs of life. This is where critics are not only needed today, but where they can most solidly advance the art of a conveyance of quality.
The enduring benefit here should appear to all interests within the communities who hope to see an advancement. Encouragement of the vagrant class being the only downside, a generally positive outlook has going for it an inalienable ability to murder any trends of snotty illuminati in their cradles. The critical community tends to be cut from a similar fabric. To play to an interest, which in this case might be called “classics” but by any other name is still a preference, drives a movement toward groupthink and hivemind. If we should drive ourselves willfully against any trend it would be those. If not here, where? If the artistic community of Earth cannot find within itself an urge to move in a direction that fosters creativity, because we can rest assured that the insurance agencies of Western Connecticut won’t be doing it for us.