In the creative world, the views of critics have traditionally been held to be of some significant influence. A few bad reviews could kill off a promising new project.
It was also possible for the public to ignore the critics and vote with their money, or build a reputation through word of mouth, but for everybody involved it’s like paddling against the stream when the critics are against you.
Social media such as blog comments, forums and comment-enabled media sharing sites would appear to hold promise to have the effect of bringing the critics opinions under the active scrutiny of the masses. But is it happening yet?
Take the Guardian for example. They have a series of blogs with comments enabled and many of the main writers do indeed engage there to some extent. There’s even a dedicated theatre blog which covers regional and international theatre but the main West End Reviews are published on the news site without comments.
The other newspaper websites are the same.
It’s interesting because Linda wrote a roundup of Imagine This Reviews on our own London Theatre Breaks blog. Imagine This is a new musical which had it’s preview press night in London’s West End last week. The critics reviews were nearly all bad, but the blog garnered a series of positive and well written “user generated” reviews that seem to urge others to defy the bad reviews and go and enjoy the show.
So I’m just kind of brainstorming what’s going on here:
- Why is there such a gulf between the opinions of the journalist professional critics and the public?
- I’ve seen comments before which accuse the critics of perhaps being jaded through reviewing so many pieces that they can’t really appreciate them in the same way as the public any more, and that’s a process which makes sense.
- Critics have also retorted, somewhat snobbishly, that the appreciative audiences are merely victims of not very subtle propaganda or marketing manipulation.
- It’s also perfectly possible that the blog commenters are not all rank and file theatre goers themselves but could be relatives of the cast or even financial backers with a vested interest in talking up the show.
- Who reads newspaper critics anyway! Google provides the instant answers these days, in the form of an assortment of reviews from which we have to decide for ourselves which is relevant, but how do we make that decision?
Andy Roberts is a writer who initiated DARnet. Contact me on aroberts@gmail.com or @aroberts on twitter
As someone who is heavily invested in both social media and traditional arts criticism, I feel the need to respond point by point.
1. There is a gulf because critics (ones worth their salt, anyway) have spent time in education and experience in order to have an informed opinion about something. The public by and large does not. They go to a show when it pleases them, not as a profession. Experts in a subject who have devoted thousands of hours generally have a much different (though not inherently more valuable) opinion about something than those more casually invested in it.
2. As someone who would ostensibly have been effected by this jading process, I would say that seeing so many plays, reading so books, etc. does make me dislike substandard work more passionately than the usual audience goer. But the opposite effect is also true. The more I see, the more I appreciate good work and desire to broadcast it to the public. Overall, I think it’s pretty ridiculous to pay people to have informed opinions about something, and then fault them for having strong opinions.
3. I don’t agree with that idea. Critics are paid to be more informed about a subject than the public, but that doesn’t mean the public are hapless dupes of marketing. I personally think that society (esp. Gen Y and X) are getting significantly less susceptible to advertising, and that positively affects my ability to write serious criticism. You not only have to respect your audience in order to be an effective critic, but you really need to care about them. Saying any disagreement is because they are morons is the end of the conversation, and the end of your relationship with readers as a voice of critical authority.
4. I think this is true. People who read criticism in order to decide about whether to buy tickets or not don’t generally comment on the blog. If they think you were totally off the charts, they simply stop taking your advice. In my personal experience, the people who are by far the most likely to actually comment extensively on a review are either members or friends of the production.
5. A lot of people still read old media critics, actually. Much more than traditional news reporting, in my opinion. It’s delightfully easy to get straight reporting from Google News, but Google doesn’t give me the reliable, informed and personal voice of Manohla Darghis or Kenneth Turan. Just like people enjoy blogs or op eds, readers come back again and again to a critic who they develop an affinity with. On select subjects, people still trust familiar critics more than random individuals.
“There is a gulf because critics (ones worth their salt, anyway) have spent time in education and experience in order to have an informed opinion about something. ”
Nonsense! Professional critics arent Philosopher Kings they are usually useful bourgeois idiots who buy into the culture and subtly insider trade within their chosen field of expertise and/or simply talk up the status quo and are very often the last fucking people on earth to get it when a real paradigm shift does come about. Critics are shallow creatures who seek immortality through trying to pass off other peoples talents and abilities as somehow deriving from theirs . Critics are more reviled than believed thats if they get any attention from the majority population at all.
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