Slow Criticism: Overcooked Ideas in an Aptly Named Crock Pot

One of the many pleasures of reading Sight & Sound comes in the two pages of book criticism at the back. It's here that I often get to learn about ideas and buzzwords making the academic rounds that might someday percolate down into the broader critical world. Often these remind me precisely why I'm not in academia, which is some kind of service. It was in the March 2009 issue, for instance, that I read Catherine Wheatley—in an aside about a critical anthology of Mark Cousins' writing—noting that Cousins admits he works from a "masculine" urge to "praise or excoriate." Wheatley continued: "I'm not sure that I myself don't prefer the alternative: a 'feminine' form of criticism that opens up a film's potential by refusing to read it as this or that, rather than closing it down through sheer force of rhetoric." I bow to the flawless conceit that academic theory can somehow take us back to the old stereotypes—men grunt while women talk, men judge and women empathize—and come out richer for it.

Whether "feminine" criticism takes off remains to be seen, but for the moment, there's something more interesting in the air: Slow Criticism. When I first heard the term, I assumed it was some kind of critical equivalent to Roger Ebert's beloved slow rice cooker, with thoughts steeped in years of reflection, put out at leisure, with no regard for what's trendy or driving site traffic. As someone who blogs every day, I can't say I don't appreciate the promise of a different path, a brighter day somewhere. Indeed, in her introduction to the second issue of Filmkrant's second annual stab at Slow Criticism (capital letters and all), editor-in-chief Dana Linssen promises us nothing less than "a counterbalance to the commodification of film journalism [...] a refuge for rebellious and imaginative thinking, which is too often considered to be too personal, philosophical, poetic or simply not appropriate for day-to-day journalism." How nice.

Any movement needs some spleen to get it going, and Linssen (like so many of us in the day-to-day film writing grind) gets hers from a press release: an admittedly stupid notice from the Rotterdam Film Festival that directors will be visiting the festival. Linssen goes on to excoriate the festival for stacking its panels with "opinion makers, museum directors, ex-politicians and rabbis" rather than bona fide critics, for surrendering the stage to making movies "issues" rather than aesthetics-centered. And she's going to fix that.

That must be most heartening for her and all involved. So who are these rebels? Out of 12 participants, five (Diego Lerer, Caroline Mercado, Christoph Huber, Neil Young, Pamela Biénzobas) are jobbing critics of one sort or another; the rest work in journals or academia. That's not a judgment, just an observation: the crisis Linssen's reacting against (an explosion of jabbering voices all trying to get traffic with redundant takes on the exact same material) is very real and can be attacked on any number of fronts. I'm all for critics and academics linking arms and singing "The Internationale" if that's what it takes. But even before I delved into the writing, I was bothered by the smugness of Linssen's tone, the absolute cocksureness that there's the outside world and then there's this brave little band of brothers, trying to nudge us back onto the path of righteousness.

So what's in this issue? Some of the pieces are very good indeed. Adrian Martin has some eloquently expressed (if overly familiar) thoughts on the commoditization and cooption of past revolutionary art as ossified standard-bearers; Jonathan Rosenbaum looks at Ne Change Rien in terms familiar to anyone who reads him regularly, at the kind of length the Chicago Reader presumably can't afford anymore. Pamela Biénzobas and Eva Sancho Rodriguez both provide excellent reportage and context on recent movements in South America, though it is, in fact, exactly reporting and context; aside from the fact that most periodicals aren't champing at the bit for news from those parts of the world (and shame on them), I'm not so sure what's "slow" about this.

There's the asinine stuff too: academic Patricia Pisters offers up not-particularly-convincing comparisons of Avatar to 2001 and Homer with nothing less than some jargon-y hyperbole. Diego Lerer gives us "Fast Criticism: An Installation," by which he means screengrabs of a few Twitter feeds that have been neither retweeted nor replied to. I'm not sure what this is supposed to prove, except that Twitter is Satan but Tumblr is a force for good, which would be more convincing if some of the links—to the intriguing FBI memo about why It's a Wonderful Life was flagged as Communist propaganda, for example—weren't quite intriguing and every bit as "digressive" as the movies Gabe Klinger talks about in his essay. If anything, Twitter's a force for cross-pollination of ideas and serendipity; taking snapshots of its inanities proves no more about Twitter than porn does about the internet as a whole. There's also an entire Facebook argument about recent Peruvian films that includes the deathless line "Hi Caroline, how's the reading going?" I presume this is supposed to remind us how technology mediates conversations and time and leads us to reflect on the subject further, but mostly it made me think a little editorial intervention would've heightened the sophisticated arguments on display.

Then again, what's an uncut Facebook conversation about a recent film doing in this world of slowness? Or possibly the dumbest piece I've read on Avatar thus far? It seems that Slow Criticism is a self-righteous catch-all for "Writers We Like" rather than thoughts and emotions recollected in tranquility. But let's say I take this exercise at face value; that means I still hate it. For one thing, there's an assumption that we don't actually need on-the-ground festival criticism, which is moronic. Sure, we don't need one-paragraph blurbs or tweets (bottom-line criticism is a drag), but we do need someone out there monitoring the circuit, alerting readers with adventurous tastes to films, talent and ideas they should be looking out for. Also, who set up the idea that you can't be "rebellious and imaginative" in real time? It's precisely talking with colleagues, reading other pieces and all the rest of the task of criticism that hinders an unmodified response. First thought best thought? Probably not, but there's a value to that all the same. Furthermore, who decided only critics get to talk about films? Accidental insights and perspectives lie all over; I'm sorry the Rotterdam festival has failed to properly enshrine the critic as the top arbiter of worth, but trust me, they'll get a word in soon enough.

What "Slow Criticism" would logically lead to is the assumption that the movies will find their champions somehow and float to the top, which is not how the world works. Yes, we need thoughtful, long-form considerations produced at the pace needed to get them right—often arriving at moments when they're "irrelevant" to the trend-obsessed many—but we need this other stuff too to even start the conversation. There's a snobbishness here towards pragmatism, both for the films and the careers of those writing about them, that baffles me. I'm inclined to blame people who have the liberty of being safely ensconced in academia and/or in periodicals: not the most lucrative market, certainly, but a more stable one, where the terms of the conversation are already set. The task, at the end of the day, is always at the service of the actual films; "Slow Criticism" implies the cinema will take care of itself. Without people willing to work fast and thoughtfully, there's no groundwork.

Sorry, "Slow Criticism." Anything that brings about the death of EXCLUSIVE ADVANCE PHOTOS OF SPIDER-MAN 4 is cool by me, but there's a difference between an approach and a corrective. A catch-all by any other name is still a catch-all, no matter how grandiose the rhetoric, and exclusionary approaches like this—especially with incoherent starting points—aren't going to help any film or anyone.

Posted by ahillis at February 9, 2010 4:28 PM