No Surprise Here

[Note: This post has been updated (1) as of 6:18 PM Eastern on 9 Apr. See below.]

No surprise, that is, that MSM critics in the arts are fast losing, or have already lost, their authority. And no surprise the principal reason, although in this piece for the Los Angeles Times, Patrick Goldstein, subsequent to an opening statement that sets the scene for the phenomenon, seems curiously diffuse and unsure on the matter. Writes Mr. Goldstein:

There was a time when critics were our arbiters of culture, the ultimate interpreters of intellectual discourse. When I was growing up, eager to write about the arts, it was just as important to read Pauline Kael, Frank Rich and Lester Bangs as it was to see a Robert Altman film, a David Mamet play or listen to the latest Elvis Costello album. Critics gave art its context, explained its meaning and guided us to new discoveries.

As a flood of stories in recent weeks has shown, those days are going, going, gone. Critics today are viewed as cultural dinosaurs on the verge of extinction.

[...]

Obviously the Internet has played a big role in this shift. It has promoted a democratization of opinion in which solo bloggers — most famously Matt Drudge — can outstrip mammoth news organizations. Whenever I spend time with young students, I see an even more intriguing concept at work. Although they are heavily influenced by peer group reaction to films or music, they do listen to critics, but largely as a group, not as individual brands. The age of the singular critical voice is ending — people prefer the wisdom of a community.

[...]

Of course, it's not only the Web that is putting nails in the coffin. When it comes to film, no one has done a better job of robbing critics of credibility than the movie studios themselves, whose blurb ads are a thoroughly corrupt and cynical invention that has done more to devalue critics than any incursion from the Internet.

[...]

To be fair, the media is also responsible for undermining its critics' authority. Scores of TV's film critics have become quote whores, willing to say anything ("Awesome!" Fox TV's Shawn Edwards enthused about the woeful "Drillbit Taylor") to get their names atop movie ads. The news weeklies often devalue their star critics by using them to deliver exclusive interviews with big-shot filmmakers, allowing the studios to create some much-needed aura-by-association for their summer blockbusters. At all too many newspapers, the emergence of various service-oriented sections has created a thumbs-up or -down mentality.

[...]

The flaws extend beyond film. In pop music, especially at top-of-the-food-chain publications like Rolling Stone, critics have a distressing tendency to pull their punches for leading artists. As Bill Wyman points out in a hilarious post at his Hitsville.com site, a long string of Rolling Stone critics has gotten twisted into pretzels to try to portray any new R.E.M. album as a throwback to the band's glory days, even though the albums now written off as disappointments were the ones originally labeled comebacks.

"In the music industry press, you are frequently discouraged from writing negative reviews," Wyman told me. "It's considered uncool to say that a lot of pop music is terrible. You're not supposed to tell readers things they don't want to hear."

From all this Mr. Goldstein concludes:

The Web isn't the enemy of critical thinking. The land of a million blogs is a medium brimming with opinion. What's different is the reader gets to decide whose opinion matters the most. It's a big adjustment, but maybe it's time critics, like many artists, realize they should pay more attention to their audience.

What's wrong with this picture?

What's wrong with it was laid out by us in this July 2003 piece (reprinted on this blog in July 2005) concerning classical music critics, wherein we wrote:

The generally debased, PC-contaminated, ultra-"civilized" crowd which today constitutes much of the mainstream classical music critical fraternity relishes nothing so much as engaging in discussion of classical music in ways more appropriate to genteel luncheon and dinner parties where it's considered the height of gauche to argue in any manner that might upset the digestion of those seated at table. Arguing in that "civilized," genteel way makes members of this critical crowd feel they've been winning, intellectually probing, stimulating, and "with it," when all they've managed to be is glib; nattering on about nothing of real substance or pertinence while at the same time keeping hands clean, hair un-mussed, and digestion undisturbed — theirs and their readers'.

And our answer to this?

Well, I've a bit of news for this critically "civilized" bunch: Your brother mainstream classical music critics of prior eras would have none of such "civilized," genteel pap, even in proper and oh-so-civilized Victorian England. When they discussed or wrote on matters musical they were not in the least afraid of dirtying hands, mussing hair, and disturbing digestion. They carried on their dialogues red in tooth and claw if need be as in those culturally more concerned eras we had in the mainstream media that healthy and vital mass of informed classical music critical ferment ... at the heart of which was a critical fraternity made up of courageous and erudite classical music critics who felt that anything in music or music related worth arguing about was worth getting bloodied for.

Goldstein's, "maybe it's time critics, like many artists, realize they should pay more attention to their audience" our ass. What it's time for is for critics to give their audiences no quarter at all. Skewer their ignorant opinions. Destroy utterly their uninformed prole assessments. Make sport of, mock and humiliate them ruthlessly with your erudite rapier wit.

But a critic can't even begin to employ — daren't even attempt — such tactics unless he first be informed and erudite beyond even the wildest self-important, self-delusional, Web-inspired conceits of his ignorant prole audience.

And therein lies the problem. Just how many arts critics exist today who could qualify and would be fully competent to administer this much needed and richly deserved lesson to an ignorant public and by so doing raise the consciousness of and enlighten that public?

Apart from the Old School crowd who are fast dying off — literally — pitifully few, we suspect.

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Update (6:18 PM Eastern on 9 Apr): Apropos our above closing remarks, see here.