I’m sure you’ve seen the articles popping up all over the place in the recent weeks. Traditional true “Film Critics” are losing their jobs at a break neck pace and are starting to disappear off our movie community landscape. Prominent publications like The LA Times, The New York Daily News, The Chicago Tribune, Newsday, Newsweek, The Village Voice and countless others have been firing, laying off or just not encouraging to stay traditional print film critics.
There are lots of smaller reasons why this is happening, and each reason deserves to have a chapter in its own book:
1) Audience attention span – Let’s be honest, most people (not all) would rather read a 2-4 paragraph quick take on a movie these days than a 2-3 page insightful analysis of a movie.
2) Economic realities – Film critics aren’t the only people in North America getting laid off and losing their jobs these days. Most companies and corporations are trimming staff and reducing head count. The print industry is no exception.
3) Loss of trust in Critics – I’m not talking about trusting their honest opinions or not. I’m talking about the new trend of critics becoming “quote whores”. Certain guys who will say anything to get their name put on a poster. The audience doesn’t forget that stuff.
4) The Internet
Ah yes the internet. There is no getting around the fact that this is probably the biggest and most significant reason we’re seeing the disappearance of the traditional film critic. After all, in the time it would take you to grab the local newspaper or magazine, flip through it and find the actual review you’re looking for, you could have jumped online and scanned about 150 “reviews” of your movie.
Some of my online colleagues (whom I greatly respect) are cheering this development. As a matter of fact, some of my absolute favorite online guys (who are still some of my favorite online guys) have been standing on proverbial mountain tops holding these stats and figures of the loss of Film Critics aloft like the head of a fallen enemy.
And really, that’s how a lot of online guys like myself have viewed traditional film critics… as THE ENEMY! Let’s be honest, most online movie guys (myself included) have often lived in jealous envy of the status, popularity and respect that the traditional critics get while the online guys still (to a point) get relatively little. And so, like sniveling little whelps we lurk in the shadows like Scar to Mustafa or Prince John to King Richard… eagerly bashing our “big brothers” at every turn… calling them “dinosaurs” or relics… talking about how WE are so much better than THEY are. If nothing else, it has revealed just how attention starved we are and how much of an inferiority complex we in the online world suffer.
So while some celebrate the demise of the traditional film critic… me personally… I lament it greatly.
As an online film guy, I can list to you 20 reasons why what WE do is valuable and has a place in the larger film community. The interactive nature, the conversational tone, the speed, it’s relational, it’s debatable, it’s something from a fellow film fan rather than a film expert… yadda yadda yadda. These are all things that online film guys like myself bring to the table that the traditional film critics can’t. HOWEVER….
There is a valuable contribution that the traditional critics make to the film fan community that is not better than online guys… but rather DIFFERENT than what online guys bring to the table (or, quite frankly are even capable of bringing to the table). Knowledge, skill and expertise.
What makes a great film critic is not if they share my opinions or not. All opinion is subjective, it bends, it’s never 100% consistent and no one’s will ever be consistently the same as mine. But rather, what makes a film critic great is his/her ability and skill in crafting words, their theatrical historical knowledge, their journalistic training, their experience, their understanding of the medium, knowledge of the filmmaking process and their ability to put elements of film into an historical, modern and relatable context that makes the reader feel like they learning something as they engage the review.
Guys like Kevin Thomas, David Ansen and Roger Ebert are (or were) able to deliver that sort of contribution on a level that, quite frankly, no one at The Movie Blog, Slashfilm, FilmSchoolRejects, Screenrant or other sites of our ilk are capable of even coming close to.
These are different things than what online guys like myself deliver (or even try to deliver). It’s not our place to educate or do any of those other things the traditional guys do. We share our opinions, express our thoughts and simply open it up for discussion. And what we do is every bit as valid as what the traditional guys do. With that said, it also means what THEY do is still every bit as valid as what WE do.
To me, the loss of the traditional film critic is just another step towards the reality of the movie “Idiocracy”. We’re programing ourselves more and more to just listen to what is easy, to pay attention only to those that already agree with us. We want our information feed to us in quick sound bites rather than in exposition. Where there should be a healthy balance of the online style and the traditional style, there is now only 1, and that is a detriment to the movie fan community as a whole.
So while some people in the online world are gleaning a sense of self-importance from this perceived “victory” of the online world over the traditional…. I see it as a massive defeat to the movie fan community as a whole. And while some stand and cheer at the demise of the traditional critic, I will personally bend a knee to those people who did what they did for so long, so well, and who were quite frankly 1000x better than I will ever be.
