Democratizing Criticism: Yay or Nay?

In which I suggest a system.

I sat down to write about the process of criticism – and to pitch to you, my Never Newsies, a bit of a system, and found myself wrestling with defining, legitimizing, and defending the practice.

I wanted to establish, before diving into my silly little project, the great respect for the profession of ‘Critic’ that I have and point out some of the profoundly intelligent, insightful, and joyous critics whom I find most stimulating.

The trouble with setting down to do such a thing – especially in service of another thing altogether – is that it nearly admits a defeatist attitude to the whole endeavor. It would be a self-report that I don’t think that you give a flying fuck about criticism, or at least that you hold it in small regard.

If that were the case, I don’t suspect you’d be subscribed to the Substack of a writer who considers himself a critic.

Luckily, right as I began struggling between explaining criticism and playing with it, The New Yorker published this incredible think piece by the critic (and editor of the New York Review of Books) Daniel Mendelsohn¹. It’s a brilliant piece that begins with Mendelsohn’s young passion for reading critique, passes through recent controversy in the field, and ends (as it should) by setting forth thoughtful advice for the modern critic.

I wanted to explain that, for a critic, all things are context – every book read informs every film seen, which in turn informs every album, on and on and on. Mendelsohn approaches this consideration with this helpful equation (tongue firmly in cheek): KNOWLEDGE + TASTE = MEANINGFUL JUDGMENT.

“When you write criticism about literature or any other subject, you’re writing for literature or that subject, even more than you’re writing for your reader: you’re adding to the accumulated sum of things that have been said about your subject over the years.”

This single quote sums up some 300 words I had put down in my notes.

There is some consideration in the piece about a sort of democratization of criticism in the world today — that is to say, the Internet has provided an avenue for literally anyone to air their critical feelings about any mediated artwork. The article ends on the note that not everyone should (or can) be a critic.

“. . . few people have the rare combination of qualities that make a good critic, just as very few people have the combination of qualities that make a good novelist or poet.”

I don not disagree. But I don’t fully agree, either.

See, here at Never News we believe that

which is to say that a critic must view artwork through the lens not only of their wide cultural knowledge but with a context that comes from within their interior (unmediated) lives. Everyone has such a lens; not everyone knows how to apply it.

I agree that people who aren’t writers are not writers; I don’t believe that people who aren’t writers shouldn’t also develop the skills to criticize in the way we critics do. Certainly, not every person in the world needs to have their own —*cough*cough*ahem*— Substack; not everyone needs a platform any bigger than the “this product sucks” box beneath an Amazon listing.

So here’s what I propose: I want to give you, my Never Newsies (and the world beyond) a little system by which you, too, can approach criticism — even if only at its most facile and uncomplicated: I want to teach you how to assign weird, icky numerical scores to all your favorite works of art.

Why would I want to do such a thing? Is my motivation to not only further democratize criticism, but to make it somehow even more terrible?

Am I here to sow chaos?

I am not. I simply believe that demystifying some of the more abstract aspects of criticism is a good way to illuminate the tiny machinery of criticism. That is to say, I want to lay out some tools (maybe even gamify some tools) that will allow even the most uncritical to think a little more deeply about the art they enjoy (or do not enjoy).

So, over starting the Wednesday after next I will be laying down a kind of mechanical system of critique that will give you a model by which you can make your own 5/5 or 10/10 Star reviews. You’ve all been doing it for years on Letterboxd and what not; this will just allow you to do so with some degree of precision and finality. I hope the system will help readers examine what they truly value about films, or albums, or perhaps the upcoming Book Club selections.

We’ll see you there and, as always:
Okay I Love You Goodbye

1. Thanks to AiPT mastermind/co-conspirator David Brooke for pointing it out; I’ve yet to be motivated to renew my New Yorker subscription because I have three years of partially read issues inscribing a pronounced, downward bulge in a variety of shelves. The New Yorker demands fervid commitment from its readers, and I hope, someday, to stoke that fire again.