{"id":999,"date":"2008-02-06T13:25:39","date_gmt":"2008-02-06T18:25:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2008\/02\/06\/film-criticism-emotional-or-analytical\/"},"modified":"2008-02-06T13:25:39","modified_gmt":"2008-02-06T18:25:39","slug":"film-criticism-emotional-or-analytical","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2008\/02\/film-criticism-emotional-or-analytical\/","title":{"rendered":"Film Criticism – Emotional or Analytical?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jim Emerson has an intriguing post up on his scaners::blog<\/a> about whether film criticism can be or even should be objective. I’m somewhere in the middle on the issue; like many of the commenters (read the comments, too; a lot of the good discussions is down there), I usually find Roger Ebert’s reviews too high on emotional response, and I have the same problem with Pauline Kael. (The analytical side is apparently covered by J. Hoberman, who I haven’t read enough to comment on myself; and to be fair to Ebert, his essays on criticism itself and on older films are quite good–it’s only the reviews of new films that tend to bother me.) On the other hand, the more I write about film the more I realize that what’s really important to me is the experience of watching the film, often even more than what the film made me think about. The experiential nature of film is largely what Emerson points out in his original post.<\/p>\n

I’ve had a couple of people in the last few months mention that they watched a film because I praised it and they didn’t care for it the way I did. I’m sorry about that, but I think it comes down again to the experience. Quoting one of Emerson’s footnotes: “The best reviewers (who may or may not also be critics) share their insights and perspectives on a film so that the reader gets an idea of what they experienced — which is not the same as saying the reader should expect to have an identical one.” I would hardly put myself into the category of “best reviewers,” and I know that those particular reviews were written hurriedly, but this strikes me as exactly right. The best that I can do as a reviewer\/critic is tell the experience I had watching the film, acknowledge that it was my experience (colored by my background and personality, as well as perhaps the conditions surrounding my watching of the film)–I can’t guarantee that anyone else would have the same experience, and wouldn’t necessarily want them to. Though I don’t think criticism should be reduced to “this is how the film made me feel,” because some standards of quality DO exist and some analysis of how the film achieves its experiential power is helpful, you can never take the personal out of it. That’s why I dislike critics who try to pretend they aren’t personally involved and thus biased to some degree.<\/p>\n

I don’t have much more to say, other than it’s a good post and discussion and you should read it, and then you should add Emerson’s blog to your feedreader, because his blog is uniformly excellent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jim Emerson has an intriguing post up on his scaners::blog about whether film criticism can be or even should be objective. I’m somewhere in the middle on the issue; like many of the commenters (read the comments, too; a lot of the good discussions is down there), I usually find Roger Ebert’s reviews too high […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[29],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1305,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2008\/09\/ebert-on-how-to-read-a-movie\/","url_meta":{"origin":999,"position":0},"title":"Ebert on How to Read a Movie","author":"Jandy","date":"September 1, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I've mentioned to many acquaintances my distaste for Roger Ebert's binary thumb system of film reviewing, and I often tend to have a knee-jerk reaction against his overall film ratings. On the other hand, his criticism (rather than his reviewing) is highly sound, readable, and I wish he'd do more\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Film"","block_context":{"text":"Film","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/film\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":33571,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2014\/09\/against-evaluative-criticism-a-personal-manifesto\/","url_meta":{"origin":999,"position":1},"title":"Against Evaluative Criticism: A Personal Manifesto","author":"Jandy","date":"September 2, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"[Evaluation is] practically worthless for a critic. The last thing I want to know is whether you like it or not: the problems of writing are after that. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think it has any importance; it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s one of those derelict appendages of criticism. Criticism has nothing to do with hierarchies.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Film"","block_context":{"text":"Film","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/film\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/statler-waldorf-feat.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":69,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2006\/08\/the-role-of-criticism\/","url_meta":{"origin":999,"position":2},"title":"The role of criticism","author":"Jandy","date":"August 7, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"So far this year, eleven films have opened in theatres without screen for critics first. That's up from just two films by this time last year. These are films which the studios decided would do better without the critics lambasting them on opening weekend. The studios were right about the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Film"","block_context":{"text":"Film","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/film\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":34172,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2014\/06\/american-movie-critics-the-introduction-phillip-lopate\/","url_meta":{"origin":999,"position":3},"title":"American Movie Critics: The Introduction (Phillip Lopate)","author":"Jandy","date":"June 19, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Reading David Bordwell's series of posts on criticism in the 1940s made me want to dive back into reading criticism, so I've pulled my copy of American Movie Critics back out (I'd previously made it into the middle of the Ferguson section) and started over, because I don't remember any\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "American Movie Critics"","block_context":{"text":"American Movie Critics","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/film\/american-movie-critics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/American-Movie-Critics-feat.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":165,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2006\/12\/good-thoughts-on-film-watching\/","url_meta":{"origin":999,"position":4},"title":"Good Thoughts on Film Watching…","author":"Jandy","date":"December 10, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"A couple of weeks ago, Andy Horbal ran a Film Criticism blog-a-thon, basically encouraging other film bloggers to post their thoughts on film criticism and then posting all the links in his blog. I haven't had time to read all the posts yet, but this one caught my eye. These\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Film"","block_context":{"text":"Film","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/film\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":365,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2007\/04\/literary-criticism-rant-warning\/","url_meta":{"origin":999,"position":5},"title":"Literary Criticism (rant warning)","author":"Jandy","date":"April 19, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Literary criticism ruins books. It tears them apart and glues them together again with the critic's pet theory. It reduces character to symbol and narrative to trope. It increases cynicism and decreases enjoyment. It makes every book about something else. It creates a divide between \"critical readers\" and ordinary ones\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Books and Reading"","block_context":{"text":"Books and Reading","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/books\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/999"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=999"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/999\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}