I often said that the most annoying part of being an English major is dealing with your fellow students. Inevitably in every class you'll run into a handful of students who love to tear down the work you're analyzing, and in some way, it's part of being a critic. They'll always end up saying the same types of things "the author is constantly contradicting him/herself" or my favorite "I just didn't find his argument convincing." I know that I've said these things, and I'm sure to some of my former classmates I've inhabited this "annoying english major" persona. But why? Why do we constantly feel the need to rip on those around us? Why is it so much cooler to tear something down than to build it up?
I think that this propensity towards criticality stems from an insecurity about attaching ourselves to something that could get us made fun of. By saying that you actually like something, or in my English class example, enjoyed a certain author's point or work you are risking your credibility. For as soon as someone shoots down the text you defended, in a way you feel like they are shooting you down as well. A good friend of mine at school, majoring in fine arts, said the key to getting a good grade on an art critique was to take an incredibly negative angle. All the professors would be way more impressed by your attention to what didn't work in the piece that what did. What an interesting thought.
This idea extends out from the world of academia into our critiques on pop culture, or those who inhabit it. How much more often do we "hate that movie" or "hate that song" than love them? There is something very attractive about this negativity. Apart from sounding or seeming more analytical, it is also much safer. We never have to attach ourselves to something that others may end up deeming lame.
Another friend up mine told me about his experience writing for the ultra-critical music reviewing website pitchforkmedia.com. A Harvard grad, and now a writer for the Wall Street Journal, my friend was fired from pitchfork for not being critical enough. The website portrays itself as the site for music conoissuers, those who know the difference between good music and bad music. As a frequenter of this site, it's hard not to be swayed by the confident, overly vocabularistic (not a wrd) writing of its critics. I think, "yeah they're right, those rifts all sound the same . . . this band is tired", instead of realizing how incredible it is that someone is able to create art worth listening to, putting themselves out there in a way a critic never could. I say in my blog description that critics are only critics because they're not creative enough to create, and I think this is where they get their start. The safe, intellectual-sounding world of negativity.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Giving Up
I am sitting here, watching the credits role from the film "Gone Baby Gone". The effect of the movie's plot/theme, combined with my third leinenkugels and some really beautiful music has put me in a quite a mood. The film centers around a man named Patrick, played wonderfully by Casey Affleck, who is hired as a private detective to investigate the disappearance of a young girl. Taking time to hash out plot details and provide a decent "review" of the film would be monotonous for you and me, so I'll spare us both. What I am very interested in however is the manner in which the film deals with the general, yet very specific shortcomings of its characters, and indeed the light in which it paints humanity in general.
What I really like to do after watching a movie I enjoy is looking it up on rottentomatoes.com. This is one of my favorite websites. It gathers all the reviews from a movie it can find from magazines and newspapers all over the country and gives said movie a percentage based on how many critics gave it either a "fresh" or "rotten" review. The site itself provides no opinion, but rather harnesses the opinions of hundreds of movie critics. I was pleased, as I often am when my opinion coincides with the "experts", that Gone Baby Gone recieved a 93% on rotten tomatoes and a 91% from its "top critics" (which implies major newspaper and magazine reviews).
There was one reviewer's comment however that really irked me, not because it was necessarily inaccurate, but because of its implications. Terry Lawson, of the Detroit Free Press writes that "we give up before the detectives, not just on the story, but on humanity, which I doubt is what anyone really wants." My contention with this comment is not that Lawson is wrong in this movies' depicton of humanity's shortcomings, nor his assumption that most people don't want to give up hope on our species capacity for good.
My contention with Lawson is that giving up on humanity, indeed giving up on ourselves is in fact the only hope we have. Perhaps Mr. Lawson is unable to see it this way, as I am sure many people are who have yet to be truly disappointed in themselves, or who are too afraid to admit their own failures. Perhaps the world Mr Lawson lives in is one where people keep their word, or don't continually behave selfishly and/or violently. Perhaps Mr Lawson genuinely believes that humans are good, and that given the opportunity they will change for the better, not because they should, but because its ingrained in our makeup.
Well perhaps Mr. Lawson, what is keeping humanity from attempting to fix the mess it has made of itself and of the world is its own insistance of goodness. Perhaps if we took a moment and stood back from ourselves we would realize that we aren't that great. I think this honesty is a relief to most of us. The moment we realize we aren't, nor will we ever be the people we want or the people we think those around us expect us to be. Maybe a collective acceptance of humanity's failures will bring us closer to creating a world worth being a part of. Yes it is difficult, and maybe people don't want to see it, but the relief alone is worth checking out. The relief of giving up.
What I really like to do after watching a movie I enjoy is looking it up on rottentomatoes.com. This is one of my favorite websites. It gathers all the reviews from a movie it can find from magazines and newspapers all over the country and gives said movie a percentage based on how many critics gave it either a "fresh" or "rotten" review. The site itself provides no opinion, but rather harnesses the opinions of hundreds of movie critics. I was pleased, as I often am when my opinion coincides with the "experts", that Gone Baby Gone recieved a 93% on rotten tomatoes and a 91% from its "top critics" (which implies major newspaper and magazine reviews).
There was one reviewer's comment however that really irked me, not because it was necessarily inaccurate, but because of its implications. Terry Lawson, of the Detroit Free Press writes that "we give up before the detectives, not just on the story, but on humanity, which I doubt is what anyone really wants." My contention with this comment is not that Lawson is wrong in this movies' depicton of humanity's shortcomings, nor his assumption that most people don't want to give up hope on our species capacity for good.
My contention with Lawson is that giving up on humanity, indeed giving up on ourselves is in fact the only hope we have. Perhaps Mr. Lawson is unable to see it this way, as I am sure many people are who have yet to be truly disappointed in themselves, or who are too afraid to admit their own failures. Perhaps the world Mr Lawson lives in is one where people keep their word, or don't continually behave selfishly and/or violently. Perhaps Mr Lawson genuinely believes that humans are good, and that given the opportunity they will change for the better, not because they should, but because its ingrained in our makeup.
Well perhaps Mr. Lawson, what is keeping humanity from attempting to fix the mess it has made of itself and of the world is its own insistance of goodness. Perhaps if we took a moment and stood back from ourselves we would realize that we aren't that great. I think this honesty is a relief to most of us. The moment we realize we aren't, nor will we ever be the people we want or the people we think those around us expect us to be. Maybe a collective acceptance of humanity's failures will bring us closer to creating a world worth being a part of. Yes it is difficult, and maybe people don't want to see it, but the relief alone is worth checking out. The relief of giving up.
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
The Have To
Something funny happened to me a few days ago. I was reading Cormac McCarthy's newest work The Road, and found myself thinking about possible paper topics. Had I not been so completely engrossed in the book itself I would've busted out my laptop and started typing. The irony here is that through my entire academic career up until this point, I have always had the hardest time finding the desire or the drive to do my work, typing papers especially.
For those of you familiar with me this comes as no shock. Procrastination is a description most people would use to describe themselves, and I would to, at least to some extent. The difference is that most people end up doing what ever it is that they've been pushing off. I wait and wait and wait, and then don't. What I have found interesting about that sudden impulse to develop a thesis, find proper quotes and launch into an argument or analysis, is that I felt it at all. After years of people telling me what to write, or how to write and when it was due, and me resisting through it all, there I was subconsciously formulating my stance.
I have often wished, as I state in my blog header that I possessed THE creative impulse. That I needed to write, or needed to play my instrument otherwise I would lose my mind. I have told many people that when walking into bookstores I am completely amazed by all the books. That may seem ludicrous, but what I mean is that I am surrounded by thousands of people's efforts. People who were willing to quit their jobs to write, or would write in their spare time. They then were willing to go through the long exhausting process of editing and submitting their work to people who would eventually publish it. That whole affair completely psyches me out, for I certainly don't possess such a drive. Again, I wish I did, but I simply don't. I enjoy writing, but only when it comes naturally, not when I have to force it, which brings me back to the opening of this rant.
When I feel like I have to, I can't, won't and don't. The "have to" ends up manifesting itself as a sort of suffocation. For whatever reason, when I have to do x I will avoid it in any way possible, despite the consequences. Yet when I am free to to read what I want, when I want, and free to decided for myself what I want to write the desire is there, maybe even a bit of a drive if I dare use such a word. So who knows, maybe that essay on The Road will be up here soon, but then again, if you're expecting it . . . well, then I wouldn't count on it.
For those of you familiar with me this comes as no shock. Procrastination is a description most people would use to describe themselves, and I would to, at least to some extent. The difference is that most people end up doing what ever it is that they've been pushing off. I wait and wait and wait, and then don't. What I have found interesting about that sudden impulse to develop a thesis, find proper quotes and launch into an argument or analysis, is that I felt it at all. After years of people telling me what to write, or how to write and when it was due, and me resisting through it all, there I was subconsciously formulating my stance.
I have often wished, as I state in my blog header that I possessed THE creative impulse. That I needed to write, or needed to play my instrument otherwise I would lose my mind. I have told many people that when walking into bookstores I am completely amazed by all the books. That may seem ludicrous, but what I mean is that I am surrounded by thousands of people's efforts. People who were willing to quit their jobs to write, or would write in their spare time. They then were willing to go through the long exhausting process of editing and submitting their work to people who would eventually publish it. That whole affair completely psyches me out, for I certainly don't possess such a drive. Again, I wish I did, but I simply don't. I enjoy writing, but only when it comes naturally, not when I have to force it, which brings me back to the opening of this rant.
When I feel like I have to, I can't, won't and don't. The "have to" ends up manifesting itself as a sort of suffocation. For whatever reason, when I have to do x I will avoid it in any way possible, despite the consequences. Yet when I am free to to read what I want, when I want, and free to decided for myself what I want to write the desire is there, maybe even a bit of a drive if I dare use such a word. So who knows, maybe that essay on The Road will be up here soon, but then again, if you're expecting it . . . well, then I wouldn't count on it.
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