February 6, 2015 | Filed under: External Sources, Recent Posts and tagged with: Music, Non Play Criticism
It is a truism in video game circles of serious thinkers that video games are a young medium and that we are forging new territory with our criticism. That is of course bullshit in both respects.
Video game critics are often cut off from other mediums. May perhaps that our medium is so new that more energy is required to get anything done as each new step is not just walking along a singular path among the fold, but having to stir and pour the concrete before a step may be taken. So much time gets spent toiling away on our own medium that we rarely look up and see the critical spheres of other mediums happening around us and realize so much that is considered art is true for however an artist wishes to express themselves because it is all still human expression.
Non Play Criticism is my attempt to highlight some piece of criticism relating to another medium, educate whatever readership I may have by pointed it out and try and bring back into the fold whatever lesson it may have to offer.
If nothing else, I share an interesting piece of criticism from another medium.
Back in the new year, I think I’ll start with: Music.
This is a hit piece by Steve Almond from all the way back in 2010 for The Boston Globe.1 It made quite a stir at the time. Inspired a lot of voracious agreement and a lot of angry dismissals. His main point? Critics and criticism are generally worthless.
I’m not about run through the short piece and rebut it line by line. (Though I could have a hell of a lot of fun doing so.) This piece by John S.W. MacDonald for The Faster Times does an adequate enough job of that, even if it does get a tiny bit pompous near the end. Instead, I want to use it as an illustrative point.
This is a very common mindset in modern discourse. I almost said American discourse, but really, I’ve seen it pop up everywhere. One of our great exports, anti-intellectualism. Almond starts out by admitting he knew nothing during his time as a music critic, learned little, wrote dreck, was happy doing so and then had an epiphany that he was ignoring the effect it was having on people. They were enjoying the music he was spending time on the wittiest ways to tear down. The lesson learned was that criticism is a worthless endeavor. It’s hard for any self-aware thinking person to take it seriously. Yet quite a good many did. He even engages the sentiment of those who cannot do, criticize. And those who cannot criticism, complain, but back to the point.
I spend a lot of time, even now wondering if there are critics out there like this who still have jobs. I can’t imagine such a person would have that job for very long. Then again who knows. So many people, myself included, get called out for sharing honest opinions that disagree with whatever the audience thinks we should say. There are so many false alarms of hackery, I can’t even be bothered to check them out for myself. Regardless of the source, I assume it’s bullshit sour grapes and move on. I’m not even talking about the now meme shout of “BIAS!”
In all this, Almond manages to make one observation of sublime brilliance, by accident, I’m sure. “Indeed, over the past decade much of our “critical” cultural has degenerated into glorified form of punditry, in which critics have forsaken their role as compassionate arbiters for the barbed joys of snark.”2
I know I’m waging into dangerous waters here, but to me that description doesn’t seems to apply to the critic or the reviewer. Instead, it seems more applicable to the YouTube Let’s Player. But then, by their own admission, criticism isn’t their primary concern. They are entertainers first and foremost.
Glorified punditry. That is indeed what a lot of our culture has boiled down to. A lot of instant based reactions by talking heads to play up for an audience to drive an agenda instead of consideration or education. Am I talking about YouTuber or the new cable networks. I don’t know. It might even be disingenuous to compare the two. For all the efforts of some, I doubt any YouTuber could muster the amount of societal damage that the talking TV heads have managed. That and Let’s Players don’t claim to be that important and are more honest with their position.3
It’s ironic that the general mental clichéd image of a critic, the one Almond try to emulate, was formed not people honestly interested in criticism or reviews, but by those who dropped in for controversy. When something popular gets panned or taken to task, it’s the outside commentators that come flooding in. That is where the stereotype gets born, because that is all that is ever seen. Then we get people who grew up on that stereotype emulating it once they get that job title, because that’s how they think they are supposed to do it. Second generation hackery and that was in the 80s. We’ve got to be up to 3rd or 4th generation hackery by now.
I don’t present this piece to refute it. It does a good enough job of that by itself. Instead, I want you to look at it, recognize it, see what is being learned. Several times Almond comes close to getting it, but there is some block instilled by an anti-intellectual understanding of what a critic is. His epiphany comes away with the wrong lesson and his present actions are not the behavior attributed to critics, but to those that ignore them. In the process it promotes dishonesty in both directions. Never criticize, only glorify. Never enjoy, only despise.
I’ll never understand the thinking.