3.21.2010

Do Movie Critics Matter?

An article on FirstThings.com does a good job of explaining the importance of movie critics in our culture today.   An excerpt from the article supports what we're trying to do on this website:
"It is the film critic’s constant struggle to get filmgoers and filmmakers to understand that politics and morality are still part of the artistic equation, even at the movies.

Without using morality, politics, and cultural continuity as measures of value, there is no way to appreciate the state of the culture or to maintain intelligence. Without criticism, we will have achieved naivete."

They also mention the damage that amature critics and the "Internet's free-for-all" can cause to "the concept of film criticism"
"By offering an alternative deluge of fans’ notes, angry sniping, half-baked impressions, and clubhouse amateurism, the Internet’s free-for-all has helped to further derange the concept of film criticism performed by writers who have studied cinema as well as related forms of history, science, and philosophy. This also differs from the venerable concept of the “gentleman amateur” whose gracious enthusiasms for art forms he himself didn’t practice expressed a valuable civility and sophistication, a means of social uplift. Internet criticism has, instead, unleashed a torrent of deceptive knowledge—a form of idiot savantry—usually based in the unquantifiable “love of movies” (thus corrupting the French academic’s notion of cinephilia)."

Hopefully by our continuing study of religious principles, ancient philosophers, current and cultural events, history, etc., the reviews on this site can become more meaningful to our society.

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