As Zeit(geist) Goes By. . .
March 17th, 2006 by Andre Soares
Sign of the Times
Karina Longworth on Cinematical:
"According to Metacritic (a database primarily made up of mainstream print critics), the best reviewed film of 2005 was The Best of Youth – a six-hour Italian TV miniseries that played in the US on a handful of screens for a couple of weeks. Revenge of the Sith, the highest grossing film of the year, and one whose success was undoubtedly stoked by fan-motivated online activity, did not make the Metacritic Top 20. More and more mainstream print critics find themselves standing outside of the zeitgeist, watching film culture pass them by; more and more, this ship seems to be steered by its passengers."
Longworth’s article is definitely worth a read, though I disagree with a couple of her statements, and I do believe that a few important elements were left out:
Americans — especially young ones, who compose most of the moviegoing public — don’t read print publications as often as they used to. Despite a steady population increase, newspaper circulation in the United States has fallen markedly since 1990. That might help to explain — at least to a certain extent — the diminishing importance of print film critics, even though many of their reviews are also available online.
Also, film critics can’t be expected to represent the tastes of a film audience composed mostly of teenagers and very young adults — unless, of course, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and The Nation were to hire fourteen-year-olds to write film reviews. (In the old days, Hollywood movies were generally made for an adult audience — even if the films oftentimes had their "adult" content mercilessly zapped by the strict Production Code. Adult women, in particular, represented a large segment of the filmgoing public until the late 1940s.)
Ultimately, film marketing — not film culture — may be what’s leaving film critics behind. (Except for the media whores who’ll write positive reviews in exchange for a well-positioned ad blurb — and who knows what other perks may be involved.) But then again, the film commerce vs. film criticism struggle is hardly anything new.
Pauline Kael, who is extensively mentioned in Longworth’s article, was reportedly fired from her job at McCalls’ because she gave the box-office phenomenon The Sound of Music a negative review back in the mid-1960s. That incident didn’t prevent Kael from becoming the best known — and perhaps the most respected — American print film critic of the late 20th century.
As for the current zeitgeist, is it better represented by Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, The Wedding Crashers, and King Kong, or by A History of Violence, Brokeback Mountain, and Caché / Hidden?
Box-office success should not be held as an absolute social barometer or, for that matter, as an indicator of the development of film culture.
The most popular American film of 1945, the year World War II ended? The now utterly irrelevant The Bells of St. Mary’s. A reflection of the zeitgeist of the mid-1940s? More likely, a reflection of solid star power (Bing Crosby and Ingrid Bergman) and good studio marketing skills.
"We have been turned into emotional and aesthetic imbeciles," Kael wrote, "when we hear ourselves humming the sickly, goody-goody songs" from The Sound of Music. Now, what sort of "emotional and aesthetic imbeciles" have we become when we — including many mainstream critics — laugh at what passes for humor in trash like Meet the Fockers and The 40-Year-Old Virgin?
If that’s the zeitgeist, let it pass me by.
Worth reading: Ken Tucker’s Salon article on Kael, "A Gift for Effrontery."
“Great To Be Nominated” Oscar Series
Winners at the Miami International Film Festival
Winners at the 2006 South By Southwest Film Festival
2 Responses to “As Zeit(geist) Goes By. . .”
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Hey, thanks for the link … just out of curiosity, what do you think I left out?
Karina, thanks for writing.
Namely, I think it’s important to point out the age discrepancy between most established film critics and most moviegoers, the fact that newspapers and magazines have been losing readership ground, and the fact - or at least I’d say it’s a fact - that big box-office does not necessarily mean either a representation of “film culture” or of the zeitgeist.
Also, perhaps more people would have watched something like “Best of Times” - if only they knew the film existed. Much more often than not, reviews of “smaller” foreign films appear buried on page 182B. Making matters worse, those films get absolutely no U.S. TV coverage. Filmgoers must be quite diligent in order to discover such gems.