Did Roger Ebert Destroy American Film Criticism? | Hacker News Reader

Did Roger Ebert Destroy American Film Criticism?

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14 pointsbokonist19 comments

This is an article bashing Ebert and siding with contrarian "intellectual" film critic Armond White. Here's what Armond White wrote of Toy Story 3:

"But Toy Story 3 is so besotted with brand names and product-placement that it stops being about the innocent pleasures of imagination—the usefulness of toys—and strictly celebrates consumerism."

Let's pick apart his argument. I'm guessing that for White a movie in which children grapple with adolescence and sentimental value over their childhood belongings is celebrating consumerism. In my book celebrating consumerism would be a movie about a child not being able to decide what new toy to buy at Toys R' Us. Consumerism, at its worst, is about companies convincing you that your old stuff isn't good anymore and to forget it and to buy the new stuff. Toy Story is about just the opposite. But you wouldn't think that right away for the seductive allure of agreeing that a popular movie "celebrates consumerism."

My point is that Armond White takes big words, in the tradition of French literary and film criticism, drops them in to troll and get attention, and then sheepishly backs off when you try to scrutinize what he says. This is the same school that brought you "the author is dead" and "writing precedes speech." There's nothing for White to defend here. His way of doing criticism is a house of cards.

It's not really picking apart his argument when you "guess" at what he answers in the review. He writes, "As...Tom Townsend (Edward Clements) tries fitting in with East Side debutantes, he discovers his toy cowboy pistol in his estranged father’s trash....evok[ing] childhood, lost innocence and Townsend’s longing for even imagined potency." That's very much what it is to grapple with "sentimental value over...childhood belongings." No where does White accuse that movie of celebrating consumerism. It also seems to me that a 3D movie is very much about "buy[ing] the new stuff."

That the movie 'endorses' toy recycling and passing on the toys to other people, does not mean that fundamentally it escapes its consumerist message. The want of more toys, even if recycled, is still a message of consumerism. Having one last play with the toys as they're passed on doesn't fix it. That the film isn't "consumerism at its worst" doesn't mean it's not fundamentally consumerist. The message isn't "Maybe I didn't need so many toys as a kid because I'll grow out of them," the message (as it relates to consumerism) is far more, "As long as I pass things along, I can buy as much as I want."

Whether or not a movie should talk about consumerism responsibly is certainly an open question. But "guessing" what White thinks when he gives you data, or saying that because TS3 isn't the WORST consumerism it's not consumerism, is disingenuous to the argument he makes. And Armond White's criticisms are useful as a reminder that films, even Dreamworks ones, can aspire to something higher. Does he sometimes go overboard? Probably sometimes. But the above is certainly not 'picking apart his argument'.

Ebert most often asks, "Will this film entertain?" White seems to ask, "Is this film good?" He concludes his TS3 review, "When a movie is this formulaic, it’s no longer a toy because it does all the work for you." I have to say I liked TS3 because it did all the work for me, and did so with excellence. But its excellence at delivering on fundamental plot arcs does not mean we shouldn't sometimes ask for more from what we watch. And White reminds us to keep asking.

(To see White displaying his talent more cleanly, check out his review of Eat, Pray, Love: http://www.nypress.com/article-21533-pretty-woman-with-an-ap...)

I don't see how a movie review can be founded an argument so vaguely articulated. What does it mean to "celebrate consumerism" if not glorifying the purchase of things while simultaneously discarding the old irresponsibly? That doesn't happen in the movie! Where is consumerism bring celebrated? Where is the movie doing a bad thing?

Ugh. Guys like these are the reason people get drunk at cocktail parties.

Roger Ebert and his peers fulfill a perfectly useful role: telling most people whether a Friday night movie is worth their limited time and money. He is not Plato. People will not be reading about him in 800 years. Nobody has ever suggested as much.

If you want to sit around in the dark, drinking expensive wine and trying to pick the deepest meaning out of obscure indie films while secretly enjoying your pervasive superiority, that's fine. But pretending that Roger Ebert has single handedly destroyed your precious little past-time is utter bunk.

I never understood how Ebert became so popular. I remember (years ago) when he lambasted Cheech and Chong's "Up in Smoke", thinking that he just didn't get it. The movie was about two stoners in a van making stoner jokes for a stoner audience. That's what it set out to do, and that's what it did. You can't properly critique a movie without taking in context what the goal was - something he consistently failed to do.

So basically you can be someone who provides insight to 99% of the population who doesn't want to delve into the neuroses of "film criticism", or you can be a self-important blowhard who seems to mostly talk to himself in the dark. Most "film" is not cinema, and not art in a "deep" form. It is entertainment. To pretend that it contains more meaning than that is nothing but mental masturbation.

That's kind of like saying that Bill Nye the Science Guy delves as deep into science as 99% of the population can appreciate, so any scientist going deeper than that is a self-important blowhard. And as for your second sentence to the end of your comment, I believe that is a statement of an axiom with which Armond White would adamantly disagree. If you're entering into this discussion with different axioms, the discussion is pointless.

How many scientists go out of their way to bash Bill Nye as a hack who damaged American science?

That's not analogous because Bill Nye, unlike Roger Ebert, has not become the public face of pure excellence in his field.

I'm under the impression that most people think "film critic" is a guy who writes a paragraph for a newspaper saying whether or not a film is entertaining enough to see, and that was true before Ebert showed up. I don't think White's field has a public face at all.

I think people who would use the words "film critic" know that Roger Ebert isn't one. Most people would call him a "movie reviewer."

Armond White writes for people that want to pretend that they are intellectuals. If you want to dive into a movies deeper meaning you need to look at it from the perspective of the content creators and not just treat it as literary crit 2.0.

In many ways movies are closer to architecture than novels because there are far more constraints on the artist. Conceder how a useful hospital and a successful blockbuster are both built for the masses, yet using what freedom remains and artist can still create art and not just another forgettable commercial success.

"If you want to dive into a movies deeper meaning you need to look at it from the perspective of the content creators ... "

That's another axiom with which I suspect White would disagree. I don't think White considers a film a success just because the filmmaker accomplished what he/she set out to do. White indeed treats film criticism like literary or other art criticism--you identify a set of criteria, perhaps arbitrarily though ideally derived from the history and cultural context of the medium, and criticize a film against those criteria.

No, I didn't say there wasn't a place for "deeper analysis", but let's be real and not compare science with "literary criticism".

Ebert's reviews are useful because they relate, roughly, to how normal, thoughtful people watch a movie. They aren't an academic exercise in critiquing Art. Most people outside of academics in the field of critiquing Art aren't interested in that.

FWIW, Ebert wrote "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls".

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19...

tl;dr: Roger Ebert is undeserving of his success and we're very bitter about it.

I couldn't get past the first "sentence". Don't write the way you speak.

Not sure why your being down-voted. I had to re-read the first few sentences at least four times before I could understand what he was trying to say. It was a horribly constructed opening that almost made me abandon the article.

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