A question for Polly Carl

We watch the career of Polly Carl (at left) over at Emerson's Center for Theater Commons with increasing interest.  Recently, it was announced that Ms. Carl and her Center would be part of a philanthropic effort to embed playwrights in (partly) administrative positions within regional theatres.  

This set off a few warning bells for us, which prompted a somewhat re-assuring response from the Huntington.  Now we read Carl is also looking to hire critics, too - not to write reviews, however, but to - well, you know, "foster a space," "respectfully dialogue," etc., etc.

So . . . now we're talking about equipping theatres with their own in-house playwrights, and even their own in-house critics. What's next - paid audience members?  (Just kidding!)  

With that trend in mind, I submitted the following question to Carl's post on HowlRound.  I'm curious to read her response.

Okay, I'll take the bait, because I'm curious - are you thinking of hiring critics to critique your own productions, or other people's? There would seem to be some obvious conflicts of interest in either case, of course - but I'll assume you're interested in enlisting a critic to discuss your own productions.

Now integrating a critic into the internal development process strikes me as a good idea, actually; indeed, several budding playwrights have asked me to critique their work. It's the public face of this supposed "critical" writing that strikes me as problematic.

You say, for instance, that you don't want to publish "reviews," and you don't want to "wake up in the morning to a bad review." (Only guess what - I don't want to go into the theatre and see a bad show, either. And yet it happens all the time!)

Only if the critic isn't being paid to write a "review," then what, exactly, is he or she being paid to write?

Well, you say it's going to be "positive" and "respectful," which is nice. Beyond that, though, the project seems vague. Very vague, in fact - although these critics will apparently ask questions about "what gets produced and why," and inquire, "Why this play, playwright, or story now?"

Only frankly - those queries don't sound like critical questions, in that they seem to dodge any issues of aesthetic analysis. They sound instead like political questions, designed to subvert critique with open-ended gestures toward "diversity" and various demographic targets (in short, the academic version of audience development).

Not that there's anything wrong with audience development! Only of course it's not criticism, and those who practice it are not critics. Which is why I question the nomenclature of your headline, "Call for critics!" I don't think you're calling for "critics," because I don't think you're really looking for criticism.  Well, okay, you're looking for critics, perhaps - only you'd like them to write something else.

Is there room for critics in a Market Society?, Part II

Samuel L. Jackson comes after A.O. Scott.

When Samuel L. Jackson "hit back" at New York Times critic A.O. Scott over his review of The Avengers, Jackson only typed 105 characters into his Twitter feed (he had 35 to spare). But he still sculpted an argument molded to the culture almost as closely as an ear bud is to its - well, ear.

 #Avengers fans,NY Times critic AO Scott needs a new job! Let's help him find one! One he can ACTUALLY do! Jackson tweeted on May 3. And as his fingers stroked the keys of his iPad, they also touched, consciously or unconsciously, on a number of unspoken millennial assumptions and attitudes.

First - note Jackson doesn't actually say Scott was wrong about The Avengers  - about which Scott had sighed, "While The Avengers is hardly worth raging about, its failures are significant and dispiriting."  (He went on to say: "The light, amusing bits cannot overcome the grinding, hectic emptiness, the bloated cynicism that is less a shortcoming of this particular film than a feature of the genre.")

No, Jackson let Scott's assessment stand, in its way.  And indeed, he has never actually said that he thinks The Avengers is a great movie (I'd be surprised if he did).  No, Jackson instead said that A.O. Scott wasn't doing his job - or, to be precise, that he cannot do his job.

But what is that job, you well may ask?

Now perhaps this is a trivial point.  But sometimes subtle details tell you everything you need to know about the subtext of a debate, and I find it intriguing that Jackson didn't bother to counter Scott's claims, or hint at any kind of argument at all, really, regarding The Avengers.  He seems to assume that the actual quality of the movie is beside the point, as it has proved so popular.  Thus he simply contacts the virtual hordes of its fans, and lets them know that someone in a galaxy far, far away, where alien life forms still read newsprint, has not done his duty toward them.

In other words, Jackson constructs the role of the critic in terms of his or her relationship to a particular movie's audience.  Not even its potential audience, but merely the fanboys who have already lined up to see it; and of course (needless to say!) not to the larger culture, much less any longer view of the cinema.  No, in Jackson's view (and that of many people today), the critic is there to predict and reflect the majority opinion of the audience niche (large or small as it may be) to which a movie has been marketed.

But then other "stakeholders" in the arts have gone even further.   I read the following post, directed to young playwrights, recently on the Emerson College site HowlRound, posted by a body that styles itself "The New York Times Critic Watch Research Team":

Would you ever go out of your way to read [a review] that wasn’t kind in order to “learn something” or “make yourself a better writer” or “give yourself a reason to drink heavily?” No. 

All this begs the question of whether reviews should ever include dramaturgical thoughts like: “the second act needed to be shortened” or “the subplot with the incest didn’t work.” Is this a specific request to the writer or director? Is this so that the audience will go into the show preparing to dread the second act? We know that a review is not studied dramaturgy but rather personal opinion. (If it was dramaturgy the note-giver would see the show more than once, read the script, ask the writer why the second act was written that way before proclaiming a solution to something the writer/director does not think is a problem).

We think this practice, when it happens, is weird.

Now these sentiments may be partly tongue-in-cheek, but let's be honest: they're largely not.  And let's also recall that Samuel L. Jackson didn't actually say out loud that "critics should not practice criticism."  (He implied it, but dodged stating it bluntly.)  The playwrights of HowlRound have less compunction, however.  They find the very essence of criticism "weird," and they want nothing of it.  They won't read their reviews, so don't bother, Mr. Critic, to point out that their second acts don't work!  They'll never know - and anyway, even if their second acts do suck, people should still pay money to suffer through them.  And then write congratulatory notes on Facebook, too!  Because otherwise their feelings will be hurt!

Okay, okay, I know - what do you expect from a crowd of undergraduate playwrights?

Would you sell your critical soul for a Benjamin?  (You probably already have.)

But consider one final piece of evidence in this ongoing debate - the recent offer by the British company Strut & Fret to potential reviewers of their coming visit to Brooklyn: they'll pay $100 for an online review they can reprint as ad copy.  The pitch goes like this:

To qualify, you must (1) have a website (which may be a print medium's online site) on which you exclusively or regularly post theatre reviews; (2) post a review of The Tie That Binds currently in its final week at the Gallery Players Black Box Festival; (3) notify the producers by email at ttbfestival@gmail.com with a link to your review at the time of publication; and (4) agree to permit the producers, should they request to do so, to reprint, publish, and post your review -- or an excerpt of approximately 450 words approved by you -- online with proper credit to you as author, all other rights reserved to you. All reviews must identify playwright Rebecca Sue Haber, director Heather Arnson, and producers David Watson and Strut & Fret, Inc. Reviews posted before 9:00 a.m. EDT Saturday, June 16 will be eligible for a $100 reprint fee if selected for reprint. Reviews posted after that time but on or before Saturday, June 30 will be eligible for a $65 fee if selected for reprint.

Some bloggers have tried to simulate shock at this proposal - but for the life of me I can't figure out why; doesn't it merely openly formalize the relationship that Samuel L. Jackson and HowlRound have suggested?  Yes, I'm afraid it does: it simply identifies economically the critic as a cog in the arts marketing sector of our over-arching market society (as all these parties agree he or she should be).  And what's more - aren't Strut & Fret merely accurately diagnosing the current state of affairs, anyhow?   Critics already behave as if they're being paid by producers - when they don't, they usually face severe blowback from their editors - or colleagues (even major theatres like the Huntington - and of course the A.R.T. - have mounted coordinated email and comment attacks on critics who have harshed on their shows). Indeed, at this point I can't think of many Boston critics who couldn't take up Strut & Fret's offer with a clear conscience.  (Certainly Don Aucoin could send along all his copy without changing a line.)

But would they be in the right to do so?  Let's indulge in a little thought experiment for a moment, and ask ourselves, "Who should a critic work for?  And what precisely should be his job?"

Let's do it in another post, though.  I know I promised I'd keep this discussion to two installments, but sorry, you're going to have to read a third.  To be continued!

Is there room for critics in a Market Society? (Part I)

Anton Ego, the morbidly epicene critic of Pixar's Ratatouille.

Since the seeming triumph of capitalism with the fall of the Berlin Wall, our modes of cultural discourse have, almost unconsciously, bowed more and more to the authority of the market.  Not that the collapse of that particular barricade was proof positive of any such historic consummation (whatever Francis Fukuyama - or Pink Floyd! - may have thought).  Indeed, capitalism has been as often on the ropes after "the Fall" as it was before.  The transition of the Soviet Union to the free market ended in an oligarchic shambles - while China became a pseudo-Communist (read: fascist) labor powerhouse; the market without the freedom seemed the new dispensation, frankly.  And since then, European nations have gone up to (or over) the edge of bankruptcy with frightening regularity, and 2008 demonstrated that Wall Street was only too happy to destroy the entire Western economy (indeed, they're happy to do it again).  But still, capitalism holds sway in the collective mindset as some sort of economic ideal.  Because, like, you know, the only thing that has "happened" since the Berlin Wall was 9/11 - and anyhow there's this cool new app for your iPhone.

A few trenchant writers have already begun to comment on this strange state of affairs, and have noticed that the progress of social thought, like the culture at large, has slowed to a crawl, while "capitalism" and "the free market" now occupy the sort of uncontested intellectual space once occupied by ideas like "the divine right of kings" and "the Virgin Birth."

But perhaps what is most troubling about our current mental predilections is that capitalism not only reigns supreme in the rarefied realm of pure economics, but has begun to infiltrate the discourse of our artistic culture as well.  More and more, popular art reflects the triumph of market forces.  And indeed, some thinkers have begun to worry that we may not be content merely to imagine ourselves as superheroes on the Web, but have already begun to imagine that we should become "citizens" of a "market society" in real life as well.

In such a society, every existing social norm, and every moral or value, is re-invented as an atomized exchange between free individuals - and so, essentially, all culture can be translated into metaphoric (or even literal) fiscal terms.  What's more, in a market society in its purest form, "freedom"all but requires that there be a price on everything, and that said prices serve as the only arbiters of behavior and lifestyle; indeed to doctrinaire libertarians, the yoke of what has come to be known as "monoculture" should be thrown off: there should be no social contract, no mores, no community judgments - and certainly no official punishments based on what are essentially historic (or aesthetic) criteria.

There's a lot to be said for this idea, of course; today it operates as the unconscious underpinning of much of the popular support for gay rights, as well as opposition to racism.  To my mind, however, such causes are (all too) easily justified by other intellectual traditions - but these very traditions generally require informed intellectual participation, something to which much of millennial society is opposed, and which technological cocooning seems to have rendered obsolete as social capital.  Hence by default the "market society" has become the unspoken foundation of much of our discourse - or what there is of it - even though in the end such a society is no recipe for liberal tolerance, as we naively imagine now.  Luckily for us, an immature, degraded version of Enlightenment ideals still molds the popular arena, like a benign shadow cast by the previous cultural consensus; but there's no reason why that should always be the case (and sooner or later, it won't be; indeed, we've already accepted the idea that corporations have First Amendment rights - and if an "enemy combatant" can be tortured, why can't he be enslaved?).

All of this, of course, would usually be beyond the bailiwick of this blog - only perhaps inevitably, the movement of these larger social wheels has put obvious torque on the mechanisms of a cultural sector I'm often concerned with - the theatre, and particularly the role of the critic therein.  This "torque" has generally taken the form of hostile - well, critique.  Even though everyone agrees that critics are on the way out, everyone it seems would like to get a kick in before the door slams behind them.

Now critics have always been under attack.  Always have been, always will be.  That's the way it is.  If a critic is not under attack, he or she is doing something wrong - or rather, he or she is simply not actually operating as a critic.  What's new about the latest round of assaults on the critical role, however, is that today not only are individual writers, or particular styles or modes of criticism, under censure, but the very idea of criticism is under attack.

Not, of course, in the abstract, for criticism is all but an unconscious mental response to every form of cultural representation; we're all critics, and all the time, too.  Indeed, people are more critical than ever privately.  No, the current conversation, in the blogosphere and elsewhere, revolves around whether there can be a valid public role for the critic.  Can there be a kind of accepted cultural "officer" in place at leading publications, or even in the blogosphere?  Or can we correctly assume that knowledge, sympathy and insight into an art form have no place - and deserve no special respect - in the discourse?

To the opponents of criticism, the answers to those questions are obvious.  For how, these partisans cry, can one opinion be given precedence over another?  After all, isn't everything just "apples and oranges," as the saying goes - and shouldn't everyone be left to their own taste?  Why and how could one opinion be more "valid" than another? The very idea is ridiculous on its face!

As is usually the case with naive arguments, however, this one dissolves under inspection.  Of course all opinions are equal; but we don't turn to a critic for his or her opinion, do we.   No, not really.  Instead we read criticism for its perceptions.  And does anyone really believe that all perceptions are equally valid, or even equally accurate?

Indeed, once we begin to ponder the question of perception, the canard of "All opinions are equally valid" immediately falls apart, or just seems beside the point.  Even the old saw regarding "apples and oranges" collapses - for only with our critical faculties can we tell whether an orange is really an orange, and not an apple painted orange.

So perhaps it's unsurprising that the fury often directed against critics amounts to a deflected, unconscious cognition of this fact.  People shrug off, in general, mere "differences of opinion," after all; but they grow angry when a critic illuminates facets of a work of art that they themselves were unable to perceive - when, in effect, they reveal what they thought was an orange was actually something else.  Or - worse! - that they themselves are something other than they imagine themselves to be.

A.O. Scott - not so far from Anton Ego.

Thus the recent dust-up over Times critic A.O. Scott's diss of The Avengers; to its fans, this blockbuster was simply a "wild ride" featuring all their favorite Marvel superheroes.  But to A.O. Scott, despite some "snappy dialogue," the film seemed "bloated," and "cynical;" indeed, Scott wrote, it was simply "a giant ATM for Marvel."  Which made many people very angry, even though this obviously was not a difference of opinion regarding "wild rides" - A.O. Scott admitted, in fact, that he liked a good thrill ride as much as anyone else; he shared the general opinions of his audience. No, this was entirely a difference of perception.

And unfortunately, part of what Scott perceived was that the people who liked The Avengers were simply easy marks, and almost mechanical in their tastes.  His review assumed, for instance, that even in  the arena of sensation-derived pop pleasure, cultural memory should count for something (he even wanly referenced Rio Bravo), and what's more, that other people had cultural memories, too.  He wasn't interested in getting on exactly the same roller coaster over and over, and didn't really understand why anybody else would be.  In short, he wanted the superhero tradition to develop, but instead felt it was exhausted - precisely because the people who built roller coasters now understood that the popular audience had become so stunted in its response that they didn't have to build in any new thrills.  No real cultural work was required; the "wild ride" could, and should, go faster and faster, but at the same time it could essentially stay in place.

But you see the problem; in a market society, you can't criticize the customers (so Scott had to to go through a ritual humiliation to appease his readership - see previous post), and cultural products can't have cultural histories, anyhow, because there is no more "monoculture" to have a history in (seriously - Rio Bravo??). So the only appropriate way to discuss movies, or plays (or books) is as discrete sets of sensations - like restaurant entrées.  There can be no "tradition," and so criticism can't be a component of a larger, shared conversation - we have tweets now instead!  Or at any rate that's what the new crop of "critics of the critics" have begun telling us, as I'll describe in the second half of this two-part series.