As seems to happen every week or so, there’s some wailing and gnashing of teeth going on about the state of comics criticism. Tucker Stone has this to say in a very entertaining interview on Newsarama:
I just wish people had thicker skin. That’s main thing with comics. There’s all this stuff recently about critics versus creators. Come on. Pauline Kael and the people from Cahiers du Cinema, they brought their art forward. They made films better, just by existing and pushing people to ask for more, to expect more. Or even the people who work on the Onion’s AV club, they make movies a better experience. They introduce you to stuff you’d never find on your own. But in comics it’s “Well how dare he say Alex Ross is a bad painter! I like Alex Ross!” Look, if you’re love of Alex Ross gets all fucked up because some dude you don’t know, who doesn’t share your taste, because that guy said Alex Ross sucks ass and should have his fingers broken, that’s your problem. Tons of people hate the shit I like, especially music, even my wife. Big deal. Doesn’t mean anything. If somebody else’s opinion on culture messes with yours so much it makes you want to cry, then you probably had started wondering whether you liked it that much to begin with.
Tom Spurgeon gets at the same point, more or less, saying if he ruled the comics world he would decree that “We criticize and receive criticism without reactionary defensiveness and accept others’ ability to do the same with respect for their doing so rather than as an opportunity to press our agenda that much further.”
And Dick Hyacinth joins in here making more or less the same point — as he says, “I’ve seen too many creators freaking out in public over honest (if not always thoughtful) criticism.”
So, basically, artists need thicker skins and then critics will save comics.
I’m sorry, but — much as I admire Tucker, Tom S, and Dick — that’s just ridiculous. In the first place, virtually nobody, in any medium, likes to have their work criticized. Artists have whined about criticism all through the ages. It’s what artists do. And furthermore, critics do it as well. In fact, when critics say things like “artists should have thicker skins”, what they tend to mean is, “artists should appreciate me more and not say that I suck when I criticize their work.” Not to say I’m exempt or anything; it really irritates me when people don’t like my stuff as much as they should, goldarnit. It’s natural. When you’re attacked, you get defensive. And, yes, attacking someone’s aesthetics is an attack on them — on their cultural position, their taste, their identity. Certainly there’s a line between attacking someone personally and attacking what they read…but it’s a line, not a wall. If you write harsh criticism, people are very likely going to get upset. In fact, getting people upset is kind of the point, right? I know it is for me; when I write, I’m writing in part out of anger (at sloppiness, at thoughtlessness, at ugliness, at moral turpitude (though I blush to admit the last)), and the intention is at least in part to irritate the people I’m angry at. Given that, it seems silly to turn around and complain if those people are in fact angry. (Though I do thoroughly admire people like Kim Deitch, with rhino hides and hearts of gold.)
And as for saving comics or improving comics or moving comics forward…I’ve really gotta say, my response is, fuck comics. I’m not writing to help comics. I’m writing for the same reason artists create art — which is either because (if you’re a romantic) I want to create something beautiful or (if you’re a realist) because I like to hear myself talk. I’m certainly more than happy to help particular comics artists whom I admire by giving them what publicity I can, but the medium as a whole — like all mediums, or like art itself, or like any other soulless cultural agglomeration — is worthy of neither love nor respect.
Not that there aren’t things wrong with comics in particular. There are, and I talk about them frequently. But I don’t know that the point is really to improve anything. It’s more about me thinking through what I like about art, and how that relates to other things (politics, morality, toilet humor, whatever.) It’s for me and my (admittedly limited) audience, not for a utopian future of better comics.
I can’t speak for Dick or Tom, and wouldn’t even try, but I can say that I wasn’t trying to imply that criticism–whether it’s big leatherbacked armchair smart guys or the amateur blog-on-the-side kind–is going to do anything for comics. But I do think it can have an impact on the reader of the comics–that’s what I get out of reading old movie reviews, you know? Like when you wrote about Shivers for the Gay Utopia site–there’s stuff that you talked about that went right by me, but when I went back to the movie, after reading what you had to say about it, it was a better experience. I honestly think that my experience of that film was made “better” by reading about it. I can see where you’re going with the interview quote–what I said about Cahiers and Kael was pretty ambiguous, and it came from having just read this long conversation between Godard and Kael where Godard kept telling her all the things that criticism can do to art. But I think you know that I’m not trying to make an argument that criticism of comics can make “comics” any better. Just that it can improve the reader experience.
On the thicker skin thing–that’s why I put the Alex Ross example in there. I meant that I think readers of blogs should have thicker skins, and realize that the writer of said blogs isn’t referring to them personally when they dismiss a comic they like. It’s still within the camp of what you’re referring to–an attempt to control the audience’s reaction–and yes, that’s pretty arrogant, but like you said, natural nonetheless.
Actually, now that I look at what I said, it wasn’t ambiguous at all. Fuck, I actually did say that it would bring art forward. That wasn’t very smart.
I mean, I’ve probably said something about criticism improving art myself at some point. These things happen to the best of us….
That’s a really sweet thing to say about my Shivers review. Thanks.
“…like all mediums…”
Media.
I’m not sure that criticism does much to directly improve comics (or movies) on an individual creator-by-creator, work-by-work basis. But I do think criticism can have an effect on “comics culture” and I’d make the value judgment that any worthwhile critic is self-reflective about the effect they have and/or are trying to have.
Cahiers-style criticism has always been self-consciously polemical. Whatever other motivations they may have had (advertising for themselves, trying to get their own filmmaking careers started), the original batch of Cahiers critics wanted to change film culture (and its institutions) for the better. It’s the same thing with Andrew Sarris, although his take wasn’t explicitly political.
And one of the central themes of Jonathan Rosenbaum’s criticism has been that critics need to take responsibility for the effect they have on film culture . (That’s a big part of his argument for critics and academics taking an active role in cannon formation).
And I’d argue that though Kael was certainly polemical, the lack of this kind of in her criticism is a major strike against it.
Noah – I think you’re being somewhat disingenuous here – striking an unnecessarily defensive and self-deflating pose. Your criticism generally shows a Rosenbaum-like concern for how it fits into the bigger cultural picture. I don’t think critics need to be embarrassed to admit that they have more ambitions than to merely hear themselves talk.
I was talking about general criticism not a critical dialogue about art, but I do hope one day to write so well that my reviews of random GI Joe comics cure cancer.
I hope for that day too, Tom.
Jon, bringing up Jonathan Rosenbaum is exactly the point. He’s a fairly intelligent critic and a good writer who descends frequently into self-parody because of his belief that anybody actually gives half a shit about his entirely pedestrian leftist politics.
I am interested in how art and politics and morality intersect. But it’s an aesthetic interest; the ultimate point of a review is to create an aesthetic effect, not a political one. Critics don’t have a responsibility to “film culture” or “comics culture”; they certainly don’t have a responsibility to create canons (a process that I think is dweebish good fun, but is pernicious — aesthetically and otherwise — when taken too seriously.)
I think critics should take their roles as cultural/political arbiters with a grain of salt, and instead focus on their role as artists and craftspeople (who may use, among other materials, cultural and political insights). Is that self-deflating or defensive? Perhaps in some ways, but I think its implications are otherwise.