Sometimes I feel like writing art criticism is the ultimate quixotic endeavour. It's what I do here on my blog almost every day but the hazy line between subjectivity and objectivity seems to render it pointless sometimes. This past week I've been listening to a lot of YouTube critics while drawing pictures. They're not a fair sample if I'm talking about the fundamental quality of criticism itself, I guess. I ought to be be talking about Pauline Kael or William Empson.
Paul Schrader wrote this on his Facebook recently:
AI FILM CRITICISM. It should be fairly simple to program chatgpt to review a new film in the manner of, say, Kael, Sarris or Farber. Chatgpt would need simply watch the film, read every review written by the designated critic, see every film the designated critic reviewed, see every previous film made by every talent (directors to actors to prod designers) in the new film, watch every film in the new film's genre, read every review written about those films and read all other reviews of the new film. That should take chatgpt about thirty seconds.
Ironically, I think the real appeal, at least for me, of criticism is the feeling of shared experience. As seeing a movie in a theatre is a communal experience, reading or hearing criticism is another facet or manifestation of that experience. The balance between comments I agree with and comments I don't are like echo location to map my own feelings while at the same time carving an impression of the other human being. Which kind of describes group communication in general. It seems computers are on the verge of simulating this, the ultimate result being, I guess, that everyone can more successfully lead completely solitary lives.
It's not just the computer's image we mould, though, it's our own. ChatGPT won't notice if you have a pimple or if you're bald. It's Satanic self-creation. I say that as a fan of Milton's Satan. Of course, it's only the rich who will go extinct or upload themselves to a hard drive. There are still vast swaths of Earth's population who have no hope of meeting ChatGPT.
I'm aware a lot of people don't read criticism the way I do. The number of people who do so only to be told how to think are multiplying. So it's important to note how lousy YouTube criticism often is.
I was listening to a YouTube critic called Sheev Talks last week. He mostly talks about Star Wars stuff and is slightly unusual for the fact that he compares criticisms of other YouTube critics. I appreciated his retrospective on The Phantom Menace for how he discussed the ways in which The Phantom Menace is often discussed, singling out the influential Mr. Plinkett reviews on the RedLetterMedia channel and pointing out just how bad and sloppy they are, even though Sheev Talks agrees that the prequels are bad. Personally, as I said before about criticism being for me part of the communal experience, I appreciate RedLetterMedia more for the hosts' rapport and personality than for the insights of their reviews. The original Mr. Plinkett reviews seemed to be me to be partially a parody of criticism itself, of the idea of even spending hours and hours talking about movies that most people supposedly don't like. The channel's content has generally shifted away from parody into doing something more straight-forward.
Despite his tirade against the flaws of other YouTube critics, I find Sheev Talks' criticisms to be equally flawed, as when he says that the houses on Skeleton Crew too much resembled suburban '80s American houses and uses the '50s diner in Attack of the Clones for comparison, saying that the diner was different enough to fit comfortably within the Star Wars universe but the houses were not. The footage he himself provides seems to belie this comparison. I would actually say the diner is more of a diner than the suburban houses are suburban houses.
Despite calling the prequels bad, Sheev Talks says that he loves them and has watched them repeatedly since childhood (he seems to be in his 20s). In a sense, I can appreciate separating what I like from what I think is objectively good--Vertigo is my favourite movie but I think Citizen Kane is more deserving of the "Best Film of All Time" title. But surely how a movie makes us feel should be a vital part of the criticism. If he loves them, why doesn't he analyse himself to see why he loves them? Since art is often popular and effective despite how well they do or don't follow the conventional rules of storytelling, surely our feelings should factor into any judgement of a film's quality. Whatever problems a film may have, do we find it satisfying at the end of the day? Most filmmakers would say that's the only point.
I wonder if, as AI becomes more emotional, human beings are becoming more mathematical. Recently, the YouTube algorithm has been encouraging me to watch this conservative book critic called The Second Story. She has a video bemoaning the omnipresence of sex in women's fiction and lamenting the fact that people repeatedly pursue titillation. Watching her and noting her form fitting clothes and dead-eyed delivery, I couldn't help thinking of Nicki Brand in Videodrome.
Second Story's critiques seem entirely meant for people who are already willing to agree with her and she tends to offer no evidence for any argument she makes. I will give you some evidence for my argument, a particularly amusing one in which she argues with GRR Martin's assertion that JRR Tolkien created the modern fantasy genre.
Second Story goes on at length to say and reiterate that Tolkien, though talented, did nothing new or special. I would think the obvious thing for her to do would be to provide examples of fantasy fiction written before The Lord of the Rings that have qualities that are erroneously believed to have originated with Lord of the Rings. She does not. Meanwhile, anyone watching who knows anything about fantasy will know that, yes, certainly fantasy existed before The Hobbit in the works of Clark Ashton Smith or Lord Dunsany, but The Lord of the Rings nonetheless provided a basic blueprint that was followed by thousands of publications in the fantasy genre ever afterwards, all over the world. The numerous books published under the Dungeons and Dragons banner replicate the party of adventurers depicted in Lord of the Rings of different representatives of fantasy races and specialised professional classes. Martin's work replicates the epic war in a fantasy world that Lord of the Rings introduced. Elements of Tolkien's works certainly existed in a number of forerunners but Tolkien was undeniably the first to put them together into something of The Lord of the Rings' depth and scope, having something of the true war account of Wilfred Owen while also having the grandeur of Alfred, Lord Tennyson. And I have the sinking feeling ChatGPT would've seen this.
X Sonnet 1957
The young macaque is guarding station food.
You hunger now for bread about the cheese.
Around the dairy stuff the tasters brood.
As global honey holds the yankee bees.
Partake and run, the banquet threatens peace.
You have to wait and bid before you buy.
A hundred yen could buy the golden fleece.
And yet a billion fails to budge a fly.
You see the dappled sun become a coin.
The darker spots were never what they seemed.
As owls watch the agent's soggy groin.
The rest of us were watching Orson Bean.
A later hobbit bought his leaf for cheap.
Safari dwarves repaired to Thorin's jeep.
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