Critical analysis is there a point?
Oct. 23rd, 2011 06:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatIs it worth commenting when you disagree? Or saying anything at all? I suppose depends on the situation. Felt compelled to correct people on the false Warren Buffet chain mail - because I knew the facts were horrifically and dangerously wrong.
But with cultural tastes? It's not worth it. People have different tastes. For example - some people love sweet potatoes, others find them way too sweet and gross. Same with tv shows and books. No amount of arguing or critical praise is going to convince me to watch XYZ - if I don't like it. And no amount of arguing or critiquing is going to make me stop watching or reading XYZ if I love it. I will just ignore/dismiss the critic as someone who does not share my taste.
But this begs the question - where does critical discussion supersede pointless argument? I think when you take it to a higher level beyond like/dislike and more into the nitty gritty. Example - Ryan Murphy's stories bother me because there's an underlying dislike of his characters and the human condition portrayed in his work that I find disturbing and poisonous. His work pushes for an emotional disconnect. That's an emotional response. Versus say, Ryan Murphy's stories are a bit too interested in pushing buttons and not developing character. The characters for the large part are fairly stock - the adulterous husband, the self-hating/alienated teen daughter, the long-suffering wife. There's little depth or time spent in looking deeper inside them. Instead of exploring new avenues, old soap opera tropes are rehashed - such as the mistress's pregnancy and insistence on telling the wife, the loss of funds. If you compare to say Stanley Kubrick's The Shining - where the marital trouble is less simply defined. Or on the infidelty level - look at the films of Roman Polanski - Rosemary's Baby and Repulsion or even the films of Bergman and Cassavates - Scenes from a Marriage. Or for the loss of a child - the wonderful film "Don't Look Now" about a couple struggling with the loss of a child which is ripping them apart. These are horror films that dig inside the psychology of the characters without relying on soap opera cliche or standard stock. Instead of throwing imagery at us, they dig for it - go deeper. [Another example - Buffy or even Vampire Diaries, one reviewer may view it as nothing but a teen soap opera, rehashing established romantic tropes in a gothic horror setting, while another critic could look at it much deeper seeing subtext on the teenage condition and about growing up.]
But is that even moving past subjective critique? I think to do true critical analysis you have to have the language down - the language of film or the industry itself. To a degree you love the work for what it is. As Robert Loomis, the long term and esteemed editor of Random House, once told me in an informational interview way back in 1995, every writer writes what they know best. John Grisham is brilliant at the legal thriller. You may hate those types of books, but I'm willing to bet you money you couldn't come close to writing it. He blends his experience into the tale, there is an authenticity to it. More to the point - he sells lots of books, making it possible for Robert Loomis to publish Emily Praeger, a lesser known yet reknowned literary writer of stories such as "A Visit to the Footbinders" and "Eve's Tattoo". To compare the two works does both a huge disservice. Just as comparing say two vastly different jobs. Being human, I think we do it anyway. And I find people are insanely judgemental of each other's tastes and often their own, although there is a spectrum on that score as well.
I think I decided not to enter a career of critical literary or film or television analysis - because I remain unconvinced there is much point to it. What, if anything, does this further? Or help? Does picking apart a story really aid the writer in becoming better? Does picking apart a tv show do that as well? I clearly enjoy it on some level and have been doing it with my mother, and family members since I was 10. But is it a valuable thing? Would I be happier if I didn't?
It's harder for me to do the type of analysis I do do for a living - which tends to be more technical and numerical. It also feels more vital somehow. For me - my job has to be vital, it has to have meaning or a point, since I spend so much of my waking hours doing it. It can't be just to pay for things. The jobs that felt that way, I did not stay in long. As a result the job I have, which does work on the level I've described takes a lot out of me. More than it might someone else. I don't know. All the people working in my area seem exhausted by the end of the day. Prior jobs? I could go out afterwards, take classes, write for hours on a story - after this one? I want to eat a nice meal and veg in front of the tv - preferably a comforting show that doesn't make me anxious or is too violent, nice and light and frothy - with great one liners. Fun. I do not want deep and meaningful. I don't want literary - if there is such a thing for tv. At least not most of the time. I remember how long it took me to get into the Wire this summer - it was almost too deep, too violent, too textured - yet luckily it had some wonderful characters, a lot of hope at the center, and was hilarious. Also the violence really was tempered. It wasn't that bad - no Breaking Bad or Deadwood. Or even Game of Thrones. Sure people died, but it wasn't, how do you say? Torture and gross. But even with the Wire - I found it hard to focus and was often re-winding. After work, my brain is dead. I don't want to think. I just want to be entertained. And it occurs to me how many others feel the same way.
Most Americans, like myself, get no more than two weeks of vacation a year. With 3 personal days - if you are lucky, and not allowed to take with the vacation. And 12 paid holidays, again if you are lucky. That's until you serve at least 5 years. ESPN is like this, so is just about every other corporation in the US. Federal jobs certainly are. There are exceptions of course, there always are. But generally speaking...that appears to be the case, if you aren't management.
So you get tired. And on your time off work - you don't want more work. So you don't read those deep literary novels you read when you were in grad school or college, nor do you watch those deep films and tv shows that you read when you were in college. It takes me longer to read a book now - mostly because half of the time I'm sleeping on the train not reading on it.
And tv...well.
Tastes change...depending on what I'm doing in my life and who I'm doing it with. And how much time I wish to expend on cultural pursuits. It also probably is worth mentioning that I knit, cook, eat, clean, read magazines and surf the internet while watching tv and seldom focus all my attention on it. I don't watch it on the internet. And that I think is important too.
Half the time I wonder why I post the things I do in my lj...I occasionally check to see who has defriended and friended to see how I'm doing - but lately it's been really hard to tell. So, I've no clue. Probably not important. Learned a long time ago that trying to please people on the internet was a losing proposition. Most of the time - you piss off one person and make a life-long friend of another - often due to the same post. I've had posts that resulted in people de-friending and friending me.
I think tv shows and books and films are much the same way. Some people love a show to death, and some hate it so badly they want to throw things at it. I remember with the novel "Atonement by Ian McEwan" there were people on my flist who adored it, loved it, best book ever, while others, like myself, despised the book. Heck that was the situation in my book club for several books. I remember American Psycho - one person loved it, everyone else hated it. Or Atonement - one person hated it, everyone else loved it. Or you'd get a book like House of Sand and Fog, and people would be evenly split. It's like politics in my workplace - half the people hate Obama, love Bush, and think the NY Post is great, the other half hate Bush, love Obama, and think the NY Times is where it is at. Yet we somehow all get along and work very well with each other - we just try to leave politics and often tv preferences at home.
But with cultural tastes? It's not worth it. People have different tastes. For example - some people love sweet potatoes, others find them way too sweet and gross. Same with tv shows and books. No amount of arguing or critical praise is going to convince me to watch XYZ - if I don't like it. And no amount of arguing or critiquing is going to make me stop watching or reading XYZ if I love it. I will just ignore/dismiss the critic as someone who does not share my taste.
But this begs the question - where does critical discussion supersede pointless argument? I think when you take it to a higher level beyond like/dislike and more into the nitty gritty. Example - Ryan Murphy's stories bother me because there's an underlying dislike of his characters and the human condition portrayed in his work that I find disturbing and poisonous. His work pushes for an emotional disconnect. That's an emotional response. Versus say, Ryan Murphy's stories are a bit too interested in pushing buttons and not developing character. The characters for the large part are fairly stock - the adulterous husband, the self-hating/alienated teen daughter, the long-suffering wife. There's little depth or time spent in looking deeper inside them. Instead of exploring new avenues, old soap opera tropes are rehashed - such as the mistress's pregnancy and insistence on telling the wife, the loss of funds. If you compare to say Stanley Kubrick's The Shining - where the marital trouble is less simply defined. Or on the infidelty level - look at the films of Roman Polanski - Rosemary's Baby and Repulsion or even the films of Bergman and Cassavates - Scenes from a Marriage. Or for the loss of a child - the wonderful film "Don't Look Now" about a couple struggling with the loss of a child which is ripping them apart. These are horror films that dig inside the psychology of the characters without relying on soap opera cliche or standard stock. Instead of throwing imagery at us, they dig for it - go deeper. [Another example - Buffy or even Vampire Diaries, one reviewer may view it as nothing but a teen soap opera, rehashing established romantic tropes in a gothic horror setting, while another critic could look at it much deeper seeing subtext on the teenage condition and about growing up.]
But is that even moving past subjective critique? I think to do true critical analysis you have to have the language down - the language of film or the industry itself. To a degree you love the work for what it is. As Robert Loomis, the long term and esteemed editor of Random House, once told me in an informational interview way back in 1995, every writer writes what they know best. John Grisham is brilliant at the legal thriller. You may hate those types of books, but I'm willing to bet you money you couldn't come close to writing it. He blends his experience into the tale, there is an authenticity to it. More to the point - he sells lots of books, making it possible for Robert Loomis to publish Emily Praeger, a lesser known yet reknowned literary writer of stories such as "A Visit to the Footbinders" and "Eve's Tattoo". To compare the two works does both a huge disservice. Just as comparing say two vastly different jobs. Being human, I think we do it anyway. And I find people are insanely judgemental of each other's tastes and often their own, although there is a spectrum on that score as well.
I think I decided not to enter a career of critical literary or film or television analysis - because I remain unconvinced there is much point to it. What, if anything, does this further? Or help? Does picking apart a story really aid the writer in becoming better? Does picking apart a tv show do that as well? I clearly enjoy it on some level and have been doing it with my mother, and family members since I was 10. But is it a valuable thing? Would I be happier if I didn't?
It's harder for me to do the type of analysis I do do for a living - which tends to be more technical and numerical. It also feels more vital somehow. For me - my job has to be vital, it has to have meaning or a point, since I spend so much of my waking hours doing it. It can't be just to pay for things. The jobs that felt that way, I did not stay in long. As a result the job I have, which does work on the level I've described takes a lot out of me. More than it might someone else. I don't know. All the people working in my area seem exhausted by the end of the day. Prior jobs? I could go out afterwards, take classes, write for hours on a story - after this one? I want to eat a nice meal and veg in front of the tv - preferably a comforting show that doesn't make me anxious or is too violent, nice and light and frothy - with great one liners. Fun. I do not want deep and meaningful. I don't want literary - if there is such a thing for tv. At least not most of the time. I remember how long it took me to get into the Wire this summer - it was almost too deep, too violent, too textured - yet luckily it had some wonderful characters, a lot of hope at the center, and was hilarious. Also the violence really was tempered. It wasn't that bad - no Breaking Bad or Deadwood. Or even Game of Thrones. Sure people died, but it wasn't, how do you say? Torture and gross. But even with the Wire - I found it hard to focus and was often re-winding. After work, my brain is dead. I don't want to think. I just want to be entertained. And it occurs to me how many others feel the same way.
Most Americans, like myself, get no more than two weeks of vacation a year. With 3 personal days - if you are lucky, and not allowed to take with the vacation. And 12 paid holidays, again if you are lucky. That's until you serve at least 5 years. ESPN is like this, so is just about every other corporation in the US. Federal jobs certainly are. There are exceptions of course, there always are. But generally speaking...that appears to be the case, if you aren't management.
So you get tired. And on your time off work - you don't want more work. So you don't read those deep literary novels you read when you were in grad school or college, nor do you watch those deep films and tv shows that you read when you were in college. It takes me longer to read a book now - mostly because half of the time I'm sleeping on the train not reading on it.
And tv...well.
Tastes change...depending on what I'm doing in my life and who I'm doing it with. And how much time I wish to expend on cultural pursuits. It also probably is worth mentioning that I knit, cook, eat, clean, read magazines and surf the internet while watching tv and seldom focus all my attention on it. I don't watch it on the internet. And that I think is important too.
Half the time I wonder why I post the things I do in my lj...I occasionally check to see who has defriended and friended to see how I'm doing - but lately it's been really hard to tell. So, I've no clue. Probably not important. Learned a long time ago that trying to please people on the internet was a losing proposition. Most of the time - you piss off one person and make a life-long friend of another - often due to the same post. I've had posts that resulted in people de-friending and friending me.
I think tv shows and books and films are much the same way. Some people love a show to death, and some hate it so badly they want to throw things at it. I remember with the novel "Atonement by Ian McEwan" there were people on my flist who adored it, loved it, best book ever, while others, like myself, despised the book. Heck that was the situation in my book club for several books. I remember American Psycho - one person loved it, everyone else hated it. Or Atonement - one person hated it, everyone else loved it. Or you'd get a book like House of Sand and Fog, and people would be evenly split. It's like politics in my workplace - half the people hate Obama, love Bush, and think the NY Post is great, the other half hate Bush, love Obama, and think the NY Times is where it is at. Yet we somehow all get along and work very well with each other - we just try to leave politics and often tv preferences at home.
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no subject
Date: 2011-10-23 11:07 pm (UTC)I take comfort in the fact that I will manage foot in mouth action many more times in my life.
no subject
Date: 2011-10-23 11:28 pm (UTC)I love reading your posts but I'm never satisfied to simply agree; I like to give my own opinion (which is only really solicited in the poll format). But I do try to avoid being argumentative or annoying, I apologize if I am!
no subject
Date: 2011-10-23 11:47 pm (UTC)Okay, I do have something to say about critical analysis. Sometimes I love to get into the fine details and explore why something works for me. More often I'm happy to read other people's thoughts on the same thing, even if I don't agree.
What counts most for me is the exploration of the actual material, rather than delving into the psychology of "Why did the author write this?" or "What does it say about us that we like to read this?" Far too often I end up feeling either insulted or like the critic completely missed the point. I don't mind disagreeing with someone's opinion on a fictional character or why a particular show is or isn't entertaining, but making it about the real people writing or watching feels like crossing a line.
(I wouldn't keep reading someone's LJ if they constantly posted vitriol about a character or show I liked, but occasional differing opinions? No problem.)
no subject
Date: 2011-10-24 04:33 pm (UTC)Hee. It is a bit of a relief isn't it? My entire book club and most of my flist loved it, while I despised it. Atonement was one of the books that made me give up on book clubs. I got tired of forcing myself to finish/read books that I hated. Life, seriously, is too short and there are far too many books to read.
What counts most for me is the exploration of the actual material, rather than delving into the psychology of "Why did the author write this?" or "What does it say about us that we like to read this?"
While I've done both, much to my own..well chagrin, I'd have to say that it is far more dangerous or dicey to discuss why the author wrote it or why people love or hate it. Because you are attempting to psycho-analyze people you've never met or don't know or only know based on what they've written. It tends to lead to gross over-generalizations and well, can be insulting. We really have no way of knowing what was in a writer's head when he wrote something or why our best bud loves Atonement while we despise it, even if they try to tell us, because in most cases? They don't even know the answer.
Doesn't stop me from trying though.;-) Even if the exercise tends to be pointless and leads to problems. I mean - as much as I'd like to think that what draws people to the Buffy/Angel relationship is the same thing that draws them to the Twilight books, I know I'm wrong. There is no discernible pattern there. I know too many people who loved the Buffy/Angel relationship and hated the Twilight books.
But it would make life easier, I think, if we could draw these connections, albeit less interesting.
I wouldn't keep reading someone's LJ if they constantly posted vitriol about a character or show I liked, but occasional differing opinions? No problem
Hee. To rant on occassion is fine. But to constantly do it without a cut-tag or warnings or any way for people to avoid it? You are just asking for people to defriend you. Same goes for politics or anything else. Yeah, sure, I despise the tv show The New Girl, but my friends have the right to love it without having to read me whine about it. Plus far healthier just not to watch and pretend it doesn't exist. Where it gets less clear cut is in cases where you do love the show or book or series, but there's this one thing that is driving you crazy about it. So you can't stop watching, in the hopes they will either get rid of that one thing or...you think if you complain enough about it, maybe they'll happen upon your complaint and get rid of it. (Which actually happened with the show Glee, weirdly enough. The writers read fans' blogs and changed things.) Another instance which is less clear is when you like the show, but part of what you love about it - is making fun of it.
I love making fun of Vamp Diaries, True Blood,
and Ringer. It's part of the appeal. But I do try to warn people that I'm being snarky.
no subject
Date: 2011-10-25 10:55 pm (UTC)For example? If you were say a huge fan of JXY and were going on and on about how great he was and his next project? The last thing you would want is a response from me or someone else who hates JXY or is fed up or despises JXY. Now, it's one thing if I posted a rant about JXY in my lj, behind a cut-tag with warnings, but to do it in response to your post? Not a good idea. Best to avoid blood pressure inducing responses they never end well. ;-)
no subject
Date: 2011-10-25 10:57 pm (UTC)