Critics versus the Audience
I spent a good portion of my Thanksgiving break watching the first season of Mad Men. For those who haven’t heard of it, it’s a show on AMC about Madison Avenue advertising executives in the early sixties. John Hamm plays Don Draper, the dashing creative director of the advertising firm Sterling Cooper. The first episode sets up the various departments of a advertising agency; the copywriters, art department, customer relations, secretarial staff, and alcohol.
The show has won every award possible and has been a critical darling since it came out, but I had to slog through it. For a show whose main characters are sex and booze it is remarkably dull. There are some central mysteries and characters that drive the show forward, but I never found myself getting behind anyone. Everyone seemed both having the time of their lives and incredibly unhappy and it did nothing for me.
In the debate between critics and the audience, I’m finding myself sliding from one side to the other. During the time I’ve been a filmmaker, I’ve often heard people tell me that they never listen to critics. Usually their reason is that the critic had an opinion about a work that they disagreed with, and it destroyed their faith in the critical process. Take this example from Roger Ebert’s website
Q. I saw your review for the new movie “The Twilight Saga: New Moon.” You have a lot of nerve!! I remember when you and Siskel reviewed the movie “The Accidental Tourist” and gave it four stars, and with that recommendation I went and saw it, and you know what? It was the BIGGEST PIECE OF **** known to man! I decided from that day that I would not listen to you or Gene Siskel and save my money. So, for the next year or so, I did not go to the movies and today, I use my formula: wait two months after a movie comes out and spend the $1 at RedBox to rent it if I dare. Thanks, Roger, thanks for making people not want to go to the movies.
Joe Flambe
A. Hey, in the case of “New Moon,” that was the least that I could do.
Joe’s argument, that because Ebert loved “The Accidental Tourist” and he hated it all of Ebert’s reviews must be completely invalid, would be hard to argue even if he hadn’t picked such a laughable counterpoint (Joe, are you really a 16 year old girl?). I’ve usually argued on the side of the critics. What critics do is give their opinion on the film’s merits. They’re not meant to be unbiased – that’s impossible – but they try to be fair and exclude things like that they were having a bad day.
Something has changed for me though – In the past few years I’ve turned to TV and movies less as a cultural exercise and more as an escape from my day to day routine. When I was younger I had patience for work that wanted to explore new areas. I used to think a film that was 20% interesting and 80% total mess was still worth watching because I might see something new. My patience has shrunk in parallel with my spare time. I don’t have time for quirky angsty mumble-core movies about love from people who seem to have never felt it, or pretentious art house fodder. As of late, I find that I’m not using my spare time to catch up of all the films I haven’t seen, which is a hole I can never fill. Instead I’m catching up on sit-coms and animated shows where you can down episodes like popcorn.
A critics’ job is to watch everything that comes out. If there was a cake critic, who had to spend all day eating every kind of cake there was. Naturally, they’re going to get pretty tired of your chocolate cakes and angel food cakes really quickly, but will champion cakes that are unique and different and didn’t give them indigestion. At this point, I’m only eating cake once a month, so my perspective is very different. I want something moist, sweet, and goes well with ice cream.
If I seem to be overly concerned about a very mundane topic, it’s because I’ve been reading movie reviews for as long as I can remember. I have The Onion AV Club, Roger Ebert, and a number of other movie sites on my RSS reader. As I’m getting older I have to acknowledge that I’m just one of the masses, and not one of the elitists.
November 30th, 2009 at 2:34 pm
The fact that you wrote this post and linked to such obscure titles still means your an elitst, you have just dropped out of the running for Current Elitist. I’m the same with music, so you can take my word on that.
I had exactly the same feeling about Mad Men. Sure, Mrs. Mal is all the hawtness and whatnot in that show, but really, so is Liz Lemon in her show (call me).
December 16th, 2009 at 9:22 am
I had an instructor in power school who considered comedies more true-to-life than dramas. After having experienced several different careers and living life, I think I agree with him. It’s not the situations in the shows, but the ways the characters deal with each other. The ones in comedies are the ones I feel act like real people would. I have rarely felt like the characters in dramas act in a manner that lines up with real people that I have met.