How do we Criticize?
Oscars, Appetites, and Menswear Guys
My advisor and I discuss a lot in our weekly 8:30 AM meetings. Vampires, Norman Jewison’s Rollerball (1975), and the minutia of 2010s Cartoon Network originals have all been discussed, but last week we touched upon the world of academic emptiness (a recurring subject). He told a story about analysis where here, only the ending is really important. A professor and theorist claimed that they had eliminated spontaneity from their analysis.
We agreed this was impossible, and an odd quality to even strive for in the first place. It assumes that emotion can be conquered by the intellect, and seems to imply both that it should, and that it has no credence in the analysis of art. This is a world of criticism in which meaning is key, and the experiential is meaningless. In this ideology, the difference between the anti-fascism of Salò and Casablanca may boil down to formalist rhetoric as opposed to the tactile-emotional gulf between the two. My advisor quotes the Wordsworth stanza, “We murder to dissect“. Dissection is unpleasant for every party involved.
In a world of rapid-fire debate, endless noise, and commodified and miniaturized art, how does criticism function? On a more utopian note, how can it function?
The members of the academy of motion picture arts and sciences are mostly not critics. If they were it would be called a critic’s choice award, which most can agree is far less delicious, extravagant, and fashionable. Following the Oscars this year was not that different from any other year - the movies I loved didn’t win (minus Pinnochio!), Hollywood patted itself on the back, and the richest of the rich revealed that they desperately needed new stylists. What was different about this year was that I discovered the Entertainment Weekly Blind Oscar Voter poll, unalienable proof that academy voters are not critics.
I am neither a stickler for grammar nor one who likes to think of themselves as a hater, but this is not what the term “original screenplay“ means. To award a script for its “originality“ is a remarkably one-dimensional way of looking at writing. It’s like awarding best editing to the film with the most cuts (which I guess the academy also did). Even so, this is commentary that comes from a bubble - EEAAO uses a well-trodden multiverse narrative (See 2015 era Rick and Morty) bolstered with the Daniels’ inventive filmmaking, brilliant casting, and fine, smart editing. The film is a feat, but I would argue it is not necessarily helped by the way it is written.
Sometimes, with such complicated words for members of the film industry like “original“, “editing“, and “animated“, voters play associative games in determining merit based on completely separate aspects of the film. Sometimes, it is scarier when they know what the category means.
I can recognize the barriers of my own (hopefully) occasional pretentiousness, but this statement is deeply ironic and boundlessly stupid. Despite the academy’s pride in deciding to recognize voices that were marginalized by their ranks, these voices were very much present in their niches creating well-regarded, interesting, and powerful work. A warning to sensitive academy eyes, these kinds of films may do wacky and disturbing things like show the credits in the beginning, provide tiny words at the bottom of the screen when characters speak different languages, and may not spoon-feed you meaning. A film like EEAAO is complex in its machinery, yet positively commercial in the inescapable articulation of its philosophy. There are a myriad of reasons why EEAAO won, but when compared to a contender like Tar it was easy. The academy was not yet ready, or perhaps able to examine itself as honestly as Tar did.
Yeoh and Blanchett are both sensational in their respective roles and Yeoh’s win is deserved, overdue, and powerful. That being said, what was this “marketer“ voting for? A film or an actor’s performance? Were they criticizing Tar, or Blanchett in Tar?
These voters seem spontaneous in their one-sided assessments of film, yet they certainly are not. Their decisions involved sorting through a wide variety of the films of the season looking for quality, a very similar responsibility to that of the critic. These voters seem to have the same cynicism as the theorist in my advisor’s story - they have made themselves immune to that in their field which can pierce. Perhaps this is due to the focus these industry insiders have on Hollywood institutionalism rather than film quality - this always was the purpose of the Oscars. Therefore, the recurring theme of these voters’ criticism is the rejection of anything outside their bubble. Blanchett has been there too long, Top Gun is a “beer commercial” or a “red state movie“, and Spielberg is too earnest. They hate Top Gun because it works, they don’t like Fabelmans because it’s the weirdest film he’s made in years, and they don’t like Blanchett because she’s performing their own unstable narcissism.
Disappointment goes hand in hand with the Oscars. Its institution has never been about cinematic quality or true criticism, yet its masquerade is powerful. These interviews, these articulations of institutional prejudice and limitation are points in which we can wonder at the reasons why people critique. Here, it is to uphold an institution which means the academy or Hollywood or American film. Is that the same thing a critic like A. O. Scott or Roger Ebert did? Is that why they did it?
This is Jonathan Gold. He used to be a critic of classical music before becoming one of the most legendary food writers Los Angeles and perhaps America has known. He wrote lovingly of LA institutions like Tommy’s while putting previously sidelined spots like Jitlada and Mariscos Haliscos on the food lover’s map. Gold won the only Pulitzer prize ever awarded to a food critic, and did so by pivoting away from the precious and expensive dining Los Angeles was stereotyped for. He died in 2018 from pancreatic cancer, and that summer I was far from home and heartbroken.
The last review Jonathan Gold ever wrote was titled At Majordomo, Jonathan Gold is unsure whether to praise chef David Chang — or bury him. Gold was friends with the New York food-famous Majordomo owner David Chang. The conceit of the interview was that Gold was torn. He likes Chang, and there are dishes on the menu that he loves. However, there are plenty that he doesn’t, and far more of a quarrel with the restaurant’s high price tag and flashy environment. At the time Majordomo was one of the nails in the coffin of the downtown arts district’s gentrification, preceding the Soho House and a myriad of other hot food destinations hidden in the converted warehouses. Moreover, it brought a fussy, hipster energy to a city with boundless competition and high standards. Gold fought for, and in this review defended those standards.
On one hand, Gold suggests a mode of criticism that recognizes but eschews personal politics. Unlike the academy voters who barely veil their personal contempt, occasional racism, and institutional protectionism, Gold’s focus is to service a less formalized state of food. Interpersonal politics and monied food institutions like Chang’s food brand or precious and overpriced LA fusion or arts district gentrification are barriers to that service, and so Gold is specific about stepping outside of their bounds.
What Gold understands and the academy voters take for granted is that the critic is powerful, even when the age of the internet allows everyone critical platforms. Intention, consideration, and forethought define this review, and Gold as a legendary critic - he offers this kind of criticism to all realms of food. To think is not the same as eliminating spontaneity from analysis, to truly think is to synthesize, contextualize, and empower affective experience.
Gold criticizes because he loves. He is an obsessive, a hunter, and a thinker, and his priority remains searching for new celebrations of food as a medium. He is knowledgeable but not pretentious, a protector of institutions open to seeing them shift. He is a brilliant critic.
Very few mediums have a Jonathan Gold or have a critic of Jonathan Gold’s standard working at any given moment. Sometimes this figure emerges, sometimes an imitator appears, and other times there is simply someone around to point to the loss. I follow @Derekguy on Twitter and I followed him before people complained about him overpopulating their feeds or the Washington Post writing about him in the same breath as Elon Musk’s hate speech. At his worst he’s addicted to posting and loose with his snark, at best he’s a truly great and knowledgeable critic. While known for zeroing in on aspects of clothing discourse like the dilution of luxury and subculture, minute tailoring rules, and arcane prep codes, earlier this month he’s taken an interest in the varied natures of fashion criticism.
He starts with a thread on the format you’re reading now: substack.
Ah, the age of blogging. A fashion landscape that rewarded obsession and encouraged sharing that obsession. In this world, anyone could be a critic but experts seemed to rise above the everpresent discourse. This aspect of the internet was novel but its capabilities in housing incredible amounts of knowledge had not been fully seized. While the image, the fit pic, the flex, and the produced have always been a part of the world of blogs, social media heightened these aspects of internet critique and life.
Derek is critiquing a very specific aspect of the way social media has warped the path of new creatives into constantly advertising themselves as a brand, as desirable, and as inseparable from their personas, but there’s a more specific argument here as well. Because of the prevalence of the image and the scroll on platforms like Instagram, some of the most vocally knowledgeable, popular fashion voices are forced to dilute or simplify their content. An account like @hiddennyc completely shifted street wear and culture mood boards on Instagram for years, all thanks to a strong vision and dedicated research and knowledge. To tap into the details and discourse around that knowledge, you must pay a fee.
, alongside many fashion commentators, scan searchers, and sharp minds have realized that the labor that accompanies their obsession does not have to go unnoticed. The internet, once a sphere for community, has become another locale for a hustle. Derek is not devaluing labor or knowledge collection, he’s pointing to the importance of keeping information, and passion accessible.Derek points out that the only alternative to this frustrating new landscape of fashion journalism is more ethically complex commercial fashion writing. This sphere represents what writer Francesca Granata deems akin to “fashion reportage“, wherein invitations to shows and parties and the occasional gift can complicate the desire to truly criticize. On the other end of the spectrum Granata labels as “fashion theory“, which is subservient to the institution of academia. Somehow, I’m guessing that Barthes was invited to fewer fashion shows than Anna Wintour. The result of this gulf is the question that Granata uses to open her excellent Fashion Criticism An Anthology:
Film Criticism has its Pauline Kaels and Andrew Sarrises, and music criticism its Robert Christgaus and Greil Marcuses - yet fashion remains, in the words of one prominent fashion critic, “culturally beneath regard“. How has such a rich and diverse area of criticism remained so understudied and undervalued?
This gulf is the result of subservience to institution. Everything is industrial, as Vogue reports clean and businesslike descriptions and innocent observations while others find ways of connecting couture to arcane academic worlds. The passion that Derek locates in the now invisible blogger/substacker is hidden beneath this gulf, subsumed by social media impulses and philosophies of self.
How does one counter the cronyism and close-minded institutionalism that limits the way we can see and discuss art? In a world of noise, how can we set a standard for the criticism we consume and engage with? If love, passion, and obsession are keys to ethical and powerful criticism, Derek and Granata wonder now, what is the price of love?
