Writes the NYT film critic, A.O. Scott, in "And Now Let’s Review … A.O. Scott conducts his own exit interview as he moves to a new post after more than two decades of reviewing films."
March 17, 2023
"[T]he behavior of these social media hordes represents an anti-democratic, anti-intellectual mind-set that is harmful to the cause of art and antithetical to the spirit of movies."
"Fan culture is rooted in conformity, obedience, group identity and mob behavior, and its rise mirrors and models the spread of intolerant, authoritarian, aggressive tendencies in our politics and our communal life."
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27 comments:
The critic really can't handle criticism, can he?
The WSJ’s movie reviewer reviewer rarely steered me wrong. I use the Elbert people now..
Shorter A.O. Scott: "Boo Hoo! They don't like the movies I like!"
For the most part I've considered his reviews to be quite reliable over the years.
Stanford Law student hordes employing hecklers' veto represent an anti-democratic(?), anti-intellectual(!) mind-set that is harmful .. and is rooted in conformity, obedience, group identity and mob behavior, and its rise mirrors and models the spread of intolerant, authoritarian, aggressive tendencies
Anti-democratic. Is that the new racist? Need a pejorative, but racist is just too pedestrian, threadbare? Ant-democratic fills bill. Educated, even erudite.
Hard to get around the autocratic professional critic, whining about ant-democratic. (who elected him?)
"Woke culture is rooted in conformity, obedience, group identity and mob behavior, and its rise mirrors and models the spread of intolerant, authoritarian, aggressive tendencies in our politics and our communal life."
Fixed it for him.
Sounds like he’s comparing movie fans to law school students. Hordes. Mobs. Authoritarianism. All of it being supplied in spades by the left. The “fans” are not the problem for the motion picture industry. The industry’s problem is making woke crap that drives their fans away. “Top Gun” found plenty of audience but so-called critics hated it and it was virtually ignored by the award mob.
“Elbert” sounds like a Scott Adams film critic.
"anti-democratic"? A.O., explain what that means in this context? Does it mean that large groups of people that oppose a film are not a majority? Does it mean that movies are where we go to vote? Does it mean that movies are spreading Democrat political messages, and opposing the movie is like opposing Democrats?
Or, as I see iowan2 note above, "anti-democrat" is just the new "racist" pejorative?
We got Netflix for a month and watched a movie last night, The Grey Man. It was really good: good action, very slick set pieces and filming, most of the acting was compelling. Afterwards, I said that I didn't understand how I hadn't heard anything about it. My daughter mentioned it had a 46 on Rotten Tomatoes. It was too formulaic for critics; there was no underlying message.
Yeah critics don't understand why regular people watch movies.
Teachers and critics
All dance The Poot
If only there was a studio dedicated to wholesome family entertainment that made movies people like! But no. Even Walt’s legacy has been destroyed by wokeness. I remember standing in a long line for STAR WARS a movie critics derided. It was so popular it launched an enduring franchise that only a modern woke studio could ruin by creating leftist agitprop instead of fun stories. I’m waiting for the avalanche of lefty hate speech about to flow from Scott’s colleagues after the $40M opening of JESUS REVOLUTION. We all know it’s coming.
Why the hostility in these comments toward A. O. Scott?
Why do you assume hostility?
Thank God for the internet and places like IMDB. People like AO scott have been rendered irrelevant by the ability of movie goers to actually look up reviewers from normal people, not in the pay of the movie industry or pushing a political agenda, and see if a film is good or bad.
I've read serveral of his reviews and was not impressed. Here's the thing, unless you're John Simon, you don't become a film critic unless you like Films put out by the "industry". Not just elite art films, but shit like "Crash" or "Shakespeare in Love" or "12 years a slave" or "Argo". Out of the 100 films he watched every year, probably 80 would bore anyone with an IQ over 105. But he writes about them, and mostly likes them.
And because he's an "Industry" flak AO scott defended the Star War films that upset the fans and some of the crappier Comic book movies. His attacks on "Toxic Fandom" just shows he's a dumb libtard. I'm amazed he didn't call them "Trump voters".
The democratic/dictatorial duality.
Anti-Intellectual. #MeToo
Diversity [dogma].
Take a knee, beg, VP.
Throw another baby on the barbie, it's literally over.
The "burden" of life is antithetical to viability, dignity, and agency.
I pretty much stopped caring about current film critics after "The Passion of the Christ". I kept reading reviews trying to figure out WAS IT A GOOD MOVIE and worth seeing. But the critics didn't want to talk about the actual film. Instead, they wrote endlessly about antisemitism, Mel Gibson, "Was it good for the Jews?", and Christian Theology.
And that's the way they are. MSM film critics are completely unreliable and will let their politics trump art every day of the week.
In fairness to A.O. Scott, he began at the tail end of one of the best eras of American movies. He very quickly he found himself in one of the worst. One of the few interesting critics left is Armond White over at the National Review. He hates (almost) everything.
"after the $40M opening of JESUS REVOLUTION"
I did not realize that 'opening' now meant 3 weekends and a total of 19 days of shows
its rise mirrors and models the spread of intolerant, authoritarian, aggressive tendencies in our politics and our communal life."
You mean like interrupting and shouting down an invited speaker because you disagree with him but don't know how to make, much less win, and argument?
You mean like an authority figure attacking an invited speaker and supporting the howling mob rather than enforcing their stated policies protecting the right to speak?
Here's the thing, unless you're John Simon, you don't become a film critic unless you like Films put out by the "industry".
True. That's one of the things that turned me against Roger Ebert. To hold down a job as a film critic you have to praise a lot of junk. Loving the movies means loving what the industry puts out and sustaining the reputation of the stars. It's not so much the less worthy Oscar winners that bother me. It's all the comic book movies, lewd comedies, and star vehicles that get a pass from critics.
It's as though film is a dying art (Like poetry? Like the novel?) that has to be sustained by every means available. Film and television have changed places: with the glut of video content, TV critics have gotten more selective as movie critics have become more indulgent.
"Democratic" has become a problematic term. The more it's used as the opposite of mob rule, the more it becomes a synonym for elitist or oligarchic or authoritarian rule.
It's going to take me a while to figure out just what the "spirit of the movies" is.
Y'know... Every time I hear someone cite "anti-intellectualism", what I note is that the complainer is almost always the sort of creature that would wholly justify a normal person looking at them and their works and deciding that "intellectualism" is bad. Very bad.
They're usually self-centered, smarmy assholes who're really not at all that bright. They just think they are, and they're the sort of cretin that says things like "deformed children ought to be aborted". Things that a normal, sane person with an average intellect looks at and then determines to be wrong. And, the more that that "smart person" says to defend their positions, the better they convince that normal person of their judgments about such "intellectuals".
Frankly, the more I see of some of these soi-disant "intellectuals", the more I begin to wonder if Pol Pot wasn't on to something...
"Yeah critics don't understand why regular people watch movies."
I'm sure many of them do, but why should they take that into consideration? (Actually, in your view, why do regular people watch movies? What do you mean by "regular?")
By definition, critics examine the subject under scrutiny and report on what they find. A critic of the arts provides praise or denigration strictly on the basis of his or her own tastes, knowledge, familiarity with the subject or genre or medium under examination, and so on. That "the punters" may like it has no bearing on whether the (movie, story, novel, poem, painting, etc.) is deemed good or bad, magnificent or wretched, according to the criteria of each critic's unique point of view. No "regular person" is obliged to agree with a critic's considered examination and judgement--equally qualified and erudite critics may disagree with each other, violently so--but the critic is likewise no more obliged to respect the opinions of the crowd, (and in fact should not do so).
When I think of "intellectuals" I don't think of people who write about Comic Book movies and Star wars. Sorry.
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