As a frequent hanger-outer in Cafe Society, I find fascinating the respective roles one assumes when he/she voices either admiration or dislike for a work. What follows is no great sociological revelation, I’m sure; I just think it’s interesting how much more vulnerable you make yourself by praising something… by putting your cards on the table and saying to the world, Look. Here are my tastes. In turn, this opens you to a subtle (sometimes not so subtle) judgement by others, much as the artist under consideration has done by presenting a book or painting or movie or CD for consideration.
On the other hand, scrunching up one’s face and saying, Oh, I thought that was terrible serves to fortify a person to an extent. It somehow gives the impression that he/she has perceived a fundamental flaw in the work that others simply aren’t shrewd enough to have picked up on. You may say, well, a harsh critic puts his/her “cards on the table,” too… but not nearly as bravely as an admirer does. By reserving praise, the implication is, I know what’s really good. And this isn’t it. In theory, one can then stroll along indefinitely, awarding little dollops of praise as the mood strikes, subtly causing admirers of this or that work to pause and question their own critical instincts. Negatively attuned critics, I would guess, examine their own feelings toward a work much less than those who would praise it, even if the admirers overwhelmingly outnumber the naysayers. In fact, this may even strengthen the views of a particularly egotistical panner, reflecting, in his/her mind, a more astute critical radar on their part than once dreamed of.
For the more paranoid among the Cafe Society readers who have graced this thread with their attention, let me say that no one discussion or Doper (or even professional critic) prompted this particular exhalation of hot air. I was just curious to know if others note the phenomenon, or even agree that it exists in the form I’ve tried to describe.
I think it sometimes exists in the form you’ve described. But if I may be contrary at the beginning, the opposite is sometimes true – especially if a particular work is popular. It’s “safe” to praise something that you already know is widely-liked, and it can be socially risky to openly express dislike for the same work.
Semi-Relevant Personal Anecdote: I once made the mistake of expressing (IIRC fairly mild) criticism of Independence Day at the height of its success. A sympathetic observer later described the reaction this provoked as “like if you’d called them a bunch of motherfuckers or something”. I was actually told that the only reason I could possibly have for not thinking the movie was great was a lack of proper patriotic sentiment, and that I should just leave the country! (Coincidentally, I no longer live in the US.)
Now, Independence Day’s popularity didn’t last and it’s long since become cool to slam it. And I won’t pretend that the experience hasn’t strengthened my ego as a panner of popular stuff that I think is rubbish. But it certainly wasn’t fun, safe, or pleasant at the time!
I’m also inclined to speculate that for some people it feels hip (if not necessarily safe) to express a view contrary to that of the masses…be that view positive or negative. If the “slammer” of the popular can feel that s/he is a superior critic for detecting the flaws in the work, a “praiser” of the unpopular can feel that s/he is a superior critic for being able to spot diamonds in the rough.
However, I do agree that at least in some circumstances it’s easier to talk about what you don’t like than what you do like. If you reveal what you do like, there’s the danger that someone else might think that it’s trash and that you’re a loser for liking it. It’s much less risky to throw such barbs at others, or to have fun laughing at something that no one present thinks is any good!
Exactly. The other types of bogus stance-taking you cite are just as common though, if not more so, than the ones I opened with.
You were attacked for critical comments re: Independence Day? Wow. That movie made Titanic look like a Bergman film. (See? Moody thinks he’s so clever with his easy jibes at Dean Devlin/James Cameron!)
Yet vastly more irritating to me is when a poster criticizes not just the movie (or other work of art), but the people themselves who have an opposing view. Lamia’s anecdote is an example of this.
In my opinion, people who begin to criticize the poster rather than the work of art itself are simply displaying a form of insecurity. They can’t justify their own opinions in a rational dialogue, so they resort to name-calling.
As a brief sociological aside, while it’s safer (and certainly more popular) to slam something. It’s those people who express positive feelings towards something who are more likely to be leaders of opinion and not followers.
I think that professional critics (and this is coming from someone who suppliments his income by writing music and movie reviews for an alternative weekly) tend to do this because, in my experience, one makes their critical reputation by spotting weakness. Case in point: Everybody likes Independance Day, but you call it rubbish. A few years later, everyone has come around to your opinion, so you get to say “See? I told you it was rubbish a long time ago! You should listen to me, because my acumen is keener than yours!”
In my view, the problem is not that you think something sucks–if you think it sucks, that’s fine. Say so. But if you’re just saying you think it sucks because you think it will increase your street cred, then you are being dishonest. A think a prime example of this kind of crap is Salon.com’s critic Stephanie Zacharack (I misspell her name a different way every time) and her vendetta against Charlie Kaufman. Kaufman’s the best screenwriter working today and all the critics are lining up to suck his dick. Zacharack makes a point of poking holes in his work–even to the point of writing a five-page screed against Adaptation after Charles Taylor had reviewed it positively for the site a week before. Her review of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was similarly hateful and dishonest. She complained that it was “too clever” and called it a “puzzle movie”. Her review was like four pages of pointing out what she liked about it and then saying “but I didn’t really like it.” That’s just dishonest and it’s bad journalism. And furthermore, it’s a bad editorial decision on the part of Salon because they continue to let her review Kaufman movies even though she has stated unequivically that she doesn’t like him. My editor would never let me review a Rush album, for example, because I have stated to him over and over that I hate Rush. I was denied the opportunity to review Lucero because he thought I couldn’t be fair to the album because I don’t really like country music and Lucero has kind of a country bent. These are signs he’s a good editor, in my opnion.
No, that’s pretty interesting, actually (about your editor).
But oh man, the second you mention Salon my teeth start gnashing at the thought of Dame Laura Miller. Getting off track a bit in my own thread, but to me she is the penultimate example of a critic who, smart, literate, and prodigiously well-read as she is, manages to convey a sense that her own grasp of a given topic are much more important than anything under discussion, including the book or writer she’s reviewing. She likes to sum people and works up in a brief and ultimately dismissive capsule summary and in a tone that unfailingly says, yeah, all you really need to know about them is (this). Nothing too impressive, really. Geez but she’s annoying. Tone is everything -as born witness to on this board every day- especially if you want people to weigh your evaluations seriously.
I would agree with Lamia. While the behavior described in the OP does occur, I see the opposite just as frequently, if not more so. There seems to be a prevailing sentiment among many that one is not allowed to dislike anything. Many posters seem to invest their entire self into their proclamation that they like something, and become personally offended if another poster dares to say they don’t like it. This often happens even if the second person merely criticized the work, and not the person.
For example:
A: I love The Flinstones - what a great cartoon.
B: I think The Flinstones is drivel - possibly the worst cartoon ever.
A: You’re such a jerk - why do you people have to tear down everything I like?
I see this all the time. Person B merely expressed his opinion of the work in question, yet Person A took it as a personal affront.
I’ve seen huge pile-ons when one person expresses a negative opinion of something that has been predominantly praised in the thread. This phenomenon of not welcoming dissenting opinions has gone so far, that I often see threads that attempt to block dissenting opinion, i.e. “The Flinstones Appreciation Thread”, or “The I Like Flinstones Thread”. Seriously, what kind of garbage is that? I think this forum is at a higher level than a lot of what’s out there, and this kind of Junior-High fan club mentality really cheapens it.
I hear you. But like I said, tone is everything. If you’re going to call something someone really loves “drivel,” you can’t expect them not to get their guard up.
How about:
A: I love The Flinstones - what a great cartoon.
B: Really? Never really did anything for me.
A: Huh. Ah well, different strokes.
Actually, yes I would expect them not to “get their guard up”. Some things are drivel; why should people be expected to sugar-coat their opinions? Now, if someone personally insults another person, e.g. “You like the Flinstones? What an idiot”; that’s wrong. But if you haven’t been personally insulted, you just need to grow a thicker skin. I’m sorry, but if you say you like something, and I say I don’t like it, I have not insulted you - that is, unless you created it. I’m really against the idea of having some namby-pamby, touchy-feely kind of forum where everyone is afraid to tell it like it is.
I have one proviso: Yes, it’s possible to express a negative opinion in a condescending way that sort of implies a low opinion of another person, and I’m against doing that. But I’ve seen so many threads where that wasn’t the case - where a person simply posted a negative opinion without attacking anyone in particular, and got piled-on.
Oh, y’know what? I think you read my example differently than I intended. I didn’t mean that it was an exchange, where Person B quoted Person A and responded to him. I meant for them to indicate seperate posts in a thread. So Person A says “I like The Flinstones”, and Person B, in a seperate post, says “I hate the Flinstones”. When you put in the response, “Really?”, it sort of changes the dynamic that I intended, because then Person B would be singling out Person A.
I think another reason why some critics might enjoy “slamming” a movie more than praising one is for the same reason that people here might prefer to give something annoying a good Pitting rather than start a thread about how something pleasant had happened to them that day. A good slam is usually funnier and more interesting, for both writer and reader.
Now, a good critic isn’t going to slam a decent film just because it’s fun to do so, but I think many critics do take some enjoyment in showing off their slamming skills in reviews of bad movies.
Roger Ebert on Freddy Got Fingered: “This movie doesn’t scrape the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn’t the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn’t below the bottom of the barrel. This movie doesn’t deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence with barrels.”
I must admit, I remember that paragraph better than I do anything else Ebert has ever written! I’ve even quoted it in conversation. Can’t say the same for the kinds of things one might write in a favorable review, like “A strong supporting cast rounds out the film” or “The director has proven himself to be one of Hollywood’s most insightful rising talents.”
There’s a sociological name for this behavior - it’s called “mismatching”. I read about this in a sales book called “Question Based Selling”.
A little from the book:
"Have you ever had one of those conversations where the person you are talking with seems to clarify or contradict everything you say? You make a point, and they immediately take the opposite position. Or, you interject a comment, and they feel a need to share something better or more impressive. Needless to say, these are very frustrating behaviors that usually put a damper on any further discussion.
In everyday conversation, this occurs more often than you’d think. For example, make an innocent comment like, “I hear it’s supposed to be nice this weekend,” and you might be surprised how often people will take the opposite position. In some cases, they will say, “Really? I thought it was supposed to rain,” or be “too hot”, or “too *windy” *, or *“too humid” *. Perhaps they’ll contend that the weekend is “too far away”, or *“too close” *, or maybe they’ll just lament about the upcoming weekend because they have to “clean the garage”. In each of these responses, the person is MISMATCHING your original supposition that the weekend is supposed to be “nice”.
Mismatching is a form of disagreement. It’s an instinctive and emotional behavior that causes people to respond or push back in a contrarian manner, usually by taking the opposite viewpoint".
In summary, mismatching is a behavioral response, an instinctive defense mechanism that many people have developed because they feel that this is the best way for their input to be considered valuable. It also helps some people feel more adequate. But it doesn’t always mean that they actually disagree with the content of the discussion.
[scrunching up face] What a stupid theory! This is the worst thread ever! [/scrunching up face]
All kidding aside, I was glad to find this thread. One of the things I am constantly amazed at is the way comic book fanboys tend to be so hyper-critical, to the point of spitting venom of a past-time that they so clearly like.
I think that your assessment is inherently true. But also consider these additional dynamics:
• The amateur reviewer in the confines of their peer group is more prone to review “for safety” than a professional critic who draws a paycheck based on the quality of their review.
• Reviewers tend to be enthusiasts (and sometimes artisans) themselves. When a movie or book or record fails to deliver in a way the reviewer wants it to (internal voice: "I would have done it differently), subjective taste colors their review.
• Reviewers tend to have a higher artisanship standards than the typical person. Book publishers (or movie studios or record labels) tend to favor work that has the broadest appeal rather than the work that has the highest aspirations. So most of the work being reviewed was not created for the reviewer, but for the masses. So the reviewer ends up reviewing a lot of work that do not cater to their sensibilities, and therefore end up “slamming” more often than not.
• Reviewer elitism aside, For every good record (or book or movie or whatever) there are countless bad ones. Creating good work takes a lot more effort than creating bad work. There are likely more things that deserve slamming than praise.
Hey you!- Excellent points. Despite my disclaimer about any specific threads or Dopers inspiring this thread, I was actually thinking more along the lines of amateur reviewers, i.e., you and me and the other knuckleheads here at Opinion Central. Though I hardly made that clear.
The same principles you pointed out likely apply, though.
iamme99- I’ve always found that phenomenon interesting, though I’ve just thought of it as “contrariness”. . . my best friend actually engages in this reflexive devil’s advocacy quite a bit.
blowero- No, I meant it as an exchange between Dopers. More the overall sentiment, though, than the actual words I used.
O.K., well that’s not what I was talking about. Yes, if someone says something along the lines of “Oh, yeah? Well I think the Flinstones sucks.”, then it’s confrontational, and that’s not cool. But if we’re merely expressing our opinions, I don’t see why we should have to sugar-coat it just because others might be overly-sensitive. And maybe that’s the problem; people often assume that someone was confronting them, when in fact they were just expressing their own opinion.
If you are going to make a blanket statement like this, you typically need to provide some meat and cites to back up your contention. For instance, what is your suspicion based on?
But it certainly wasn’t fun, safe, or pleasant at the time!