# What were the biggest critical reappraisals? (All media) **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [November 12, 2019, 12:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-biggest-critical-reappraisals-all-media/843324 "2019-11-12T12:16:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![John\_DiFool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_difool/32/19543_2.png) [@John\_DiFool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_DiFool)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2019, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-biggest-critical-reappraisals-all-media/843324/21 "2019-11-12T14:26:41Z")
1. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2019, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-biggest-critical-reappraisals-all-media/843324/22 "2019-11-12T14:28:00Z")
Very definitely Mark Twain’s _The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn_ — and not for the reason it’s controversial today. It was seen as irredeemably crude and unworthy of a good author. Louisa May Alcott (who lived in Concord, MA) condemned the book : > [@](#): > > Writer Louisa May Alcott criticized the book’s publication as well, saying that if Twain “[could not] think of something better to tell our pure-minded lads and lasses he had best stop writing for them”. Not coincidentally, the book was banned from the Concord public library > [@](#): > > The Concord (Mass.) Public Library committee has decided to exclude Mark Twain’s latest book from the library. One member of the committee says that, while he does not wish to call it immoral, he thinks it contains but little humor, and that of a very coarse type. He regards it as the veriest trash. The library and the other members of the committee entertain similar views, characterizing it as rough, coarse, and inelegant, dealing with a series of experiences not elevating, the whole book being more suited to the slums than to intelligent, respectable people. Says the Wikipedia article on it: > [@](#): > > Twain later remarked to his editor, “Apparently, the Concord library has condemned Huck as ‘trash and only suitable for the slums.’ This will sell us another twenty-five thousand copies for sure!” (I’ve been there to check – they now have several editions of _Huckleberry Finn_. And of Louisa May Alcott’s books). > [@](#): > > In 1905, New York’s Brooklyn Public Library also banned the book due to “bad word choice” and Huck’s having “not only itched but scratched” within the novel, which was considered obscene. When asked by a Brooklyn librarian about the situation, Twain sardonically replied: > I am greatly troubled by what you say. I wrote ‘Tom Sawyer’ & ‘Huck Finn’ for adults exclusively, & it always distressed me when I find that boys and girls have been allowed access to them. The mind that becomes soiled in youth can never again be washed clean. I know this by my own experience, & to this day I cherish an unappeased bitterness against the unfaithful guardians of my young life, who not only permitted but compelled me to read an unexpurgated Bible through before I was 15 years old. None can do that and ever draw a clean sweet breath again on this side of the grave.[29] Nowadays the book is condemned for its depiction of slavery and use of the word “nigger”, which is pretty ironic considering that it’s the story of a boy from the antebellum South who learns for himself the evil of slavery and its effects. > **[Adventures of Huckleberry Finn](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventures_of_Huckleberry_Finn)** > > Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a novel by American author Mark Twain, which was first published in the United Kingdom in December 1884 and in the United States in February 1885. > Commonly named among the Great American Novels, the work is among the first in major American literature to be written throughout in vernacular English, characterized by local color regionalism. It is told in the first person by Huckleberry "Huck" Finn, the narrator of two other Twain novels (Tom Sawyer Abroad and T... ---
**Author:** ![Treppenwitz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/treppenwitz/32/3445_2.png) [@Treppenwitz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Treppenwitz)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2019, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-biggest-critical-reappraisals-all-media/843324/23 "2019-11-12T14:39:01Z")
It appears that **The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman** , by Laurence Sterne had [a mixed reception at the time](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Life_and_Opinions_of_Tristram_Shandy,_Gentleman#Reception_and_influence), before going on to be one of the more revered of English novels. (I was aware of Samuel Johnson’s unfortunate comment: “_Nothing odd will do long. Tristram Shandy did not last_”). j ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2019, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-biggest-critical-reappraisals-all-media/843324/24 "2019-11-12T16:02:36Z")
There has been a revival of interest in **The Room** by Tommy Wiseau, especially with the release of **The Disaster Artist** a few years ago. It’s still an awful film, but people revel in the awfulness. **Rocky Horror Picture Show** was a bomb when released. It’s now a camp classic, even beyond the traditional midnight showings. ---
**Author:** ![madsircool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madsircool/32/3432_2.png) [@madsircool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madsircool)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2019, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-biggest-critical-reappraisals-all-media/843324/25 "2019-11-12T16:19:00Z")
> [@Smid](#): > > The Blues Brothers wasn’t well liked by critics, and flopped too. Found its place on video rental release. The Blues Brothers was anything but a flop. > **[The Blues Brothers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blues_Brothers)** > > The Blues Brothers are a fictitious American blues and soul revue band founded in 1978 by comedians Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi, who met and began collaborating as original cast members of Saturday Night Live. > A common misconception is that the act also originated on SNL. The Blues Brothers, however, was an independent project of Belushi and Aykroyd, first appearing as the opening act for comedian Steve Martin. Martin later appeared on Saturday Night Live as host, and The Blues Brothers app... > [@](#): > > The film grossed $57 million domestically in its theatrical release, making it the 10th highest-grossing movie of 1980, and grossed an additional $58 million in foreign release ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2019, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-biggest-critical-reappraisals-all-media/843324/26 "2019-11-12T16:26:45Z")
> [@Horatio\_Hellpop](#): > > Also, all those John Hughes films are kind of suspect now. I’d guess that a lot of popular 1980s era comedies would be currently reviewed with a bunch of “that’s so wrong and terrible” comments from modern younger reviewers. I don’t know if a separation should be made between reappraisals from critics who saw it at the time and now say “I thought it was good but it’s actually pretty crap” and times when you just have new critics viewing through a modern lens and objecting to content that was, at the time, acceptable in a movie. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Colossus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.colossus/32/9423_2.png) [@Dr.Colossus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Colossus)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2019, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-biggest-critical-reappraisals-all-media/843324/27 "2019-11-12T16:47:39Z")
[Radiohead’s Kid A was not well received.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kid_A) I have a possibly false memory of a rather harsh Rolling Stone review with barbs like “everything is in the wrong place,” “sounds like a marching band crashing into a brick wall,” and " airless and entombed in chrome"… But I recall a revision where they bumped up the star rating to four or five relatively quickly. I might be recalling it wrong tho. At any rate, the initial reviews from other outlets were blunt and scathing. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2019, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-biggest-critical-reappraisals-all-media/843324/28 "2019-11-12T16:48:04Z")
> [@madsircool](#): > > The Blues Brothers was anything but a flop. > > [The Blues Brothers - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blues_Brothers) OK, but this thread is more about critical opinion than box office. ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2019, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-biggest-critical-reappraisals-all-media/843324/29 "2019-11-12T16:59:16Z")
> [@Gyrate](#): > > Johann Sebastian Bach was primarily known as a talented organist during his life but was heavily overshadowed as a composer by his talented sons. Bach’s music for the last half of his life was seen as stodgy, old-fashioned and dull and he struggled to get it played anywhere (or anywhere he wasn’t personally in charge of the music). He was “rediscovered” in the 19th century and the rest is history. Just for fun, here’s the other side of the coin - the guy who was THE hot ticket in the 1730s and onward in high society, when critics were busily slating Bach’s music: [Johann Adolph Hasse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Adolph_Hasse). Seriously, for a while he was making (in contemporary terms) Michael Jacksonesque levels of money and hobnobbed with emperors. And then he got old and died and everyone moved on and forgot about him. (I’d recommend his opera _Cleofide_ if you’re into 18thC opera - I prefer the Capriccio recording with Emma Kirkby and Randall K Wong.) ---
**Author:** ![Shoeless](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/shoeless/32/7099_2.png) [@Shoeless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shoeless)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2019, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-biggest-critical-reappraisals-all-media/843324/30 "2019-11-12T17:07:03Z")
> [@Smid](#): > > The Blues Brothers wasn’t well liked by critics, and flopped too. Found its place on video rental release. I remember a joke in National Lampoon back around the time the movie came out. Q: How many Blues Brothers does it take to make a funny movie? A: Apparently more than two. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2019, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-biggest-critical-reappraisals-all-media/843324/31 "2019-11-12T17:10:59Z")
> [@Gyrate](#): > > Just for fun, here’s the other side of the coin - the guy who was THE hot ticket in the 1730s and onward in high society, when critics were busily slating Bach’s music: [Johann Adolph Hasse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Adolph_Hasse). Seriously, for a while he was making (in contemporary terms) Michael Jacksonesque levels of money and hobnobbed with emperors. And then he got old and died and everyone moved on and forgot about him. > > (I’d recommend his opera _Cleofide_ if you’re into 18thC opera - I prefer the Capriccio recording with Emma Kirkby and Randall K Wong.) It’s interesting to look at old NYT bestseller lists of books to see who had staying power, and who didn’t - 50 years ago the list looked like this [http://www.hawes.com/1969/1969-11-09.pdf:](http://www.hawes.com/1969/1969-11-09.pdf:) Philip Roth is still highly regarded, and Mario Puzo, Chaim Potok, and Jacqueline Susann are well known - but who is Gladys Rockmore Davis? ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2019, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-biggest-critical-reappraisals-all-media/843324/32 "2019-11-12T17:16:43Z")
_It’s a Wonderful Life_ wasn’t the critical bomb as the legends make it out to be, but it WAS considered kind of meh by most critics, and it’s a fact that it lost money on the initial release. As holiday movies go, _Miracle on 34th Street_ (which was actually released in May) received a better response from critics, and won three Academy Awards (four nominations) while IAWL was 0 for 5. And consider that Barbara Stanwyck’s _Christmas in Connecticut_, released in 1945, outgrossed both of them on its first release. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2019, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-biggest-critical-reappraisals-all-media/843324/33 "2019-11-12T17:22:02Z")
“The Searchers” is now a major critical darling; it is often cited as the greatest Western of all time, and one of the best movies ever. Absolutely no one thought this when it came out. It was not regarded as an especially good movie by anyone. It was only after a few years when a few French auteurs, primarily Jean Luc Godard, claimed it was great a deep, and American critics who had dismissed it just a few years before rushed to agree and started appending interpretations and nuance to it that anyone suggested it was great. ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2019, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-biggest-critical-reappraisals-all-media/843324/34 "2019-11-12T17:26:19Z")
Vincent Van Gogh was a total failure in his lifetime. I bet you he would have given yu one of his paintings for free. Today it would be worth millions ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2019, 5:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-biggest-critical-reappraisals-all-media/843324/35 "2019-11-12T17:27:25Z")
“The Searchers” is now a major critical darling; it is often cited as the greatest Western of all time, and one of the best movies ever. Absolutely no one thought this when it came out. It was not regarded as an especially good movie by anyone. It was only after a few years when a few French auteurs, primarily Jean Luc Godard, claimed it was great and deep, and American critics who had dismissed it just a few years before rushed to agree and started appending interpretations and nuance to it, that anyone suggested it was great. ---
**Author:** ![Noel\_Prosequi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b19c9b/32.png) [@Noel\_Prosequi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Noel_Prosequi)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2019, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-biggest-critical-reappraisals-all-media/843324/36 "2019-11-12T18:04:51Z")
How about _Brown Bunny_? It famously had a premature release at Cannes, and Roger Ebert was at his scathing best. Later it was recut to better reflect the director’s wishes, and suddenly all the apparently interminable motorcycle racing, for example, made sense to the point where Ebert recanted his original criticism. The use of narrative devices for the time frame that slowly emerges was cleverly done. So was the repetition of the critical story _before_the audience knew what the critical story was. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2019, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-biggest-critical-reappraisals-all-media/843324/37 "2019-11-12T23:47:26Z")
_The Great Gatsby_ was both a critical and commercial failure when it first came out. Fitzgerald was a young god because of his first novels but this failure almost destroyed his career, and possibly him. Andy Warhol was reviled throughout his career, but his work as a whole now looks good in retrospect. I just visited the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh and it was an impressive collection. Same for Yoko Ono. Has anyone garnered more hate than her? But feminist critics have re-examined her work and found it original and meaningful. Again, I happened to see a retrospective of her work at the San Francisco MOMA and it converted me. Science fiction as a genre was considered for decades to be fit only for sub-literates. The rockets and atomic bombs in WWII prompted a short-lived recognition in the early 1950s, and then the newer writers that developed in the 1960s forced admissions that it could have literary merit. But it still needs to be rediscovered every 20 years or so when the mainstream literary crowd suddenly “get it.” ---
**Author:** ![Mahaloth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mahaloth/32/1079_2.png) [@Mahaloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahaloth)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2019, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-biggest-critical-reappraisals-all-media/843324/38 "2019-11-12T23:59:38Z")
> [@kitap](#): > > How about the Gettysburg Address? It is famous that the speaker before Lincoln spoke for a long time, but I thought people right away recognized that Lincoln’s speech was a lot better. When did the Gettysburg Address become widely known? ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2019, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-biggest-critical-reappraisals-all-media/843324/39 "2019-11-13T00:23:16Z")
The most critically acclaimed and popular author of the 19th century US was Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth. The best and most successful American author of the first decade of the 20th century was Winston Churchill, so much so that a UK politician asked permission to use his own name when writing. Of course, now the politician is a bit better known. There are very few who have read either Southworth or Churchill these days. Sic transit gloria mundi. ---
**Author:** ![EinsteinsHund](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/einsteinshund/32/8400_2.png) [@EinsteinsHund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EinsteinsHund)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2019, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-biggest-critical-reappraisals-all-media/843324/40 "2019-11-13T01:02:38Z")
The Stones’ _Sticky Fingers_ [was no critical darling](https://slate.com/culture/2015/06/sticky-fingers-by-the-rolling-stones-one-of-the-greatest-albums-in-rock-n-roll-history.html), but now is regarded as one of their best and most defining albums, which means one of the best rock albums of all time. I especially remember having read [Jon Landau’s scathing review](https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-album-reviews/sticky-fingers-107725/) from Rolling Stone about 20 years ago and being speechless that a guy I adored as a producer had thought so less of my favorite album. ETA: especially this sequence bugs me, because Mick Taylor’s solo at the end of Sway is my all time favorite guitar solo: > [@Jon Landau](#): > > But unlike early Stones messiness, “Sway” lacks intensity. It never reaches a goal because it doesn’t seem to have one. Rather, it remains a series of riffs whose lack of content is obscured by prolonged and indifferent guitar semi-solos and a fine string arrangement that suddenly enters towards the end. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-biggest-critical-reappraisals-all-media/843324.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-biggest-critical-reappraisals-all-media/843324.md?page=3)