Not too long after my post, Online Media Beats Television, I recently read an article in The New York Times written by none other than A.O. Scott, the man who is directly connected to the show "At The Movies"."Where once reasoned debate and knowledgeable evaluation flourished, there are now social networking and marketing algorithms and a nattering gaggle of bloggers.
Or — to turn the picture on its head — a remnant of over-entitled old-media graybeards are fighting a rear-guard action against the democratic forces of the Internet, clinging to threadbare cultural authority in the face of their own obsolescence. Everyone’s a critic! Or maybe no one is."
How this very idea struck me directly in the gut. I am one of the nattering bloggers riding the forces of the Internet, sending the seed of destruction to the show. I may not be the best reviewer out there, but it is definitely true that even a common average college boy like me can start my own blog and start writing and reviewing any movies without any educational background regarding movies whatsoever. I am clearly not a movie critic, but I sure can say that I am a movie reviewer. Full credit goes to the Internet which allow anyone to say anything they want, anytime they want, expressing their own thought freely.
What is so different about movie critics and movie reviews, anyway? While they seem to be generally the same on the surface, they are really standing on different sides of the field. Movie critics tend to judge a movie from the art point of view while movie reviews see a movie from its entertainment side. It doesn't mean that reviews don't even consider art or even burying the elements of art in a movie, but they are just using the more tolerant and flexible perspective; we know how stiff and conservative the art folks are, don't we?
Despite of the grand and glamorous sense of art the critics bear, they still can't fight the flow of the world. The world has always has this thing for freedom and there is nothing more that can offer more freedom than the infinite world of the Internet. That is why blogging is so common nowadays. We can find all sort of blogs because people are just dying to express their feeling freely, without any restraints or worrying about the norm or social rules to break. Online reviews can be this popular because of its freedom to say anything. This is why we can say that movie criticism is sinking more and more everyday. Nevertheless, I believe that art--in the form of movie critics--is just going into hibernation, because it is human nature to always look for something new when they grow tired of the old ones. This cycle will always repeat itself, and who knows maybe one day we will grow tired of light online reviews and look for something old fashioned such as movie critics. Art is never really popular; sometimes they are even considered as boring stuff, but every once in a while we do need it to remind us where beauty really lies, don't we?
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