One idea that has interested me for a while is the Hegemony of Negativity. It's an idea that has arisen out of my observations about high, low and middlebrow culture. The upshot is this: If I simply dismiss something as stupid—or bad—this act of dismissal creates the impression that I'm being more critical than someone who thinks it's good, regardless of whether I have any substantive criticism.
What I'm trying to do here is draw a distinction between critical engagement with a text (something we ask our students to do all the time in literature courses) and critical dismissal (the summary rejection of a text). Summary rejection is fine in certain cases, especially where particular assumptions about the project apply. But when the text is attempting to accomplish certain goals, to reject it without considering those goals strikes me as intellectually dishonest (or at least lazy).
The example I find myself returning to is the new
Star Wars prequels.
There are lots of perfectly valid objections that critics could raise about, say, the first film. I have many of them myself. In fact, I think it wasn't a successful project, ultimately. However, my conclusion that it is unsuccessful is something I reach only after I have engaged the text—after I have investigated the project on its terms, not on some idea of what I think the text should be.
When I read negative reviews of that film, I was largely shocked that the critics seemed to make all kinds of assumptions—about what the film was supposed to be, about what motivates Lucas—but if they knew anything at all about the project, they would never have made those assumptions in the first place. So they're either intellectually dishonest or just plain lazy.
I suspect it's largely the latter, an attitude that is only enabled by their conception of what their job is. Many seem to think that the job of the critic is to judge. But, really, who goes to critics for that reason? We go to critics to see if we want to see the film. Substituting the critic's judgment for the reader's isn't an especially good way of doing that.
Moreover, the critic only occasionally lets himself speak to the average reader. When the critic loves a film, he is more than willing to explain the film to the masses, to argue that aspects that may not be immediately apparent are, in fact, incredible virtues, yadda yadda yadda.
There's a
review of
Hitchhiker's Guide in the local alternative weekly. The author, however, who is a huge fan of the book, has chosen to write it from the perspective of a fan of the book. Since fans will be a large part of the initial audience, that might seem like a good idea. Well, take a look:
To the devoted—to those who find the late Adams one of the wisest, funniest philosophers of modern times—it’s torture, a nightmare in which everything is familiar and yet not.
The entire review is a complaint from a fan of the book about how "they" have ruined what could have been great.
It’s that bad. Look, you can give Tiny Tim a machine gun and have him come out shooting on Christmas morning, but that don’t make it Dickens. And you can give a man named Arthur Dent (Martin Freeman) a funny plan to rescue a damsel in distress, but it ain’t Adams.
But what's especially funny is that Adams was the primary screenwriter, which means (at the very least) that Adams pushed the film in this direction. What might his reasons be? How does this play really as a film? Aside from abstract observation that "all the punch lines are missing," I really have no idea what the film is actually doing.
The three other reviews I've read (two at least by fans of the book) have been very positive, but also more circumspect about the difficulties of turning books into movies and at least trying to engage the film
as a film.
So go ahead and try out the Hegemony of Negativity. Ask someone what their favorite book/movies/music is. Then, once they tell you (say, Shakespeare) shake your head disapprovingly and say "Really? You actually
liked that, hmmm."
You'll feel so much better.
