Final Project Abstract – An Appraisal of Critical Appraisals: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Embrace Arts Criticism

In 2016, in an effort to devote more time and contemplation to the films I was watching, I started writing short movie reviews and sharing them to social media. I was hoping to both improve my own understanding of the medium and start conversations with others who were interested in film. I never considered myself a “film critic” – Arts Criticism was something formal, capitalized, and professional in my head. But every critic needs to start somewhere right? The more I contemplate the practice of arts criticism, the more elusive it seems to me. I think I naively hoped to discover a template, a solid understanding of what criticism should look like or focus on. I wanted to know how or if it was something loftier than what I was doing with my online reviews – if there was some kind of evolution or trajectory to follow from movie goer to cinephile to reviewer to film critic. I’m not sure why I ever thought there would be consensus in a sector driven by analysis and the expression of one’s opinion. There have been debates for centuries on arts criticism, and even though film is a comparatively young medium, those debates have informed thinking on film criticism as well. What is criticism? What are its functions? Who are critics speaking to – the general public, niche audiences, the artists, themselves? Who has the authority to be a critic and from where is that authority derived? And finally, is there a crisis in arts criticism – do the current crisis in print media and resulting job losses really signal the death of the critic?
To refine and hone my own approach to arts criticism, this paper explores these questions and their ensuing debates. Along the way, I explore the tendency towards elitism in art and arts criticism – a feature I find problematic. I note that current discussions and debates over whether criticism is in crisis and in danger of being “dumbed down” actually reflect the same rhetoric used at other pivotal moments in arts history, and may have more to do with asserting or re-asserting critical authority. I attempt to identify the functions of art criticism, many of which were born out of the major debates of those pivotal moments and “crises,” in the hopes of finding models to employ in my own work. And finally, I celebrate arts criticism as an artform in and of itself, an act of creation inspired by the creative work of others. In the end, I find myself still grappling with defining my own voice and approach to criticism, but better prepared for the work ahead.