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July 11, 2004

Division? Hell, no. It's called democracy

: In today's Times, Andrew Kohut of Pew starts to recyle the well-worn meme about more partisan media yielding a more partisan nation. But at the end of his op-ed, he takes a 180 (if not a U-turn) and acknowledges that, no, Mr. Little, the sky may not be falling after all:

Still, perhaps all is not lost.

In his new book, "The Wisdom of Crowds," James Surowiecki argues eloquently that "under the right circumstances, groups are remarkably intelligent, often smarter than the smartest people in them." That's because a diversity of experience, opinion and knowledge can render the whole greater than the sum of its parts. Whether a more partisan news environment undermines or enhances the cognitive diversity of American culture - or diminishes the "gut rationality" of the public - remains to be seen.

"The public's judgment has been pretty good over the past 75 years, when we pretended that we didn't have a partisan media," said Maxine Isaacs, a lecturer at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. "Everyone knew that we did. It's now just more overt."

Yup. When we care about issues -- which aren't necessarily the issues media think we should care about -- we manage to get our smarts together and do pretty damned well, through eras of press of greater and lesser yellow hues. The Internet and cable choices and weblogs and all these new sources of -- uh-oh -- partisan media will, I believe, only help the process of democracy as we air more opinions and more diverse viewpoints. It's called democracy.

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Tabloid movies

: NY Times movie critic gets all haughty/populist about the success of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 and Mel Gibson's Passion.

But I have a different theory about it. I say this is the tabloidization of movies.

Says Scott:

...we are willing to pay good money to be provoked, enraged, exalted and challenged.

I'm aware that, in saying "we," I'm being somewhat disingenuous — maybe even hypocritical. Because the popular responses to "Passion" and "Fahrenheit" have not only challenged the conventional wisdom of the risk-averse Hollywood studios; they have also shaken the assumptions of a great many film critics, this one included. Critics, however democratic our tastes, however accessible our prose, however ignorant our views, are part of a culture of expertise, and it is the prerogatives of this culture that populists like Mr. Moore and Mr. Gibson delight in attacking.

Read that last sentence again and savor the self-awareness of the critic: The world as his mirror.

Their films provoked a great deal of hand-wringing: from biblical scholars who questioned Mr. Gibson's interpretation of the Gospels; from political commentators who attacked Mr. Moore's rhetoric, and some of his facts; and in both cases from movie critics who were uneasy about the directors' methods.

This unease, I suspect, arose partly because "Passion" and "Fahrenheit" were difficult to classify and, loath as we are to admit it, critics often prefer movies that resemble other movies. But "Passion," with its unrelenting violence and its horror-movie effects, did not seem to play by the austere rules of cinematic spirituality, any more than "Fahrenheit," with its boisterous blend of mockery and outrage, obeyed the sober imperatives of documentary.

It is proper for critics to be concerned with such things, and I certainly would not disown anything I've written about either film. But it is also proper, and healthy, for audiences to overrule our anxious, qualified judgments, and to respond to movies like these with more heat and more passion. The basic critical function of consumer advice, in any case, is overridden when movies become part of a larger debate, which may also be hard for critics to deal with, since it threatens our authority.

Which is, all in all, a very good thing. Movies are a democratic art form, and democracy, at its most vigorous, can ride roughshod over polite opinion, responsible judgment and cool appraisal. When that happens, we should relish our discomfort, and gratefully acknowledge that, sometimes, hotter heads prevail.

Oh, ferchrissake. Such self-important drivel. I see the trend in far simpler terms:

Movies were boring.

Every other medium has been tabloided: newspapers, magazines, TV, books. It's movies' turn.

: Meanwhile, elsewhere in The Times, Frank Rich twists himself up like a critical pretzel trying to make sense of Fahrenheit and Spiderman in the same breath of hot air.

The Michael Moore explosion is now officially unbearable. It's not just that you can't pick up a Time Warner magazine without seeing his mug on the cover. Or turn on a TV news show without hearing another tedious debate about the accuracy of "Fahrenheit 9/11" — conducted by the same press corps that never challenged the Bush administration's souped-up case for invading Iraq. What's most ridiculous is the central question driving the whole show: might a hit documentary swing the November election?

Is that the same press corps that isn't acknowledging the newfound daily freedom of most Iraqis?

It being The Times, Rich has to make such gratuitous bows to the antiwar left, but it's clear that he hates Fahrenheit and has little use for it. Fine. Bravo, in fact.

But then he goes off on a nonsequitorfest comparing Fahrenheit with Spiderman and trying to find political significance in it:

There's nothing triumphalist about Spider-Man; he would never declare "Mission Accomplished" after a passing victory, and his very creed is antithetical to the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive war. But neither is he a stand-in for John Kerry. Whatever inner equivocation he suffers over his role as a superhero, he stops playing Hamlet when he has a decision to make. Nor does he follow Mr. Kerry's vainglorious example of turning his own past battles into slick promotional hagiography.

Whatever light "Spider-Man 2" may cast on the dueling, would-be heroes of our presidential race, however, it is not going to change the dynamic of the election any more than "Fahrenheit 9/11" will.

Huh? All these two critics do is prove that criticism is a dying profession and dead art. These are critics in a desperate search for a point. And they fail at finding it.

I'm glad I'm a former critic. Whew.

: UPDATE: Ernie Miller emails with some thoughts about the tabloidization of movies. That's what I love about this medium of ours: I throw out an idea that's not jelled; hell, the Jell-O is still steaming. And Ernie comes back giving it context. Ernie wrote:

Newspapers have gone tabloid, but before they were professional, they were tabloids. It seems to me that newspapers went through the following process:

tabloid/yellowsheet - professionalization - tabloid

Movies were tabloid, at least to some extent, in the beginning (Edison's early films - Birth of a Nation - Newsreels), but then lost their tabloid cast to some extent to television. However, the economics are once again shiftng so that tabloid movies are once again economical.

Television news was never really tabloid in the beginning because of government censorship (fairness doctrine, public service requirements, etc.), with the loosening of restrictions, television has been allowed to achieve a more natural balance.

Radio was also tabloid, but this disappeared with the advent of television, only to reappear many years later.

I think he's right and I'd love to see an economic layer put on these timelines: high competition (tabloid/badass) yields to big business (safe/objective/snotty) yields to new competition (retabloidization). See the post above about opinionated media: weblogs are tabloidy because they're new (will they become safe and "objective" someday?) while big media is rediscovering its yellow roots as the new competition of the Internet emerges.

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Slipping on the second banana

: I'm watching John Kerry and John Edwards on 60 Minutes and can't decide whether Edwards is the annointed attack dog or whether he is a camera/microphone hog. Edwards is at least coming off at the over-eager assistant, or the horny guy on the second date. The odd effect, for me, is that he's making me like Kerry more by contrast. Parallel impact on the wives. So maybe Kerry did the really smart thing: He chose someone to make him look good.

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Whereabouts

: I'm back. My week-long nightmare of dial-up AOL is over. It feels so good when it stops hurting.

We went to our favorite vacation spot, Skytop in the Poconos, an island of civility in a sea of trailers. It was our tenth year there, so you can tell we like it and the kids love it. We dress up for dinner every night and ask for our favorite waiter, Fernando. We go on nature walks with John Serrao, who fearlessly picks up every log and rock to find us amazing critters. We swim. And I make believe I play golf. Gawd, I am bad at it. My father, trying not to watch here, said he broke a hundred. I said I broke the next hundred. I lost balls. I accidentally hit another player's ball on the next fairway. I hit the damned ball so often I lost count. But we the family bonded. And we had fun.

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