CRITICISM HAS EXISTED
AS LONG AS ART ITSELF
ARTICLE BY DARREN MOONEY
Early in Mel Brooks’ History of the
World: Part I, narrator Orson
Welles suggests the history of the
art through paintings on cave
walls. "With the birth of the artist,
came the inevitable afterbirth,"
reflects Welles, as one member
of the tribe proceeds to urinate
upon the finished cave painting.
“The critic.” to sustain itself, but one with
form and function worthy of
appreciation. There are any
number of examples; James
Baldwin’s The Devil Finds Work,
Virginia Woolf’s Three Guineas,
Geoff Dyer's Out of Sheer Rage.
Even Roger Ebert’s film reviews
might be read as a pleasure unto
themselves. streaming applications. Film
studios race to figure out how
best to keep audiences buy film
tickets and paying for home
media. Television companies are
operating at peak capacity,
churning out content in order to
fill limitless broadcast space and
to serve as a potential bulwark of
a future streaming service.
Many academics point to
Aristotle’s Poetics as the first
substantial work of literary
criticism, dating back to the
fourth century. The philosopher
discussed and explored the
impact and technique of
Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex. Criticism
has taken many forms over the
millennia. The twenty-first century has
revolutionised media production
and consumption. The advent of
the internet has changed
everything, making almost
anything available to everyone at
every moment. The digital
revolution has shaken the media
industry to its core, with various
strands finding themselves
grappling with existential crises. With all of this change taking
place, it makes sense that film
criticism would face a similar
challenge in adapting to the new
media landscape. Indeed, it
seems like the future of film
criticism is debated with the
same frequency (and to the same
noncommittal conclusions) as
any other entertainment
industry.
Music companies compete with
digital piracy, and struggle
to remain afloat in the era of Are critics redundant? Are critics
outdated? Do critics make a
difference?
It seems fair to describe criticism
as an art form of itself; an art
dependent upon other art to