On Sat, Feb 16, 2013 at 3:58 PM, Dave Sikula <[email protected]> wrote:
> Fair enough. > > I will say it points to the extremely sad state of criticism in this > country. In my undergrad days, reviews were seemingly written by people who > either just happened to have a ticket for the performance or were dragooned > into attending, and to this day, I see and read plenty of reviews by people > who give glowing notices to boring or incompetent crap or who don't > understand what they saw. Fortunately, if I suffer through enough of their > writing, I can use their bad judgment as a touchstone and respond > accordingly. (Sidenote: I just let my long-time subscription to the SF > Chronicle lapse, in large part because of the dismal state of their arts > criticism. There wasn't near enough space allocated to local events -- > which is actually shocking, given the Chron's provincialism -- and what was > there was bad. SF's theatre scene is one of the most vibrant and innovative > in the country, and it seemed like only the four major houses ever got > write-ups. On the other hand, gallons of ink were devoted to photos of the > patrons of the opera and symphony.) > > We have plenty of -- too damn many -- reviewers (that is to say, "I went > to the show and this happened, then this happened, then this happened, and > everyone involved did their jobs well") and not enough critics who can or > will contextualize stuff. The thing is, I agree with the basic point you make above, but it just seems so obvious to me that what you are calling good criticism (and I would do) is the exact opposite of what they guy reviewing Mumford and Sons in the WaPo did. -- -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
