Speech Changes in the Structure

¶ … Speech Changes in the structure of media today have resulted in catastrophe for the criticism business, claims one leading movie critic. A.O. Scott, film reviewer for the New York Times, made the declaration during a speech in Atlanta last night, likening the decline of print journalism and the rise of online journalism to a potential apocalypse.

Scott, delivering a speech entitled "The Future of Arts Criticism and the Role of the Academy" to an audience of experienced media and communications professionals at the Emory University campus, lamented the state of print media and its impacts on critical thinking in society. Newspapers are under financial pressure and as a result are getting thinner, placing their critical content at risk.

No less an esteemed outlet as the Wall Street Journal has cut its restaurant reviewers and similar cuts have been made across America as newspapers come under increasing financial pressure. A critic at the New York Weekly was held out of a screening because he had insulted the mother of a movie producer. "We can get way more readers online than in print," he explained.

This has given way to a new age of criticism, which Scott described as being in a "confused, beleaguered, divided state" in which we have a great diversity of ideas and thought, but much of it nascent in its formation. Scott argued that the reduction of the role of newspapers in criticism was, if nothing else premature. The Internet, he argued, is often painted as playing a role in criticism that is either "apocalyptic or utopian" but that the truth is somewhere in between.

The diversity of voices and the rapid, frank exchange of thought were two virtues of the Internet, but also represents uncontrolled discourse. Such discourse, Scott argued, may have the potential to make criticism more real but it also contributes to the decline of "an ethos of thought and writing." Criticism is a "habit of thought, a way of thinking about the world" and as such is a high order of writing that should be fostered and encouraged.

While the digital age has its benefits, particularly in the dissemination of information, the lack of controls means that often criticism is simply reduced to "anyone [saying] whatever they want." As criticism shifts on becoming primarily online, it diminishes the role of the critic. Critics such as Mr. Scott once enjoyed exclusivity, based on their experience with the subject and their ability to write. Today's Internet critics, however, often have neither writing skills nor any particular expertise.

"The Internet all of sudden makes everyone a critic," said Scott, taking a pot-shot at the blogging community, where criticism is both rampant and often uninformed. The benefits of the Internet as an information dissemination medium are manifold, but that does not mean that true, classical criticism has lost its value. Indeed, despite the cutbacks at newspapers, classic criticism is more vital than ever. "Critics are soldiers in the on-going culture war," Scott contends, inferring that the role critics play is often greater than the act of writing a review.

The way people think and view the world is often shaped by criticism. When the standards of criticism are compromised, as happens when editorial control is lost, then the influence on the way people think can become negative. Scott's argument was not lost on the generally older crowd in attendance at the Carlos Museum. The Academy itself plays an important role, along with critics, in defining the elements of popular culture that have the most value.

While the public has flocked to see sci-fi eyepopper Avatar in record-breaking numbers, the Academy chose the Hurt Locker, a movie that Scott called "the best non-documentary about the Iraqi War," as its best picture for 2009, indicative of that film's role in telling the story of today's world. The declining role of critics in media must stand as cause for concern among its members as well, in the face of multiple online sites for movie ratings that are both democratic and chaotic. A.O.

Scott joined the New York Times in 2000 as a film critic and now writes in a number of that paper's sections, and.