Blogs and Criticism

Another blogger weighing in on the role of criticism on the internet, on blogs, specifically - David Bordwell, no less. As one would hope, he takes the broad view, asking what criticism is and offering a description before moving into the specifics of blogging. Or more accurately - he asks what criticism does, what critics do: well - describe art - analyze art - interpret art - and evaluate art. And what forms does it take? reviews - critical essays - academic writing. And how do these functions and formats interact? And after exploring these questions, he returns to the web - what do we find on the web What could we use more of? Critical essays! That is - he notes that while the web tends to encourage and be dominated by shorter, evaluative pieces, it is also well suited to longer pieces. A good many exist - his site is a prime example, but he cites other examples - Jim Emerson, Senses of Cinema, Rouge - that use longer forms. There are others beside - Ted Pigeon, say; the Self-Styled Siren.

I'm all for it. I like longer pieces: I like posts that take a couple reads to go through. And I like that these kinds of essays on the web can use the internet's rather easy multimedia capabilities. Pictures, video, sound - as well as words - and interacting with words. (And sometimes without words. Or the words integrated into the pictures, as with Kevin Lee's video essays.)

But another thing I like about the web, that plays in the middle between the short, fast posts (reviews, news, gossip, links, little bits of nonsense like video clips or lists) and the (potential for) longer essay-like posts is its cumulative nature. And its collaborative nature, for for this purpose, collaboration is a form of accumulation. Take, for example, most of Girish's posts: he starts with a topic - a book, a film, a group of films, a topic like blogging - and sketches in some thoughts about it. Then opens the floor, basically: and the comments take the subject(s) and explore it (them), work through the possibilities. It becomes a group essay, in a way - trying on ideas, working through the various perspectives... Blogathons work like that as well - a bunch of people, pooling their ideas and information and arguments, creating a cloud of information about a subject...

But this can happen even without the collaboration. Take David Cairns' site - this week he's writing about Joseph Losey - a one man blogathon! The posts are longer than simple reviews or comments - but maybe not, individually, full on critical essays - but together, with their illustrations, and a video clip or two - they add up. (To something damned great...)

I think this is one of the genuine advantages of the web in general and blogging in particular: it allows you to work on things over time, to build an argument, to work toward an essay. Bordwell's crack about "idlers, hobbyists, obsessives, and retirees" isn't far off: blogging doesn't pay - we all have to pay the bills somehow, and if we aren't paid writers or academics, we have to find the time to write about films after we pay the rent. Which works against long, well researched, carefully reasoned work. But blogging, in particular, allows us to move toward more substantive work if we want to. It allows us to be part of the exploration of films - and it allows us to present ideas in pieces. Posts can act as notes for an essay that might pass muster in school or print - drafts of an essay... And at its best - these drafts are critiqued and considered by other people, who can build on them, react to them...