Word: criticizing
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...critic is supposed to criticize. He's supposed to pan or to praise to his heart's content, that's his primary reason for existence. What's more, his criticism is supposed to be based on a reasonably complete knowledge of the subject he's talking about, whether it be Egyptian art or American movies...
...standards which most of us acknowledge, and to which, in general, we pay a good deal of attention. But there's another criterion which has become taken for granted to such an extent that it gets trampled under foot without our even noticing. And that is that the critic has no business addressing his little barbs or tossing his laurel wreaths toward an audience which functions on a different intellectual or social level than he does...
...this is not a prelude to an essay on the art of criticism. It's simply the best way I can think of to begin a series of digs against one particular species of critic--the movie critic. We're raising in our midst a generation of critics of a particularly American form of art who apparently have nothing better to do than to sit in picture shows and bore themselves stiff If the pictures they see are so god-awful that they're disgusted night after night in seeing them, then it isn't much of a compliment...
...other words, a critic who continually finds himself out of step with the audience he deals with is likely to be the fly in the ointment himself, though he generally won't admit it. If he's an esthete and can't stand cop-and-robber tights on the screen, then he has no business trying to tell an audience that craves blood whether or not a particular thriller is good or bad. He's batting in the wrong league, and the sooner he, recognizes this, the better...
This leads to the question of music criticism in general. Few would deny that critics are a natural and necessary evil as long as people listen to music as a serious aesthetic experience, but what line should criticism take? It should be constructive, but not in a soupy, overtolerant way, nor yet in a casual "Well, what does it matter anyhow?" sort of way. The former type is represented in New York by such as Downes of the "Times" who is one of the best meaningless-phrase-makers in the business, and the latter by such as Simon...