Reviews - A Preliminary Discussion
Jul. 14th, 2008 11:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kateelliottI hope I haven't posted some version of this before. I'm badly behind, madly working on Crossroads #3, and otherwise stalled out when it comes to Getting Things Done. So I've gleaned through a folder I keep in which I jot notes for things to blog about and discovered the following, which ties in with a couple of additional (and I hope follow-up) posts I'd like to make about reviewing on the web.
Herewith:
Years and years ago, the local film reviewer of the local newspaper where I then lived reviewed Dark Crystal. The reviewer made abundantly clear that he despised the fantasy genre as a whole and indeed considered it rather stupid. Naturally, he found the movie lacking and described its faults with great intensity, but none of this was helpful to me in any way in judging whether I might want to spend my hard-earned coin to go see the film in the theater (some of you may not recall a time when it was not easy or even possible to watch a movie from the comfort of your own sofa on your own schedule).
So I wrote to him a letter, which went something like this: Your dislike of the fantasy genre of movies in the general is so extreme that I cannot make out through your biases whether this film works, because you’re not focusing on the filmic elements but rather elements that may or may not work for someone who isn’t from the get-go by definition opposed to and even contemptuous of fantasy tropes, weird creatures, magic, wings, and evil villains. So could you please either review the film as a film, or let someone else review the sff films, please?
Less than a month later this particular reviewer announced in a column that he was leaving film reviewing and going back to his first love, reviewing Theatre. While I have no evidence beyond coincidental timing to suggest I had anything to do with this decision on his part, I like to think I might have helped him along.
I believe that a good reviewer reviews out of love, and if there is no love, Houston, we’ve got a problem.
By “love” I don’t mean that a reviewer must only say nice things, or even any nice things.
I mean loving the genre or sub-genre in the general; I mean approaching the work with respect, and tackling its deficiencies from a perspective not of contempt for its type or a sniggering tone of derision for its perceived or actual shortcomings, but an analysis of where and how things didn’t work as well as how and where they did.
One reason I often like mixed reviews best is that they aren’t limited to praise (whose repetition can become pallid or even, in certain parts of my irrational heart, begin to seem suspect, which says more about my personal psychological issues than it does about the reviews themselves, but never mind, let's move on), and therefore, in reading them, I feel I am learning things about the book that will help me decide if it’s one I will enjoy despite, or even because of, elements the reviewer may not have cared for.
I have more personal issues with truly negative reviews, especially when they seem to me, as a reader of the review, to shade into contempt or derision (see above). I don't enjoy reading such reviews even of a book I have myself not liked. This exercise gives me no pleasure. The negative reviews I can read with interest and even feeling I've gained something by reading them have a faintly regretful air, as if to say, I wanted to like this book because on the whole I prefer to like books.
But I naturally would feel that way because, on the whole, I prefer to like books. I would rather enjoy every novel I pick up. I don’t, of course. I can’t imagine anyone does. So when I read reviews (as distinct from criticism and analysis, which is a different kettle of fish), I’m trying to discern whether the book in question will please me.
Naturally, not everyone will have this perspective about reviews, nor should they.
What are you, as a reader, looking for when you read reviews?
Herewith:
Years and years ago, the local film reviewer of the local newspaper where I then lived reviewed Dark Crystal. The reviewer made abundantly clear that he despised the fantasy genre as a whole and indeed considered it rather stupid. Naturally, he found the movie lacking and described its faults with great intensity, but none of this was helpful to me in any way in judging whether I might want to spend my hard-earned coin to go see the film in the theater (some of you may not recall a time when it was not easy or even possible to watch a movie from the comfort of your own sofa on your own schedule).
So I wrote to him a letter, which went something like this: Your dislike of the fantasy genre of movies in the general is so extreme that I cannot make out through your biases whether this film works, because you’re not focusing on the filmic elements but rather elements that may or may not work for someone who isn’t from the get-go by definition opposed to and even contemptuous of fantasy tropes, weird creatures, magic, wings, and evil villains. So could you please either review the film as a film, or let someone else review the sff films, please?
Less than a month later this particular reviewer announced in a column that he was leaving film reviewing and going back to his first love, reviewing Theatre. While I have no evidence beyond coincidental timing to suggest I had anything to do with this decision on his part, I like to think I might have helped him along.
I believe that a good reviewer reviews out of love, and if there is no love, Houston, we’ve got a problem.
By “love” I don’t mean that a reviewer must only say nice things, or even any nice things.
I mean loving the genre or sub-genre in the general; I mean approaching the work with respect, and tackling its deficiencies from a perspective not of contempt for its type or a sniggering tone of derision for its perceived or actual shortcomings, but an analysis of where and how things didn’t work as well as how and where they did.
One reason I often like mixed reviews best is that they aren’t limited to praise (whose repetition can become pallid or even, in certain parts of my irrational heart, begin to seem suspect, which says more about my personal psychological issues than it does about the reviews themselves, but never mind, let's move on), and therefore, in reading them, I feel I am learning things about the book that will help me decide if it’s one I will enjoy despite, or even because of, elements the reviewer may not have cared for.
I have more personal issues with truly negative reviews, especially when they seem to me, as a reader of the review, to shade into contempt or derision (see above). I don't enjoy reading such reviews even of a book I have myself not liked. This exercise gives me no pleasure. The negative reviews I can read with interest and even feeling I've gained something by reading them have a faintly regretful air, as if to say, I wanted to like this book because on the whole I prefer to like books.
But I naturally would feel that way because, on the whole, I prefer to like books. I would rather enjoy every novel I pick up. I don’t, of course. I can’t imagine anyone does. So when I read reviews (as distinct from criticism and analysis, which is a different kettle of fish), I’m trying to discern whether the book in question will please me.
Naturally, not everyone will have this perspective about reviews, nor should they.
What are you, as a reader, looking for when you read reviews?