Excerpts from ‘Bridging Divides’ series: What Does it Mean to Be an Informed Critic?
As part of the College of Media’s three-part webinar series this fall, “Bridging Divides: Conversations on Media and Disagreement,” faculty from the Departments of Advertising, Journalism, and Media & Cinema Studies led Q&As to explore how productive discussions occur across lines of disagreement and difference.
Below, read excerpts from “What Does it Mean to Be an Informed Critic?” Note: Answers have been condensed for length and clarity.
Panelists:
- Jenny Oyallon-Koloski, Assistant Professor, Department of Media & Cinema Studies; author of Storytelling in Motion: Cinematic Choreography and the Film Musical
- Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune Film Critic; College of Media Ebert Fellows Mentor
Oyallon-Koloski: What's the value of criticism, especially in these polarized times? Why do we need voices of critics, people like yourself, especially ones who are informed about those kind of artistic and cultural works that they write or communicate about?
Phillips: I've never stuck to one firm belief or answer on that because it really responds to the times you're in. I think it's important to have to acknowledge that every single human being has their own tastes and opinions and prejudices and responses to everything. And I just like to try to write so that your preconceptions and maybe expectations are not set in concrete. They can actually bend and they're more porous. You can have your mind changed by a film that you didn't think would be for you, but there are elements of it that are really working. Really in the end I think criticism works best and is most alive when it is acknowledging that you have more than two feelings about something, and they might go in opposite directions. That's why I look to critics that I respect who try to sort out all the wildly conflicting elements that make anything worth talking about.
Oyallon-Koloski: Do you consider global perspectives, even if you're targeting local audiences of your media outlet? How does the global perspective or the global audience play into criticism?
Phillips: This is something we all need. We just need to see, we need to hear from more than a certain kind of American filmmaker in our lives. Because then otherwise, we're just risking a kind of cultural nationalism that does not help us at all.
Oyallon-Koloski: It often feels like what literacy there is today tends to come filtered through a decontextualized bite-sized meme culture. How much does criticism thrive on a culture where media is curated for you in intentional ways? How much does that historical knowledge play into all of this?
Phillips: It's important. It's also important to acknowledge that, broadly, everybody worth reading is going to have 10 very different reference shelves in their psyche. I think it's always worth championing and reintroducing certain classics to people. But the reasons change through the decades.
I think the critic or the academic or the media studies professor should always be reconsidering what needs to be shown to these people this semester because it will spark the kind of split or debate. Maybe it's a film that is just begging for a cultural divide to happen literally in the classroom. And then I think it's the critic or the professor’s role to just simply kind of referee it. And it's wonderful to experience. It gets more dicey when you're talking about films that have tremendously controversial content. I also don't believe in shelving those works because they're too hot to handle. But boy, oh boy, you really have to figure out how and when and if this is the right context. We forget or whitewash the past at our own peril in every aspect of American life.
As for the memes and the satire, I'd hate to just settle for that because that's kind of a faint echo of the original.
Read excerpts from the other “Bridging Divides” Q&As: