The scourge of reasoned criticism

Variety editor Peter Bart, noting that all the big hits at the box office in recent weeks have been critically-panned dreck – “300,” “Norbit,” “Wild Hogs,” “Ghost Rider” (even the titles sound profoundly unpromising) – offers up a fascinating solution: Lobotomies for critics, all around!

Not really, but close: He suggests critics lighten up and embrace their inner-fan-of-“Are-You-Smarter-than-a-Fifth-Grader” and cut slack to movies that were never intended to be good anyway, just a time-killer for a bored and undemanding country. “If the established media want to stay relevant,” Bart writes, “should their critics make a passing attempt to tune in to pop culture?”

I’m sure this hand-wringing is intended as a joke, but outside of the utter wrong-headedness of the notion, I fail to see the humor. Critics, of course, are immersed in pop culture, but Bart is talking about videogames and short films on YouTube featuring women having diarrhea in hot tubs and the overheated bellowing of WWE wrestlers, the sort of things that appeal to those who would enjoy the aforementioned hit movies but exist outside the purview of Bart’s perception of ivory-tower critics. Were they to absorb those entertainments, Bart seems certain, their reviews would read, “‘300’ is an inane, homoerotic gorefest, sure, but presented far more stylishly than WWE wrestling” or “‘Norbit’ is crass, pandering drivel, but crafted with a little more facility than that 20-second film on YouTube featuring a girl crapping in a hot tub.”

Of course, if critics were to review movies on the basis of their potential popularity, they’d lose all credibility with the people who actually do read reviews. It’s not the media’s job to cheerlead for the movie studios (well, except for Entertainment Weekly), nor is it the media’s job to blindly advocate for whatever it perceives to be the will of the people: They did that recently, and four years later, we’re seeing how well that worked out in Iraq.

But let’s take Bart’s assertion – that the capricious entertainment decisions made by those leading unexamined lives deserve validation between the pages of our nation’s leading publications – to its Kurtzian endgame. Magazines will print garrulous investigative pieces revealing that whiny children should be spared nothing, no toy nor candy chunk that by chance traverses their peripheral vision. Newspapers will publish editorials arguing that if a President wants to engage in dubious, even treasonous, behavior, who are we to complain, because that might just hurt his feelings. Despite her irrelevance in the larger world, websites will report breathlessly on every public sighting of Paris Hilton. (Oh, wait, that one’s already happening.)

And you know where that leads us, don’t you?