I'm not sure if there was ever a golden age of criticism, but its current state may be cause for concern among folks who care about that sort of thing. People who used to talk about movies were once called "film critics"; now they're "movie reviewers". The same goes for book, tv, and music critics (strangely, theater critics have been unaffected by this semantic change up). Much like critics themselves used to be able to do, this situation reveals a previously unacknowledged truth: people hate critics.

In the current atmosphere, their original purpose seems a bit cloudy. But looking back, it seems that the critic's primary function was to analyze art in order to expose its meaning, gauge its impact and value, and bring obscure art to the attention of the public -- but not the general public. Often including technical jargon, and references to earlier works, critical analysis was not really useful to the man on the street, who didn't know (or care) about the differences between Picasso and Pollack. The audience for their work tended to be those people who already had some knowledge and interest in art.

The first populist form of criticism is found in film. Like television, which got its start much later, movies were a corporate psuedo-art form from the get go. Music and writing can be produced cheaply, by individuals, whereas it took money and throngs of people to make a movie. From the outset, the goal was to put working class asses in the seats, and sensation trod statement into the dirt in almost every film. Only later came German expressionism and its inevitable child, pretension. People didn't really need to know what movies were good or bad, they were going to the pictures regardless.

Eventually, bigger and better spectacles were being thrown up in burgeoning multiplexes and drive-ins, while people had less time to devote to movie-going (keep in mind, they also had to consume plenty of other entertainment products). It became important to invest one's movie viewing time as wisely as possible. Unless they gave up television, concerts, reading, or work, people were finding it difficult to see every single "big" movie that came along, so film reviews became a useful tool for deciding what to watch.

By the early sixties, television was already being referred to as a "vast wasteland". In that vastness, people needed someone to clue them in to the best and brightest of the available waste.

Waste is the nexus around which modern entertainment reviews revolve. Don't let anyone kid you -- Americans are workaholics. Even when we amuse ourselves, we need to feel like we aren't wasting our time. One way to do that is to take a look at reviews, and decide which products to partake in, as if we're making some sort of informed choice. A quick look at the movie page in the local newspaper can save you from throwing away 90 minutes of your life on "Pluto Nash". This false connoisseurship allows us to feel like we can make important decisions; yet, while most of us know which of the current crop of films aren't worth ten bucks, we have no idea how to get the best long distance calling rates or shop for the best value on home loans. The decisions that we make based on good information are also the most irrelevant.

In spite of this, criticism in its purest form is not really appreciated. After all, nobody likes being criticized. Especially when people fail to understand that criticism, while not purely objective, is supposed to be an honest appraisal, taking into account both the strengths and weaknesses of its target. Nobody wants to hear that honest opinion anymore; we're a terribly sensitive society and our egos are unable to withstand facing up to even the slightest fault, even if its impact is softened with laudatory comments. It's not surprising that "criticism" has become a euphemism for nitpicking and unwarranted, unnecessarily cruel personal attacks.

This makes our intellectual environment a softer, "safer" place for our fragile self-images to inhabit. But the cost of this safety is a certain amount of mental laziness. Honest criticism, well taken, can inspire us to change in a positive manner. As it is, we all run the risk of being hopelessly lame, and never being told.

It would be hard, but overall it might be beneficial if real criticism were to make a comeback. Unfortunately criticism is an intellectual exercise, where is "reviewing" is a marketing one. Free market proles don't trust anything with an intellectual taint, and so we might never see a well thought-out exegesis in Entertainment Weekly anytime soon. Maybe it's for the best; after all, if we can stop one person from renting "Dude, Where's My Car", we've at least done some good in this world.

-B. C. Silvia