Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth. Oscar Wilde As of this writing, “Doomcock” is trending on Twitter. This is occurring because there is a self-titled “supervillain who critiques popular culture” under the name of Dicktor Van Doomcock. He has… Read More Star Trek, Doomcock, And Fandom Shenanigans
Criticism, for all we elevate it, amounts to the imposing of a narrative on a work. It is a non-fiction encounter with a text, gussied up to a universal statement about its meaning. This is fine when it is acknowledged. Often, however, critical reads become a kind of low-effort meme, repeated without actual consideration. They… Read More On the Death and Return of Gandalf
TrueFansTM always find reasons to retain their devotion: I almost never comment on YouTube videos, but I did on this one, because the assertion that the Prequels merit critical rehabilitation, as a consequence of the audience having the Wrong Expectations, needs to be smashed with a hammer. When people are Fans of a thing, they… Read More The Prequel Effect Is Just Fandom Coping
This probably contains SPOILERS, but I’ve really written it for people who’ve already watched the season. If you’ve never watched it, it won’t make sense to you. I wasn’t really going to take the time to analyze Stranger Things. I wasn’t even going to watch it. Others have pointed out that the show has lost… Read More Dumping on Popular Entertainment: Stranger Things Has Too Many Characters
When I say “critic” I don’t mean “someone who gives you feedback on a piece of art”, I mean “someone who applies a formal critical assessment to your work”. You know, the nerds. This video, worth watching in full (it’s less than 9 minutes), discusses well two things: That authors/artists don’t necessarily follow a logic… Read More When Critics Don’t Help, and When They Do
The Sunrise Motel makes note of the same Film School Rejects article that I did, and pulls a good description of the puritanical urge to sieve any piece of art for wrongthink, “hermeneutics of suspicion”. I might go a step farther than this, and say that a great deal of criticism is done not for… Read More Hermeneutics of Suspicion and the Problem with Film Critics
Doing the chattering class a favor. If authors are dead set on publishing these types of pieces, then the least we can do is take a moment and work out the perfect template. This way, the argument gets made, the author gets paid, and audiences can breathe a little easier knowing that they aren’t actually… Read More Film School Rejects Provides Template for Crap Reviews of Old Movies
Content Blues 