The Internet Is Ruining Movies, Just Like It Is Ruining Food
Call us crazy, but the whole time we were reading Roger Ebert's screed on the death of film criticism, and even more so when we were reading TOC film critic Hank Sartin's significantly better response and elaboration, we were thinking to ourself "just swap in 'food' for 'film' and this is same old, same old."
Ebert's point is, broadly, that a culture of celebrity gossip and shortened attention spans — coupled with the ongoing death of print media — has ruined film criticism for everyone. Sartin's point is that Ebert is probably in a bad mood today, because there is plenty of great writing on film to be found if you can sift through the dross. Sound familiar? Here's one of Sartin's paragraphs — changing only five words, it's completely rewritten to be about comestibles:
The change, then, is that serious criticism is for the most part no longer a paid profession. Fewer venues employ full-time critics or allow them to engage in long-form criticism. And, as Nagrant also smartly points out, it’s not like newspapers outside a few urban centers were exactly fostering an army of smart cultural critics musing on food. Dig back through the last 20 years of restaurant reviews at papers in, say, Pittsburgh, Iowa City and Denver (a random selection, I swear, with no offense meant to these cities in particular), and you’re more likely to find sloppy menu summary and a simple indication of whether or not you can take the kids to eat it.
Look, y'all, exactly the same thing is happening to everyone, everywhere. The film critics are feeling it, the food critics are feeling it — heck, even the tech critics are feeling it, now that PC Magazine's been eaten alive by the internet. Everyone's being eaten alive by the internet, and everyone is complaining about it, and then everyone who's not complaining about it is rebutting the complaints by pointing out that, actually, no, there's still plenty of intelligent discussion about Topic Of Choice going on, it's just happening on the internet by people who are writing for free.
Celebrity culture, gossip, and soundbites are, yes, taking over the American appetite for food journalism — remind us again how many blogs are recapping Top Chef these days? — but they're also expanding the interest base. So many more people are interested in food (and movies, music, art, fashion...) these days than there used to be back when a supportive and informative community was farther away than google-enter-click. It's the same story for everyone. Blah blah blah.
Death to film critics! Hail to the CelebCult! [EbertBlog, S-T]
Death to film critics? Ebert on the practice of professional criticism [TOC Blog]
[Photo via dro!d's Flickr]
previously
Chefs and Bloggers and Critics, Oh My!
Chefs Vs. Bloggers: A Followup Summit
Chefs Vs. Bloggers: Fear And Loathing
Comments
Mmm... maybe.
The difference I think lies in two things. One, Ebert really is in at the dying days of something newspapers did well-- for a short time. The film culture era did percolate into newspapers at the moment when movies were hot conversation and art at the same time, and then for once the newspaper tendency to give tenure paid off because even when the movies got stupid, smart people still held those jobs. (Where the inability of newspapers to get rid of people who'd long since outlived their last original thought has been a disaster in most other sections, from the editorial page to the comics. Try to think of something, ANYTHING that's been around in pop culture as long as Blondie. If TV was run by newspapers, Uncle Miltie would still be on.)
I'm not convinced that any such glory day ever took place in the food section. There are maybe a half dozen cities where high quality food writing takes place in newspapers, and then there are a zillion towns across America where somebody is writing that the chicken pesto pasta at Grazie's! is addictive and the tiramisu is to die for. And look, there's an ad for Grazie's! on the opposite page, declaring that the Bugle-Foghorn's own Dawn O'Day gave Grazie's four napkin rings. How cozy.
If anything, we're at the start of a real food culture in America, not the end. Sure, it's being led by television, and television is mostly hyped-up crap, but even a jazzed-up show like Top Chef just had Grant Achatz on there, which is the equivalent of having Michelangelo Antonioni on What's My Line in 1964. And we have food bestsellers which are really about taste, not just nutrition, and chat boards and blogs and this and that and the other. So I'm convinced we will have great writing about food-- but it won't be in newspapers, because it was never going to be mostly in newspapers, even if there were some newspapers who were mostly good in writing about food, because this isn't a time when newspapers are central to forming our opinions, as 1964 was.
Posted by: Mike Gebert | December 2, 2008 06:40 PM
Ha! I clearly picked the wrong Mike to swap in for Sartin's paragraph.
I think you're right, Mike (G) -- food culture is just beginning when the state of discourse is compared to a medium like film (you don't see people majoring in "Food Studies" in college right now -- but I bet you will in a decade or two).
Still, the old school print folks complaining about the shift to the new school internet kids sounds pretty much identical no matter what the topic, no?
Posted by: Helen | December 2, 2008 06:45 PM
Thanks for your interesting response to my post. I agree that the whole "Death of journalism! But wait, the web has great writing!" debate has been covered exhaustively and exhaustingly, and I was hesitant to jump into it.
And I wholeheartedly agree with your point that it isn't just film criticism, but all arts and food and cultural criticism that has gotten sucked into a discussion that seems to be about the death of thinking but is really about a shift from a professional critics to a different model.
Food writing, like film writing, has always had a lot of chatter, and some fine thoughtful writing for the select audience that wants it. So, the move to the internet continues a world in which there's a lot of chatter, some smart writing, a big audience that just wants the chatter, and a smaller audience that will get throught he former to find the latter. That's why, although I'm an old school print guy who gets paid to be a critic, I'm not complaining about the shift, just observing that that is the real subtext of Roger Ebert's piece, which claims to be about the death of serious cultural criticism, is really about economics. (Well, I'm complaining inasmuch as I don't expect to be a paid critic in five years, and it's scary and depressing to look ahead to having to redefine myself yet again).
So, anyway, this is a long-winded way of saying thanks for your thoughtful response, and I agree that food writing, like film writing, is undergoing a transformation. Heck, I even agree with your closing 'blah blah blah.'
Posted by: Hank Sartin | December 3, 2008 08:26 AM