Airport Transit Thoughts On Criticism

20 8月 2024

@Iro asked:

What are your / do you have any specific tips or methods for evaluating media more critically?

methods to evaluate

i honestly watch/play/read something and then think about what i read. i don’t really do anything special, let alone use critical lenses. if i do that, it’s going to be retroactive.

i take pleasure and revulsion to be the most important and interesting aspect. the aesthetics of a work should guide me to reflect on what exists and what is missing.

but this could all be quite sophisticated to some folks. i was reading critical book and film reviews since i was young and developed a kind of taste on the kind of reviews i want to see.

which brings me to my next section:

reviews

the way i write my reviews is to consider it as something like a play report or a snapshot that tries to simulate my experience through the work. i want to capture how i feel about something because i’m probably going to reread the review at a later date and think about how i felt then.

and then, i try to articulate or enhance what i find to be most provocative. for the hayasaki no kuroyuri article, i wanted to make sure readers understand this is indeed an attack on japanese heteronormativity, so i looked around for anecdotes and philosophies that help explain metaphorically what the work is trying to do. it’s why i brought up sugita mio and my terrible encounter with that guy who hated lesbians but liked yuri.

then, i just write. i write till i reach the conclusion and think about what my ultimate message is. i usually cut down any sentence, change sections, do some more research, and revise again and again to make sure the point of the essay is clearly delineated.

the zambot 3 article makes for a good example. it was originally a bunch of fragments, but once i reached the toy section (this was a late addition and i realized i wanted to add this paratext in), i realized what i wanted to say about zambot 3. i basically cleared out paragraphs i sweated for hours because that’s what i had to do to make sure people get the oomph. i also reordered the paragraphs to make the reader go in a kind of journey that mimics my own and make them reach the conclusion by themselves.

for me, a good article/review isn’t about convincing people. it is a kind of narrative journey that i crafted so people can understand how i reached this conclusion. it is a shame when people use my articles to say xyz is good or bad when i think my reflections are more about “the friends we made along the way”, to use a popular meme. i want readers to think alongside me and think together on what this work could mean.

i have very little use of reviews and articles that simply display knowledge or critical power. that just bores the hell out of me. why i dislike northrop fyre and harold bloom. only book i’m cool with that is erich auerbach’s mimesis. but i mostly admire anthony lane the film reviewer and mike russo from the intfiction space for writing articles that are clearly grounded in the environment they’re writing in. they’re historicized. you know more or less when russo is writing it or how much research lane has done before watching the movie. i like this transparency.

conclusion

for me, the art of criticism is not about evaluating the work but evaluating and trying to accentuate the meaningful relationship between critic and work. i don’t think critics have some epic 20/20 vision that could peer into the essence of the work (in kantian terms, the thing in itself) and go “this work is about toilets and here’s why.” it’s always about the abstract layer, the way someone believes the work is about toilets and here’s why.

so in a way, reviews are actually more about how someone experienced a work and decided to talk about this. we learn more about the reviewer than the author in a certain way.

i often think about this when i write about untranslated media. for better or for worse, few people can check out the works that i have written about. when i wrote about argus, i knew that i wasn’t writing about the work. i really can’t. argus is a complicated work and i don’t believe anyone has done justice to it. however, i think i wrote pretty well on the way i understood argus. i brought in plotinus and discussed how i understood the ending as connected to the one. people can disagree with that, and that’s fine. it’s just how i read it.

i think what people mean when they say meaningful/good criticism is not stuff they agree with (if they want that, go to r/anime and write how some popular anime is underrated). rather, it’s anything that is provocative, shows something extremely different, and makes you go “huh, i didn’t think that way.”

i like my kitakawa post because fans of the work found it so different from the conventional read they began to appreciate the work even further. i like my 1000xRESIST post because the creative lead thought my assertion that it was a game made for a generation not born yet so interesting, and they’re able to reflect on the creation they’ve made. i like the reviews and articles i’ve written that have generated new ideas and narratives for a richer reading for people who read my stuff.

umberto eco, in his afterword to name of the rose, once described novels as a machine for generating interpretations. italo calvino talks about how the process of rereading leads to new ideas because we often encounter the same words in different ways. peter bayard believes the way we talk about books is more important than reading them. they’re all lofty ideas which i can disagree on its scale, but they are probably right in one thing: it’s fun to write something that makes someone else want to write new stuff.

so i think the best reviews are like the good stuff in science fiction: they instill a sense of wonder in people and make them speculate a new horizon, hopefully by making them pen a new thing.

i hope this helps. i don’t have any ideas on how to critically evaluate the essence, but i do have ideas on how i see criticism as a project that makes people become more curious and learn more about the wider world we live in.