Powered by Google
Home
New This Week
Listings
8 days
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Art
Astrology
Books
Dance
Food
Hot links
Movies
Music
News + Features
Television
Theater
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Classifieds
Adult
Personals
Adult Personals
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Archives
Work for us
RSS
   

Questions and answers

BY BILL RODRIGUEZ

I’ll tell you what I tell everybody who steps up to promote this out-of-the-way Tierra del Fuegan restaurant they just discovered: I like a good flan as much as the next guy, but I’d rather die with a bon mot on my lips. Well, I haven’t really ever said that, but this time I had a couple of minutes to work on it.

The thing is, while doing restaurant reviews is as much fun as you’d think, being a professional dilettante — the Times calls it Cultural Reporting — is that and more. I don’t want to get hokey about it, but covering the arts is, well, an honor. Artists mine the depths, and writing about what they come up with is a privileged participation in the endeavor.

I know that some artists can’t abide the notion, never mind the existence, of critics. As playwright Christopher Hampton said, "Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost what it feels about dogs." I recall one director — a mediocre director, though — stating from the floor at a panel I was on that he saw no need for reviews at all. What a sad failure to admit. What’s writing a review, after all, but formalizing a discussion you might have strolling through the lobby after the performance? Most criticism of critics has to do with the harm that can be done because their voices carry farther than normal.

Critical writing is just critical thinking with a printing press at your disposal. If lack of critical thinking is causing the Downfall of American Education (not to mention the political system), wouldn’t its practice mean the Uplift of the Arts? Think about it.

So I thought I’d take this opportunity to answer some questions that come up, sometimes in body language, about making a living making judgments. Here goes.

Q: So, who died and elected you Pronouncement Pope?

A: Can’t tell whether to credit what you’re reading without a credential? To paraphrase Alfonso Bedoya, the Mexican bandit in The Treasure of Sierra Madre, "I don’t have to show you any stinking credentials!" But, as it happens, I did bring a few. My first review was of a dinner theater production of Charley’s Aunt, in Montclair, NJ, in high school, for my journalism merit badge. That’s still my favorite certification. Continued doing arts writing, off and on, through journalism and English majors, campus editorships, creative writing master’s, and a stint as arts editor for a small-town weekly. Practice, and study, makes less imperfect. I’ve written theater for American Theatre and the New York Times — no critical pieces — on and about filmmakers for Premiere and the Times.

For years after starting to freelance for the Phoenix in 1989, I wouldn’t write a restaurant review because I thought that I couldn’t do so adequately unless I could cook what I was describing. It eventually became obvious that consuming heaps of nim chow permitted me to observe whether they were tightly wrapped and the Thai basil fresh. And although I still have the sense to not compete with my wife in the kitchen, regarding other review subjects, I’ve written a practice novel and a practice play or two, largely for the commiserating anguish.

Q: But where do you get off objectifying what’s inherently subjective?

A: I may be wrong, but to preface every judgment with "in my humble opinion" would interrupt the flow of my prose style. So that reservation will have to remain implicit, Dear Reader. We’re all hip to the fact that in news reporting objectivity is an ideal, never an accomplishment. So why not accept that a reviewer offers subjective observations? Don’t you appreciate a cogent opinion you disagree with? Doesn’t it help clarify your own point of view?

Q: Aren’t you spreading yourself thin, covering the arts rather than just one of them?

A: For one thing, as with those restaurant reviews, nobody wants to commit themselves in ink until they can articulate and defend what they’re talking about. I love dance and have seen scores of performances, but I haven’t studied dance, so I’ve written exactly one dance review. Which leads to another thing. A reader can get a lot out of a response that’s more descriptive — a re-viewing — than proscriptive. When information is the main offering, observations that might be expanded into critical essays can be conveyed not only more readably but with enough leavening to better digest, maybe even nourish.

Q: So, what are your responsibilities as a critic that don’t require opinionated ranting?

Let’s see . . . .

To clarify what was intended and gauge whether and how well that was accomplished.

To assess whether what was attempted is worthwhile.

To keep the eye on the prize. Actors and directors avoid the tendency to lunge for each other’s throats by constantly coming back to talking about the work itself. Good idea.

You get the general principle.

You wuss. Weren’t you too soft on that (so-so/bad) (stage production/restaurant/artwork/book)?

A: I didn’t think so at the time and probably still don’t. And you don’t have to hop up and down and point to convey that an attempt doesn’t succeed in some ways. Fortunately, few human efforts fail in all ways. A theater company, author, or restaurant won’t likely get reviewed in the first place if it hadn’t had successes in the past.

Q: You brute. How could you pan all that hard work?

A: With great difficulty. It’s much easier to write favorably than critically. (Unless you’re being snotty, which is great fun for everyone in a pan of some dreadful slasher Hollywood flick, but just bad manners in someone’s hometown.) Let’s take theater, for example. All happy audiences are happy in more or less the same ways — the promised goods were delivered, intact and on time. When an effort fails, finding and articulating specific reasons is less like picking nits than like locating the fleas on a dog that’s scratching itself to death. Of course, we come with different expectations to a college production than we come to Trinity Rep. Different strokes for different folks, and student actors get lashed enough as it is.

Any questions?


Issue Date: October 24 - 30, 2003
Back to the Features table of contents








home | feedback | masthead | about the phoenix | find the phoenix | advertising info | privacy policy | work for us

 © 2000 - 2007 Phoenix Media Communications Group