Roses and Rants

-COLIN DUNLOP

Who are we really publishing for?

To answer that question, I'm going on a small tangent, but stick with it.

After spending a couple years in a newsroom and on deadline, my brain has become sharp. It's ready to go at a moments notice to beat the pressman. Being on the copy editing staff we were used to getting things late but having to make up for that lost time.

That's why when I started my critical writing class I knew it was going to be different than anything I had really done before. I never really stopped to smell the roses – there was never any time. It's not just me and journalism either. It seems it's all go, go, go in everyone's lives. The stock market's in the crapper, who has time for roses?

Well, gardeners for one.

Don't like metaphors? OK, I'll spell it out for you. The roses are art, like movies, television, books, food and performances. Gardeners are artists, such as painters, directors, writers, chefs and actors.

If you're following along carefully at this point then you've probably found an argument in there somewhere. Yes, I am insinuating that critique is as much for the artist as it is for the viewer. Without the critic no one would know how to get any better. Even the “error” of “trial and error” is defined by the choice words of those judging the merits and detriments of artistic expression.

This dynamic exchange, however, is under duress. As more people become vocal critics through the Internet, the voices coming at an artist become so large in number that the substantive argument is worthless. As a critic I have come to find that most reviews are a mix of the good and the bad. Some sites, like rottentomatoes.com, have begun to oversimplify the arguments into “thumbs up” and “thumbs down” categories. As a copy editor, one of the most potent lessons I learned was that whether something is good or bad is irrelevant without the “why.”

So the critic of the future is faced with a task not seen before. They must fight against the onslaught of simplistic verdicts and challenge their reader. That fight is being fought write here on these pages. The HBFP is a blog devoted to taking critique and articulating it.

This is, of course, in an unproven medium. Some Web sites have been shown to create money, but is the critique of Perez Hilton really substantive? Faced with a gloom and doom economy we may be seeing the decline of the critic with something real to say. They'll reemerge though. If the industry can ever find them a new home.