Lost Transmissions: Critics
Created | Updated Feb 12, 2012
Entry: Critics.
It is well known that some critics enjoy their work, some critics write for notoriety and some are so bloody-minded that they have to live in secure isolation in case the recipients of their withering ire decide that legal action is a soft option.
The one critic who embodied all three of these precepts was Glor Raneer of Ackramil whose prose was so vile, so litigious that an entire legal profession sprang up in the towns around his remote home, cutting him off from civilisation entirely.
His review of the film "My Daughter's Octopus" based on the book of the same name by romantic powerhouse Yepin Wenno, was considered by aficionados to be one of his best. It began:
"To say that this film does not capture the delicacy of the novel is an understatement. It is as if the screenwriter has opened the book, read it, taken out all the actual words and constructed his narrative premise from the punctuation alone..."
Consequently the film, the production company, the actors, all the crew and an award winning catering company all went into liquidation, with Wenno herself never writing another word again, which left her fans far more bereft than if they had just read one of her sentimental novels.
The purpose of the critic is actually quite simple. Seeing an advertisement for the latest spectacle the curious public need an honest answer to the question "Yes, but is it any good?"
No critic in their right mind would reply "No. It isn't." as they are paid by the word and, in order for the auto-opinionated public to hang out in bars and complain about the lack of zeitgeist in the latest dandruff commercial, lengthy reasoning has to be provided.
A true criticism of a work will first lay out the core of the argument, deconstructing the elements that make up the fundamentals and then smash them to bits with a hammer and an industrial grade sack of wit. Unfortunately, this purely academic approach to things has never made anybody famous.
Critics in the public press have something extra, a magic ingredient that elevates them above all the rest to the heady stratosphere of criticism. They have all failed an art class.
This lingering childhood inadequacy, for reasons best left to their therapists, produces prose that is so extraordinarily quotable that they become artists in their own right, artists of the jibe, the sneer and the withering put-down.
Which is a pity really because all anyone really looks at in the review pages is the number of stars the new spectacle received.
Slowly the critics started to realise this and began to compete to produce the shortest, wittiest, most scathing comments that would catch the eye of the public and rescue their invisible reputations.
Bellik Fash began with a well received "Hold on to your money, and your lunch," for the revival of the play "The Rotten Harvest" by the Atonal Ensemble.
Baria Kwu replied with a pithy "Made me long for a knife," in response to the movie "Sadness For Spoons".
Pemmel Hardebron came out of retirement to challenge the youngsters with a long rambling diatribe on the nature of arts funding after missing the point completely when he managed to get a champagne cork stuck in his ear-horn.
Everyone was waiting for Raneer. He didn't disappoint.
That week Rau Demarke's novel "The Triptych" was published with some fanfare and the marketing budget of a small war. It was too big a target to pass up. In the morning the eager critics opened their papers for Raneers review.
No stars and two words.
"La Trine."
Entry Ends.
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