Do the Arts Need Critics? By Mike Fischer
Critics, Stephen Sondheim tells his fellow artists in Look, I Made a Hat (2011), “cause you to waste your time. And did I mention that they can steer people away from your show, just as they can hurt sales of a novel or put a crimp in further gallery showings of your paintings or concerts of your music? They can discourage both you and your audience.” Critics, the naysayers allege, deliberately emphasize the negative. They’re more intent on pursuing their own political and aesthetic agenda than they are in honestly judging what they see. They take themselves too seriously; this is entertainment, after all, and an audience ought to be left alone to have a good time. Finally: they’re parasites, living off the work of others who do something they themselves cannot. Throughout the 15 years during which I covered theater and wrote book reviews for the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, I heard many variations on these themes, from disgruntled actors and audience members as well as from directors and designers. The majority of those complaining were convinced I had zero sympathy for artists and didn’t have a clue what I was doing. Sondheim again, on critics: “most of them have little knowledge of the craft as it is practiced.” None of this is new, or peculiar to me. “The history of criticism,” writes New York Times film critic A.O. Scott in Better Living Through Criticism (2016), is “an endless cycle of complaint and accusation, a series of protests against the activity of criticism itself, and in particular against the blindness, stupidity, and destructive aggression of its practitioners.” Believe me, I get it. Here’s part of what I wrote in an open letter to the arts community when announcing that I was walking away from the Journal-Sentinel two years ago: “I’m also acutely aware that what all of us remember most are the occasions on which we’ve been criticized. No matter how gently such criticism is offered, it feels personal.” Not to mention, as Sondheim pointedly notes, that a critic’s words are “out there in public, that thousands of people are witnessing your humiliation.” Little wonder that so many people spend so much energy questioning critics’ right to exist. 8 | artsscene
