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Journalism Practice

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Film Criticism in the Twenty-First Century

Andrew McWhirter

To cite this article: Andrew McWhirter (2015): Film Criticism in the Twenty-First Century,Journalism Practice, DOI: 10.1080/17512786.2015.1051372

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17512786.2015.1051372

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FILM CRITICISM IN THE TWENTY-FIRSTCENTURYSix Schools

Andrew McWhirter

Beginning with a research question that sought to discover what film criticism actually is, the

article uncovers important distinctions between scholarly and practice-orientated conceptions of

contemporary film criticism. Through a qualitative mixed-method approach, the article first

explores the relevant scholarly literature and a sample of content carriers of film criticism before

moving into fieldwork to test findings. Through the process of triangulating these data-sets

emerges the motivation to create a schools approach for post-millennia film criticism. The

empirical data cover North America and the United Kingdom but the findings may have

explanatory potential beyond these territories. Beginning by looking at research on criticism from

such prominent scholars as Noël Carrol and Terry Eagleton, a dialectic is uncovered between

aesthetic evaluations and socio-political comment. These ideas are then tested in fieldwork by

undertaking semi-structured, in-depth qualitative interviews with 30 film critics at two major

international film festivals. There is a clear disconnect between scholarly ideas about criticism and

two-thirds of the film critics’ conceptions of criticism in their daily routines. From this particular

difference of opinion, an Academic School in comparison to Trade and Populist Schools emerges.

In turn, this prompts a reappraisal of content carrier data approximated against the fieldwork

data and leads to the conceptualising of additional schools: Sophisticated, Fandom and

Consumer.

KEYWORDS critics; cultural journalism; film criticism; Noël Carroll; Terry Eagleton

Introduction

This article asks how film criticism is conceptualised and compares scholarlyperspectives on criticism more broadly with film criticism in practice. This involves areview of literature covering the functions of criticism and the discovery of importantscholarly themes to be tested in interviews, and against a further qualitative methodo-logical backdrop of observations at film festivals and analysis of content carriers. This workstarts from a research question that sets out to discover what film criticism actually is. Byconducting a literature review that indicates a commonality between film criticism andcriticism more broadly via a dialectic of aesthetics and socio-politics, it becomes importantto then survey practitioners to ascertain whether or not such theorising on criticism isapplicable to their own conceptualisations. With answers showing a difference betweenthe majority of critics sampled and scholarly literature on criticism, and thus a distinctionbetween two groups, it then became pertinent to ask, what other schools or ideas aboutfilm criticism might be classifiable? In short, a mixed-method approach using the views ofscholars on criticism alongside continued familiarisation with mainly UK and NorthAmerican content carriers was tested in the field with results that uncovered a disconnect,or in the Hegelian sense a dialectic, that provided grounds for the conceptualisation of Six

Journalism Practice, 2015http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17512786.2015.1051372© 2015 Taylor & Francis

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Schools of Contemporary Film Criticism: Consumer, Fandom, Populist, Trade, Sophisticatedand Academic. An English-language market was chosen because of its size and the regardthat some publications there are held in.

It is recognised that research into critics and the moving image has witnessed someresurgence in recent years with historical enquiries into film critic/industry behaviours (Bell2010, 2011a, 2011b; Gibbs 2013; Selfe 2012), edited collections (Clayton and Klevan 2011)and entire books dedicated to television critics (Rixon 2011). This research belongs to thefield of cultural journalism more broadly, itself only recently emerging from thedominance of news and political journalism studies (Harries and Wahl-Jørgensen 2007;Hellman and Jaakkola 2011, 2; Jaakkola 2012; Verboord 2014, 2). The article begins withthe methodology due to its multiple data collections and mixed-method approachculminating in the formation of Six Schools, before then discussing relevant scholarlyliterature on criticism and moving on to detail and reflect on the conceptualisation of theschools.

Methods

The Six Schools model is conceptualised after interviews and participant observa-tions at two international film festivals whereby not all schools are represented equally,therefore some of the formation of the model relies on examination of content carriers offilm criticism. The article uses a multi-method approach, desk researching not only existingacademic literature but sustained qualitative interpretations of the swathes of filmjournalism being written in the United Kingdom and North America during 2010–2012(Table 1). During this time, 133 sources of film criticism were viewed over a two-yearperiod with the aim of identifying patterns across a broad range of media: 25 newspapersand alternative weekly newspapers, 43 magazines and journals, 27 website-only publica-tions, 21 individual blogs, and 17 other carriers of film criticism such as podcasts,distribution companies, curatorial projects and exhibitors, including a repertory theatreand on-demand streaming services. Qualitative content analysis (Bryman 2012, 565–589)was used, including semiotics and discourse analysis, and favoured due to the number ofoutlets and time span but also the fact that themes and codes were not all applicable toall sources.

The qualitative nature of media texts can be revealed by searching for themes inoutputs (Bryman 2012, 552). Some of the areas considered across this content were:evaluation, socio-political engagement, jargon, PR, press kit material, image use, videocontent, complicity with copyright, complicity with embargoes, access to artists, breakingnews or reviews first, publication status, critic status, intended audience, size and reach,length of content, tone and style, time stamp (if online), among others. The analysis of thecontent carriers was ongoing and took place pre-and post-fieldwork.

This returning to the sources perhaps has more in common with EthnographicContent Analysis or ECA, with movements back and forth between conceptualisation anddata collection, analysis and interpretation (Bryman 2012, 559), and there is precedence forthe use of documents in qualitative research (543). Thus, the sample shares affinity withtheoretical sampling in that it was “an ongoing process rather than a distinct and singlestage” with refinement of the categories emerging out of the course of analysing data(419); this is an iterative “interplay between the collection and analysis of data” (566). Inresearching English-language film criticism it was logical to cover the largest markets in

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TABLE 1UK and North American publications studied

Newspapers andalternative press Magazines and journals Websites Individual blogs Other

The Birmingham Post American Cinematographer Ain’t It Cool News Bordwell, David (http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog) Creative ScreenwritingThe Boston Phoenix Artforum AV Club, The Onion Campbell, Zach (http://elusivelucidity.blogspot.com) Criterion CastThe Chicago Reader The Big Issue BBC Dumas, Andre (http://horrordigest.blogspot.co.uk/) The Criterion CollectionThe ChicagoSun-Times

Box Office Magazine DVD Beaver Everleth, Mike (http://www.undergroundfilmjournal.com/about-underground-film-journal/)

The Documentary Blog

Daily Express Bright Lights Film Journal Electric Sheep Grant, Catherine (http://filmstudiesforfree.blogspot.co.uk/)

Fandor

Daily Mail CineAction Eye for Film Hill, Katrina (http://actionflickchick.com/superaction/) FilmcastDaily Record Cineaste Film.com Hudson, David (http://daily.greencine.com/) FilmspottingThe Daily Telegraph CinemaScope Film-Philosophy Johanson, Maryann (http://www.flickfilosopher.com/) Find Any FilmEdinburghEvening News

Cinema Journal Film Threat Kehr, Dave (http://www.davekehr.com/) The Glasgow Film Theatre

The Evening Times Close-Up Flixter Kenny, Glen (http://somecamerunning.typepad.com) Hollywood Babble-OnThe Financial Times The Dissolve The Grid Kittle, Alex (http://www.filmforager.com/) KCRW’s The TreatmentGlobe and Mail DVD Monthly Frames Cinema

JournalLee, Kevin B. (http://alsolikelife.com/shooting/) Masters of Cinema

The Guardian Empire HeyuGuys Lisanti, Tom (http://www.sixtiescinema.com/blog/) Movie Review QueryEngine

The Herald Entertainment Weekly IMDb Lyne, Charlie (http://www.ultraculture.co.uk/) MUBIThe Independent Film Comment IndieWIRE Mann, Sarah (http://cinema-splendor.blogspot.co.uk/) The Picture House PodcastLondon EveningStandard

Film International LOLA Rosenbaum, Jonathan (http://jonathanrosenbaum.com) The Projection Booth

The Metro (UK) Film Quarterly Metacritic Shambu, Girish (http://girishshambu.blogspot.co.uk/) Slate Spoiler SpecialsNew York Post The Hollywood Reporter Moving Image

SourceShamon, Danny (http://dansmoviereport.blogspot.co.uk/)

The New York Times Kinematograph Weekly Reverse Shot Singh, Jai Arjun (http://jaiarjun.blogspot.co.uk/p/about-me.html)

The Observer LA Weekly Roger Ebert.com Weatherford, Matt (http://www.filthycritic.com)The Salt Lake Tribune The List Rotten Tomatoes Various writers (http://www.slantmagazine.com/house)

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TABLE 1 (Continued)

Newspapers andalternative press Magazines and journals Websites Individual blogs Other

The Scotsman Little White Lies RougeThe Sun Movie Maker SalonThe Times Monthly Film Bulletin Senses of CinemaThe Wall Street Journal The New Yorker Slant

Newsweek SlateNYArts Yahoo! MoviesPremiereQuarterly Review of Film andVideoRolling StoneScreenScreen InternationalSight & SoundTimeTime Out: NY & LondonTotal FilmTribune MagazineTributeVanity FayreVarietyVideo WatchdogThe Village Voice

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North America, as Verboord (2014) does with the Amazon-owned Internet Movie Database(IMDb) and Warner Bros.-owned Rotten Tomatoes (although of course anyone cancontribute to those sites), and as Holopirek (2007), Lupo (2007) and Bordwell (1989) doin their respective researches into film criticism.

While analysing publications provided topics for further enquiry, the main motiva-tion for the project was to canvas the opinions of film critics at length, so the options opento survey and observe a number of critics from a variety of different publications dictatedthe best possible locations as international film festivals. Chosen prior to the formulationof the Six Schools, and therefore not intended to be representative of the variety ofcriticism that the model expresses, it was decided that a significant enough breadth of“types” of film critics would converge at the Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF)and the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), both cities with highly regarded festivalframeworks, embracing online engagement. Moreover, most critics who expressed aninterest in participating also preferred to be interviewed face-to-face after initial contactwas made via email or over the telephone. A total of 94 critics from a wide variety ofpublications were contacted. They were deemed to be elite due to their profile in filmculture and attributable to the status of experts; it is recognised that in terms of elite andexpert interviews there is much crossover (Bogner, Littig, and Menz 2009). From this 94, 30interviews were conducted—the majority of which took place at both film festivals, lastingapproximately 40 minutes and producing over 120,000 transcript words—mainly withprofessional critics but with some amateur writers too with the aim to access the self-images of arts journalists as others have before (Harries and Wahl-Jørgensen 2007). Thefull list of interviewees and their respective publications can be seen in Table 2. Given thebroad nature of the research question in attempting to find out what film criticism is,talking to experts in the exploratory phase of a project is an efficient and concentratedmethod of gathering data (Bogner, Littig, and Menz 2009, 2).

Participant observation coincided with the requirement for a press pass andadditional access to the areas that film critics would frequent such as press events,conferences and screenings. These are all areas that can be viewed as (at least one of) thecritics’ “natural environments” offering the potential to come close to a “naturalisticemphasis” (Bryman 2012, 495). In discussing the popularity of her co-authored film blogwith David Bordwell, and how it has since benefited the forging of links with industry,Kristin Thompson (2012) acknowledges that festival passes and other access benefits canaid scholarly research and being accredited at a prestigious event like TIFF certainlybenefited access to higher-profile critics willing to talk. The location of the film festival asan area for research also has a prehistory (Archibald 2012; Bart 1997; Beauchamp andBéhar 1992; Craig 2006; Mazdon 2006; Coreless and Drake 2007), with some of thesescholars also working as film critics. Film festivals have also grown in importance both inEurope (Aas 1997) and worldwide (Iordanova and Rhyne 2009; Iordanova and Cheung2010, 2011) and have become a respected field of enquiry over the last 20 years, withwork coming out of St Andrews University and the ever-growing Film Festival ResearchNetwork organised by Skadi Loist and Marijke de Valck.

Scholarly Perspectives on Criticism

This article seeks to uncover how film criticism is conceptualised. From thisinvestigation it is apparent that any one piece of literature that can express what film

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criticism is, is in short supply. Therefore, to gain a perspective on what it might be, it becamenecessary to move to tangential areas on the act and function of criticism more broadly.Using the contrasting works of cognitivist, philosopher and film scholar Noël Carroll (2009)in On Criticism and the Marxist critic Terry Eagleton (1984) in The Function of Criticism, aninitial enquiry was formulated to survey some content carriers of film criticism andsubsequently to put to film practitioners about the relevance of such academic thinking intheir own criticism. It is therefore important to detail the connections between scholars oncriticism more broadly to find correlations in examples from the history of film criticism.

When Rónán McDonald (2007) published The Death of the Critic, a book whichdiscusses literary and arts criticism across the academic and journalistic spheres at a timeof proposed crisis, it was not the first sustained look at arts criticism in the UnitedKingdom in recent decades. Although he largely focuses on the world of literature in TheFunction of Criticism, Eagleton (1984) charts a history of European (beginning with English-language) criticism from the early eighteenth century, again covering the spectrum fromjournalism to academic writing. In the years since McDonald’s work, US scholar Carroll’s

TABLE 2Film critics interviewed, listing main affiliation

Name Date Location Affiliation

Ansen, David 13 September 2011 TIFF, Toronto NewsweekBrooks, Xan 8 June 2011 Email The GuardianCampbell, Zach 27 October 2011 Email BloggerCousins, Mark 8 June 2011 EIFF, Edinburgh The TimesEverleth, Mike 18 November 2011 Email Underground Film JournalHarkness, Alistair 19 June 2011 EIFF, Edinburgh The ScotsmanHunter, Allan 18 June 2011 EIFF, Edinburgh The Daily ExpressHynes, Eric 16 June 2011 TIFF, Toronto Time Out: NYJames, Nick 13 July 2011 Telephone Sight & SoundKoehler, Robert 17 September 2011 TIFF, Toronto VarietyKohn, Eric 9 September 2011 TIFF, Toronto IndieWIREKoresky, Michael 16 June 2011 EIFF, Edinburgh Reverse ShotLawrenson, Ed 17 June 2011 EIFF, Edinburgh The Big IssueLee, Kevin B. 10 September 2011 TIFF, Toronto FandorLucas, Tim 7 October 2011 Email Video WatchdogLyne, Charlie 10 June 2011 Email Ultra CultureMeans, Sean P. 7 December 2011 Email The Salt Lake TribuneMurray, Noel 9 September 2011 TIFF, Toronto AV Club, The OnionNayman, Adam 13 September 2011 TIFF, Toronto The Globe and MailPeary, Gerald 11 July 2011 Telephone The Boston PhoenixPeranson, Mark 15 September 2011 TIFF, Toronto CinemaScopePorton, Richard 17 September 2011 TIFF, Toronto CineastePulver, Andrew 17 June 2011 EIFF, Edinburgh The GuardianRosenbaum, Jonathan 4 November 2009 University of

GlasgowFilm Comment, Slate

Shambu, Girish 15 September 2011 TIFF, Toronto BloggerSmith, Damon 21 June 2011 EIFF, Edinburgh Birmingham PostTaylor, Kate 21 June 2011 EIFF, Edinburgh Electric SheepTolley, Gail 21 June 2011 EIFF, Edinburgh The List, BBCVizcarrondo, SaraMaria

9 September 2011 TIFF, Toronto Boxoffice Magazine,Rotten Tomatoes

Wilkinson, Amber 23 June 2011 EIFF, Edinburgh Eye for Film

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(2009) On Criticism sought to similarly outline the functions of criticism by makingreference to its past. Carroll (2009) argues for the return of criticism to its ancient Greekorigins, which he claims valued judgement above all else. He makes a provocative case forthe foundation of criticism to have at its centre one key aim: objective evaluation.Etymologically speaking, the term critic is a derivative of the Greek word kritikós: one whois able to judge, the noun use from the adjective, from krites judge, which is in turn fromkrinein, to separate, decide, judge (Barnhart 2003, 236). As Carroll aims to reunitecontemporary critical connotations to this central idea of evaluation, to judge andevaluate is something that, for him, has been decoupled from arts criticism.

Overall, Carroll’s focus is on the object and he even argues that politics can beremoved from criticism altogether. By contrast, Eagleton borrows the public sphere theory,first developed in 1962 by Jürgen Habermas (1991) in The Structural Transformation of thePublic Sphere. In his own description of the origins of criticism, Eagleton (1984, 9) notesthat modern European criticism arrived due to a political struggle for recognition againstan absolutist state. From this initial discussion of the birth of modern criticism, Eagletonpositions what he advocates as criticism’s key function at the heart of his argument:because modern criticism was born of socio-politics it therefore must fulfil a substantivesocial function (7). Similarly to Carroll, Eagleton laments the loss of this particular functionof criticism to public relations spin or retreats towards the academy. The functions thatboth speak of, however, can be found throughout the short history of film criticism.

In 1896 there are two examples discussing the Lumière brothers’ work from socio-political (Russian writer and Marxist, Maxim Gorky, writing in the Nizhegorodski listoknewspaper) and more aesthetically evaluative perspectives (a British writer, known only asO. Winter writing in the New Review). Laura Marcus (2010, 4) shows that in the first fewdecades of cinema, critics were preoccupied with either what cinema was aestheticallydoing or what its effects were on society, and sometimes both.

There are examples from the middle period of film history too, in the pages of oneof film criticism’s most influential journals, the French high-brow publication Cahiers duCinéma which, ironically for one of the most political publications, started out in 1951 bytrying to prove the aesthetic value of cinema as the seventh art (Bickerton 2009, 1). Similartensions between which function should take precedence are found in the pages of theBritish Film Institute’s journal of record Sight & Sound in 1956 (Anderson 1956; James2008, 18). Bell (2011a, 197) finds that some British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) editorsaround the same period informed their film critics that they should pay more attention tosocial aspects rather than formal technique. More recently, we can see such functionsdebated in the pages of US film journal of the political left Cineaste (The Editors 2005, 4;2013a, 2013b).

Practitioner Response

With a dialectic emerging from the work of Carroll and Eagleton and qualitativecontent analysis of various publications revealing that the functions of aestheticjudgement and socio-political commitment were visible from the history of film criticism,it was now pertinent to take this enquiry and test the relevance to practitioners. Theaesthetics/socio-politics dialectic was not presented to the critics at first, this happenedonly after they had responded individually to the open-ended question: “What is filmcriticism?” It became clear that although some practitioners identified with such positions

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and worked with informed ideas about aesthetic evaluation and socio-politics, the majorityof critics did not consider their profession or vocation in this way. Their responses, detailedmomentarily, triangulated with the data from desk research, revealed a disconnectbetween scholarly concepts and industry practice—although these findings support thesomewhat smaller arguments made by both Carroll and Eagleton that their functions arelacking. Nevertheless there was a division, at least between ideals, to be mapped.

Six Schools of Contemporary Film Criticism

An amalgamation of desk research, interviewing and observing film criticism andcritics provided the grounds for conceptualising Six Schools of Contemporary FilmCriticism in existence today: Academic, Sophisticated, Trade, Populist, Fandom andConsumer (see Figure 1). Interviews with film critics revealed that scholarly thinking oncriticism was saying one thing but film critics another. This offered up the first division ofschools as that of Academic, Trade and Populist, because those who largely disagreed withthe views of Eagleton or Carroll, or did not recognise such thinking in their work, all camefrom publications which inhabited mainstream populist realms or trade arenas. Combinedwith qualitative content analysis, another school was also the product of this divisive

Sophis�cated School

High-brow discourses 1) Art 2) Literary 3) Cinephilia

Academic School

Populist School Trade School

School of Fandom

Low-brow discourses 1)Industry/entertainment2) Journalese 3) Fan-boys

Consumer School

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discourse, because those critics who did recognise an affinity with film criticism asdialectical of aesthetic-based judgements and socio-political comment were those whocame from publications, not scholarly, but more considered and researched than trade orpopular outlets. This school is termed the Sophisticated School.

There is precedence for taking this approach to film criticism. David Bordwell (1989)developed a typology as he examines the institution of film criticism prior to thenetworked digital media age and, more recently, Paul Rixon (2011) tries to do somethingsimilar with television criticism. However, what sets this research apart is that it begins tomake more pronounced and nuanced distinctions between types of film criticism. While itwas fieldwork results that prompted the idea, these schools were, on reflection, alsolargely informed by desk research. For instance, initially tracing any binary of aestheticsand socio-politics was informed by many journals and publications which could be said tobe either academic or more sophisticated than the mainstream. The sample of criticsconsisted of Populist, Trade and Sophisticated School members in the main. However,through qualitative content analysis of outlets carrying film criticism (see Table 1), it wasclear that there were more schools in existence. In some ways the interviewees alsocontributed to this idea with a persistent and skewed discourse of negative amateurconnotations by using the term “fan-boys”, even though amateurs also inhabit theSophisticated School. Clearly there was more than just the idea of the professional in filmcriticism today. In other ways, observations were useful in establishing the remaining twoFandom and Consumer School categories. For example, there were three main ways thatled to conclusions of inexperience and disruption to professional ethics: some critics weresilent at intimate press conferences, some were complicit with publicist demands forinstant opinions, and two even recorded the opening 10 minutes of press and industryscreenings on their mobile phones.

Defining the Schools

School is defined here by a group of writers or institutions sharing similar ideas andmethods, and although they may simultaneously contribute to and occupy multipleschools, their critical manifesto (how they operate in the sphere of film criticism at baselevel) is determined by the dominance of one school. The formation of these schools isbased, again, on both empirical data and an analysis of a sample of UK and NorthAmerican outlets containing film criticism. Therefore, it is important to outline what theseschool characteristics are in detail, beginning with a school formed from the digital mediaera, that of consumer reviews and reportage. The functional aspects of star-rating aside inmainstream reviewing, the Consumer School can be categorised as writers wishing toconvey their views on cinema and individual films; this can take the form of lengthyreviews/reports on below-the-line comment threads and IMDb, as well as more recentmicro-blogging aphoristic statements. This is the most under-represented school in thisresearch in terms of the content carriers and also the sample of interviewees. It can bedifficult at times to distinguish this school from the School of Fandom because writers willat times have been motivated to contribute and participate in the dialogue in such a waywhich exposes their partiality via a positive endorsement or active defence. In her closelyrelated category of “citizen reviewers”, Jodi Holopirek (2007) finds that many of thesewriters often concentrate solely on the entertainment value of films and whether certainfan expectations have been fulfilled.

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Holopirek (2007) examines the changing nature of film criticism from the content ofreviews to find clear differences between citizen reviews and professional ones. Verboord(2014) has also researched the rise of peer-produced criticism online, taking intoconsideration many similar themes, such as aesthetic evaluation and institutionalisation,with an additional framework of media attention given to specific films. He looked at 624film reviews and finds that the rise in peer reviewing adds a further dimension to filmcriticism, as is argued here. However, this dimension needs to be separated from the ideaof fandom in film criticism.

Fandom, which generally indicates strong interests or admiration and essentially abias towards a given genre, filmmaker or actor, is more purposeful than the ConsumerSchool because contributors are dedicated to the craft of writing; sometimes this passionis for writing about cinema as a hobby more than any specialisation or deep engagementwith specifics, more visible in the forms chosen to publish (blog, website, etc.) rather thanin comment sections or aggregate database structures. Fandom is often negatively framedas fan-boy writing by a number of professionals seeking to police their boundaries, whichis not always conducive to critical thought, and this does little to promote the qualitywhich exists. A more objective critical voice can (sometimes) be found in this school, forinstance Charlie Lyne writing at the UK blog Ultra Culture. Lyne comments “My workcertainly isn’t half as intellectual or well-reasoned as that of a lot of ‘professional’ critics,but I don’t think that’s what people are looking for from my blog” (email interview withauthor, 10 June 2011). However, more often than not the dominant tone in the School ofFandom is not just personable or informal because at times whatever is inventoried ordiscussed is an endorsement in itself. Here the critic as agent becomes less important asthe object takes precedence. Beyond the written form there is this closeness to the objectfound in particular in some audiovisual criticism; of course no critic is going to dedicatethe time to produce a video on something they regard as unworthy of their time. Oftenthe School of Fandom is a transitory period for writers, as it is for Lyne who contributes toThe Guardian and BBC. When contacted, some fans no longer wrote, with some showingself-effacing behaviour. Here a response from Matt Weatherford, AKA The Filthy Critic, isfairly typical, “I am no longer reviewing movies. Even if I were, I wasn’t a real critic andwouldn’t have provided much insight into anything like an intellectual process” (emailcommunication, 15 August 2011). At the level of fandom, newsroom contexts such asreporting first on events or first-look features extend the idea of Harries and Wahl-Jorgensen (2007, 620) that “arts journalism should be understood within the larger contextof newsroom professional cultures”. In line with Verboord’s (2014, 15) argument that“peer-produced content generally draws more on popular aesthetic than on high artdiscourse”, many of the content carriers attributable to fandom do write about popularfilms in the main, but there are exceptions such as Mike Everleth writing at theUnderground Film Journal about micro-independents; he may straddle the boundaries offandom and sophistication.

Arguably, the bias towards a certain genre or filmmaker which takes place infandom also transpires in the Sophisticated School in the form of cinephilic writing. But asa general rule, this school distinguishes itself in being able to interpret complex issues viacertain experience or knowledge and it is, at times, less clear whether strong partialinterests exist towards what is being critically engaged with—apart from in video essays,as noted. At the same time, this school’s publishing is most closely related to film critic andscholar Adrian Martin’s (2008) “Middle Ground” idea, in that it promotes long-form writing

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but also has an awareness of the non-specialist reader who it tries to compel, if not alsoentertain. This school often blurs the distinctions between amateur and professional filmwriting, challenging the notion of expertise, and can be found in publications like Cineasteor the US online magazine Reverse Shot. The latter publication started in 2003 and hasbeen referred to by influential New York critic Eric Hynes as “now very much theestablishment of US film criticism” (interview with author, 16 June 2011). This type ofcriticism can also be found in individual blogs, such as that written by chemical-engineer-by-trade cinephile Girish Shambu. Dealing in invariably higher levels of discourse andhigh-brow cinema, unlike findings from Harries and Wahl-Jorgensen (2007, 635) that find“the self-image of arts journalists is self-serving”, this is not the tone of critics such asRobert Koehler writing at CinemaScope or Catherine Grant writing at Film Studies for Free.There does not seem to be the same level of elitism as with “arts exceptionalism” (Harriesand Wahl-Jorgensen 2007), or through a pronounced aesthetic paradigm over ajournalistic one (Hellman and Jaakkola 2011, 6), discussed of arts journalism more broadly,applicable here to film critics in the Sophisticated School. Perhaps this could be related tocinema as the last categorised Art (if one is willing to discount television and computergames). There are mixed and varied results across the sample, with individuals seeingthemselves as critics before journalists and vice versa.

In terms of criticism, and not just film industry news, the Trade School dealsprimarily with publications and writers working for those publications which areattempting to predict, firstly, an audience for the film and, secondly, whether thataudience will make the film a financial and or critical success. Scholars have contextualisedthe Trade School in the past through the ways that audience taste is discussed there. In hisexamination of Kinematograph Weekly in the 1930s, a trade newspaper for the UK filmindustry, James (2006, 229) suggests a widespread but problematic perception that filmtrade personnel “were supposed to know [audience taste] best”. This perception holdstoday as film critics writing for this school are aware of the expectations placed upon themto use their expertise as a predictive tool for publications such as Screen International. Afreelancer to that trade outlet, UK critic Ed Lawrenson admits to having failed to predict amarket for the US remake Funny Games (2007, also directed by Michael Haneke who madethe original) and then it bankrupted distributor Metro Tartan in 2008 (interview withauthor, 17 June 2011). Fellow Screen contributor Allan Hunter remarks on trade criticismgenerally: “I suppose it’s a gut feeling based on however many years you’ve been seeingmovies and reviewing movies. But you can still be spectacularly wrong. And spectacularlyright!” (interview with author, 18 June 2011). More implicitly, writers working in this tradesphere also distinguish the relative merits of different types of cinema and genres. Forinstance, historically the focus of Variety or The Hollywood Reporter has been on Americanstudio movies but more recently publications such as IndieWIRE exist to cater forindependent filmmakers and their audiences.

The Populist School relates to content which is reaching large readerships as part ofentertainment, news sources or journalistic institutions with a certain heritage. Perhapsmore than any other school, publications and writers here consider audiences over andabove critical thought processes because this sphere is bound by strictures of capitalism.More often than not, this means instantly consumable and entertaining information whichcan be easily understood with minimum effort. This is arguably the school where theindividual critic’s voice is least distinguishable unless, perhaps, they are a celebrity or starcritic working for a large organ, such as A. O. Scott or Manohla Dargis at The New York

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Times. Even then the argument exists that these critics are only read because they write forthat gatekeeper publication. For some these restrictions can be too much, as freelancecritic Damon Smith claims:

When writing for other commercial publications, the Time Outs the Boston Globes, all I’mthinking about is the audience because I’m getting paid to think about the audience.Because I’m getting paid to write in a particular style, for a particular audience … I canonly tell you that for me personally it drove me absolutely fucking insane and I couldn’tdo it anymore. And I could only put my heart into something that for me felt purelyexpressive. I just wanted to say what I wanted to say. I didn’t want to think about any ofthese other things, even if it meant I wasn’t going to get paid to do it. (interview withauthor, 21 June 2011)

It is clear that most of the interviewees writing at this level are experts in their fieldbut to say, as Harries and Wahl-Jorgensen (2007, 620) do of the ideal arts journalist, thatthe film critic is more extensively qualified than the news reporter is problematic. It isagain a point raised by Verboord (2014, 4) when distinguishing amateur film critics asthose “who have not had formal training”. Many critics are of the opinion that the popularpress actually devalues expertise by preference towards the opinions of the laypersoncritic, with some alluding to the fact that they themselves have no formal training orindeed pointing to the fact that, beyond film studies, no formal training actually exists.This is compatible with conversations had in participant observation and views held in therecent past, such as those of Serge Daney in the early 1990s questioning why the presswill not use experts in cinema to write about cinema (Rosenbaum 1995, 261). It is worthstating that, based mainly on observations of journals and the work of Bordwell (1989),and then the larger frame of criticism more broadly from Eagleton and Carroll, that theAcademic School is the least concerned with audience or commercial pressures and worksalmost disinterestedly, often with in-depth specialisms to which the other schools (withthe exception of the Sophisticated School) may only ever allude. This criticism is found injournals such as Screen and Cinema Journal, and while it might be thought of in largerresearch terms as film scholarship or film analysis more broadly, criticism does still exist infilm studies, however sparingly (Clayton and Klevan 2011).

There are no claims to a correct or preferred model of film criticism and worthwhilewriting can be found at all levels although clearly some voices will be more marginalisedthan others (Bourdieu 1984). However, there is no quotidian reality of film criticism thatthe model alienates or prejudices (for instance the mainstream) as being the everyday;each school has its own everyday. The model exists to help gain a perspective beyond theproposed dialectic of aesthetics and socio-politics and practitioners own ideas on whatthey do. This model also allows for a framing of critical responses when analysing furtherdata, for future research into film criticism or an introduction to the subject for journalismand media students.

Some Reflections on the Model

The hexagonal, honeycomb or “hive” form (Figure 1) suggests a visible separationbetween categories but also the connected and fluxed nature of practitioners whoseagency is busily shaped by professional career rhythms. Populist, Trade and SophisticatedSchools are represented most in the empirical data and the other Schools are largely

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formed based on analysis of content carriers, although undoubtedly experiences inparticipant observation exercises at both festivals, such as meeting young amateur writersand seeing how some inexperienced bloggers operate in the press environment, feed intothis informed design. The nature of the hive is that individuals or institutions can belongintermittently, interchangeably, simultaneously and even conversely of one another.A critic may write across schools at any one time for populist, trade and sophisticatedpublications, as Lawrenson does for The Big Issue (Populist), Screen International (Trade)and Sight & Sound (Sophisticated). Institutions may occupy more than one mode ofaddress (a website such as Ain’t It Cool News, started by US amateur writer Harry Knowlesin 1996, is an example of both populist film criticism as well as fandom), and critics maynot be defined by their publications’ categorisation(s). For instance, Dargis or PeterBradshaw are not entirely populist just because they write for large circulation outlets, TheNew York Times and The Guardian, respectively. There are multiple axes of categorisationand, as alluded to, the hive structure is modular in that each school remains distinct buttabular in that each category contributes to the overall study of film criticism.

Aesthetic and socio-political attributes have not been associated and placed on themodel because the lack of recognition of these is what led to its creation. As a causalfactor for the drive to conceptualise the model, the differences between the views ofEagleton and Carroll and the majority of critics importantly motivated the search forfurther differences. However, as a typology the specific binary of aesthetics and socio-politics cannot be mapped successfully here and will require more specific quantitativecontent analysis of the content carriers. Currently, from the empirical data, there is notenough clear evidence to suggest that one school other than the Academic orSophisticated foregrounds these more than others. Those critics who do reflect onsocio-politics or aesthetic evaluation come from the Sophisticated School in the main, butthese ideas are also represented across the model as well, however small in number.

The missing hexagon with arrows, while implicitly indicative of other schools to beattached in future which have not as yet revealed themselves, also has a more explicit rolein serving to indicate the interconnectedness between schools, not capped at either end:the academic film critic might also write consumer comments on IMDb and it is generallyacknowledged that scholars write criticism for newspapers (McDonald 2007, IX; Perloff1997). The descriptions at the top and bottom right of the model require furtherexplanation. They represent the common binaries which often characterise, or moreaccurately caricature, critical writing and film criticism specifically: whether film isentertainment, industry or something more artistic; whether writing about film isjournalese or a distinct literary branch, etc. These are historically formed around thecultural hierarchical categories of high and low (Bourdieu 1984). Furthermore, there is nodominant school because it is impractical to quantify and compare the amount of materialbelonging to each but logically putting the Populist School at the centre seems mostappropriate. As the differences between scholarly ideas on criticism and practitionerresponses were the first motivation for the creation of the Six Schools, it is important toshow what some of these responses were in detail.

Scholarly and Practitioner Views in Detail

As noted, in partial support of the arguments made by Eagleton (1984) and Carroll(2009) of contemporary criticism lacking social commitment or evaluation, 13 critics

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mention specifics about socio-political functions or offering a verdict. In most cases thesewere minor inferences. Those from the Sophisticated School are, unsurprisingly, morelikely to intellectualise what they do, whether that is to acknowledge the duel functions ofcriticism underlined or to posit some of their own. There were polyphonic responsestowards what film criticism means to each interviewee, with only a loose theme ofsubjectivity—which contravenes Carroll’s (2009) “philosophy” on objectivity—able to bemapped across the sample. Many other responses were idiosyncratic, from appreciatingthe goals of the filmmaker (Mark Peranson, CinemaScope) to Plato allegories of criticism asa cave, as critic and filmmaker Mark Cousins remarks:

I think of the world of film as this fantastic cave. A film critic is somebody who goes inthere, sees what there is, has an experience and writes about it. A film critic is an envoyfrom the movie world that goes in, sees stuff and comes out. Now, to push thatmetaphor a little bit, in the past the door to the cave was very narrow. Not many peoplegot in. It tended to be white males who got in in the past. That has all changed. There area lot more people in there now and that’s good. But overall the role of the job, even inthe digital age, hasn’t changed all that much. I think what has changed is the nature ofthe cave. (interview with author, 8 June 2011)

The majority opinion from the newspaper critics and the Populist School is surmisedbest by Lawrenson, chief critic for the UK homeless charity magazine, The Big Issue, andHunter, a critic for the middle-market tabloid, the Daily Express. Hunter actually laughs whenasked to consider that press film critics may have a level of self-awareness of aesthetics andsocio-politics in what they do, stating “I wouldn’t have thought any kind of mainstream folklike me would have that as much of a consideration” (interview with author, 18 June 2011).Lawrenson places film critics in the wider context of other professions by saying that “It’snot very important what we do, it really isn’t”, before adding in more detail:

I’ve got to be reasonably entertaining, because people are reading it. I’ve got to give anaccurate summation of what the film’s like. Only then do questions of aestheticjudgement come in. And they’re never especially elevated. They boil down to, is thisworth spending a tenner on, you know? So there’s not much scope for Aristotelian firstprinciples to creep in there. (interview with author, 17 June 2011)

Although both critics are clearly aware of the intended purpose of their criticism,they and the majority of others rarely consider their criticism as deeply as Eagleton (1984)has his fictional critic do in his introduction when he asks why write criticism? Who is itfor? And who is affected by it? This is part of his “consistent commitment to rearticulatingthe task of the critic” in the public sphere (Eagleton and Beaumont 2009, XVI). For AdamNayman, belonging to the Sophisticated School by his status as a contributing editor toCinemaScope, the a priori need to discuss film criticism of late is a very insular event,whereas in the past it may have had more resonance in culture at large. He comments: “Ithink post-1980 the discussion that you’re having is one that you’re very likely to be theonly one having, which is people who are specifically practising or doing research on filmcriticism. Most people couldn’t give a shit” (interview with author, 13 September 2011).

Conclusion

This article set out to uncover the conceptualisations of film criticism and hasnoted that it is a fragmentary phenomenon with multiple disparate groupings. This

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mixed-method approach to researching film criticism in the twenty-first century hasrevealed a disconnect between scholarly ideas on criticism more broadly and the viewsof film critic practitioners. The causal links between this aspect and the conceptualisationof the Six Schools model is that this finding not only demonstrated two different sets ofthinking within the literature but also among the purveyors of film criticism. Therefore, itwas pertinent to continue analysing the data from interviewees and participantobservations and again look at the content carriers to identify any further differencesor similarities between individuals, groups, publications and institutions on whatconstitutes film criticism. This prompted the formulation of the Six Schools model. Asthe list of publications and critics in Tables 1 and 2 show, this study has been aboutresearching film criticism in a convergent culture rather than simply studying film criticsin print or online. That distinction has passed but future research might look further intothe converged landscape beyond the dominance of text-based approaches and towardsnew forms of Web-based audiovisual film criticism.

This article has not looked solely at individual review details but placed greatemphasis on a broad qualitative approach to studying publications and institutions andattaining the opinions of film critics working today, and as such contributes information onthe culture(s) of film criticism. While the interviews were the motivation for the project, itwould be wrong to suggest that one approach from these mixed methods has had mostinfluence in the creation of the model. Reviewing literature from Eagleton and Carroll andperforming qualitative content analysis into content carriers informed the fieldwork datacollection which in turn fed back into the desk research data to formulate the design of ahive of Six Schools of film criticism at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The overallinflection of the enquiry has been qualitative, which leaves future options to considerthese schools quantitatively and perhaps consider their influence on one another moreand in relation to aesthetics and socio-politics.

While this research was born out of a period of crisis for film criticism in the UnitedKingdom and the United States, crisis talk was also not to be found, at least explicitly, inany of the empirical interview data and this foreshadowed the trend whereby today thefuture of film criticism looks brighter. It is expected that the model will aid further analysisof the data from the critics and it is hoped that it will also provoke a response from thewider community to posit additional typologies or indeed other vantages towards the hiveof film criticism.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to acknowledge the Arts and Humanities Research Council for sharing myvision that contemporary film criticism in the digital age requires more academicattention.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

FUNDING

This work was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

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Andrew McWhirter, Social Sciences, Media and Journalism, Glasgow CaledonianUniversity, UK. E-mail: Andrew.McWhirter@gcu.ac.uk. Web: https://www.gcu.ac.uk/gsbs/mediajournalism/academicstaff/mcwhirterandrew/.

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