"Since when have there been critics? Since when have there been no critics? The professions and their names come and go: As figures in the division of labor, they are subject to the obscure rules of cultural evolution. We appreciate that, we've come to terms with it, at least in general. Only it's a little different in our own trade. How difficult it is to believe that we are dispensable! And yet we only need to think of the dry-salter, the sword-maker -- where has he gone? -- the ribbon-maker, the brass founder, pin maker, spurrier. It may have happened like that to us too, only we haven't noticed it yet. A brutal, complete, abrupt extinction is something of an exception. Gradual transitions, imperceptible transformations; that is the usual course of things. The ranks of the threatened species grow thinner until, hardly noticed by the rest of the world, the last one has departed. It is altogether conceivable that one day soon we shall ask ourselves, what has become of the critic, the reviewer. They were still here only a moment ago... Or did we only imagine it?"

- Hans Magnus Enzensberger, 1986

"You've done what most critics, I think, find the most difficult -- writing about something you don't seem to hate, which, to me, is the only useful service that any 'writing about writing' can perform.... Fortunately, you're too good a writer to be a critic..."

- Chris Ware,
in a letter to The Imp about an Imp devoted to himself, 2003

The death of criticism, like the death of the novel, has been routinely announced and lamented throughout most of the 20th century, but that doesn't mean it will never happen. This time, it may be true: The act of criticism as it's been practiced over the last 2-300 years is pretty much dead and in the process of being buried. But, buried by whom? For starters: By the zeitgeist of boosterism, the advertising industry and the interlocking media conglomerates who manufacture books, movies and music and conveniently (and synergistically) control the media that promote them; the rising class of pseudo-educated reviewers who are essentially appendages to corporate PR departments and who write consumer squibs rather than criticism; artists who feel that they and their friends have been victimized or snubbed by stupid and malicious critics; and finally culture consumers whose critical instincts, if they ever had any, have been systematically eviscerated by the deluge of propaganda to which they are daily subjected. In short, the very idea of a critical point of view toward pop culture is anathema to almost everyone who doesn't want to be discomforted or challenged -- in America in 2003, that's just about everyone.

Not that I'm talking about a conspiracy, exactly. Conglom-erate numbers crunchers, publicists, hack reviewers, and artistes don't meet in smoke-filled rooms to devise new ways to marginalize critics. But, there is an unhappy confluence of vested interests -- sometimes contradictory at that -- at work here. It's no secret that from a corporate point of view, critics are useless as anything other than shills, carnival barkers whose job is to sell tickets to the rubes. Media conglomerates are now more synergistically and vertically integrated than ever before; an AOL-Time-Warner can manufacture a movie, promote it on the cover of Time and eventually sell it to its own cable stations (on which it has previously promoted the movie). Reviewers are hired for their agreeable attitudes and slack standards. It's not that they're insincere or prostituting their intellects. These are people who genuinely think 2 Fast 2 Furious is a damned good movie -- or, if they don't, will say so only in the most gently, chiding terms with that oh-it's-only-pop-culture shrug implicit. Gone are the days when critics worked from the basic assumption that culture meant something. Nowadays, in the vast majority of magazines and newspapers, the underlying attitude of reviews is, don't worry about it, there's nothing at stake, live and let live, there's no arguing with taste -- a quiescence to moral pluralism and epistemological uncertainty that greases the wheels of commerce and forms the foundation of our educational system. Artists are the most complicated factor in the equation; their hostility to criticism has been well documented and not entirely unreasonable, but it does tend to intersect with the anti-intellectualism that plays into the hands of their enemies - the culture industry and an apathetic public. More about them later. Oh, and that apathetic public! What is there left to say? If stupidity and vulgarity could be canned and marketed, they would line up to buy it.

But, again, is this anything new, or just the same old same old? Everything else on the planet appears to be quantified, but there's no Philistine Index to refer to (there's no profit in it), and the sort of grousing I'm engaging in has been voiced repeatedly in the past. Here, for example, is George Orwell complaining about much the same thing in a 1936 essay, "In Defense of The Novel":

The trouble is that the novel is being shouted out of existence. Question any thinking person as to why he 'never reads novels,' and you will usually find that, at bottom, it is because of the disgusting tripe that is written by the blurb-reviewers. There is no need to multiply examples. Here is just one specimen from last week's Sunday Times: 'If you can read this book and not shriek with delight, your soul is dead.' That or something like it is by now being written about every novel published, as you can see by studying the quotes on the blurbs. For anyone who takes the Sunday Times seriously, life must be one long struggle to catch up. Novels are being shot at you at the rate of 15 per day, and every one of them an unforgettable masterpiece which you imperil your soul by missing. It must make it so difficult to choose a book at the library, and you must feel guilty when you fail to shriek with delight.

There are subtle or perhaps not-so-subtle differences between Orwell's underlying premises and what could reasonably constitute our own today. Note, for example, that he thinks the public feels betrayed by the "disgusting tripe" of blurb reviewers. Today, Jerry Bruckheimer couldn't make a movie so awful that he couldn't amass a double-truck ad full of exclamatory and breathless praise -- with which, and here is the difference, the movie-going public would emphatically agree! Orwell gives us the sense that the majority of the reading public saw through the constant barrage of boosterism and maybe even resented but was, in any case, aware of it. Not so today, where the only type of review to elicit the vociferous indignation of the public is a negative one, which is why critics who have the temerity to write such reviews are becoming an endangered species. The public who hungers for vital public debate and independent critical voices is too small to matter; the scale of mass culture requires the manufacture of blockbusters and blockbusters require a herd mentality among the public. Dissenters, i.e., critics, need not apply.

Although it's impossible to quantify with scientific exactitude, the critical climate seemed far healthier 30 or 40 years ago. To take film criticism as an example, is there anyone today to match Kael, Macdonald and Simon in their liveliness, erudition and passion? There are some: Geoffrey O'Brien, Peter Bradshaw, Jonathan Rosenbaum, David Thomson, to name the ones that come immediately to mind. They may not have quite the intellectual heft of the previous generation, but that doesn't explain why they don't seem to arouse the same level of public participation that criticism did generally in the '60s and '70s. That has more to do with the changing times than the changing critics.

If we turn our attention to comics, the situation is, if anything, even worse. Outside The Comics Journal, itself far from perfect of course, there is no criticism to speak of. There is the Internet with its message boards and the endless carping, caviling, rumor-mongering and the like, and although some of this is smart and perceptive on occasion, none of it constitutes criticism per se. Otherwise, there's nothing but gush.

The public sphere has been, since the '90s, characterized by happy talk, boosterism, an active hostility to the critical or evaluative spirit. "Be positive" is the prevailing sentiment. Examples abound. Scott McCloud may have led the charge with his evangelical theories about the invisible art and his subsequent pep talks; Top Shelf's Chris Staros (your friend in comics), whose annual, legendary Staros Report was a valiant and successful effort to suspend critical judgment; Comic Book Artist, a magazine that has never met a hack it hasn't liked (or interviewed); the Comics Buyer's Guide, whose collective critical point of view has been arrested at the age of 12 when it isn't preoccupied by mylar snugs and plastic slabs; and what appears to be an entire generation of cartoonists for whom elaborate theory is more important than discrimination.

"Groth is simply justifying his poisonous agenda of hatred, malice and negativity," I hear the message-board pundits complaing bitterly, so let me be precise. Respectful, positive reviews, even panegyrics, have their place. Essays, reviews, profiles celebrating first-rate artists are always welcome. There's a fair amount of literate criticism of exactly this sort being produced today: Donald Phelps, perhaps our most illuminating and transcendant critic, is a world-class appreciator; Dan Raeburn's writing in The Imp is a deft combination of analysis/reportage/hagiography; the new Comic Art is a lovely and lovingly assembled package. But, Raeburn's essays come perilously close to celebrity worship and if the first three issues are any indication, every cartoonist Comic Art features will be heralded as a flawless genius. There may be artists who deserve nothing but unconditional praise, but so many so often? The whole point of viewing something critically is the shock of recognition that comes from the intersubjectity of two unique sensibilities -- the critic's (or, ideally, every reader's) and the artist's. If the reader is merely a supplicant before the art, he's doing neither himself nor the artist any favors. If he respects the artist and himself, the reader (the critic!) brings his own worldview, his own philosophical orientation to bear on the art and, in the event, perfection and idolatry ought rightly to be looked on with some suspicion. Heretical as this sounds, appreciation could be made even more pungent and challenging when there's some friction between the reader's perceptions and the artist's expression. The best critics of comics have never been wholly uncritical (Phelps, for example, or Mike Barrier) toward the acknowledged pantheon.

[To read the rest of this essay, please see The Comics Journal #254.]

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