Sometimes I appreciate being told straight up whether or not I will enjoy something. (“Steve Carell and Tina Fey should be able to carry even the floppiest script, but don’t go see Date Nate because it will render you flaccid for weeks.”) On the other hand, most of the time, Mr. Smartypants entertainment critics, I want to read something interesting and maybe, god forbid, entertaining. While enterprise Googling my way through a slow afternoon looking for ideas, I stumbled upon this Sasha Frere-Jones piece about rock critic Lester Bangs. The concluding paragraph might be one of the better reflections I’ve read on good criticism.
Picking an All-Time No. 1 in any category is an exercise that’s generally more fun than scientific. This is especially true when picking top critics, a breed who succeed precisely by being in and of their time. There’s a good chance Bangs owns the ’70s but carving him in marble for all time does his gifts no service. Bangs would be the first to point out that the new Lester Bangs, whoever he or she is, wouldn’t read like the old Bangs because the needs of the present are different. Hip-hop, dance music, feminist punk, and an avalanche of homegrown music all over the world have redrawn the playing field several times over since Lester left the earth. It is unlikely even a rookie critic now would invest as much as Bangs did in his idols and then work so hard to prove it hadn’t been a mistake choosing them as idols. That kind of naked investment would be too painful in the instant feedback world of the Internet. The cynicism that permeates much rock criticism would annoy Bangs more than anything. You can see him now, grabbing a critic, shaking him and saying, “HOW DO YOU KNOW THIS ISN’T A GOOD RECORD? JUST BECAUSE IT’S BAD DOESN’T MEAN YOU GET TO SLAG IT!”
Amen.