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Al-Ahram Weekly 18 - 24 March 1999 Issue No. 421 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 18 - 24 March 1999 Issue No. 421
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Profile Features Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Plain talk
By Mursi Saad El-Din
A series of programmes on the English Channel 4, called "Critical Condition" and which hosted a number of speakers discussing the role of critics in our modern age, has created a great controversy. The speakers in the four programmes were professional critics and they dealt with theatre, films, television and fine arts. There was vehement response from the press to the programmes, one that led to a discussion of the history and function of criticism.
In The Observer Review Peter Conrad gives his article the intriguing title "What does he (the critic) know that you don't?" Then, as a subtitle, he writes: "They used to be the arbiters of cultural worth. Now they just tell us if we're getting value for money. Do we still need critics?"
Criticism, in Conrad's opinion, is the oddest and most parasitical of activities, relatively recent in its origin "and currently, perhaps, very near its demise". In his informative article, Conrad traces the rise of criticism from the 18th century when Grub Street began to mass produce "grubby newsprint". In 1759 Samuel Johnson denounced it in his periodical The Idler. Though he himself was a great critic, he, nonetheless, wrote: "Criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at very small expense. He whom nature has made weak, and idleness keeps ignorant, may support his vanity by the name of critic."
Then came Hazlitt who was famous for his savage criticism. He believed that critics should develop a feeling of hatred which would give edge to their criticism. In his essay "On the Pleasure of Hating", he claimed: "Without something to hate we should lose the spring of thought and action."
Criticism has often been described as a "sub-culture", but in the 19th century it moved from its marginal position to become a prestigious profession. That prestige came as a result of the publication in 1882 of Nietzsche's The Gay Science which was regarded as a heroic undertaking since it ventured to question everything including divinity. The critic became a superman. In his dialogue The Critic as Artist Oscar Wilde writes: "The 19th century is a turning point in history, simply on account of two men, Darwin and Renan -- the one, the critic of the Book of Nature, the other, the critic of the books of God." Wilde went on to claim that "it is criticism that leads us."
Conrad then goes on to discuss the role of Matthew Arnold, Leavis, Thompson and Eliot, and the development of the critical spirit as an aid for achieving modernity. As a result of this critical spirit, culture itself underwent changes, from elitism to the cluttered café table tops painted by Picasso, or the demonic babble of the city of Joyce's Ulysses.
For the present generation culture is more like a groaningly over-stocked supermarket. Its contents are there to be purchased and consumed and consequently, like other goods, instantly, expendable. In an economy "where culture has been taken over by the leisure industry", Conrad writes, the critic has a lowlier function: "to tell you whether to spend your money". Music reviewers, for instance, write not about the music that is worth hearing but about the CDs that are worth buying.
At one time the New Yorker magazine claimed the best critics in the world, in music, theatre, film and dance. Now, as a result of the change of editor, criticism pages have been replaced by "corporate gossip, celebrity profiles and fashion layout".
Conrad ends his article by saying: "We still need critics, of course -- but better ones." Wilde and Arnold's concept of the job of the critic was selection of what's best, the construction of a Pantheon. But now the critic has become the consumer's guide. Yet there is a grander, more eclectic and more vital job to be done. "Who," Conrad asks, "will account for the strange new synergy between soccer and opera, warn about the influence of Leni Riefenstahl's body fascism as Calvin Klein's underwear ads, or cave in to Godzilla's lustreless eye and explain his war against humanity? Critics are the means whereby society becomes conscious of itself, aware of the direction it is taking. There can be no culture without them."
