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Wednesday, February 04, 2004
Rant today in Penny Arcade about the poor quality review of Chrystal Chronicles at ign. Now, I don't know anything about the game or how well the review reflects it's status, but one sentence of Tycho's particularly struck me: "It is as though they were presented with a race car, and then spent an hour criticising all the ways it differed from chocolate cake". I focus on that sentence in particular because it is things like that that have been a pet peeve of mine for a while in regards to criticisms of any kind of work.
I think a criticism of any kind has two phases: (1) what is the work trying to accomplish? (2) how well does it accomplish that goal? It seems to me that reviewers everywhere miss (1) an awful lot of the time, and so have trouble articulating (2), and as a result, instead of criticising the things important to the work, criticise irrelevant elements. For example, as noted by Tycho, ign's review complains a fair bit about how the game differs from other final fantasies. This is an irrelevant criticism of what the game is trying to accomplish, from what I know about Crystal Chronicles. Another example would in Roger Ebert's review of The Return of the King. He notes that "There is little enough psychological depth anywhere in the films". This is not what the movie is trying to accomplish, so saying that it does not do so is irrelevant. If one criticised the movie by saying that one did not get emotionally caught up in the climactic scene, then that would be a viable criticism.
This all relates back to when I first heard this from my Shakespeare professor last term. A student complained that As you Like It resolved the plot elements in a silly way, and so could hardly be considered a great comedy. The professor replied that this was not a very deep criticism, as this is not what the play is about.
I think the problem is that often people want the things they experience to be a certain way. If a work does not fall into their idea of what good entertainment or art is, then they criticise it. I think it is much more interesting to find the point of view that the work is attempting to show and experience it from the angle it presents to you. There is so much out there that I find it narrow to restrict yourself to works of a certain type, and criticise works that are not of that type.
I think a criticism of any kind has two phases: (1) what is the work trying to accomplish? (2) how well does it accomplish that goal? It seems to me that reviewers everywhere miss (1) an awful lot of the time, and so have trouble articulating (2), and as a result, instead of criticising the things important to the work, criticise irrelevant elements. For example, as noted by Tycho, ign's review complains a fair bit about how the game differs from other final fantasies. This is an irrelevant criticism of what the game is trying to accomplish, from what I know about Crystal Chronicles. Another example would in Roger Ebert's review of The Return of the King. He notes that "There is little enough psychological depth anywhere in the films". This is not what the movie is trying to accomplish, so saying that it does not do so is irrelevant. If one criticised the movie by saying that one did not get emotionally caught up in the climactic scene, then that would be a viable criticism.
This all relates back to when I first heard this from my Shakespeare professor last term. A student complained that As you Like It resolved the plot elements in a silly way, and so could hardly be considered a great comedy. The professor replied that this was not a very deep criticism, as this is not what the play is about.
I think the problem is that often people want the things they experience to be a certain way. If a work does not fall into their idea of what good entertainment or art is, then they criticise it. I think it is much more interesting to find the point of view that the work is attempting to show and experience it from the angle it presents to you. There is so much out there that I find it narrow to restrict yourself to works of a certain type, and criticise works that are not of that type.
