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Arts
The absent critic
The Republic will begin to review and critique cultural products, but not in the way that anyone is familiar with
By Kevin Potvin
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By the time you’ve planted yourself in a seat at the movie theatre, the film you’re prepared to watch is completely irrelevant to nearly all the people involved in all the activities that went into putting it in front of you. The transaction of money at the box office outside the theatre was the moment of truth—that’s what the whole industry is focused on.
It is what happens before a patron hands over money that is of nearly total importance to the cultural industry. Once money has changed hands, their interest in you has mostly ceased. What happens after—your actual watching of the film—is only of relatively minor importance, and then only insofar as it is vaguely associated in tenuous ways with the process already engaging you regarding the next film already in the pipeline.
The same is true, more or less harshly, throughout all aspects of culture. The art show, the play, the concert, the book: Once you’ve paid, and you always pay first, your actual experience of the cultural product is in this essential way irrelevant. Obviously, an artist of integrity cares dearly what you think of their work when you experience it, and nearly all artists are infused with a great deal of that kind of integrity.
But for the vast majority of the public, the experience generated in them by the creation of cultural products is limited to the promotion, marketing, and general impression floating around about the thing, and has nothing to do with the thing itself, since most people will not see a particular play or a particular show of paintings. Critics of cultural products who focus on the experience of the actual product represent therefore far less than one percent of the public’s experience of that product. This is no slight at the uncultured. Even for those people who go to a lot of art shows and films, the sophisticates among us, their cultural experience is still swamped by encounters with what comes before and outside and around cultural products, so saturated are we in media and advertising about those cultural products.
Don’t judge a book by its cover, we’re told. But with a million books out there, even the most prolific reader will inadvertently and even unwillingly experience 99.99% of them only through an encounter with the cover. And that experience, at least as much as the one taking place within the covers, or in the movie theatre, or the playhouse, or the art gallery, needs to be critiqued as well. This critique is lacking, and so The Republic will attempt to open up new space to begin supplying it.
In the proposed series of cultural critiques we hope will follow this opening entry, little reference will be made to the actual shows in question besides a passing one. We won’t attend or view any particular cultural product. Instead, we hope to critique what comes before, outside, and around any particular show or cultural product, including the promotion and marketing of it, as well as the general vibe, if you will, that we pick up on that surrounds it. This is what most of the work that goes into cultural products is now focused on, and in our media-infused and chronically ephemeral times, it is where success or failure is determined.
For example, consider the Vancouver International Film Festival. There are typically two or three screenings of each of about 450 films shown over 14 days. The vast majority of Vancouverites will see none of them. A relative handful will see one, two or three films at the most. A very few will see a dozen or more. There may be one person in the whole city who will see as many as 10% of the films being shown. By the time reviews of individual films are available in the press, the film in question has probably come and gone. In the rare case where someone does read a review of a film still upcoming, and goes to see it based on the review, a number of chance occurrences have taken place: even an intrepid reviewer has elected to view maybe only 4% of the films and has chosen to write about maybe only 15% of those. A reader of reviews will only maybe read about 33% of all reviews available and will become intrigued enough to see maybe 10% of those films she reads about. And she is maybe that 1% of Vancouverites who will actually see at least one film. What are the chances that any particular Vancouverite will see any particular film? I might not be strong enough in math, so it’s only a guess that the chances are something like 0.000002%.
The assumption around all film reviews that appear in virtually all media during the festival is that a film is screened, a reviewer watches it and then writes about it, and then a citizen reads the review and goes to see that film as a result. But the likelihood of that circle ever being completed is something in the neighbourhood of being struck by lightening.
The real purposes of a review are manifold but have little or nothing to do with the film-watching experience. A review allows the reviewer to strut his knowledge and perceptions. It allows the ad sales staff of media businesses to flog their wares. It allows the marketing and promotion staff connected to film production and distribution companies to enhance the packaging of their product. And it allows the Vancouver International Film Festival to compete better with other film festivals around the world in the realm of prestige. Only a fool who hasn’t considered the math would think the purpose of a review is to cause a citizen to go see a film.
The Vancouver International Film Festival is only one example. Many more are available. Cars, streetscapes, both residential and commercial, wars, elections, cities, statutory holidays, superstores, bus routes, flooring stores, and parking meters and our interactions and responses to them, are all distinct cultural products possible to critique as such, in terms of their aesthetics, their functions, and how they alter, enhance or diminish our experience as humans encountering them.
In this light, it is all that comes around the traditional cultural product, the promotion, marketing, packaging and buzz of the play, the film, and the book, and not the actual play, film or book, that is interesting. This is, in any event, what we intend to identify and make interesting in future issues of The Republic.
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The Republic of East Vancouver masthead
The Republic of East Vancouver supports no party, advocates
for no cause, represents no group, serves no master, and considers
problems with no preconceived notions. We hope to afflict the comfortable,
both materially and intellectually, and comfort the afflicted—of
both kinds as well, and we are trying to do both things at the same
time.
Publisher, Editor
Kevin Potvin
Managing Editor
Kara Foreman
Copy Editor
Janis Harper
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Potvin
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Bruce Alexander, Dan Adleman, Toby Alford, Kevin Annett, Santo Barbieri, Bob Broughton, Mike Bryan, Stephen Buckley, Matthew Burrows, Maria Calleja, Ron Carton, Chad Christie, Joshua Corber, Dan Crawford, Gail Davidson, Eric Doherty, Joe Donaldson, Lorena Jara Patty Ducharme, Shadia Drury, Taivo Evard, Reed Eurchuk, Farnaz Fassihi, Thomas Feakins, Anthony Fenton, Reza Fiyouyzat, Andrew Gordon Fleming, Ryan Fugger, Sasha Gagic, Matt Goody, Guy Hawkins, Spencer Herbert, John Irwin, Nick Istvaniffy, Junius, William Kay, Mike Keep, Kate Kennedy, Donald Kropp, Chris LaVigne, James Lindfield, Brian Lindgreen, Karen Litzke, Keith MacKenzie, Michael McLaughlin, Sonya McRae, Rafe Mair, Sonia Marino, Jennifer Matsui, Michael Millard, Isaebel Minty, Michael Nenonen, Wendy Nylund, Derrick O’Keefe, Stephen Osborne, Sean Orr, Evan Augustine Pederson III, Stephen Peplow, Kim Peterson, Kevin Potvin, Mary Rawson, Andrea Reimer, Erin Riley, Phil Rockstroh, Becky Scott, Jason Scott, Chris Shaw, Jeff Steudel, Alex Tegart, Scott Turner, Elbio Grosso Trentini, Patrick Vert, Chris Walker, Sean Wilkinson, Brad Zembic
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