Look, you don't have to take my advice
Like every working critic, I think, I get a lot of emails from people who read what I write and want to know how they can do it too. Sometimes they’re from students. Sometimes (more often lately) they’re from people who are thinking of quitting their stable and well-paying jobs (!!) to pursue a graduate degree in film or something to become a critic.
I always feel like a wet blanket in replying, but this is more or less what I reply to everyone:
My basic advice would be definitely do not quit your job! There are next to no staff jobs in criticism generally, and I've always had to have a higher-paying day job in addition to writing (I still do now). The only thing you really have to do is write a lot (blog/newsletter) and to pitch ideas to editors -- if you poke around the internet you'll find a lot of articles that are helpful in learning how to pitch. (It's what I did!) Building up a regular freelance grind can take a long time, but if it's something you're passionate about then it's worth doing. I freelanced for a decade before I was approached about a staff job at Vox -- I know some people who've spent their whole lives freelancing. It can be done, but it's not a stable way to make money, so it's really best to think about it as something you do because you want to do it, and still have a way to pay the bills. :)
I don’t really know how often people take that advice; everyone thinks they’re exception to the rule. (None of us are.) There are a few other things worth noting, such as the fact that I didn’t study film in graduate school — you really don’t need to, to be a critic; you just need to be a good writer, and very few critics are. The main thing is to write.
But it does make me think about my early days, 15 or 16 years ago. In some ways the industry was much different then from how it is today. More things were printed on paper. More freelance money was flying around. The years just before the recession, when I was just dipping my toe into the water, were better for anyone who wanted to make a living in criticism or any other kind of media. (This was just as true in the more siloed world of Christian media as mainstream; if you want to make a living writing criticism for Christian media today, well, you can’t. Nobody will pay you for it anymore. Sorry.)
I think I started doing it chiefly because I really loved trying to unpack my thoughts about art, and writing was the only way to do it, and also because I wanted to be part of the conversation I saw swirling around me. You can’t, and shouldn’t, write about art if you don’t love art. Even a negative review (especially a negative review, as I’ve long argued) comes from a place of love, of seeing how something could have been better and mourning that it isn’t.
The thing critics do is pretty simple. We tell you what we saw, and articulate what it was. As I’ve often put it over the years, criticism is at core an ekphrastic art — that is, it’s art about art. It’s not opinions about art; it is, itself, an art form. If we describe it well, if we try to make you see it through our eyes, then we’ve done our job.
I’m not always convinced that people who want to get into criticism really think of it that way. Sometimes it’s clear that aspiring (or unfortunately even established) critics don’t want to share the art with you, the movie or the book or the painting or whatever, but an opinion with you. They want you to look at their opinion, to hear it, to accept it as your own. This is a lot of what you see in the “everyone’s a critic” world, the reviews on social media sites and shouting on apps. It’s a start, but only that.
But good criticism has always been more icon than idol. What I mean is that good criticism points to the artwork as much as (or really, more than) the critic writing about it. You get to know the critic, because you’re getting inside their head; they’re the conduit, the guide. But you should be looking at something that exists outside that space. (There’s a place and a time to make the writer the subject, but that’s memoir.)
Our culture has decided against valuing criticism very much, at least right now, which is the thing that I have to tell the people who email me. But that’s never a reason not to do it. It’s just expectation-setting. The work is worth doing, whether or not it pays well.
That said: if you read criticism, please support it. As a serious discipline, it’s going to die off otherwise.
Been writing
One of my favorite movies of the year, The Souvenir Part II, is out, so I wrote about it.
I’ve been working on many things, but nothing else that’s available for your reading pleasure at the moment. Fear not: it’s coming.
Been reading and watching
I saw The Humans, which comes out November 24. It’s a screen adaptation of the much-decorated play, and it really snuck up on me — a one-act about a family that’s sort of a horror story by the end, but in a strange way. (I was reminded of the end of Heroes of the Fourth Turning, oddly enough.) Keep an eye out.
Tom and I have been watching some of the “home invasion” movies on the Criterion Channel, and yesterday we watched The Anderson Tapes, which was so good. That Sidney Lumet fellow really knows how to make a movie.
Odds and ends
I guess it’s Halloween! Spooky season! Go eat some candy.
I have a big, cool thing to announce soon, which I will as soon as I’m positive I haven’t jinxed it yet. Stay tuned!!