The state of things #

Conditions for professional critics are bleak right now. I mean, conditions are never not bleak but the cascade of bad news just keeps coming, day after day. This assessment of the damage from Aftermath is as comprehensive as any I’ve seen:

It’s been a grim month for the field of criticism: the New York Times reassigned veteran critics, WaPo’s took a buyout, Vanity Fair elected to eliminate reviews, and Associated Press did the same with its book reviews. It’s beginning to look like curtains for criticism—at least of the traditional sort—but do not conflate the mercurial winds of economic change with a lack of need.

Just yesterday, news broke that the Chicago Tribune axed its film reviewer. I wish I could say it was surprising, but it’s really just the culmination of a decades-long trend for every newspaper that isn’t the New York Times. And even the Times is making its critics pivot to Instagram reels or whatever.

I have a lot of feelings about all this, as someone who writes criticism and cares deeply about seeing the craft survive. It’s depressing to see paid gigs for reviewers and critics disappear. But let’s also be honest: We’ve long since crossed the event horizon into a world where influencers and fandoms are the primary shapers of taste and discourse; professional critics are, at best, relevant only as foils and villains in the cultural black hole inhabited by MCU stan accounts, Ending Explained YouTubers, and BookTokers who breathlessly hype the same five books. The line between promotion and commentary was always blurry, even in times when professional reviewers were more powerful, but it seems far more tenuous now.

I don’t mean to demonize fans or people who just want to talk about how much they love their favorite piece of media. Good criticism — even criticism that functions as harsh critique rather than praise — is rooted in that same impulse. Most people don’t become critics unless they actually care about the things they analyze.

Plus, there are still plenty of people doing criticism right now, even if it’s not their full-time job. I’m no big fan of Substack but, amidst the slop and hateful garbage flooding the platform, there are a lot of independent writers producing thoughtful critical writing. I got tired of posting book reviews on Instagram because I was spending too much effort on the aesthetic presentation of photos at the expense of actually writing — but that doesn’t mean there aren’t others who are good at posting pretty book photos AND doing criticism, even if the platform isn’t designed to accommodate it. And of course, there are plenty of niche little magazines and websites that still publish reviews of art, theater, games, books and films; the pay is shit or nonexistent but criticism is still happening.

As someone who regularly writes about comics, I also feel compelled to note that — as bad as it is to be a film, book, TV, or art reviewer right now — it has always been worse for critics who specialize in (to use the pretentious term) “sequential art.” There has never been money or more than like two actual jobs in comics criticism and never will be. In some ways, professional criticism for all other media is just becoming the same thing comics criticism has always been: A fractured constellation of different voices in marginal blogs and publications, some sharp and insightful, some dumb and vapid, but all trying and probably failing to influence culture in a world where stanning and public relations are infinitely more consequential than rigorous analysis.

I started this post in hopes of writing myself towards some bigger statement about the meaning of criticism in this particular moment. But that didn’t happen! I mostly just succeeded in making myself feel weird about the state of culture. (Apparently a recurring theme for this blog.) I suppose my grand takeaway for the moment is that, yes, criticism will persist, but the ecosystem that allows anyone to make a living by doing it is rapidly decaying and, given the many incentives that push people toward hype over substantive engagement, I don’t think Substackers and YouTubers with Patreons will quite replace what we’ve lost.

A new review #

Yesterday, I revisited the early days of the pandemic with Kevin Budnik’s diary minicomics. I don’t want to have to live through something like that again, but cartoonists who were chronicling their daily lives produced some of my favorite art from that time — including this zine!

You can go read my review of Budnik’s minicomic here.

If you make zines, I want to read and review them. Get in touch and I’ll share my mailing address. Or if you’ve got a digital zine, just send me a link.

Links #

I’m trying a new thing. Well, it’s really an old thing, but it’s new for me. About six billion years ago, people used blogs to share links they thought were cool. Then social media killed blogs and people started sharing links on Twitter. Now, social media is unbearable, so it’s (hopefully) back to blogs. Here’s a few things I read this past week that stuck in my head (also posted here):

Senate Probe Uncovers Allegations of Widespread Abuse in ICE Custody (Dell Cameron, Wired)

Nebraska announces plan for immigration detention center dubbed the ‘Cornhusker Clink’ (Josh Funk, AP)

The last journalists in Gaza are pre-writing their obituaries (James Salanga, The Objective)

AI Is a Mass-Delusion Event (Charlie Warzel, The Atlantic)

The Free Press Reports Gaza’s Starving Children Have Pre-Existing Condition Of Being Bombed By Israel (Kelsey McKinney, Defector)