busyTwitter Sonnet #125
Sugar of Toucan's cry permits no peace.
Twitter swallowed three of my last night's tweets.
Sparkling haze made it dizzy and obese.
Screaming warnings, the traffic monster eats.
Burning laughs are digested to money.
Anger boils beds in Gestapo porn.
Look what they did, marone, they shot Sonny.
Nasal vampires earn a stapler's scorn.
Some day, there'll be no suckers left to hate.
Many fear being first to a stop sign.
Laughing asphalt has forever to wait.
Disputed chow mein in the car is mine.
Words are lost in digital dark matter.
Bits are obliterated by batter.
To-day I read Devin Faraci's reaction to Kevin Smith's recent twitter tirade about movie critics. I agree with Faraci's take whole heartedly here. Having witnessed Smith's tweets as they were happening, I remember wincing and hoping his wife would drag him away from the keyboard. I like Kevin Smith, I like most of his movies, and I can understand him being sensitive about something he's worked on. But the solution for him is to not read reviews at all. The solution is not to go to relying exclusively on random people on the internet to review his films. Is he the last guy in the world to read the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory? If he thinks professional critics are harsher and less thoughtful than the denizens of Twitter, he's snorting Kool-Aid. Really, what he wants is to back up from the big arena he's in now and lock himself in an echo booth with his most loyal disciples. His ego's cracking under the pressure--that's it. Some people can't handle being received poorly by a lot of people. There's not really any shame in that, but the way he's handling it isn't doing himself any favours.
I've said this before, but I feel critics are themselves artists of a kind. It's not so much that their opinions are more valid as that good critics are better at expressing those opinions, can draw on a wider knowledge of the medium in discussing it, and can ably expand upon intellectual and emotional prompts presented by a movie. In essence, a good critic, to me, both supplements my digestion of a film (mmm!) and helps me decide whether or not to spend my money on a movie, establishing their trustworthiness on the task by demonstrating the reliability of their opinions over time and, to some extent demonstrating an intelligence about that which he or she is speaking. To do this properly, one needs to be educated about, and devote a great deal of time to watching, movies--it's a full time job, therefore one for which one needs to be paid.
That's a rational argument I've just made, but if Smith were reading this, I know it'd be more useful to suggest that he smoke some pot or make out with his wife.