Thinking about that online music critic theneedledrop - the guy who somehow failed to notice the political commentary in Richard Dawson's 2020, but who yet managed to still think it was great - and why he rubbed me up the wrong way. (1/)
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I think it's more insidious: Fantano seems somehow cynical, as if he's always a teacher grading students' work; as if he sees his role of judging rather than... well, than what? How we in general engage with art is not a matter of judging, but isn't the critic's? (4/)
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I think the cynicism arises partly from his giving ratings to the music - how can you quantify 'To Pimp a Butterfly' as if it's a term paper? that thing changes overturns metrics of quantification! Now there's a response here that takes us deeper: (5/)
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"But if something tears up the rulebook, it's in the rulebook that that gets the album a 'ten'." The arrogation here is that the reviewer has seen it all, knows how to deal with it all, is bored by it all. And this is the vibe I get from Fantano in general. (6/)
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Now Fantano has not seen it all, and the only way for him to successfully maintain that illusion is to close himself off to that which he has not seen: to restrict his focus. Maybe this would be clearer if I presented an alternative ideal of criticism. (7/)
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Let me take Yahtzee Crenshaw first, because on the surface he's an arch-cynic, ruthlessly skewering almost every game he reviews. But his approach actually seems to me the polar opposite of Fantano's: he refuses to adopt the industry's standards of excellence... (8/)
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...rather, it seems he looks at every game as if for the first time, as if he's always begging to have his words taken away from him - but is constantly disappointed. So he hates everything, but like... from an excess of love, not from cynicism. (9/)
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But it's a love that demands the best of people - his skewering is an expression of disappointment in devs' compromises or spiritual laziness. When something's good, though... he said that Spiritfarer brought him to tears, which is hardly a cynic's attitude. (10/)
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Or take
@carolynmichelle (soz for retagging), who treats games as the first volley in a conversation that she takes up, exploring herself (and by extension *us*) in new ways, these new ways being what was given to her by the artwork, no matter how 'successful' it was. (11/)Show this thread -
Or
@yacobg42, who treats games as contributions to a large-scale conversation within all the arts and indeed society at large, in which history is forever playing variations on itself and reshaping itself, sprouting new sources of delight. (12/)Show this thread -
Or
@MrGervaisWrites, who seems tortured by the spiritual demands laid upon him by even terrible games that he has to exorcise himself of them in these long, exquisitely crafted essays that spiral onto deep and subtle observations. (13/)Show this thread -
idk. As a sometime critic myself, I think a lot about what we're supposed to be doing when we take someone's labour of love and talk about it publicly, without consent, with cruel honesty. It can seem absurd and hostile. The above critics keep me honest, I hope. (14/14)
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End of conversation
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