“Taking” Bad

I saw a tweet today that prompted me to write this post but I don’t want to link to that tweet because this post is not really about the tweet or the individual critics whose perspectives clash within the tweet. It’s about what I see as a perpetual tension between critics of different stripes, with members of each group sometimes asserting that the other is doing criticism wrong. Essentially the tweet was one critic critiquing a “take” on a popular action film by another critic, without acknowledging that the aims of the critic she was critiquing are–it seems to me–significantly different from her own.

In broad terms, I think that many critics strive to illuminate nuance, complexity, meaning, and beauty in a work, with a possible goal of enhancing the individual reader’s experience of that work, and other works in that medium. I’d say the person who wrote the tweet comes from this school of thought. Meanwhile, there’s what might be described as an entirely different school of media criticism that’s concerned with the cultural impact of works. Does this game employ sexist tropes? Do these films perpetuate harmful values around masculinity or violence or misogyny? Those kinds of things. I’d say the person she was critiquing comes from this school of thought.

I find both of these approaches extremely important. It seems to me that the danger of relying solely on the second approach is a tendency toward being reductive, to viewing media only in terms of its larger cultural impact, possibly as an assortment of puzzle-piece-like tropes and not allowing for the soul, or for fragments of beauty or worthwhile meaning to exist in works that may also do some harm. If this is the extent of one’s aims or approach, it can serve to overly simplify one’s perspective on or relationship to art. On the other hand, criticism that ignores the larger cultural impact of a work can be irresponsible. If films or TV shows or games perpetuate racism or transphobia or other harmful ideologies, we’d damn well better say so. But that shouldn’t necessarily mean throwing out a work entirely. There can exist a fascinating tension and even contradiction within art. Skyfall is, in my view, an extremely regressive and misogynistic film (yes, even for an early 21st century Bond film), but I’ll be damned if there aren’t images in it of exhilarating beauty, along with aspects of its tale of death, resurrection, and homecoming that speak to whatever part of me still longs for the spiritual and the transcendent. 

Let’s use Breaking Bad as an example. Would it be wrong for a critic to describe Walter White as a kind of tragic figure who utterly loses his way and his humanity, one whose profoundly immoral actions generate terrible consequences and cost him everything that really matters? No, it would not. One could absolutely argue, then, that Breaking Bad is a deeply moral series, and criticism that explores the moral complexities of the show could absolutely be valuable, enriching viewers’ appreciation for its themes, its characters, its structure. Doing so may be the aim of some critics, and that is a valid pursuit. However, if, in thinking that Breaking Bad was a moral show, they also believed that its impact on our culture was one of net good, I would suggest that they were mistaken. To boil this down to a level of extreme simplicity for the sake of argument and brevity, I don’t think the average, person-on-the-street viewer of Breaking Bad came away from that show thinking, “What a powerful moral tale about a man who utterly lost his way, one that has encouraged me to reflect upon my own life and how I treat others.” Rather, I think the average viewer’s reaction to the show would be something closer to “Walter White was a badass!” Many, many people rooted for him. They wore t-shirts with the Heisenberg image on them. They celebrated his violent victories. And ohhh, they hated his wife

That doesn’t mean that Breaking Bad is not a show of moral complexity. It is, and can absolutely be explored and appreciated as such. But in our culture, which is already one where violence and domination through violence are normalized and regularly glorified, Breaking Bad’s often exhilarating scenes of violence and brutality, and the overall story arc of Walter White, probably did not nudge us collectively toward a less violent, less misogynistic, more moral and considerate society. Rather, for all its excellence, taken as a whole, it helped to maintain the status quo where violence and patriarchy are concerned. Examining the ways in which it does this, and encouraging people to think about the impact the media they’re engaging with actually has in perpetuating harmful values that exist in the culture they live in, is also a valuable, if altogether different, goal which criticism can pursue. 

For my part, I want criticism that complicates our relationship to media rather than simplifies it. I want criticism that acknowledges all the challenging or fascinating or absurd or uncomfortable contradiction that can exist in a work, criticism that encourages viewers or readers or players to more deeply appreciate the layers of meaning, to see the beauty in one aspect of a work while recognizing the oppressive ugliness in another aspect of it. Finally, I want criticism that doesn’t let art off the hook, criticism that takes art seriously enough and that takes criticism itself seriously enough to advocate for art that nudges us, a tiny, tiny bit at a time, toward a less violent, more liberated, kinder and more equitable world.