Critiquing the Art of the Critique

We are a society of criticism.  We've created an industry for it; there isn't any form of entertainment or art it doesn't touch.  Music, literature, food, movies, sport politics, it's all included.  Each of us has had a personal brush with it every time we had a paper graded in school or played a wrong note on an instrument.  Given how much we're surrounded by it, is it really that surprising that we have a tendency to be a little critical ourselves?  We've all done it, even if only to mentally sketch out an alternate ending to that movie or bewail the less-than-stellar season of a favorite team.  The irony is that the one thing we haven't bothered to critique is criticism itself.

So to add irony to irony, that's exactly what I'm going to do.

It all started with 8th grade English.

We had just finished reading Fahrenheit 451, a dystopian novel depicting a dire future of information repression where books are systematically sought out and destroyed.  We had also recently watched Star Trek, perhaps one of the most optimistic glimpses of humanity's potential to date.

So one day when we got to class, our teacher asked us a question:  Which version of the future is more helpful to society, the warning or the roadmap?  He had us stand in opposite corners of the room and duke it out.

Quite arbitrarily, I chose Star Trek.  Maybe I thought it was the more entertaining to the two stances to contend for that particular day.  Maybe I was already standing closer to that corner of the room.  But as I joined in the debate a strange thing happened.  Standing in front of the class, struggling to articulate my case, I quite suddenly realized that I agreed with what I was saying.  There was more benefit to positivity.

You see, warnings are only good for telling us what not to do.  But pile a person with a thousand things to avoid and they still won't have any idea what to go for.  To succeed, a person needs more than guardrails and signposts.

They need a vision of what they can become.

When a person has that vision, the signposts and guardrails become, in fact, a little less vital because they naturally avoid those things that are incongruous with the vision of their destiny.

So what does this have to do with criticism?

Well, true criticism tears down.  It belittles, demeans, or at very least strongly suggests that something is bad because of what it is.  This can sometimes lead artists to avoid making mistakes and to perfect the nuts and bolts of their craft so as to garner the approval of the critic.  And if that was all they did, they would be making a great mistake.

To explain, I'm going to take slightly out of context an analogy first penned by C.S. Lewis in the essay, Meditation in a Toolshed.

I was standing today in the dark toolshed. The sun was shining outside and through the crack at the top of the door there came a sunbeam. From where I stood that beam of light, with the specks of dust floating in it, was the most striking thing in the place. 

Everything else was almost pitch-black. I was seeing the beam, not seeing things by it. Then I moved, so that the beam fell on my eyes. Instantly the whole previous picture vanished. I saw no toolshed, and (above all) no beam. Instead I saw, framed in the irregular cranny at the top of the door, green leaves moving on the branches of a tree outside and beyond that, 90 odd million miles away, the sun. Looking along the beam, and looking at the beam are very different experiences.

When we critique, we stand outside the beam of the experience and analyze it, turn it up and down, roll it about between our palms.  But it isn't until we look down the beam that we are one with the moment.  Ironically, only the person looking along the beam can rightfully say anything about it, because only that person truly sees it.  A person looking at the beam can say any number of things about it "objectively" but the one thing he cannot say anything about is the experience of looking along it, the experience of the moment.  And if the experience is really what it's all about to start with, does the critic actually have anything to say at all?

A perpetual mindset of evaluating excellence objectively is dangerous because looking at rather than along the beam for the purpose of the critique fosters disconnection.  When we decide that something is bad, in the very act of judging we separate ourselves from it. The more we see the world in terms of failed skill implementation, the more we stand outside it looking in.  And the more we do that, the more isolated we become.  In contrast, the more we fully embrace the objects of consideration around us, the more connection we feel and the more we see clearly.
 

So what then?  Do we give up pointing out when some detail is amiss and pretend everything we see, hear, or listen to is perfect even though it isn't?  Of course not!  I'm simply suggesting that our connection with the item of criticism is a relationship that both parties (the art and the consumer) contribute to.  If I listen to a song and don't have the experience the musician intended, it means that I'm not lined up with the beam of the experience, I'm not looking along it.  And it is as equally my responsibility to position myself in front of the beam as it is for the beam to align with me.  There is no objectively "bad" art, only lack of connection.

Now certainly there is quite a lot an artist can do to make his work as easily connectable as possible.  But even the brightest light cannot shine through closed eyes.

At this point, you probably think that this is an article about the entertainment industry.

You're wrong.

Each one of us is a piece of artwork, a joint effort between ourselves and our Creator.  All of us have blots of ink in the wrong place and notes that are a little out of pitch.  All of us can be looked at and critiqued.

But what the majority of us need is not to be torn down, but rather truly experienced.  Further, the more we denigrate the weaknesses of others, the more isolated everyone involved becomes.

Because of the way the world is obsessed with criticism, it's only natural to extend our critique of the art and sports world to the people who walk among us.  You may think that's completely different from being disgusted with that new album that didn't turn out the way you'd hoped, but in this case the principle has merely been pounded into a different shape.  The substance is still the same.

What people need is not an endless list of what not to be.  They need a vision.  And a vision cannot come from criticism.

You might think, "What can I possibly do to create that kind of vision for somebody else?  Isn't that their responsibility?"  But the act of looking along the beam, and thus truly seeing, is a connection that by definition requires two people.  Each of us is dependent on those around us for that type of sight.  And how can a person have any kind of vision of themselves if they can't see?  There are plenty of people in this world who haven't even looked along the beam of their own identity, let alone anything else.  In other words, they look at everything in the world but never accurately perceive and are walking in darkness at noonday.  If we can position ourselves just right, such that we are looking along the core of who they really are, we might just be able to facilitate the very first real connection they have ever had and so facilitate a vision of what they can become.  If we choose not to help because we're too busy analyzing what they could be doing better or being caught up in our own lives, we deprive them of the one thing that would make improvement in the very imperfections we dislike about them possible.

Now we come to the part of the essay where I explain what you have probably all been wondering from the beginning:  How in the world can I criticize the act of criticizing without being at least a little bit of a hypocrite?

That comes down to what you consider criticism.

If by critiquing you mean tearing down what has been built up by someone else, you get something quite different than the ideal if-not-quite-realized term "constructive criticism."  There is a difference between tearing something down because you believe it is bad, and tearing it down because you believe it is good.  When you see the potential a piece of artwork, or a person, has, it's natural to want to reach out and take away the obstacles in their path.  This kind of destruction is actually a kind of construction because the end goal is to leave something better in its place.

This sense of "building up" is essential to good criticism and is, in a true Kierkegaardian sense, love.  When you criticize something or someone because you love them, you are no longer merely staring at the beam.  You are in two places at once, scanning the length of it while at the same time staring along it.  Those two perspectives are not mutually exclusive.  Tearing down and building up can happen in the same sentence.  What is necessary, the very vital and most critical ingredient, is a vision of what that being can become.

Love makes it all possible.  It articulates the vision that creates hope, and it inspires action in the conviction that the being who is criticized can actually get there.  It makes all things new and good and one and connected, even things like criticism that in so many instances bring only darkness and disappointment.

This is the vision I have for what the critic can become.

Now go out there and make it happen.

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Photo attribution: Sebastien Wiertz, "Reading," https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/legalcode Michael Saechang, "Movies," https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/legalcode Lauren Finkel, "Strings," https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.0/legalcode Lilac Lion, "pen," https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/legalcode Hernan Pinera, "Hug," https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/legalcode