Media layoffs are no longer breaking news; at this point, it’s more of a weekly check-in to determine which publications are shaving a few more jobs, firing people en masse, or shuttering altogether. But for the admittedly niche demographic that follows the ups and downs of professional film and culture criticism, it’s been a particularly rough couple of weeks, in part because the job losses feel so specifically targeted. The Chicago Tribune isn’t just undergoing a round of layoffs to weather some bad economic news; they’re eliminating the position of film critic entirely, and with it mainstay Michael Phillips, who inherited a beat once occupied by Gene Siskel.
Phillips kept the Siskel torch burning in more ways than one; after Ebert retired from regular on-camera reviews, Phillips co-hosted a Siskel & Ebert offshoot with AO Scott, who has since also left the film-crit world, albeit voluntarily. But over at the New York Times, where Scott still works at the Book Review, four culture critics have recently been reassigned, essentially stripped of their original titles before being eventually replaced by … well, let’s have culture editor Sia Michel try to explain it: “Our readers are hungry for trusted guides to help them make sense of this complicated landscape, not only through traditional reviews but also with essays, new story forms, videos and experimentation with other platforms.” Translation: critics better learn to TikTok. And they better not expect to write so many of their dumb reviews.
Even more galling was Vanity Fair’s announcement of a refocusing on core coverage areas such as Hollywood, which would somehow actually necessitate firing their film critic Richard Lawson (as well as several journalists covering the exact areas the magazine is supposedly building up). Arts criticism has been vanishingly difficult to break into for ages, no one’s idea of a growth industry. But publications have managed to make a dire situation worse; it’s now reached the point where long-tenured veterans are having their jobs erased in a misguided rethinking of what criticism even actually is.
Obviously, the job prospects of an aspiring film critic don’t exactly affect thousands of workers. At the same time, it’s not as if there isn’t an interest in criticism and criticism-adjacent, ah, “content”. There’s apparently still money to be made in covering the arts, especially a mass-appeal medium like the movies; Rotten Tomatoes wouldn’t do occasional dramatic tally reveals if critical reception was a nonstarter in terms of online eyeballs. Publications still send staffers and freelancers to screenings, and studios still hold them regularly. Whether the people attending these screenings are actual critics, though, is a little more water-y; studios have a growing preference towards influencers who are more likely to raise awareness about a movie and post cheerfully about the great time they had rather than digging into the specifics and nuance of a particular work.
That more complex process doesn’t always mean filing negative reviews, either; a good critic can be far more illuminating about a work’s goodness or greatness than amateurish attempts at half-solicited ad copy. That’s why the Times editorial missive feels so menacing; rather than defending the work of its experienced and professional critics, it has big if-you-can’t-beat-em-join-em vibes.
Yet despite those bad vibes, in some ways the last decade represents a golden age of film criticism. For much of the back half of the 20th century, mainstream film criticism was practiced by newspaper writers – often male, usually white, not infrequently middle-aged or older. This lent the work the consistency of a seasoned pro, as well as a certain daily-grind uniformity among the rank-and-file. Of course, there has always been higher-level or longer-form work in journals and magazines, as well as superior newspaper critics. Roger Ebert could turn a 600-word review into a concise and revealing piece of art. But the internet has allowed a greater diversity of tastes, ages, races, genders and formats in the field over the past few decades. Often this work transcends the new-release grind. Letterboxd, the popular social media app, allows readers to sort through countless opinions on almost any movie (or just find some concisely silly jokes reminiscent of Classic Twitter). Even clickbaity anniversary pieces mean that (some) older movies get much more mainstream critical attention than in the past (though you might have to stomach weaker writers and editors describing virtually anything as a “cult classic”).
From the pithy one-liners to the 4,000-word essays, some of this stuff is bad. Some of it is great. Such is the way of all writing. In terms of sheer volume, though, there is a staggering amount of analysis available on movies, television and so on. (I know this firsthand, because sometimes it seems like I’m writing a bunch of it myself.) What so much of it has in common is that it pays little to nothing. The idea of making an actual living as a critic is increasingly remote – something I realize I am incalculably lucky to be able to do, and in constant danger of no longer actually doing. When low-context influencers who have never seen a movie made before they were born become a professional priority, genuine film criticism threatens to become a hobbyist’s favorite esoteric pastime.
Plenty of folks would react with: so what? Why do we need critics telling us what to think, anyway? The truth is, you don’t. Most critics aren’t trying to tell you what to think. Some of us aren’t even trying to convince you not to see the new Marvel movie you’re sure you’ll enjoy as much as any perpetually enthused influencer. (No one knows your tastes better than you. Also, going to the movies is fun. I understand why the influencers like it so much. Brutal reviews rarely dissuade me from seeing a movie I want to see.)
But if you’re interested in reading about movies (or TV, or music, or video games), you will benefit from writers whose knowledge of the medium extends beyond the past five years of free screenings. In other words, what anyone would expect from reading the Chicago Tribune, the New York Times or Vanity Fair: someone who might know more about the situation than you do. Not definitively, and certainly not about what you personally like, but someone in a long-term relationship with the movies, with all the ups, downs and hang-ups that entails. Criticism isn’t exactly journalism; at its best, it’s more like a conversation between writer, reader and subject.
This doesn’t have to be the dreaded gatekeeping – or maybe it can be a different form of it, guiding people who show up at the gate without a map rather than barring anyone from entry. Publications desperate to avoid gatekeeping will increasingly find themselves in the embarrassing situation of attempting to court and exploit influencers – a class of not-quite-professionals whose whole deal is squeezing whatever branding and money they can from themselves. Why would any influencer in their right mind want to revenue-share with Vanity Fair or make #content for the New York Times? These publications obviously aren’t quite ready to give up on the written word; they just see criticism as a particularly optional offshoot of it.
The professional outlook for arts critics won’t improve without a whole lot of media-industry upturns, so advocating for critics in particular might seem self-serving. Learn to code, learn to TikTok, learn to influence; learn to do something else. That may be what all of us wind up doing. In the meantime, critics can only hope for a growing realization among readers, viewers and decision-makers: if you enjoy reading or talking about movies, you might like criticism more than you think.
