What’s the Function of Criticism? Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #36 with Critic Noah Berlatsky

Do we need pro­fes­sion­al crit­ics reg­u­lat­ing our enter­tain­ment intake?  Noah has writ­ten for numer­ous pub­li­ca­tions includ­ing The Wash­ing­ton Post, The Atlantic, NBC News, The Guardian, Slate, and Vox, and his work has come up for dis­cus­sion in mul­ti­ple past Pret­ty Much Pop episodes.

He was invit­ed to join hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt in spelling out the func­tions of crit­i­cism, the idea of crit­i­cism as art, ide­o­log­i­cal vs. aes­thet­ic cri­tique, and whether there’s any­thing wrong with being neg­a­tive about oth­er peo­ple’s art. While we talk most­ly about film, Noah also writes about TV, comics, music and more.

First, read some arti­cles by Noah about crit­i­cism:

• “Why Hate?”
• “Hem­ing­way vs. Ken Rus­sell: Or Why You Should Com­pare Apples and Oranges”
• “On Art as Crit­i­cism and Crit­i­cism as Art”
• “In Praise of Crit­i­cism”

Oth­er authors speak­ing on the util­i­ty of crit­ics:

• “Do We Still Need Crit­ics in This Age of Opin­ion?” by Sarah Don­ald­son
• “Are Music Crit­ics Point­less?” by Emi­ly Zem­ler
• “Accen­tu­ate the Pos­i­tive: Why Music Crit­ics Write So Many Favor­able Reviews” by Tim­o­thy Gabrielle
• Nation­al Review crit­ic Armond White talk­ing about this on the Slash­film pod­cast

Here are some exam­ples of Noah’s crit­i­cal work rel­e­vant to what came up in the inter­view and our recent episodes:

• His review of 1917
• His pox-on-both-hous­es take on Scors­ese and Mar­vel
• On Mid­som­mar and Wick­er Man
• What The Good Place finale inspired him to write
• His take on the Bea­t­les-obsessed film Yes­ter­day 
• One of his many arti­cles on Twi­light

Includ­ed here with Noah’s per­mis­sion, here’s some crit­i­cism direct­ed at Noah:

• “Why Does­n’t the Atlantic Fire Noah Berlatsky?” by Ted Rall
• “The Rant: Who the Hell is Noah Berlatsky & Why Is He Trash­ing Bob Dylan?” by Michael Gold­berg
• “Worst Op-Ed of the Year? We Have a Wein­er and His Name Is Noah Berlatsky” by Ken Sil­ver­stein

At the end, after Noah leaves, Mark lays out a tax­on­o­my of crit­i­cism: sup­port­er, decoder, taste enforcer, and hater. Noah prac­tices all of these! Fol­low him on Twit­ter @nberlat and get scads of his writ­ing by sup­port­ing him at patreon.com/noahberlatsky.

Watch Mel Brooks’ depic­tion of the very first crit­ic.

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts or start with the first episode.