Cinema and Net-based Criticism -- Was: Re: Philip Kaffen- Taking Yakuza Film Seriously ...

[Aaron Gerow]

On Jun 3, 2009, at 8:07 AM, Mark Roberts wrote:
>
> I would like to hear a more detailed explanation of why Japanese  
> film scholars feel this is happening.

I should stress this is not necessarily what I think: it's just  
something I have heard said many times. As I state below, I think  
there are a lot of other factors involved in the crisis of film  
criticism beyond just the introduction of new media technologies (I  
am always suspicious of explanations through technological  
determinism). But I think the internet has been a convenient  
scapegoat for many in Japan who are extremely frustrated by what is  
perceived as the death of film criticism. When the magazines are  
dying out, or like KineJun, just turning into industry rags, the  
opportunities for paid film writing are decreasing. This is a life  
and death matter for many. The internet has not stepped in, because  
while there are some good blogs or individually run sites like boid,  
none can help sustain film criticism as a career. The industry run  
sites have basically excluded professional film criticism. So when  
people look at the most popular movie sites, and see just viewer  
reviews, the opinion is created that such sites are not just another  
form of criticism, but are in fact replacing real film criticism. The  
cause-effect relationship may be dubious, and fueled by prejudice  
against new media that are seen as undermining literacy in general,  
but such connections are made in desperate circumstances.
>
> This may not be an appropriate point of reference, but judging from  
> the Anglo-American sector of the Internet, it strikes me that the  
> web has multiplied the number of levels and venues for film  
> criticism. Yes, there are a great many fan blogs that are not  
> terribly serious or critical, but the Net has also created new  
> channels for existing magazines and journals to distribute their  
> content. Granted, the "editorial function" has become more diffuse,  
> and there is greater burden placed upon the reader to navigate  
> through the shallow waters, but in what ways, exactly, do the less  
> serious fan blogs imperil more professional film criticism? Are  
> sites like Twitch posing a threat to Midnight Eye, and is the  
> latter diverting market and mindshare from the likes of Film  
> Comment, Cinema Journal, or October? Rather, it seems more the case  
> that each of these has a fairly distinct niche in the universe of  
> film fandom and criticism, and that some of these have been made  
> possible by the Internet. Here, I'm not even getting into Web  
> 2.0ish hand-waving, but mostly taking into consideration that  
> established presses have gotten quite heavily involved in Net-based  
> distribution, leveraging e-mail lists, web, RSS, etc. Again, the  
> situation in Japan may be different, insert the usual caveats about  
> making universal assumptions, etc., but if so I'd still like to  
> hear more about this difference.

I really do think the Japanese case is different, but I would bet  
that similar phenomena are visible in other countries. It would be  
nice to think that all these different possibilities can exist at the  
same time, each satisfying a particular niche, but that in general is  
a luxury that I would bet is not as common as we think. The economics  
and politics do not support it.

There are a lot of reasons why all is not rosy for criticism in  
Japan, many of which go beyond the issue of new media technologies.  
First, while Japan has a long and very vibrant history of film  
criticism, one that was supported for a time by a productive  
publishing industry, film criticism, for better of for worse, was  
never intimately integrated into the film industry. True, film  
critics became scriptwriters or worked as publicity men, and film  
directors wrote film criticism, but film criticism never developed  
into an industry that was important to the film studios. While in the  
US, ads make a point of quoting famous critics in order to get an  
audience, that rarely if ever happens in Japan (they usually quote   
some tarento or some anonymous viewer--a form of "reviewing" that  
echoes these internet blog or review sites). Newspaper film criticism  
never developed to the point that critics became influential figures.  
There is no site like Rotten Tomatoes to guide viewers to film  
criticism and Yahoo Japan, unlike Yahoo USA, does not link to film  
reviews from its movie pages. Famous critics like Yodogawa or Komori  
who hosted Saturday-night-at-the-movies kind of shows helped TV  
stations broadcast second rate movies, but that position by  
definition did not allow for bad reviews (whereas Siskel and Ebert's  
fame depended on them giving bad reviews). During the down years in  
the 1980s and 1990s, critics like Yamane and Hasumi did help a lot of  
independent films, but in that case film criticism remained as fringe  
as the independents. Now that the industry has "revived," there is  
absolutely no sense in the industry that film criticism is important  
except as publicity. And thus today's film companies can quite  
blatantly kick film critics out of preview screenings if they write  
one bad review. And thus new magazines like Nihon eiga nabi contain  
not one sentence of film criticism. I reiterate this: in Japan, there  
is increasingly no real niche for good film criticism--it is dying  
away and the internet has not filled in the gap.

Why has this happened? One can probably go back and look at the  
history of criticism (art, theater, etc.) in Japan to try to find  
patterns, but I think part of the reason is the long-held view, by  
officials and cultural elites, that cinema is mass-produced trash or  
socially dangerous. Writing about film, therefore, was not considered  
respectable. That led, on the one hand, to the failure of film  
studies to develop in Japan as an academic discipline. And without  
film studies in universities around the country, with lots of  
students and scholars buying books and journals, an academic film  
publishing industry failed to develop. But I think, on the other  
hand, that there also failed to develop a culture in which it was  
important--be it on the thumbs up thumbs down or on the intellectual- 
philosophical variety--to evaluate films.

Is the internet the cause? No, but as with the tarento quotes in film  
ads, the industry is much more amenable to that than with independent  
film critics. One reason is because it is anonymous and can easily be  
manipulated: just as my wife once saw a distribution company employee  
posing as an average viewer in the Pia exit poll, you can use a dozen  
employees using various accounts to start padding the Yahoo viewer  
reviews. Film is becoming part of the contents industry, now  
increasingly centered in new media, but film criticism in Japan, for  
better or for worse, is not part of the contents industry like it is  
in the US. It simply does not exist in this burgeoning industry--if  
it does, it is only in so far as it functions purely as publicity.

Are there alternatives? Of course, but the economics and in some ways  
the culture does not support it. Anyone can create a blog or their  
own site, but right now no individual in Japan can support themselves  
doing that. A few of the bloggers are getting notice enough that the  
independent distributors are sending them preview cards, but they are  
still minority sites. Look at sites like boid and you will see a  
common pattern: great ambitions at the start running into the reality  
of little money and few willing to volunteer their time for long.  
Some places like Eigei are adding internet-only articles on their  
sites, but no publishers are initiating projects centered on  
criticism. Film studies is still in a very weak position in academia  
and, while there were experiments like Kato Mikiro's now mostly self- 
serving CineMediaNet!, not much serious publishing is not going on on  
the internet or in print.

I also think this is a government issue. I wrote about this in  
Midnight Eye and Eigei, but frankly, the government conception of  
cinema culture and the contents industry does not include film  
criticism or film academia. Cinema is an industry, and since film  
criticism is not an industry, it does not belong in the future  
vision. I think this can be said of the internet as well.
>
> Clearly, there is a relationship between venues for publication and  
> the production of criticism. The existence of one implies the  
> other. Editors are always looking for good writing, and so if  
> authors are producing criticism of merit, it seems fair to say that  
> they can eventually find places to publish it.

I have to disagree with this. There are lots of great pieces written  
in Japanese on film theory, history or criticism in Japan that are  
not finding places to publish. (For instance, Makino's IMMENSELY  
IMPORTANT early Showa periodical index is still not getting  
published, probably because the previous one didn't sell well  
enough.) American academic publishing, like American academia, is  
extremely privileged economically and cannot serve as an example for  
most other countries. While serious film journals in the USA are not  
making a lot of money, they have a definite market. Even if they get  
institutional support, that is on the basis of an academic culture  
that values film studies. Neither that market nor that culture exists  
in Japan to a sufficient degree and thus those journals or  
publications do not exist in Japan.
>
> If serious film criticism magazines are disappearing in Japan,  
> isn't that more indicative of some deeper problem in the culture of  
> film and/or film criticism in Japan? Blaming it on the Internet  
> seems too simple.

I would agree and I hope I've pointed to many other factors. What I  
worry about, however, is that given how the internet is being  
historically articulated today in Japan--especially how the industry  
is defining it--it will not serve anytime soon as a productive venue  
for influential film criticism. It may not be the reason film  
criticism is dying, but I wonder whether it is being defined in ways  
that prevent the revival of film criticism or the creation of new  
forms of film criticism. I hope my fears are wrong, however.


Aaron Gerow
Assistant Professor
Film Studies Program/East Asian Languages and Literatures
Yale University
53 Wall Street, Room 316
PO Box 208363
New Haven, CT 06520-8363
USA
Phone: 1-203-432-7082
Fax: 1-203-432-6764
e-mail: aaron.gerow at yale.edu
site: www.aarongerow.com