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

[Mark Roberts]

On Jun 3, 2009, at 1:18 AM, Aaron Gerow wrote:

> We should try not to assume a universal situation here. Some of us  
> produce sites in different languages and face different problems. We  
> writing in English can celebrate Midnight Eye and even tolerate some  
> of the poor fan blogs because there is a well-established academic  
> publication system, or serious magazines like Film Comment. We  
> should not forget that we are very privileged. But that is  
> definitely NOT the case in Japan, for instance. Academic publishing  
> is still very weak, the serious criticism magazines have mostly died  
> out, and there really is nothing great like Midnight Eye on the  
> internet in Japanese. In Japan, it is largely just Yahoo forums for  
> film criticism, or industry run sites like eiga.com. Many have  
> lamented the death of film criticism in Japan and Eigei is now  
> running a series of pieces detailing this. To many of my colleagues  
> in Japan, the internet is killing film criticism.

I would like to hear a more detailed explanation of why Japanese film  
scholars feel this is happening.

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.

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. W.r.t. academic and "serious  
criticism magazines", I don't see that it can be reduced to a pure  
function of the market, where the "freetard" Internet model is somehow  
usurping the paid-subscription academic journal model. I can't speak  
with authority on the economics of journals in Japan, but certainly a  
great many academic journals in the U.S. are not supported by  
subscription revenue in the first place. In fact, I'd guess that the  
bulk of their operating budgets come from direct institutional support  
to subsidize the costs of production and overhead. There's a lot of  
volunteer labor involved and few illusions that it should really be  
otherwise. It seems more that the existence of these journals is often  
staked upon very specific institutional and theoretical boundaries,  
and the personal commitments of the editors and their supporters to  
the same.

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.

M