Philip Kaffen- Taking Yakuza Film Seriously: Critique and Consensus in Film Criticism

[Aaron Gerow]

On Jun 2, 2009, at 11:19 AM, Mark Nornes wrote:
>
> First, does anyone out there feel threatened by Midnight Eye? I  
> assume this is the kind of "cinematic critique" enabled by new  
> technologies that Phil is talking about. I for one, have quite the  
> opposite relationship to Midnight Eye. This is one of the most  
> precious and important developments in Japanese cinema "study" in  
> decades. It's authoritative. Creative. Smart. And it's doubly  
> impressive for striking an productive interface―or alliance―with  
> academia (indeed, editor Tom Mes presented at the recent Evil Twin  
> of SCMS at Josai, and the other editor, Jasper Sharp, also appears  
> at academic venues).

I don't feel threatened by Midnight Eye--I've even written for it  
before--but is Midnight Eye the best representative of what is being  
produced on the internet (the new technology)? Could one argue it is  
rather the exception as it seems that most of what is being produced  
are fan blogs of various levels of seriousness and breadth. Some are  
good (Ryuganji, J-FIlm Pow Wow, etc.), but a lot are just sites of  
narrow, shallow expressions of likes and dislikes. It's like the  
Japanese cinema page on Wikipedia: just a list of favorite movies or  
events with absolutely no historical or critical perception. While  
one can ask whether new technologies are enabling cinematic critique,  
there is also the question of whether the technologies--perhaps not  
inherently, but at least in their current manifestations--are  
undermining critique. They are also affecting, to a degree, what is  
being put out on DVD or getting released in the theaters, as we are  
swamped with J-horror and action and very little else.

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.

What do people think of that?

Aaron