Commentary 08 Mar 2008 09:34 am
Just my Opinion
- I’ve a been bit confused by what is going on at Michael Barrier‘s site.
To begin with he’s posting some absolutely amazing photographs. Many pictures of Disney and his family tavelling around the world. Most of these photos are unidentified, and Mike locates the picture for us and many of the people in them. There are also stunning pictures of some of the WB animators at work and play.
These images are the first rate stuff of animation history. They’re essential to those of us who want to know more about some of these animators who constructed the business in the first place. They’re also fun. (Who ever expected to see a photo of Tex Avery in swim trunks?)
However much I enjoy these photos, I come to MichaelBarrier.com not for visuals; I come for the writing. Way back in the very early 70′s (or maybe it was the ’60s) I discovered this budding animation historian – when no such thing existed – through his magazine, Funnyworld. Immediately, my world began to hinge on this publication. Back in the day. there was no such writing as this; no interviews with animators; no serious reviews of animated films by reviewers who completely understood all aspects of the medium. Yet here it all was, and, what do you know, the writing was first rate.
In those days, I swore by the film criticism of Andrew Sarris, whose American Cinema, taught me worlds about film and the world of the director. Now, I’d found the equivalent of an Andrew Sarris in animation reviewers and historians.
Barrier and I became friends in the ’70s and have remained thus. I contributed a letter or two and was once asked to write a review or a piece about Watership Down. (I had been close to John Hubley who was nastily removed from that film. Perhaps I had some insight to offer.) I took it in stride and all humility when that review wasn’t included. I had no – none – hard feelings. Mike’s review wasn’t as negative as I was, and he offered more insight.
When Funnyworld went through its struggle to stay alive, I watched from the front row of the bleachers, and I was enormously sad when it all ended. Needless to say, I was enthralled when the internet brought it back to me, but I wasn’t prepared for the wealth that would keep coming. The printed magazine came once or twice a year – if we were lucky. The site gets updated frequently, and the material Mike shares with us is enormous.
So, you ask, what causes me confusion? It was this essay posted on March 5th, Accentuating the Negative. Obviously, some of the foul mouthed irritants of the internet misunderstood and internalized some of the comments Mike has posted. They took it personally, for whatever reason, and lashed back in confused, muddled repsonse. Barrier has felt the obligation to defend himself from their comments. It all amazes and confounds me.The world has changed – and not all for the better.
There was a time when criticism was just that. It was necessary for the reviewer to know his(her) business and have a bigger idea of the world to defend. You sidled up to the reviewers you most appreciated.
If you were into directors, you went to Andrew Sarris or André Bazin and Cahiers du Cinema. If you were into writers, you went to Pauline Kael or Richard Corliss. The point was that there was a big picture. Now you have a choice between thumbs up or thumbs down or one to four stars. In New York it’s one to five apples. All critics today write is Black or White, a description of the story, and I like it or don’t. There is no depth in most reviews, and the language is pedestrian at best. It’s hard to read film reviewers today.
There are a few – just a few – animation critics who’ve earned their salt. Their taste is refined and their opinions are valuable. Michael Barrier leads this group, whether you like it or not. His opinion isn’t for everyone, but that’s irrelevant. I’ve disagreed with him as much as I’ve agreed. No one will ever be able to explain to me how or why he likes Polar Express. That’s my opinion vs his, and it doesn’t mean that I should say he’s an idiot and attack him. It just means I don’t agree with him. The thing is that I respect his writing so much that I paid attention to what he had to say about that film and went back to see the film a second time to try to understand his taste.
However, we’ve always agreed about one thing. Good animation is essential for the continuation of the Art form. The problem is that there’s just so little of it these days. There’s plenty of animation, but there’s just so much chaff for too little wheat.
John Canemaker once, many years ago, had a small dinner party around a private screening of Fantasia. John, his companion, me and mine, and Tissa David sat through a projection of that film. John and I still like to joke about Tissa’s response, spoken in heavy Hungarian accent, at the very moment the lights came back on. “That film is HORRIBLE!â€
(Actually, I’m not sure if that’s the exact quote – I’m not sure any of us remember since we’ve joked around it for so long imitating Tissa’s Hungarian accent. She loved the teasing.) We all laughed.
On that day, John was, I think, hurt on some small scale. Fantasia was an important film to him and his development, and it’s germinal to a lot of what inspired his own artwork. Here was this great animator that he respected enormously, and she bluntly tore the film down.
I dredge up this story because it has some small relevance here. A good critic, one who is completely honest with himself and his medium, is obliged to be honest. We have to hear the truth, or we can’t learn anything. Mike Barrier has given me some enormously positive reviews, but he’s also given me some negative ones. I’m convinced that he’s been a bit more sensitive so as not to hurt my feelings, but he has still been honest. I’ve always taken good reviews with pleasure, but I’ve taken the more negative ones more seriously. I can learn from both, but the negatives – if they’re well written and informed – have more to teach me.
There’s a current healthy exchange going on there between Mike and Nick Cross, a Canadian filmmaker. His film, The Waif of Persphone, was negatively reviewed and Mike admits that he may have been too curt. As a result he’s ordered a dvd copy of the film to look at it again and give his second thoughts. He’s using his own coin to look again at a film he didn’t like; he simply wants to be sure that he gave his open and honest opinion. You couldn’t expect more from an animation reviewer.
I guess my confusion comes when an excellent writer and historian has to bow down to those who are cursorily judging him for not agreeing with them. This is a guy who is respected as the top of the game by ALL of the other animation historians out there. Yes, they all have quibbles at times over Mike’s personality, but the same is true of all of them. The important thing is that the knowledge and the truth gets out there and should not, can not be censored. Mike’s criticism and historical writing, whether we agree with it or not, is part of that truth.
Maybe if Barack Obama gets into office this will all get a bit better.
on 08 Mar 2008 at 11:56 am 1.Pete Emslie said …
Sadly, the internet does not seem to be that conducive to well-reasoned criticism. I remember Mike Barrier himself comparing the internet world with the days of yore when criticism in books or magazines could only be countered by somebody physically writing and mailing a letter of protest to the author. Because of that necessary effort (and postage stamp), there might have been just a handful of angry responses, but with the global reach of the internet and the immediacy of giving a (usually anonymous) response on discussion boards, any serious critic has to prepare himself for the worst. It seems that many of the “Internet Kiddies”, my pet name for those who don’t know how to construct complete sentences or offer up anything much more than “that’s awesome!” or “that sucks!”, are far too prone to interpret all criticism as the words of, as they themselves put it, a “hater”.
Several months ago, I offered up my own wordy criticism of Flash animation over on Cartoon Brew. For the record, I don’t like Flash and tried to explain my reasons in great detail as to why I find it inherently incapable of producing satisfying results. However, all of the Flash defenders felt it necessary not merely to disagree with me (which I have no problem with) but to also vilify me, not only on that Cartoon Brew thread but moreso over on “Cold Hard Flash” and other related boards. I’m sure that they’d gladly have burned a straw dummy of me in effigy had they had one! As a result of that experience, I’m reluctant to jump into the fray much anymore on these discussion boards. I think Mike Barrier was on safer ground in the pre-internet era, when responses were not as swift and savage as they are today. To be a tough, serious critic today requires either a very thick skin or a masochistic bent!
on 08 Mar 2008 at 12:47 pm 2.Michael said …
My problem is that I suspect good writers are editing themselves so they don’t get bludgeoned by people who are too sensitive or completely limited in their knowledge.
When you have a writer like Barrier, who goes out of his way to watch everything in theatrical form (if he can) and then writes about it in a clear articulate form, you take seriously what he has to offer. His knowledge is too vast to ignore. You don’t have to agree with everything he says, but you don’t have to dismiss it all either.
I dislike Flash as well, but it’s not worth writing about it. I’m just accused of not knowing the “tool”. I don’t draw with lumps of coal either.
Then there was all that anti UPA nonsense we had to deal with as well. People who had only seen poor quality YouTube versions of these films were wiping them out completely.
on 08 Mar 2008 at 1:30 pm 3.Tim Rauch said …
An interesting post, Michael, it is interesting to note how use of the internet is making a difference in the exchange between animation enthusiasts. I first became interested in animation just as the internet was being “born”, and benefited from the information it made available. Besides reading Animation Magazine and whatever books I could get my hands on, I was also able to communicate with a group of animation artists via email. In those “early days” of the internet, there was little or no online video, but through the chat group I was part of, I got my hands on a VHS of Dale Case’s “Further Adventures of Uncle Sam”. Not sure how a ten year old would have gotten his hands on such an obscure but charming film without this “series of tubes”. I was sort of away from animation for several years and came back to it just as the blogging phenomenon was taking off. For me, it’s been a huge boost to connect with like-minded paper flippers, especially because I work in relative isolation from my apartment in Brooklyn. Still, I cringe whenever I see unwarranted, poorly formed attacks. Strong criticism has its place, but I think it can be too easy for someone to misinterpret a comment and overstate their response. But I’ll take all those negatives happily, because without the more supportive elements of the internet animation community, I’m not sure how I could sustain the effort I need to get my work done.
on 08 Mar 2008 at 1:33 pm 4.Thad Komorowski said …
I don’t think Barrier’s been backing down at all. He can take the criticism from blowhards just fine and dish it back to them, without getting personal, and clearly expressing his disdain for such ignoramuses.
Hollywood Cartoons is a great book, probably the best on theatrical animation ever written. Removing his point-of-view, which I tend to completely either agree (his appraisal of Chuck Jones) or disagree with (his panning of the Fleischers), you’d probably be taking out about two to three dozen pages of a 500+ page book. What’s left is incomparable research. My real gripe with it is the lack of coverage of the smaller studios.
Here’s hoping to Barrier one day giving a big razz and a “Haha! Fooled ya!”, re: Polar Express…
on 08 Mar 2008 at 4:59 pm 5.Eddie Fitzgerald said …
I value all of Mike’s books and consider him a friend, but the lad has made some strange calls lately and I’m not surprised that he’s taken criticism.
Mike’s campaign against John Kricfalusi doesn’t make any sense at all. Who’s done more for comedic animation in recent times than than John? My guess is that Mike is just temperamentally resistant to edgy comedy. He’s like a classical music critic sent to review a rock concert. You can just feel him squirming in his seat.
Mike’s views about Clampett underline this. Mike uses words like threatening, sadistic, and bizzare when he writes about Clampett, surely one of the sunniest directors in the history of animation. It just doesn’t seem to have occurred to Mike that he might not be the right audience for Clampett’s kind of broad comedy. That’s nothing to be ashamed of, nobody likes it all, but Mike has set himself up as St. George, out to slay the broad comedy dragon.
Will Mike succeed? I’m not sure. You could argue that what critics think doesn’t matter. Critics denigrated Sergio Leonne for years, contemptuously referring to him as a spaghetti western director, but the public continues to love the guy. His influence can still be seen in modern films like “Kill Bill” and in whole genres like anime.
On the other hand, critics sometimes succeed in killing a genre. Look at the way they helped to kill Swing in favor of BeBop. Imagine that! Something as vibrant and street smart as Swing being replaced by something as arid and self-consciously intellectual as BeBop! I’m still waiting for the critics to apologize.
Mike needs to re-think some things.
on 08 Mar 2008 at 6:10 pm 6.Thad Komorowski said …
I don’t know Eddie. Is there anything more hilariously sadistic than Clampett’s Tweety in the history of animation? Is there a more brilliantly bizarre short in the Warner canon than The Great Piggy Bank Robbery?
Barrier seems to love (not just like) all of the best Clampett films. He holds those as standards for the other cartoons as whole to live up to.
The underlying problem with critiquing the theatrical short cartoon is that it was never meant to be thought of in the same terms as the features it was a cheap warm-up act to. Just about all of them were made with the notion of “my kids are never going to see this thing with my name on it”. Which is why the filmmakers that did care and knew how good their cartoons could be stand above the rest.
on 08 Mar 2008 at 7:18 pm 7.Daniel Thomas MacInnes said …
I know exactly what you mean. For my main website, I wrote a film review a couple years ago, for this forgettable b-movie called Boondock Saints. It’s one of those instantly-forgettable Tarantino knock-offs, written and directed by a bullying frat boy whose rise and fall make for a far interesting story (and, indeed, has, with the documentary Overnight). So I wrote a fairly critical review; my thoughts weren’t on the movie itself, so much as the cult following it has generated among college students. I made the immediate parallel to that Simpson’s episode where Mel Gibson remakes Mr. Smith Goes to Washinton, turning it into a stupid violent bloodbath.
It’s funny how only the complainers are the ones to write the letters. That essay three years ago has resulted in a steady stream of, ahem, fan mail, always from disgruntled fans who feel so personally wounded that I chose not to validate their opinions.
I’ve never read a thoughtful response, or an intelligent one. I always receive whining, bawling, and cussing. You suck. You don’t know what you’re talking about. Blah blah blah…it’s like listening to a four-year-old throw a temper tantrum. I’m left openly questioning just where the endless dumbing down of our society will lead us. We really are becoming an Idiocracy (now that movie is truly the next Great American Prophesy, ala Network).
There really isn’t much of film criticism anymore, apart from the older generation, Stanley Kaufman or Roger Ebert and such. But that’s to be expected, since corporate conglomerates have taken over the entire entertainment spectrum, and our culture is trapped in a high-school clique mindset. In this world, popularity and status and looks are what matter. All other considerations are thrown to the wind. For movie critics, this means playing nice with the alpha males and the queen bees. Play along and you’ll be invited to all the cool parties.
I think the internet has changed this a lot, and what we’re all doing is playing a part. The fragmenting of culture is a good thing, really, because it means the tail is expanding outward infinitely. I don’t know if this means we’ll have to keep dealing with the dumb-dumbs and the bratty children, but we have to deal with them every day in the real world. Why not in cyberspace?
Oh, and here are the movie links to those two films I’ve mentioned:
http://www.danielthomas.org/pop/film_reviews/bsaints.htm
http://www.danielthomas.org/pop/film_reviews/overnight.htm
on 09 Mar 2008 at 11:21 pm 8.Kevin Langley said …
“On the other hand, critics sometimes succeed in killing a genre. Look at the way they helped to kill Swing in favor of BeBop. Imagine that! Something as vibrant and street smart as Swing being replaced by something as arid and self-consciously intellectual as BeBop! I’m still waiting for the critics to apologize.”
I don’t thinks that’s necessarily true. I think artists ultimately dictate the course of any medium. I think a lot classic animators strived or originally started out trying to become “serious” artists, but the need to make a living steered them to animation. It’s only fitting that these “serious” artists would venture away from comedy at some point to make more personal and dramatic films. (I’m not saying comedic films can’t be personal, I tend to only prefer comedic cartoons)
Take your example of Bebop killing Swing. Nothing could be further from the truth. Those same musicians playing in the big bands were out at night jamming after hours playing music they felt was more personal and explored their abilities in a way the could never do on the bandstand. The critics didn’t create bebop, the musicians did. Everything evolves whether we like it or not.
And for the record someone like Charlie Parker playing swing music would be akin to Carlo Vinci animating Fred Flintstone instead of Krakatoa Katie. I know what I’d rather listen to and watch.
on 11 Mar 2008 at 2:28 pm 9.Michael Jones said …
As an outsider to all of this and the animation realm in general (though an avid consumer and fan, especially of early Disney stuff), but a constant user of tech and the Internet, here is my perspective on commenters and such on the Internet.
I think it is easy to forget that most of the Internet audience today is in the under 30 crowd (heavily tilted to the under 25 crowd). At 35 and solidly in Gen X in my case, even I am not as connected to the Internet (though my wife would disagree) as most thumb jamming, gum smacking, ‘High School’ musical fans are.
And folks like my father and father-in-law in their mid to late 50′s? They, like most of us (and I assume many of you), have pretty much settled into what they really are passionate about and not (motorcycles in the case of the F-i-L and bad jokes in the case of my dad). So sites like this one, Mike Barrier’s and others just don’t get much play outside the AOI as my military brethren call it (area of interest for you civi types).
All of that is to say that I’m not certain that the comments are any more juvenile today as they would have been at any other time in the last 40-60 years, it’s just that the juvenile crowd has more access and more free time to pester, as do the folks who could never afford a subscription to something like Funnyworld (nor would they really have cared frankly). But now for the ubiquitous price of $19.95 a month, everybody can be a critic to things they know nothing or very little about.
Imagine the Beav having Internet access or maybe the kid in ‘A Christmas Story’. ‘Drink more Ovaltine’ to a 12 year old doesn’t rank much more above ‘That sucks, and you suck’, and given the Internet he’d have told everybody who mentioned it, even people who might have LIKED and written favorably about the episode of Little Orphan Annie he was tuned into. That might be a stretch here, but to me it shows the inherent, but often silly connections that society makes.
And having grown up in the midwest in the country, I can assure you that language is no less fowl today than it was 30 years ago. Maybe a bit more public, but certainly they haven’t added many new curse words to the dictionary than my grandfather or great uncles DIDN’T know when I was just a wee tot.
We are not now, nor have we ever been in the 200+ year history of this country, a particularly educated Republic taken as a whole. Built on the backs of hard working, honest, hourly wagers, most of whom, like my extended family, never finished any schooling past 6th or 7th grade. And that my friends is why if 30% of the people love you, 30% of the people hate you and 30% of the people are indifferent, you too can be ‘Ruler of the Free World.’
Just my two cents for what its worth.