In a panel discussion at the Indywood Film Carnival in Hyderabad recently, I was asked about the impact of social media on critics. It isn’t the first time I’ve been asked this question. It won’t be the last. So far, I’ve dished out some version of the same answer: It’s great. Things weren’t so great before Facebook and Twitter, before everyone could chip in about a film; what’s known, generally, as word-of-mouth. People looked to critics to deliver not just an analysis about the film but also the word-of-mouth on it. In other words, we were expected to say whether we liked the film. We were also expected to say if you would like the film. And then you’d come back and say things like, “But how could you like it? I hated it.”
Let’s say we are painting a wall. I say I like off-white. But you’re a magenta person. Earlier, you wanted me to be a magenta person too. Today, you know there are many, many magenta people on Facebook. There’s probably a magenta list on Twitter. You don’t need the critic to be a fan too. Heck, you can make a GIF of the critic going up in magenta-coloured smoke. This is most liberating for the critic, because the review, after a really long time, has become the domain of pure analysis. Which is not to say that you’re never going to make up your mind about a movie based on a critic’s opinion of it. It’s just that there are many other opinions out there, and you’re very likely to find a voice you agree with, a more casual voice than the critic’s. It’s a win-win. You get your word-of-mouth. The critic gets to do his analysis. Everyone is happy.
If I look like I am drawing a line in the sand, it’s because the way a critic analyses entertainment is going to be — has to be — vastly different from what’s out there on social media. The former is a piece of criticism, the latter a review. This is not a value judgement, although filmmakers and film scholars do dismiss people who write reviews on Facebook and Twitter. “What do they know?” they’ll say. But if film is about feeling something, and if someone puts that feeling down in words, then why not? Perhaps the concern is that reviewing has transformed from a commandment delivered from a mountaintop ( Thou shalt not watch this movie, which stinketh to high heaven !) to a samizdat pamphlet circulated in the streets. But that’s how it is. Things change. Had the Bhagavad Gita been written today, it would be a BuzzFeed list.
But, of course, it’s not that simple. The real question isn’t about the impact of social media on film critics — we still get space (at least, I haven’t been told otherwise) — as much as how social media has changed the profession of film criticism. A.O. Scott, The New York Times’ film critic, weighed in thus: “Critics in positions like mine can’t just rest on their laurels. We’re going to have to prove ourselves, out-write the competition day in and day out.” And it’s not just writing. The critic, today, has to compete with the Twitter reviewer who tweets impressions every 10 minutes while watching the film . I wouldn’t call this writing, exactly. Then, there is the five-minute YouTube reviewer who talks to the camera. And we have the lay audience who, on the way home, whips out the smartphone and adds to the word-of-mouth.
All this is changing the DNA of writing on cinema. The critic doesn’t have to worry so much about older readers; they aren’t afraid of text. But you have to appeal to younger readers as well, people to whom a text is something you get on a phone. You know it’s serious when scholars analyse the phenomenon — books like Film Criticism in the Digital Age , from Rutgers University Press. If you have doubts about the universality of the issue, turn to chapter nine: Finnish Film Critics and the Uncertainties of the Profession in the Digital Age .
Sometimes, I feel for producers. At least earlier, they only had to contend with a handful of critics who wrote about the film a day or two after its release. Today, they have to deal with tens of thousands of social-media users who all want to be the first to say something definitive about a film. They’re not interested in being Kael or Ebert. They want to be Tenzing and Hillary.
I still think a critic can be an influencer (in the word-of-mouth sense) when it comes to a certain kind of film, one without stars or one that comes without much publicity. But this, increasingly, is more exception than norm. Social media is the norm. Its widespread use has already caused print (and online) reviews to shrink. When you get used to 140 characters, even a 500-word review can seem like Dickens.
Depending on where you stand, it’s either the best of times, or the worst.
Baradwaj Rangan is The Hindu’s cinema critic.
