Greetings Again SUNFUNers,
The world is full of critics. Just ask anyone who has ever
done anything at all. No matter what you have accomplished,
you'll always hear from someone who thinks they could have done
it smarter or better or nicer or funnier. Only they didn't.
This is probably because it is far easier to criticize plans than
come up with any yourself. Why, entire political dynasties have
been build on that one simple fact.
We have no shortage of critics, that's for sure. There are
movie critics, TV critics, radio critics, newspaper critics,
magazine critics, restaurant critics, art critics, wine critics,
news critics, food critics, political pundits, and lots more.
Why, if you look hard enough in this cynical age, you'll even
find critics OF critics. You could say that we've reached
critical mass. Or maybe, critical mess would be more accurate.
That's not to say that honest and thoughtful critics don't
have a positive place in society. They may help us see the less
positive sides of an issue or idea, something that is
occasionally hard to do. Think what a little healthy criticism
could have done to Howard Stern or Jerry Springer. Not that
they'd listen, of course.
But large numbers of critics are vitriol mavens of the thud
and blunder school of journalism, not so much interested in real
analysis as in making their words pointy enough. The least a
critic can do is to help you to save precious time and a few
bucks by not wasting any small part of your life seeing a movie
like "Ishtar", "Battlefield Earth" or "Hudson Hawk." No one
would ever say that the critics always get it right, but those
movies did truly suck. They would have done well to have on-set
critics on those projects.
Critical thinkers we've heard from lately include: The
always-hip Bernie & Donna Becwar, John Giove, Jerry Taff, R.J.
Tully, Carol J. Becwar, Mark Becwar, Jan Michalski, Charles
Beckman, Tim McChain, Susan Will, Arlen Walker. Thanks to all
our friends and contributors who help to keep Funnies on the
trail.
So, our approach here at SUNFUN for dealing with critics?
We just follow movie mogul Sam Goldwyn's advice: "Don't pay any
attention to the critics. Don't even ignore them."
Have A Critically Acclaimed Week,
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"To avoid criticism do nothing, say nothing, be
nothing."
- US author and publisher Elbert
Hubbard (1856-1915)
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A NOVEL APPROACH TO CRITICAL ACCLAIM...
------------------------------------
At least one new author we know of has figured out a way to
beat the system. He wrote a blathery political love story
reflecting current events, and not only have the critics fallen
all over themselves praising the work, stage plays have been
based on the novel and a movie is in the works. And none of the
later productions has done anything to tamper with the author's
vision of his story. Sales have been excellent, too, even though
the allegorical love story is rather long and somewhat difficult
to follow. Pretty rare for a first novel.
A dream come true, right? No, maybe more like a nightmare.
The author in question is Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, who
is now apparently on his second published novel, a 713-page
paperback called "Al-Qala'ah al-Hasinah" ("The Fortified
Castle"), which appeared last year in bookshops all over Baghdad
and in all public libraries. The only reason for the slight
doubt in authorship is that no name is given on the cover, only
that it is a "novel by its author," while a note inside explains
that the writer "did not wish to put his name on it out of
humility and modesty." Whatever the case, the author certainly
had government pull to get things moving so dramatically.
An opening paragraph that reads: "The novel is a trip in the
world of struggle and virtue and a fight against injustice,"
makes it reasonably certain that the style is Saddam's.
Even if Hussein had help writing the book, it is unlikely
that the phantom scribe would ever spill the beans, afraid that
he'd become more ghost that ghostwriter. This is the same reason
the critics were so full of praise: Saddam has often shown that
he doesn't take well to criticism, and has been known to shoot
people he doesn't like personally.
In the story, the hero is a militant who took part in the
1980-88 Iraq-Iran war and the Gulf War. He was wounded in the
war with Iran and was captured by the Iranian forces but he
managed to escape from his jail and return to Baghdad. He
rejoins his university studies in Baghdad, where he falls in love
with a Kurdish girl from northern Iraq, which her family fled
after the Gulf War because of unrest.
Hailed on state-run television and by the government
newspaper al-Jumhouriy a as a "great artistic work," other rave
reviews in the Iraqi media, called it an "innovation which nobody
has managed to achieve during the past century."
If the novel is Saddam's it is his second after "Zabibah wal
Malik" (Zabibah and the King) which was published in 2000 to
equally rapturous reviews. Last we heard, the Iraqi National
Theater was preparing to turn that romantic novel into a musical
touted as the country's biggest ever production. A TV series is
also in the works. (Reuters/AP)
[ Yeah... The critics rave - or else! ]
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"... In other news, it was announced that on the next
bombing mission in Iraq should Saddam Hussein disobey
UN orders, the US and British troops have been ordered
to drop VHS copies of the movie 'The Avengers,' 'Babe:
Pig In The City' and 'Meet Joe Black' instead."
- Critic James R. Craven
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SPRINGERING TO A CONCLUSION...
---------------------------
There is one school of response to critics that says, "let
'em say anything they want, just spell my name right." President
George W. Bush has obviously never heard this.
Ducking criticism that his administration hadn't followed
leads that hinted of the events of September 11th, and still
fishing around to make sense of last year's horrific events, Bush
finally announced in a March speech that he had the answer: the
Sept. 11 attackers must have gotten an idea of the United States
as a weak nation from watching "The Jerry Springer Show."
"They didn't think we were a nation that could conceivably
sacrifice for something greater than our self, that we were soft,
that we were so self-absorbed and so materialistic that we
wouldn't defend anything we believed in. My, were they wrong.
They just were reading the wrong magazine, or watching the wrong
Springer show."
Bush was speaking at a White House East Room event
celebrating national championships won by seven National
Collegiate Athletic Association teams.
The television show, featuring Jerry Springer, is a daily
free-for-all sometimes with wild on-stage brawls. According to
the show's Web site (http://www.jerryspringer.com), it features
topics such as "first time fantasies," "angry lovers attack,"
"bring on the bisexuals," and "scorned lovers fight back."
(Reuters)
[ Geez, you just never know what the picture is going
to be when you connect the dots... ]
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"I would never watch my show. I'm not interested in
it."
- TV talk show host Jerry Springer
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SLAM-BANG...
---------
- "It's more like A Hard Day's Nightmare."
- Movie Mayhem review of the Spice
Girls movie "Spice World"
- "'The Astronaut's Wife' is about as suspenseful as wheat
toast. My apologies to wheat toast."
- Mr. Cranky Rates The Movies
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CRITICAL CRITIQUE
-----------------
Surprisingly often, critics completely miss the boat.
Whether it is because of their own prejudices, or because they
just don't understand what they are experiencing, it is clear
some critics just don't get it. Whatever the cause, here are
some of the biggest critical misses in history:
"Displays no trace of imagination, good taste or
ingenuity... I say it's a stinkeroo. The vulgarity of
which I was all too conscious all through the film is
difficult to analyze. Part of it was the raw, eye-
straining Technicolor, applied with a complete lack of
restraint.
- Russell Maloney's review of "The
Wizard Of Oz" (1939), in the New
Yorker Magazine
"The new Disney cartoon "Bambi" is interesting because
it's the first one that's been entirely unpleasant...
Mickey wouldn't be caught dead in this."
- Manny Farber, New Republic
Magazine, June, 1942
"Can't act. Slightly bald. Can dance a little."
- Original screen test of Fred
Astaire
"Forget it, Louis, no Civil War picture ever made a
nickel."
- Irving Thalberg, advising Louis B.
Mayer not to bid for film rights to
the newly published novel "Gone
with the Wind"
"We fancy that any real child might be more puzzled than
enchanted by this stiff, overwrought story."
- 'Children's Books' (1865),
commenting on 'Alice's Adventures
in Wonderland' by Lewis Carrol
"Of Dickens' style it is impossible to speak in praise. It
is jerky, ungrammatical, and created by himself in defiance
of rules... No young novelist should ever dare to imitate
the style of Dickens."
- Writer and critic Anthony Trollope
"That Washington was not a scholar is certain. That he
is too illiterate, unlearned, unread for his station is
equally beyond dispute."
- John Adams writing about George
Washington
"He is distrustful, obstinate, excessively vain, and takes
no counsel from anyone."
- Thomas Jefferson on John Adams
"Jeffersonian Democracy simply meant the possession of
the federal government by the agrarian masses led by an
aristocracy of slave-owning masses."
- Charles A. Beard on Thomas
Jefferson
"Beethoven's last quartets were written by a deaf man
and should only be listened to by a deaf man."
- Sir Thomas Beecham on Ludwig van
Beethoven
"[George Bernard] Shaw writes plays for the ages, the
ages between five and twelve."
- George Jean Nathan
"Leonardo da Vinci did everything and did nothing very
well."
- Marie Bashkirtseef
"Another dirty shirttail actor from New York."
- Hedda Hopper's dismissal of James
Dean
"Debussy played the piano with the lid down."
- Robert Bresson on composer and
pianist Claude Debussy
"A crafty and lecherous old hipocrite whose very statue
seems to gloat on the wenches as they walk the States
House Yard."
- William Cobbett dissing American
revlutionary and statesman Benjamin
Franklin
"If it were thought that anything I wrote was
influenced by Robert Frost, I would take that
particular piece of mine, shred it, and flush it down
the toilet, hoping not to clog the pipes."
- James Dickey on fellow poet Robert
Frost
"Handel is only fourth rate. He is not even interesting."
- Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky
"His mind works in the right directions but seldom
works clearly and cleanly. His bread is of unbolted
flour, and much straw, too, mixes in the bran, and
sometimes gravel stones."
- Henry Ward Beecher, clearly no fan
of President Abraham Lincoln
"It is only too easy to catch people's attention by
doing something worse than anyone else has dared to do
it before."
- Art critic Charivari on Claude
Monet
"You have set up in New York Harbor a monstrous idol
which you call Liberty. The only thing that remains to
complete the monument is to put on its pedestal the
inscription written by Dante on the gate of Hell: 'All
hope abandon, ye who enter here."
- George Bernard Shaw dismissing The
Statue of Liberty
'Symphony for Wind -- Memory of Debussy' -- "I had no idea
Stravinsky disliked Debussy as much as this."
- 'Musical Times' (1921)
"One feels that the composer must have made a bet, for
all his professional reputation was worth, that he
would write the most hideous thing that had ever been
put on paper, and he won it, too."
- 'Boston Evening Transcript' (1883)
review of Peter Ilyich
Tchaikovsky's 'Slavic March'
"Television won't last. It's a flash in the pan"
- Mary Somerville, pioneer of radio
educational broadcasts, 1948.
"We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way
out."
- Decca Recording Company, rejecting
the Beatles in 1962. Soon enough,
groups with guitars were back in.
"A hack writer who would have been considered fourth
rate in Europe, who tried out a few of the old proven
'sure-fire' literary skeletons with sufficient local
color to intrigue the superficial and the lazy."
- William Faulkner on Mark Twain
"If Mr. Clemens cannot think of anything better to tell our
pure-minded lads and lasses, he had better stop writing for
them."
- Louisa May Alcott review of Mark
Twain's "Huckleberry Finn"
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"Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by
smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who
really mean it."
- Mark Twain
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© 2002 by Bill Becwar. All Rights Reserved.
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