Film Comment

The Internet has made a significant contribution to film culture simply because it has allowed people from around the world to communicate with each other. Criticism plays a secondary role in the composition and functioning of this community, in which someone in Bangkok can get excited by an Alexei Guerman film and instantly share his or her enthusiasm with someone in Canada. Isn’t this the realization of Jean Baudrillard’s “ecstasy of communication? ” There is a compulsion to communicate, visible on any given day of the week in any city around the world as armies of people walk down the street or ride public transportation with cell phones or BlackBerries in hand, chattering, texting, and emailing away. Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob, allows people to feel connected and comfortably solitary at the same time. Good? Bad? Something is always coloring our visions of ourselves and our fellow men and women.

Internet criticism is instantly available all around the world and it is free.

The Internet affords opportunities that print journalism simply couldn’t: it gives the member of the reading public multiple opportunities to “make their voices heard, ” so to speak. Is this a good thing? Of course it is. But, in a sense, the Internet also blurs the distinctions between the writer and the reading public.

And here is where the question of civility enters. What kinds of obligations does democracy carry? Aren’t we obliged to behave on the Internet as we would in public? Don’t we owe it to our fellow bloggers to read every word they’ve written with great care, as opposed to simply picking out the offending phrase or choice of words and going on the attack? And what happens when someone begins with a position that’s carelessly thought through and argued in the first place? Does that give us the license to respond in kind? At which point, a fellow critic chimed in under one of his many Internet pseudonyms?

There is no “new” form of criticism on the Internet. There is only a new delivery system (which occasionally yields some interesting byproducts: on many Web sites, you often begin with one topic and through a thread of associations arrive at something completely different), increasing the visibility of nonprofessionals, and a new way for readers to respond almost instantaneously. As a “conversational forum, ” it leaves a lot to be desired – you miss nuances, subtleties, and, more than anything else, you miss the chance to breathe the same air and share the same space as your interlocutor. Since we’re talking about cinema, I believe that Godard is a genuine pioneer in this regard. His peculiar form of public discourse, a monologue that appears to be a dialogue, anticipated the most questionable aspects of blogging by decades.

Dave Kehr’s site is the model of a good Internet forum: readers who share information and enthusiasms and passions, who occasionally disagree but take the time to clarify their positions. For criticism, it’s difficult to improve on David Bordwell’s blog.