Thank you for your long, thoughtful reply. A lot of what you say is true, and I know the "highbrow/lowbrow" divide is not a new phenomenon. And while I was writing, I was thinking - well, the serious writers, photographers, artists, whoever, are going to go on doing what they want whether it is popular or not and whether it sells or not.
I think what bothers me most is the kind of dismissal that comes with "I didn't like it." (read: therefore, it's bad). I hated the movie The Tin Drum, but know enough about moviemaking and other things to recognize that it was brilliant and extremely "good" (read: high artistic quality). And these thirty second reviews on Amazon and elsewhere are just feeding into the "I didn't like it, therefore it's bad" school of thinking, or not thinking, which is more to the point.
After I wrote this, I was thinking to myself that one area where detailed, considered, reviews continue even in relatively "popular" culture is food writing. There, the writer outlines certain criteria of judgement, and measures the dish, or the restaurant, against them. Noone really cares whether the writer "likes" fish or not - and "I enjoyed this" is subsidiary to "this was extremely well prepared, as I know because I am an expert in this and can tell you why" Why are we not "allowed" to do this any more in book or movie reviews?
Not to say that such thoughtful reviews don't exist, just that only a limited group of people actually read them, so that they are preaching to the converted.
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I think what bothers me most is the kind of dismissal that comes with "I didn't like it." (read: therefore, it's bad). I hated the movie The Tin Drum, but know enough about moviemaking and other things to recognize that it was brilliant and extremely "good" (read: high artistic quality). And these thirty second reviews on Amazon and elsewhere are just feeding into the "I didn't like it, therefore it's bad" school of thinking, or not thinking, which is more to the point.
After I wrote this, I was thinking to myself that one area where detailed, considered, reviews continue even in relatively "popular" culture is food writing. There, the writer outlines certain criteria of judgement, and measures the dish, or the restaurant, against them. Noone really cares whether the writer "likes" fish or not - and "I enjoyed this" is subsidiary to "this was extremely well prepared, as I know because I am an expert in this and can tell you why" Why are we not "allowed" to do this any more in book or movie reviews?
Not to say that such thoughtful reviews don't exist, just that only a limited group of people actually read them, so that they are preaching to the converted.