I was in Rhode Island over the weekend at a conference with my wife and I wasn't able to make it to the theaters to see Stop-Loss. By tonight I'm hoping to post a personal response and analysis regarding the chapter "Technostalgia" in Timothy Taylor's book Strange Sounds: Music, Technology and Culture. Until then read this excerpt from a NY Times article today and then check out the article. I'm interested in hearing your responses.
Nathan Lee, one of The Village Voice’s two full-time critics, was laid off last week by Village Voice Media, a large chain of alternative weeklies that has been cutting down the number of critics it employs across the country.
The week before, two longtime critics at Newsday — Jan Stuart and Gene Seymour — took buyouts, along with their editor. And at Newsweek, David Ansen is among 111 staff members taking buyouts, according to a report in Radar.
They join critics at more than a dozen daily newspapers (including those in Denver, Tampa and Fort Lauderdale) and several alternative weeklies who have been laid off, reassigned or bought out in the past few years, deemed expendable at a time when revenues at print publications are declining, under pressure from Web alternatives and a growing recession in media spending.
Given that movie blogs are strewn about the Web like popcorn on a theater floor, there are those who say that movie criticism is not going away, it’s just appearing on a different platform. And no one would argue that fewer critics and the adjectives they hurl would imperil the opening of “Iron Man” in May. But for a certain kind of movie, critical accolades can mean the difference between relevance and obscurity, not to mention box office success or failure.
“For those of us who are making work that requires a kind of intellectual conversation, we rely on that talk to do the work of getting people interested,” said Mr. Rudin, who produced “No Country for Old Men” and “There Will Be Blood,” two Oscar-nominated and critically championed films last year. “All of the talk about ‘No Country,’ all of the argument about the ending, kept that film in the forefront of the conversation” and helped it win the best picture Oscar.
2 comments:
Seems like this is a pattern: when there are cuts to be made, the arts go first, or close to first. I think the assumption is that 'art' is something rich, bored people do and that simply reflects reality. Marxists are much better at appreciating the 'bottom-up' potential arts have to shape society.
At the same time, much as I would like to find myself writing about music or movies for pay someday, I'm not sure that this is that big of a deal. Journalism is moving to digital, and maybe it's a good thing that the arts will have to carve a meaningful space to survive first.
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