Posted 12:32 AM by Gene

THE USEFULNESS OF ARTSJOURNAL.COM: A writer for The Observer asks what became of theater critics. Had he paid attention to this sometimes annoying site he'd have found his answer from FT, which ran a bubbly press release for Les Miz. 3,000 AMATEUR PRODUCTIONS! WOW!!!!! And here is why we no longer have critics: the modern NEWS HACK mistakes popularity for excellence, when he deigns to acknowledge excellence at all. That the critic has been replaced by the above-the-title ad-blurbist is also a function of the larger culture, where "Olivier, Ashcroft, Richardson, Gielgud, Dench, the Redgraves, Gambon, Walter, Sher, Russell Beale and McCrory" have been replaced by ciphers. Why bother writing knowledgably on culture when the culture has no respect for itself anyway? You just do what most blurbists do: transcribe the first echo that resounds in your empty head. Part of the problem too is that a certain aesthete like our Observer scribbler must champion THE SHOCK OF THE NEW, which in practice means sticking it in the public's face again and again until its face is black and blue; hence the idiot championing of [C]RAPPERS and movies directed with meat cleavers. Plainly people are tired of ATTITUDE, but the HACKS aren't.