The Badger Herald: ArtsEtc.: Ratings mask words’ power

ArtsEtc.

Ratings mask words’ power

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Also by Daniel Sullivan:

Animal Collective wins on latest (January 18, 2009)
A philosopher's guide to dos, do nots of critical analysis (December 2, 2008)
Media mobility im'port'ant in Internet age (October 10, 2008)
Noise in theaters impedes message (September 25, 2008)
Film's meaning lost with subtitles (September 9, 2008)

By Daniel Sullivan
Tuesday, September 2, 2008 12:00 a.m.

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For a competent critic, the review is one of the easiest things to write. The critic experiences the work (album, movie, whatever), develops an impression, digests the impression and expresses this impression. This might be considered the youth of a review (though the review’s entire life is confined to this youth). Throughout this stage, the writer is a faceless actor, a booming voice without a mouth. That vague sense of anonymity should ensure an effective review, one whose consumption by the reader impregnates within them genuine interest, excitement, any sort of reaction — arrived at by the strength of the writer’s thoughts on the work. But a dooming agent lurks always, ensuring the review’s failure: It is the impersonal measure of evaluation, most relevantly as the “insert symbol here” rating.

The rating is simple, succinct and highly seductive in an age in which readers prefer efficiency in critical writings to exhaustive, intoxicating evaluations. There are commonly two forms in which it is put to use: the review that arrives at a rating and the review that explains a rating. In either case, the rating exists with all the inevitability of death. When preceding a review, the rating whispers to the reader a rudimentary, hastily considered SparkNotes of the review-to-be. This alignment is an a priori melodrama; the review that follows the rating is obligated to collaborate without complaint. The review which gives way to a rating is a spoiled story: No reader can be trusted to ignore the rating until reading the entire review, nor can they be expected to.

The writer’s thoughts on the work are that which the reader responds to. Understanding this architecture, it’s certain the “insert symbol here” rating leads to an essential shift in the reader’s approach to a review. Upon disengaging from the review, the question birthed in the reader becomes not “Should I check it out?” but instead something resembling “Can I trust this review?,” “Was that rating appropriate considering what I read?” or “Should I instead check out something more highly rated?” There is a fracture of the writer’s word, one that heals improperly in the mind of the reader.

The consequences of a review are ideally the product of the writer’s words, so the clarity of the writer’s ideas is paramount. The rating is an obscuring agent, a distraction in an unconvincing Groucho Marx disguise; it is a quiet distortion of the writer’s thoughts, not unlike the shift of meaning in statements relayed by an unreliable messenger.

The rating hijacks the spotlight from the writer’s writing and instead tilts focus on a simple, hardly informative symbol of evaluation. There would be nothing problematic about this if the review meant to be a wordy yet faithful running mate rather than the star attraction. It would certainly be easier for a critic to treat the rating with care and regard the written review as an afterthought, but that’s unfortunately not in my (somewhat self-imagined) job description. Look to the popular RateYourMusic.com, where words aren’t even necessary — anyone can submit a hollow numeric assessment of an album for consideration.

At best, the review serves as an ignorable specter for the reader, and at worst — but probably most commonly — it negates the review entirely. In its presence, the review develops a split personality, a tension between the words of the writer and the writer’s highly ambiguous overall evaluation. A curious truth of this “disorder” is that it is self-inflicted: The writers bring it upon themselves by including the rating at all. In forcing the reader to consider two focal points, each supposedly manifesting the writer’s thoughts, the writer is self-vulgarizing. The words take on a gristly, unpleasant texture, whether the best bite came at the beginning of the dish or at its end. This phenomenon isn’t necessarily a conscious one, which is perhaps its most dangerous quality: By attaching such a crude manifestation of their words, the writers invite the reader to receive their thoughts half-considerately. In turn, the reader unconsciously equates the reading of the review with the performance of a task. For most, this is akin to seeing a movie for the first time despite knowing how it will end, while sexier ways of spending one’s time lingers just beyond the theater’s exit.

I’m all too aware of the reality that most will find this to be pretty insignificant. In a way, this is but a catharsis for a writer as guilty as any of contributing to a real and dangerous trend in criticism — a confession with a marginally cooperative confessor. But an unconscious devaluation of the critical word is undeniably afoot. The readers who disregard ratings the next time they approach a review will find something worth thinking about other than what we’re trying so hard to escape — grades.

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