Having thrown enough (polite?) Molotov cocktails for the time being, I think it might be time to throw out a few fluffy bread baskets. Don’t want people to assume all part-time Buddhists are just negative Nancys here.
Even though I may be, as far as I know, the first pop culture writer to proclaim himself an “official” part-time Buddhist, this does not necessarily mean, of course, that I am the first pop culture writer to ever exhibit unintentional part-time Buddhist proclivities. For just as a musical genius can scale the heights of the profession without knowing the first thing about compositional theory or standard notation, I believe a writer with prominent part-time Buddhist sympathies can emerge, and thrive, without having the slightest inkling of what part-time Buddhism is or isn’t.
And so, having discussed film and music writers who don’t particularly strike me as part-time Buddhists, I shall now flip over the soiled mattress and discuss film and music writers who I would like to declare “Honorary Part-Time Buddhists.”
Film And Music Writers Who I Would Like to Declare “Honorary Part-Time Buddhists”
Roger Ebert
Sorry Siskel – I guess you wrote stuff too, but I’ll be damned if I ever came across it. Not sure who your agent was?
At first, in my youthful consciousness, Ebert was merely one of two unexcitingly-dressed gentlemen popping up on my television screen once a week – the “fat” one, arguing with the “skinny, bald” one. But you know how broad Siskel and Ebert’s appeal was? Even my half-functional mother, whose taste in movies and my own taste in movies would, I’d venture to say, feature an overlap of about 10%, used to religiously watch Siskel & Ebert every Sunday. I mean, if even my mother watched your show, that’s how you know you were really doing something right.
A small tip for all those aspiring film critics out there who would like to avoid coming off as pompous and arrogant: set up a system of “checks and balances.” Because whenever either Gene or Roger would attempt to deliver some grand, all-powerful view of a particular film a la Pauline Kael, the other one would be sitting right there with a thumbtack, dutifully prepared to deflate the dirigible. I’m talking about a once-in-a-million, sitcom-level dynamic here. Imagine two peers, both highly successful in their field, constantly attempting to gain the upper hand on a competitor, or get the other’s goat, but neither of them ultimately understanding, even twenty-five years on, that just one more snappy comeback or just one more snide put-down would not firmly establish their dominance within the partnership.
And it never ended! The love-hate dynamic was so deeply engrained, I’m afraid, it used to even spill over onto other people’s shows:
In retrospect, perhaps their most entertaining moments were not when they were concurring on the excellence of an obvious soon-to-be Oscar nominee, but rather when they were passionately, violently disagreeing on the merits of legendary titles such as Cop and a Half, Baby’s Day Out, and Benji the Hunted. And even when they were harshly panning a film, I always found the set-up so intimate, so unscripted, that the pan rarely felt gratuitously mean, because the show was, at its core, a boisterous conversation, a snippet of casual chit-chat – and one that any basement-dwelling geek with an opinion could presumably join. Plop a third critic into the mix, shall we say, and that third critic might have been just as likely to blurt out, “You guys are both complete morons – I adored Highlander 2: The Quickening!”
Of course, what I didn’t know for many years was that the TV show was, for all intents and purposes, merely Ebert’s side gig. While killing time in various bookstores throughout the first Clinton administration, my father would often come over to me with the latest copy of Roger Ebert’s Movie Home Companion in his hands and ask, “Hey, have you ever read Ebert’s reviews? He’s actually a really great writer.” Well, my father used to get excited about all sorts of things that I never found compelling, like Mariah Carey’s 1996 hit “Always Be My Baby,” or every unexpected media reference to Cleveland, Ohio (his hometown), so … I ignored him. No, it wasn’t until I acquired my Cinemania CD-ROM, which featured a vast database of Ebert’s written reviews, when I began to worship at the altar of Ebert.
Roger Ebert wouldn’t simply review a movie. He would review the movie, its place in the culture at large, the state of cinema upon the film’s release, his life, your life, the lives all of humans who came before and who would come after, and every subject in between. Ebert would stroll into his metaphorical study, slip on his coziest pair of metaphorical slippers, light his favorite metaphorical pipe, plop his hefty frame down into a metaphorical leather armchair next to a roaring metaphorical fireplace, and invite me on in.
Most movie critics, in my experience, write essays about movies. Ebert almost wrote essays about life that just happened to contain movie reviews within them. I feel like he treated his writing as a tool by which he would enable his readers to see the world and their fellow humans in it with just a little more clarity and depth than they might have done prior to reading his writing – but shouldn’t that be true of all writing? Mainly, Ebert passed my number one test for a movie reviewer: after I watched a movie, I wanted to know what he thought about it. I dunno, I just plain trusted the guy. I enjoyed spending time with him. He was like the wise movie uncle I never had. I mean, I couldn’t even name you my second favorite film critic.
While recently discussing this section of my intro essay with a friend, I wrestled with how best to illustrate Ebert’s many gifts. Trot out particular excerpts of Ebert’s prose as examples of his accidental part-time Buddhism? There is, of course, his Great Movies series, surely one source of treasured passages, but I fear that pulling too may quotes from that well would give away precious hints of the specific ‘60s and ‘70s films I plan to discuss going forward (and retaining suspense, you understand, is paramount). Thorough researcher that I am, I almost considered spending many long evenings on rogerebert.com combing through every single Ebert review ever, just to make sure that I didn’t miss anything relevant. “Think of all the hundreds of ‘80s and ‘90s middlebrow Meg Ryan and William Hurt reviews you could be enjoying,” my friend joked.
Instead, I found myself haphazardly clicking on random reviews and compiling various snippets which, while hardly hinting at the qualities that I believe separated him from other film critics, made me grin regardless. And so, here are a thematically unrelated smattering of memorable Ebert moments I came across a few months ago:
Firecreek (1968)
The Jimmy Stewart hero usually isn’t very happy with his job. He doesn’t go around sticking his neck out. He’s no John Wayne type. But finally he gets pushed beyond the breaking point and Wayne hath no fury like a Stewart scorned … But then a gang of bad guys rides into town. At first you don’t realize they’re bad guys, because they’re led by Henry Fonda, who always plays good guys. He does this time, too. That is, he’s not as bad as the guys in his gang. He’s an essentially decent person on the wrong side, like Rommel in the desert.
Deep Throat (1972)
It is all very well and good for Linda Lovelace, the star of the movie, to advocate sexual freedom; but the energy she brings to her role is less awesome than discouraging. If you have to work this hard at sexual freedom, maybe it isn’t worth the effort.
Xanadu (1980)
Samuel Taylor Coleridge dreamed the poem “Xanadu” but woke up before it was over, a possibility overlooked by the makers of this film.
Santa Claus: The Movie (1985)
Lithgow gives a nice hateful performance, but the villain is not drawn big enough, and he doesn’t have enough to do. Indeed, the central weakness of Santa Claus: The Movie is its lack of real conflict. The movie needs a super-Scrooge, and all it gets is the kind of bad guy Ralph Nader might have invented. The biggest crisis is when a couple of reindeer come down with runny noses.
Lost Highway (1997)
David Lynch’s Lost Highway is like kissing a mirror: You like what you see, but it’s not much fun, and kind of cold.
The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas (2000)
The pun, it has been theorized, is the lowest form of humor. This movie proves that theory wrong. There is a lower form of humor: jokes about dinosaur farts.
Battlefield Earth (2000)
Battlefield Earth is like taking a bus trip with someone who has needed a bath for a long time … For stunning displays of stupidity, Terl takes the cake; as chief of security for the conquering aliens, he doesn’t even know what humans eat, and devises an experiment: “Let it think it has escaped! We can sit back and watch it choose its food.” Bad luck for the starving humans that they capture a rat. An experiment like that, you pray for a chicken … The Psychlos can fly between galaxies, but look at their nails: Their civilization has mastered the hyperdrive but not the manicure.
Freddy Got Fingered (2001)
This movie doesn’t scrape the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn’t the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn’t below the bottom of the barrel. This movie doesn’t deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence with barrels.
I could be here all night, but I’m afraid the catalog is far too vast to collect each nugget of droll Midwestern whimsy. Notice how … low-key his hostility is? Whereas other critics might have tried to direct their acidic bile at the makers of films they disliked, Ebert seemed to try to aim for a type of camaraderie with his readers, knowing that they needed to work their way through the morass of disappointing cinema just as much as he did. There appeared to be a joy in communicating little observations and insights that existed almost independently of the task of officially reviewing films – a deeper respect for his audience, if you will.
What I’m cagily working my way up to is this: Ebert was an honorary part-time Buddhist, without even knowing it. My heart couldn’t help but grow three sizes, a la Dr. Seuss’s Grinch, whenever I would hear him describe movies as an “empathy machine.” He seemed to see cinema, and art in general, as a giant tool for generating understanding and compassion, and movies as a means for filmmakers to help make life more enjoyable for their viewers. Here, for instance, are the remarks he gave upon his acceptance of a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame:
We are born into a box of space and time. We are who and when and what we are and we’re going to be that person until we die. But if we remain only that person, we will never grow and we will never change and things will never get better.
Movies are the most powerful empathy machine in all the arts. When I go to a great movie I can live somebody else’s life for a while. I can walk in somebody else’s shoes. I can see what it feels like to be a member of a different gender, a different race, a different economic class, to live in a different time, to have a different belief.
This is a liberalizing influence on me. It gives me a broader mind. It helps me to join my family of men and women on this planet. It helps me to identify with them, so I’m not just stuck being myself, day after day.
The great movies enlarge us, they civilize us, they make us more decent people.
Siddhartha, is that you? Sitting in the balcony, munching on Red Vines, bestowing upon me and my new blog a giant thumbs-up?
I almost admire Ebert more for what he generally didn’t do. He didn’t hate movies because other critics, Oscar voters, or the general public collectively decided to drool all over them. He didn’t hate movies that tried to affect their audience in a nakedly emotional or sentimental way. He didn’t hate movies that carried a “message.” Despite all that, I’ve always been amused at his deep respect and admiration for Pauline Kael (guess you just had to be there?).
I recall Ebert once saying that, when he sat down to watch a film, he went in with the mindset that he would like the film, not dislike it. Ridiculous! And he often spoke about evaluating films based on what they were trying to be, not necessarily on what he personally wanted them to be. I guess what I’m saying is: Ebert saw his job as someone who, through reviewing movies, could help a large portion of human beings live happier lives. He didn’t seem to think his job was to “change” the movie industry, or “change” the political winds of American culture, but to serve as an ambassador on behalf of cinema history. He thrived on the experience of meeting people who didn’t “get” certain movies and then trying to help them “get” those movies. He wanted to spread the love.
One thing I’ve noticed is that, whenever Ebert disagreed with the critical consensus on specific films (a few notorious examples: A Clockwork Orange, The Godfather Part II, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Brazil, Blue Velvet, Fight Club), he was a little bit … bothered by this. He didn’t eagerly embrace the minority viewpoint. Imagine Pauline Kael or Robin Wood giving a shit about disagreeing with the consensus. Ebert didn’t lie, or pretend he loved those movies when he didn’t, but stuff like that annoyed him on some level, because it got in the way of his personal project as “ambassador.”
Alas, no movie critic deity is perfect, and once Ebert eventually traveled onward to the Great Balcony in the Sky, I began to reflect on the myriad ways in which he would frequently commit many part-time Buddhist sins. Like Kael, Ebert was still extremely fond of writing “we” in his reviews, as if he possessed the secret kingly ring that enabled him to speak for “everybody,” and would make presumptuous statements about “classic” movies that, the more I’ve grown to form my own opinions, I would not necessarily agree are “classics.”
With my pop culture heroes, perhaps I’m always loyal to a fault. One unexpected, nondescript day, I suddenly realized, with a chill in my veins, that at least half of the films that Ebert would loudly tout on his “Best Films of the Year” lists were movies that I … didn’t really like all that much. The cognitive dissonance between my admiration for Ebert’s writing and worldview and my uncertainty surrounding his specific taste in titles must have lasted at least twenty years. “Well, I thought Monster’s Ball, Million Dollar Baby, Crash, and The Tree of Life were just OK, but … but … Ebert said … and how could Ebert be wrong … DOES NOT COMPUTE … MELTDOWN … MELTDOWN …”
Let’s see, what else? Ebert would often forget that he’d already expressed a certain opinion several times, and even though his repeated attempts to spread the word about his personal favorite cult items such as Errol Morris’s Gates of Heaven or Werner Herzog’s Aguirre: The Wrath of God were well-intentioned, by the sixtieth mention, I couldn’t resist rolling my eyes just a tiny bit. Sometimes, Rog, you’ve just got to say your piece and let it go.
And what was the deal with his series of essays about how “video games are not art”? Isn’t the definition of “art” subjective? More pertinently, who cares whether video games are “art” or not? If Ebert didn’t enjoy video games, fine. I don’t enjoy them much either – not that I’ve genuinely sat down and played any of the most widely praised video games out there. But if someone else is moved to tears by a video game, I mean, what’s that to me? In other words, I doubt that the majesty of my prose could ever approach Ebert’s, but I am confident that my part-time Buddhist quotient could one day potentially surpass Ebert’s.
At yet, even when he was being an arrogant jerk, he could at least be a charming arrogant jerk. I remember when director Vincent Gallo gave a less-than-flattering description of Ebert’s weight after Ebert had viciously panned a “rough cut” of The Brown Bunny. From Wikipedia:
A war of words then erupted between Gallo and film critic Roger Ebert, with Ebert writing that The Brown Bunny was the worst film in the history of Cannes, and Gallo retorting by calling Ebert a “fat pig with the physique of a slave trader.” Paraphrasing a statement attributed to Winston Churchill, Ebert responded with, “It is true that I am fat, but one day I will be thin, and he will still be the director of The Brown Bunny.” Gallo then claimed to have put a hex on Ebert’s colon, cursing the critic with cancer. In response, Ebert quipped that watching a video of his colonoscopy had been more entertaining than watching The Brown Bunny.
I’m sorry but … the corners of my mouth can’t help but rise ever-so-slightly upon reading this. I also remember a classic Siskel & Ebert outtake where Roger is reading from a cue card. He looks off camera and says something along the lines of, “Who wrote this? This is pretty well written.” After pausing for a couple of seconds, he mutters, under his breath, “I probably wrote it.”
The All Music Guide
I have heard it whispered, in long, dark corridors, or on empty moonlit fields, that there was once a time when the All Music Guide did not exist, but I almost refuse to believe such scurrilous rumors.
The All Music Guide … not exist? Then how could people have known which Willie Nelson, Kool & the Gang, Stan Getz, or Cure album (or compilation?) they needed to listen to first? How could people have known who Belle and Sebastian’s “influences” were, or which acts were “related” to Roy Orbison? How could people have even woken up and faced the sunrise?
The All Music Guide, or AMG for short, is, as most of my music scholar compatriots would likely admit, the gold standard for music review websites. It is the Vatican, the New York Stock Exchange, the Harvard, Yale, and Princeton of the industry. I purchased the print edition of the All Music Guide to Rock in November 1997; it’s hard to believe that I even considered myself a living, breathing human being before that date.
You know why I trust the All Music Guide? Because I feel like they mainly see themselves as a guide. They are trying to help listeners find music that said listeners might like. They are generally not out to look “cool,” proclaim certain types of taste in music “good” or “bad,” or shame artists for taking risks. While they employ a star rating system, which, like the one in the previously mentioned Rolling Stone Album Guide, is inherently subjective, I would say they use that system as well as such a system could be used. Although individual writers compose each specific review, the site as a whole seems to try to base its ratings not just on certain writers’ individual whims, passions, or biases (*cough* Rob Sheffield and Robert Christgau), but on the general critical consensus. They just want to help.
AMG’s writers have generally kept a low profile, but the true hardcore AMG aficionado knows their names. Like your favorite porn performer, you may not possess very much information about their personal lives, but you’ve certainly spent hours and hours of your time enjoying their work within the privacy of your own home.
First of all, there’s the head honcho, Stephen Thomas Erlewine, who I’m tempted to call the “Roger Ebert of music criticism,” although, among many other reasons why that analogy might be ill-fitting, such his complete lack of even the slightest celebrity profile (I have only seen video footage of him once), he (along with his AMG peers) steadfastly avoids writing in the first person. But like Ebert, I always feel as though he makes a concerted effort to understand what audiences find appealing about a particular artist, and then he attempts to write about that artist from that audience’s point of view, although he certainly has his own individual quirks in taste (R.E.M.’s Out of Time only merits … 2 ½ stars? The Ramones’ crowning achievement is … Rocket to Russia? A rave review of … Paris Hilton’s debut album?).
Take, for instance, this sentence from his review of Bread’s first release: “Bread is seen as nothing but a wimp-pop band – an impression which is justified, but it wipes out the fact that the group was quite good and rather slyly diverse in its early days, particularly on its debut, Bread.” Or this excerpt from his review of Highway: 30 Years of America: “As Highway moves from one well-constructed, charming cut to another, it’s hard not to admire America’s skill at crafting appealing pop tunes that were folky, but not folk-rock, soft but not shapeless, melodic and memorable. Make no mistake – America is decidedly uncool, yet anyone with a fondness for easy, melodic soft rock will certainly find much to treasure on this superb set.” I feel like Pitchfork would only praise Bread or America if they’d accidentally overheard Thurston Moore or Frank Black offhandedly praise them first. Erlewine’s reviews somehow perform the nifty dual trick of making me 1) more deeply appreciate music that I already enjoyed; 2) give music that I might have otherwise dismissed a second chance. It’s rare that an Erlewine review has made me outright mad.
Let us compare, for instance, Rob Sheffield’s glib dismissal of Pink Floyd’s The Final Cut with Erlewine’s carefully considered, heavily qualified, somewhat reluctant endorsement:
This is more like a novel than a record, requiring total concentration since shifts in dynamics, orchestration, and instrumentation are used as effect. This means that while this has the texture of classic Pink Floyd, somewhere between the brooding sections of The Wall and the monolithic menace of Animals, there are no songs or hooks to make these radio favorites. The even bent of the arrangements, where the music is used as texture, not music, means that The Final Cut purposely alienates all but the dedicated listener. Several of those listeners maintain that this is among Pink Floyd’s finest efforts, and it certainly is an achievement of some kind … That doesn’t make this easier to embrace, of course, and it’s damn near impenetrable in many respects, but with its anger, emphasis on lyrics, and sonic textures, it’s clear that it’s the album that Waters intended it to be … Distinctive, to be sure, but not easy to love and, depending on your view, not even that easy to admire.
See, Rob? You can still express your misgivings about an album like a reasonable adult, while nevertheless acknowledging and respecting the views of the album’s admirers. (Erlewine’s infamous review of The Wall, on the other hand, I will save for another day.)
Amusingly enough, in recent years Erlewine has also begun freelancing for … wait for it … Pitchfork Media? Isn’t that sort of like Magic Johnson occasionally suiting up for the Celtics? Alas, I will allow it.
Then there’s Richie Unterberger, who I would say excels at describing the appeal of overly-familiar songs and albums from the ‘60s in a way that renders much of that music fresh and surprising. My main issue with Unterberger is that he seems to possess the view that pop music went rapidly downhill right around 1971, a view that me and many others don’t quite share, which means that every time he writes about music released after 1971, I find that he almost slips into Christgau territory. But in fairness, rarely does he write AMG reviews for post-1971 albums or artists, so at least he’s self-aware enough to stick to his era.
I’ve also noticed that, in a number of AMG bios and reviews, he has a tendency to state his own minority viewpoint as if it’s shared by more people than it probably is. Two examples:
1) While describing Elvis’s late ‘60s comeback in his Elvis Presley bio, he writes, “Arguably, it’s been overrated by critics, who were so glad to have him singing rock again that they weren’t about to carp about the slickness of some of the production or the mediocrity of some of the songwriting,” which strikes me as an unnecessarily aberrant take. In fact, if one reads the AMG reviews for compilations like Suspicious Minds or From Nashville to Memphis, you’ll come across Stephen Thomas Erlewine suggesting that Elvis’s late ‘60s comeback recordings might be his finest work (ooh, who doesn’t love an intra-AMG critical spat?).
2) While reviewing a Peter Green-era Fleetwood Mac compilation, Unterberger writes that this was “their earliest, and by many accounts, best incarnation.” Well, in Unterberger’s “everything in the ‘60s was better than in the ‘70s” view, it certainly was their best incarnation, but I’d say the critical consensus is that the Buckingham-Nicks era is considered to be, at the very least, on par with the Peter Green era. The Buckingham-Nicks era is certainly more well-known than the Peter Green era, so I’m sure that probably annoys certain people (not naming names here).
But these are minor gripes. If occasional hot takes like the ones above represent the All Music Guide’s “lowest” moments, then what does that tell you? At least Unterberger doesn’t go full Kael/Christgau and call Rumours-era Mac “infuriatingly bad” or something.
Then there’s Steve Huey, who, in his post-AMG days, has gone on to further fame as “Hollywood Steve” in the Yacht Rock web series and subsequent Beyond Yacht Rock podcasts. How many music critics do you know of who can write equally effective album reviews for works by Metallica, Dave Brubeck, Dr. Dre, and Barry Manilow? Probably a small club, I’m guessing.
All right, who else? Ned Raggett, whose name often pops up on reviews for ‘80s and ‘90s “alternative” albums, and who once left a comment on my old blog (!). There’s William Ruhlmann, Jason Ankeny, Mark Deming, Heather Phares, Bruce Eder … I couldn’t tell you what these writers look like, or even which nation they reside in, but they’ve been my invisible buddies for almost 25 years now. They’re the music geeks’ music geeks.
(Also: quick shout-out to their sister site, the All Movie Guide, which, while likewise serving as my “go-to” site for film reviews, hasn’t quite introduced me to movies I wouldn’t have otherwise heard about from other sources the way that the All Music Guide has done with albums, artists, and entire genres.)
And yet, as thoughtful, measured, and reliable as their reviews are, I don’t think AMG writers have quite gone the full part-time Buddhist mile. I mean, there’s a lot more to discuss about a great album besides simply where it ranks within an artist’s catalogue, or within its respective genre.
Even though I have likely devoted the equivalent of four years of my life to feverishly perusing AMG reviews, I must acknowledge that their writers still use that certain type of authoritative, omnipotent music critic “voice,” telling their readers what an album “is” and “isn’t,” attempting to portray some aura of authorial invisibility (or invincibility?). Why, just the other evening, I found myself reading Stephen Thomas Erlewine’s review of late-period Britpop act Mansun’s second album, Six – an album I have not gotten around to exploring myself, and yet even so, here is an excellent example of what I mean:
Since Mansun’s debut album, Attack of the Grey Lantern, was some sort of convoluted song cycle, it shouldn’t have been surprising that their second album, Six, felt like the second coming of prog rock … From the garish Marillion-styled artwork to the endlessly shifting, segued songs, Six fits into the grand tradition of prog rock, and it does tell some kind of a story, even if it’s impossible to tell what that story may be. In fact, it’s difficult to get into the music itself, even as it dazzles with its twists, turns, appropriations, and recontextualizations … It’s a head-spinning listen, especially the first time through when it’s impossible to tell where it’s going or where it’s going to end … On one scale, that’s an impressive achievement, but it’s diminished somewhat when you take into account that Six isn’t particularly rewarding once you get a handle on it. Since it never reveals its secrets, or even its clues, it’s hard to embrace the record, even for all of its many attributes. Still, Six is clearly the work of ambitious, gifted musicians who aren’t willing to stay still, which is reason enough to try to come to terms with it.
Pretty standard, even-handed review, right? But here’s the thing. Even though I might listen to this album and arrive at a similar conclusion as Erlewine did, I wouldn’t feel comfortable outright stating that an album “never reveals its secrets” or “isn’t particularly rewarding once you get a handle on it,” as if I were clairvoyant and knew precisely how other listeners would react to it.
Do I sound like an insane person? Music reviewers have written like this for thousands of years, ever since Ogg declared Grogg’s follow-up performance of “sticks against hollow logs” to be a “weak second album.” Of course, whenever I read an AMG review such as the one above, I merely flip a little switch in my brain that adds the phrase “in this guy’s opinion” after every bold assertion, sort of like how light supposedly lands on my retina upside down but my brain supposedly turns it right side up.
I assume AMG has chosen this more “declarative” style in order to give off the illusion that all their reviews have been written, if not by the same person, then at least by the same amorphous, indestructible hivemind entity. (Could you imagine an AMG where the page for an album featured competing reviews and competing star rankings? Might be kind of fun?) But there’s still something not quite … perfect about it. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read an AMG review, disagreed with it, and, because I know the power of an AMG review, found that it’s irked me even more than a review I might have disagreed with from, say, Robert Christgau. Because I know that people are going to read the AMG review and think it’s the “definitive consensus take” on that album, and then miss out on an album that I personally feel could offer people so much more than AMG‘s review is suggesting it could.
But alas, that’s the editorial approach they’ve chosen, and even if their reviewers would rather wax poetic about what certain albums meant to them when they were sixteen years old and how they’ll never forget that one bus ride from Seattle to Walla Walla where they listened to Hot Buttered Soul twenty times in a row, etc., they probably want to get paid, and so they adhere to the site’s guidelines. See, I could never really roll with that.
Slight digression: For a couple of misguided years in the wake of graduate school, I actually attempted to write freelance for established publications. In other words, I attempted to write for a “living.” Just to get my feet wet, I wrote an article about local movie theaters, and then I wrote another article about local film festivals. I would have thought that, these being subjects that were at least tangentially related to my passions, I would have enjoyed writing these articles more than I would have enjoyed, say, pushing paper at a generic office job. But in actual practice, I discovered, to my slight surprise, that this was not the case.
See, in these articles, I had to adopt a certain tone – one which was not mine – and I had to pitch my work to a certain audience – one that I did not particularly care to reach. I enjoyed writing those articles about as much as I enjoyed writing papers in grad school. In other words, not much at all. It felt like just another job. I didn’t much care for it, because ultimately, there was very little … part-time Buddhism involved.
One theory I have about art is what I like to call the “Void” theory. Here it is: the purpose of art is to fill a void. An artist should look around, see what kind of art should be out there in the world but isn’t yet, and then go about and bring it into existence. But I think the “Void” theory could also apply to analysis and commentary about art as well. And as I look around, I see a lot of writing about certain works of art that I don’t think exists yet, but I think should. Sometimes, you’ve just got to grab a hammer and some nails and do the damn job yourself.
My point is, I didn’t feel like my pleasant little magazine articles were truly “filling a void.” The trick to writing those articles was simply to cobble together bits of information from other articles and websites, throw a few snappy phrases in there, and call it a day. It didn’t seem like the best use of my time. I would rather write something that earns me nothing, but says something that I don’t think is already being said.
Where was I? Oh, one last thought on star rating systems. I find that such systems, while extremely useful for the novice music listener or filmgoer when historical distance can be taken into account, tend to be almost useless when evaluating contemporary works. I remember occasionally glancing at issues of Rolling Stone in college and noticing an amusing trend: almost every new album would be given a rating of 3 ½ stars. I think the 3 ½ star rating was the magazine’s way of saying, “We really don’t know how to rate this album yet.” I thought to myself, “If every new album is going to receive a rating of 3 ½ stars, then why even use the damn system?”
In a way, the “3 ½ star” approach was accidentally brilliant. It was the ultimate equivocation, the unintentional admission that music cannot be accurately judged without at least a sliver of perspective. That’s why I wouldn’t really want to do what Kael or Ebert had to do, which was to rate a work of art based on a first impression. Yes, as a moviegoer, I would want to know which newly-released movies might be worth my time and which ones wouldn’t be. I guess if I had to review movies or albums based on a first impression, I would spew my brilliant rhetorical analysis, pat myself on the back, and then end every review with “… but my opinion could change …”
Dean Sluyter
“Oh, right, Dean Sluyter – wait, who?”
For those joining me late, Sluyter is the author of Cinema Nirvana: Enlightenment Lessons from the Movies, a relatively obscure book published in 2005 that I am almost 99.5% certain almost 99.5% of my readers have never heard of, and that I only heard of due to serendipitously stumbling upon it while killing time in the library one chilly November evening. Perhaps this fateful discovery was, you know, in my karma or something.
Now, one might surmise that, since Sluyter is an author who is writing about cinema from a Buddhist point of view, he would therefore be my shining, immaculate idol, but one would be mistaken. Earlier I referred to Sluyter as an actual “full-time Buddhist,” in order to differentiate his approach to writing about art and culture from my “part-time Buddhist” approach to writing about art and culture. I mean, a Buddhist, writing about movies? Where do I sign, right? Ah, but in cases like these, it behooves one to read the fine print.
Naturally, Sluyter would fit more neatly into the category “Film And Music Writers Who I Would Like to Declare ‘Honorary Part-Time Buddhists’” than the category “Film and Music Writers Who I’m Pretty Sure Weren’t Part-Time Buddhists” (because if you’re a full-time Buddhist, you’re halfway toward being a part-time Buddhist anyway). For instance, Sluyter hardly ever dips his toes into what I view as the angry, arrogant, dismissive, short-sighted mentality that I’ve found so prevalent in academic writing and non-part-time Buddhist criticism. He approaches film writing from a perspective I find infused with wisdom and clear-headedness. He’s on my team.
That said, even though Sluyter is on my team, the subsequent content of the section of the essay which I am about to devote to him is mainly going to address, more thoroughly than I addressed in Part I, the ways in which I would not want to write like him. In other words, while he may be on my team, I’m going to have to have a few words with the coach after the game.
I would describe Cinema Nirvana as “a book about Buddhism that just so happens to talk about 20th century movies.” My blog, if all goes according to plan, will be a blog about 20th century movies (and albums) that occasionally talks about Buddhism. Basically, Cinema Nirvana’s primary purpose is to discuss time-honored Buddhist thought, while sprinkling in a little movie talk here and there for spicy flavoring, whereas the Part-Time Buddhist Pop Culture Guru’s primary purpose will be to discuss movies and music, while sprinkling in a little half-baked Buddhist thought here and there for spicy flavoring. Same ingredients, different recipes.
At times I feel like Sluyter merely uses movies as a “hip” way to lure “the kids” into the magic of Buddhist meditative practice, sort of like a Schoolhouse Rock for Buddhism. I find the films he chooses to focus on rather curious as well. Many of his picks are well-known Hollywood action movies that I would almost describe as representing the opposite of part-time Buddhism (Goldfinger, A Fistful of Dollars, Jaws, Independence Day). Through the creative use of allegory, he turns the superficial plot elements of these films into elaborate metaphors for Buddhist practice. For example, observe this lengthy excerpt from his essay on Goldfinger:
Bond is a budding Buddha … His transcendental aspiration is indicated by the Bond family motto: THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH. If we practice with commitment, the element of growing enlightenment infiltrates our lives just as Bond infiltrates the various exotic locales of SPECTRE’s evil operations (“as a thief in the night”) … Bond’s adversaries represent various obstacles to growing enlightenment, obscurations of our true nature. As we’ve already seen, the real obscurations are internal, our own patterns of thought and behavior. Dr. No, as his name and his chilly personality suggest, could be the negativity with which we isolate ourselves from others, just as he had isolated himself to lord over his little island, and which keeps us from reaching out and touching others, as if we too had black-gloved mechanical hands.
Here the pre-title sequence provides the first hints of the elements that make Bond a dharma hero … In a few minutes Bond will strip off his wetsuit, under which, immaculately groomed as ever, he wears an elegant white dinner jacket. Then he’ll complete his ensemble by sticking a red carnation in his lapel, recalling the lotus flower, which traditionally symbolizes enlightenment by sinking its roots into the muck at the bottom of the murkiest waters yet emerging to unfold its immaculate blossom at their surface.
But first Bond breaks into an ordinary-but-impregnable-looking oil refinery tank, in which an elaborate drug-processing operation is hidden, and sets a bomb with a timer. This is the job of the dharma agent, to break through the apparently impregnable ordinariness of outer existence, find its surprising inner content, and set off some kind of explosive transformation … This is precisely how a seasoned spiritual practitioner carries himself, heading placidly upstream from the agitated crowd, unruffled even as seemingly unchangeable, fortresslike structures (whether external or internal) come tumbling down. No matter how much things are shaken, he’s never stirred.
Cute. Very cute.
But see, for me, James Bond movies are a solid example of cinema that I would not deem “part-time Buddhist,” because, in my view, they don’t provide a realistic and resonating depiction of human suffering that helps me come to grips with my ever-present struggle to cultivate happiness within myself. You’re shocked, positively shocked.
Not that I want to rip Bond movies a new one and channel my inner Holden Caulfield but, I might best describe them as … “phony.” In Bond movies, the “bad guys” always lose in the end. Real life doesn’t work that way! I find that the films perpetuate a mostly superficial view of existence, one that I eagerly absorbed as a child and later grew to discover was unable to prepare me for the deeper psychological challenges that I would face in my young adulthood. I mean yeah, sure, simply as a student of cultural history, when I’m in the right frame of mind, I’ve enjoyed Bond movies like any red-blooded American male would, but they are not the kind of movies I would turn to for, shall we say, deeper spiritual solace. So … curious choice.
As much as I enjoyed the book overall, I feel like Sluyter employs what I might call an “allegory formula,” similar to the academic I chuckled at earlier who searched for hidden sexual references in Dickens novels, basically using movies as a popular reference point for people who might otherwise not give a shit about Buddhist meditative practice. Interestingly, he doesn’t spend much time talking about the “H” word (happiness) like I do; mostly he goes into the point-by-point specifics of meditation, how there is no “self,” how people are silly for seeking this craving and that craving when what they really need to do is seek enlightenment, and, you know, “full-time Buddhist” crap like that.
Another example: seeing a chapter on The Truman Show, I assumed Sluyter had found the perfect opening to discuss something I’ve always noted about that particular Jim Carrey vehicle: that it’s practically a modern re-telling of the Buddha’s origin story! Quick refresher: despite Siddhartha’s father desperately attempting to keep his princely son sheltered from the omnipresent suffering that permeates the world and defines the human condition, he finds that, thanks to a few inevitable screw-ups from his “production crew,” his efforts are in vain. Likewise, when a few too many stage lights fall from the “sky,” etc. etc., Truman eventually learns the truth about the artificial cocoon that he has been sheltered within since his birth, and realizes that he must leave his “palace” and grapple with the uncertain reality of existence on his own terms, given that it’s an essential part of his human journey, which no one, not even a well-meaning television director like Ed Harris, can shield him from. This chapter practically writes itself! Instead, Sluyter analyses the movie more in terms of “enlightenment vs. unenlightenment” … or something. I couldn’t quite figure it out. But he sure doesn’t go where I would have gone.
Curiously, the more Sluyter veers away from both Buddhism and the movies, the more I enjoyed his book. For example, he uses 1) a chapter about The Godfather to give a bemused analysis of organized religion in general, and the Catholic church in particular; 2) a chapter about Easy Rider to share anecdotes about dropping acid with a high school buddy in Van Nuys in 1965 (“when it was so new it was still legal in California”), and 3) a chapter about Invasion of the Body Snatchers to talk about his initial devotion to, and subsequent disillusionment with, the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Maybe he should have just written a memoir!
And I suppose it’s inevitable, with this kind of subject matter, but I do get a whiff of preachiness and presumptuousness from the fellow. Every so often he’ll write something like this:
So the essential method for realizing this infinite, oceanic freedom is the infinitely simple practice of goalless resting in present awareness. This is the direct escape route from narrow, driven, tunnel-visioned shark awareness. It’s most effectively cultivated through regular sessions of silent sitting (“meditation,” to use the word that always threatens to make it sound strenuous and goal-oriented) …
Oh really now? Is it a scientific fact that “regular sessions of silent sitting” is the most effective way to “realize this infinite, oceanic freedom”? Maybe it’s the most effective way for this guy. But no matter how many cheeky movie metaphors he employs, he hasn’t convinced me that it’s “the” way.
Random YouTubers
If I really wanted to reach the unwashed, attention span-deficient masses, shouldn’t I be starting up a YouTube channel instead of putting all this effort into a crusty old, text-ridden blog? Aren’t I behind the times here? Well, given that, since I know how to type, and since I know next-to-nothing about video production, I’ve decided to go with what I know. Let’s not rule it out, OK? That said, much of my favorite music and film commentary I’ve come across over the past few years I’ve happened to come across on this thing they call “The YouTube.”
There’s the champion of chiaroscuro, Todd in the Shadows, who I feel strikes the ideal tone of humorous, enthusiastic, edgy, and informed. He’s one of the few pop music commentators I’ve ever come across who can dish out harsh judgements toward certain albums, artists, or songs without making me irritated, because beneath all the bluster, I still sense that he’s merely sharing his subjective opinion, and also that somehow he needs a healthy outlet for whatever venomous demons torment him throughout his waking hours. I especially look forward to new entries of his “Trainwreckords” and “One Hit Wonderland” series. Honestly, I would watch more Todd in the Shadows videos, except about 65% of them discuss post-2000’s pop music, which he seems to find more worthy of analysis than I do. (Is it a bad sign when I watch his “Best Songs of [Year]” and “Worst Songs of [Year]” lists, and can’t tell the difference in quality between the two?)
I never thought I would enjoy videos of two twenty-somethings reacting to ‘60s and ‘70s rock songs for the first time, but clearly, I had never seen Andy & Alex. The pair apparently play music themselves in their free time, and thus they actually possess more legitimate “music theory” knowledge than I do – even thought they’re half my age (!). Their target audience appears to mostly be baby boomers who “grew up” with the music that Andy & Alex are only now discovering, and while I am neither a baby boomer nor a Gen Z, somehow I’ve found that watching them explore the rich legacy of late 20th century rock/pop/R&B/etc. reminds me of my own exploration of that era (which mostly took place in the ‘90s). Through their ears, what’s old magically becomes new again.
My latest find is Tastes Like Music, sort of the YouTube Siskel & Ebert of classic rock, where three highly opinionated music nerds (and childhood friends from Pittsburgh?), Jason, Joe, and Kramzer, rank various artists’ discographies from worst to best, the trio merrily taking turns as they insightfully evaluate each album. And like their forebears, some of the most interesting videos tend to be the ones where they vehemently disagree on the merits of some random Eurythmics, Talking Heads, Fleetwood Mac, or Blur release. However, I’d say a few non-part-time Buddhist elements abound, such as an over-eagerness to “shame” certain artists for making music they don’t happen to like, or a tendency to knock certain songs simply because they’ve “heard them a thousand times” and have become “sick of them,” which certainly forms an interesting contrast with fresh and untainted newborn babes Andy & Alex, who, unlike Tastes Like Music, are able to react to “overplayed” ‘70s radio staples such as “American Pie,” “Maggie May,” “Joy to the World,” and “China Grove” without any preconceived expectations, and therefore without any of the accompanying resentment.
Other music channels I enjoy: David Bennett Piano, Vinyl Rewind, Professor of Rock, Trash Theory, and (in the non-musical category) World War II, The Armchair Historian, Great Art Explained, Secret Base, and Geography King. In terms of YouTubers who discuss movies, I think CinemaTyler provides the kind of painstakingly-researched and arrogance-free film analysis that I had been hoping to find more of in grad school, but never truly did.
Well-adjusted, level-headed, ordinary citizens with humorous and informed viewpoints. No hot takes or click-bait. To paraphrase Princess Leia: “Help us, basement-dwelling YouTubers, you’re our only hope.”
*****
Other Random Tendencies I Think Part-Time Buddhists Should Try to Avoid in Their Writing
And now, some leftover observations I still wanted to include somewhere in my intro essay but didn’t know where to put (since it clearly wasn’t, you know, long enough already).
Using Phrases Like “Masterpiece,” “Overrated,” “Vastly Inferior,” “Magnum Opus,” “Perfect,” “Clearly the Best,” Etc.
One day, I came to a realization. You know what I realized? The word “masterpiece” doesn’t actually mean anything. It’s kind of a silly word to use. “The group’s third album was their masterpiece.” Sure, it’s a fun word to use. It makes you sound like you’re talking about Renaissance art or a Beethoven symphony. But it’s entirely subjective.
Is there some sort of universal criteria that an authoritative body can establish that will define when a work of art is a “masterpiece” and when it is not? I like the approach that Wikipedia takes, which is to cite sources who have praised a work, but to not officially deem anything “the greatest” or “so-and-so’s best album.” They merely point out that there is a general consensus about a work, while still leaving the debate open. Scientists have universally agreed that water boils at 100 degrees Celsius. It is not up for debate. But has science universally determined that Citizen Kane is the greatest movie ever made?
Art is not science. I don’t think writers should treat it like it is. But sometimes they try to do that, and it usually strikes me as misguided. What I can do as a writer is write down exactly how I feel about a work of art. What I say will be true. No one can argue that my “feelings” are wrong. But if I start speaking for other people, I might run into more trouble than, say, Robert Downey, Jr. in a Hollywood strip club circa 1995.
It does annoy me slightly when I’m reading an otherwise excellent piece of writing about a work of art, and the writer suddenly states, “This movie is clearly superior to that movie.” It doesn’t annoy me a lot. And yes, I understand that the writer is only stating his or her opinion. But if I happen to disagree with the writer about the quality of Movie A vs. Movie B., then to hear the writer make such a statement with that level of certainty … is annoying! It’s annoying because it’s not actually “true.” But I think it’s very, very tempting to write this way. I get it. Even the All Music Guide writers, bless their souls, do it. However.
I like peppering my writing with lots of “in my opinion”s and “I think”s and “if you ask me”s. “Well, of course your writing is your opinion,” you reply in a snotty voice. “You don’t need to remind us.” Oddly, I feel like I do. There are so many writers out there, including many of my favorite writers, who I think try to “speak” for their audience, and it can come off as obnoxious, even when it might be well-intentioned. I would like to try to remind my audience that my writing consists of my opinions and my opinions only. I think that distinction is important.
That said, my opinion is the right one, and yours is the wrong one.
I’m not saying that it’s possible to write the “perfect” essay that will please everyone and piss off no one. In order for writing about art to be interesting, the author has to take a definite viewpoint. What I’m saying is that hopefully my essays will spring forth from my own viewpoint and not try to speak for other people’s viewpoints. I will be backing up my opinions … with opinions.
Play “Gotcha”
There’s a trend in academia that I guess I would call “Playing ‘Gotcha’.” Someone will write a paper about an author and say something like, “While this author thinks he is doing this, really he is doing that.” Ha! What a foolish author! It’s like this great quest to prove your superiority to the author while you’re sitting there at your desk toiling away in obscurity.
And academics frequently (and gleefully) extend this trend out towards society at large. For example: a few years back, I was watching Luis Bunuel’s The Exterminating Angel (as one does). The booklet in the Criterion Collection DVD featured an essay by a certain Marsha Kinder, who was apparently a “professor of critical studies in the school of Cinema-Television at the University of Southern California.” Also, “her new book, Interactive Frictions” (I am not making this up) “is forthcoming from the University of California Press.” Maybe I’ll check it out sometime. I found her essay relatively informative and interesting, but the last paragraph so perfectly sums up what I don’t like about academically-influenced film criticism that I will quote it here in full:
Like the guests, we long for a rational explanation that will free us from the anxiety aroused by such disturbing behavior. This cognitive struggle is dramatized in the plot as one of the guests (nicknamed “The Valkyrie” and “The Virgin”) commands everyone to stand still, for she “perceives” they are all positioned in precisely the same spot as when this strange condition first emerged. But how could they be in the same place when some of them have already died? Nevertheless, through a communal “faith” in this absurd narrative premise, the guests are miraculously released from the living room, only to have the same kind of entrapment reimposed in another setting. Just as the guests have been trained by their culture to pursue ritual and narrative coherence, we spectators have been trained by earlier sequences that repetition is the key. As in Las Hurdes, though the insiders at first seem to be the only ones who are trapped, the film eventually reveals that the trap extends outward to encompass outsiders (including us spectators), who are all caught in the same network of bourgeois corruption, but on a much larger scale.
Oh my God! We’re all caught in a network of bourgeois corruption! What are we going to do? My part-time Buddhist spidey sense says this observation is not as profound as Kinder thinks it is. I mean, so what? But academics love this kind of writing. Like “We’re all trapped and there’s no escape, but as least a few of us are smart enough to realize it, unlike the rest of the unwashed masses!”
My question is: What does this have to do with human happiness? If we’re trapped and there’s no way out, why are you bothering to tell us this? Kinder sounds to me like she’s busy patting herself on the back by pointing out that people “have been trained by their culture to pursue ritual and narrative coherence.” Well what else do you expect people to do? Pursue non-ritual and narrative incoherence? Anyone else think this kind of writing is silly?
Praise Works of Art That Are “Raw,” “Bleak,” “Honest,” and “Challenging” But Don’t Offer Any Deeper Wisdom
I want works of art to help me feel better about my life and the world around me. Like, genuinely better, not momentarily better. For example, I scoff at the common notion of the “feel good” movie. What most people consider a “feel good” movie is often the kind of movie that makes me feel kind of shitty. Boy gets girl, and they kiss and ride off into the sunset as the music swells. I don’t relate to that. And what happens after the credits roll? What about the late-night bickering and the children’s medical bills and the mortgage payments? It’s easy to feel good about your life when your life is going well. The real challenge is to feel good about your life even when your life is going poorly.
But then there are movies that are unrelentingly bleak and tragic and the filmmakers want you to believe they are being searingly honest and are depicting life the way it “really is” (films by Lars von Trier, Gaspar Noe, Michael Haneke, Catherine Breillat, and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, among others, come to mind). I call it “Endurance Cinema.” I don’t care much for those movies either. I already know that life is shitty. I want to watch something that is going to help me feel a little better about the shittiness, not remind me of the shittiness.
In my younger years, I used to seek out critics’ “year-end best of” lists (such as Ebert’s) and felt that I needed to watch every movie on these great lists from on high or else I would somehow “fall behind” and not be 100% “plugged in” to the contemporary film scene. To summarize: I sat through a lot of strange movies that I didn’t much enjoy, while trying to tell myself that I was enjoying them. (A disproportionate amount of these films seemed to come from Europe for some reason.) I guess if you’re paid to watch a non-stop stream of gross-out rom-coms and superhero blockbusters, as a critic, you would gravitate towards less complacent fare. But eventually I realized that “art-house” did not always mean “part-time Buddhist.”
I think I tend to gravitate toward art that strikes a balance. If art leans too far into fantasy, it can strike me as kind of false and irrelevant to my concerns. If it leans too far into reality, it doesn’t really help me cope with suffering. I need a little bit of fantasy with my reality. I need a bit of jam with my toast. For example: I’ll never fly an X-wing fighter through the canyons of the Death Star, but I will have to face a difficult task without the help of my now-deceased mentor. My favorite art tends to serve as both an escape and a reality check.
Some critics might praise a relentlessly pessimistic and/or experimental work as “boundary-pushing.” Listen. I could shit on a film reel, string it through the projector, illuminate it with light, and call such a work “boundary-pushing.” But would such a work be contributing to somebody’s overall happiness? Call me skeptical.
Complain About Works Being Too “Sentimental” or “Manipulative”
Part of me thinks that dismissing music because it’s “cheesy” or “wimpy” is about one step away from dismissing it because it’s “gay.” It suggests a discomfort on the part of the writer with the naked display of emotion.
Look, back in high school, I might have seen a female peer of mine sing along passionately to Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On” and I might have wanted to cringe. Because Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On” didn’t speak to me (although – shh – I actually liked Titanic overall). But if it spoke to that female peer of mine, then so what? Many music critics might act as though there was really something “wrong” with that. But tell me, what would be wrong with that, really?