I’ve limited tolerance for critics, those who have opinions on everything but do little about anything. It may seem a strange attitude for someone in the media where, increasingly, opinion is sacred and facts are whatever you choose them to be.
It used be the opposite – that facts were sacred – but such has been the effect of social media on public discourse through misinformation and disinformation that few facts are now trusted. Today it seems facts are only valued if they feed a preconception, some daft theory or conspiracy, or other.
Then the critic/hurler on the ditch has never been popular with those who do. Here is Brendan Behan on theatre critics. They were “like eunuchs in a harem; they know how it’s done, they’ve seen it done every day, but they’re unable to do it themselves”.
Finnish composer Jean Sibelius noted “a statue has never been erected in honour of a critic”, while Hemmingway described critics as “men who watch a battle from a high place then come down and shoot the survivors”.
Beauty & the Beast review: On the way home, younger audience members re-enact scenes. There’s no higher recommendation
Matt Cooper: I’m an only child. I’ve always been conscious of not having brothers or sisters
A Dublin scam: After more than 10 years in New York, nothing like this had ever happened to me
Patrick Freyne: I am becoming a demotivational speaker – let’s all have an averagely productive December
I was a theatre critic for five years. It was my job to alert readers to the good, the bad and the ugly on Dublin stages. None of it helped by knowing that, at any time, up to 80 per cent of Irish actors are out of work.
Still, I prefer actors to critics; doers to commentators. I have always liked the Teddy Roosevelt quote.
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
Critic, from Latin criticus, “person skilled in judging merit”.
