Let us agree that all lists of movies are nonsense. I have steadfastly refused to compose any list of films except for my annual Best 10 list, and the Sight & Sound poll--which has, after all, some real significance. Despite the entreaties of countless editors, authors and websites, I decline to make lists of the best comedies, horror films, Christmas films, family films, Westerns, musicals, political films, silent films, films about dogs, and so on. That way madness lies.

-Roger Ebert

It hardly needs to be said that journalism is in a rough patch right now. In certain circles, that's pretty much all journalists write about. The death of print and the surge of online formats have raised questions about the future of journalism. And while many ask what this means for the news, few ask what this means for some of the less objective aspects of journalism - namely, criticism.

It must be depressing to be a professional critic of any sort. Their job - and a worthy job it is - is to possess a knowledge and insight on a subject that many of their readers possess only an amateur (if that) understanding of. They are employed, presumably, because they are intelligent, cogent, and deeply informed. The best critics can raise our consciousness in a way that few others can: their commentary helps us understand and appreciate worthy subjects that might have otherwise remained misunderstood or simply unnoticed. Consider the great works of art that might have passed us by were it not for the vocal advocacy of a select few. And the very best critics, with a few choice words, can alter everything we thought we understood about a subject.

The depressing part comes in when critics inevitably notice that nobody actually cares about words, even choice ones. People care about numbers. It really doesn't matter what the number is or what it means - as long as a number is visible somewhere, people will focus on it and ignore everything surrounding it. These numbers might take the form of a ranking (one to four stars for a movie), they might take the form of a list (the top ten whatevers), they might even take the form of something suspiciously alphabetical but still essentially numerical (a letter grade, for instance). Regardless of form, the number will always be presented prominently, a simple translation of the many words floating obnoxiously around it.

I do not think it needs to be said just how important people consider these numbers, but it may need to be said just how dire the situation is. I point, first and foremost, to the website Metacritic and its numerous sister sites such as Rotten Tomatoes and Game Rankings, though if you use the internet you are probably already well aware of these sites and have probably used them at least once. The premise is simple: these sites take a large number of reviews for, say, film, take the numerical rankings from these reviews, and then average them together, giving you something that is supposed to represent a critical consensus. 

The mere existence of these sites, to say nothing of their immense popularity, is one of the most damning things to be said about professional critics today. Think about what the thought process must have been when Rotten Tomatoes was originally conceived. "Moviegoers need a way to bypass a pesky reviewer's actual review and arrive only at the movie's score. In fact, what if there was a way to bypass not only a reviewer's review, but even his score, so that instead of facing a number of numerical scores, moviegoers could be presented with one single score that represented all of criticism." These review-aggregate sites operate under the premise that any given individual reviewer is worthless. It does not matter what a reviewer said nor why he said it; all that matters is how the reviewer would rank a movie on a numerical scale, and even that number is not important by itself, only as a small variable in a large cultural equation. That these review-aggregate sites are so popular only adds insult to injury.

The problem does not stop there, though. Numbers-based criticism is prominent in another, much more sinister form, which I introduced above: the list. Unless you have not actually been conceived yet and are reading this through the haze of some extradimensional ether, you have encountered many, many of these lists in your lifetime. One need only glance at a website dedicated to popular culture to find them. The A.V. Club routinely features lists (or "inventories") at the top of their front page, and the seven most popular features currently at Pitchfork are all Top X lists (top 100 albums of the 1990s, top 50 bands of 2007, etc.).

List-based criticism is especially vapid for several reasons, the most important being that the vast majority of it is not in the least bit interesting. Currently, the A.V. Club features a list titled "19 child actors who went on to successful, respectable careers," which I think speaks for itself. (If you actually care about that and wish to indulge in some meaningless celebrity biography, then I apologize for tying you up here.) I hesitate to even call it "criticism," because it is made apparent when you read it that it's not, but I am not sure what else to call it when the A.V. Club is otherwise a site clearly dedicated to pop culture criticism. 

Lists, especially Top X lists, suffer because they commit the writer to writing about things that are presupposed, not confirmed, to be interesting. Presumably the A.V. Club had the idea of listing child actors who went on to successful, respectable careers before they started writing that list, and I can only imagine most lists work the same way: writers think up a theme and try to find content to match. Unfortunately, it usually doesn't work that way. Interest doesn't generate content; content generates interest. No matter how intriguing the title of the list, if the title was written first, it will be evident in the shallowness of the content.

Lists are also dangerous because they dictate a single, confining, and arbitrary form for the writer. If a writer writes about ten albums and frames them as a "top ten" article, then he is forced to discuss them in a linear, competitive progression, even if there are many better ways to discuss those albums. I struggle to think of many situations, in fact, where the Top X format is ideal or even appropriate. "Which of these is better" is so rarely a relevant or productive question in criticism, yet is the precept behind all Top X lists. Readers' love of numbers, though, has forced the hand of many critics: either write list-based criticism or envy the lists of others that get all of the attention.

So what can critics do? The problem seems insurmountable. Review-aggregate websites are steadily obsoleting individual reviewers, and those that survive do so by appealing to the public's base number-grubbing. The solution, I think, is two-fold, one side addressed to the critics and one side to the readers.

To the critics: write better, write more. I'm sorry, but gone are the days where you were any sort of authority on anything by virtue of your position. No longer can you pump out a 200-word review of the latest film release and give little more than a brief appraisal. "Good acting, suspenseful plot; three stars!" isn't going to cut it anymore. Reviews like those are little more than thumbs-up/thumbs-down consumer advice, and if all you offer is consumer advice then you are worthless. You have already been subsumed into Metacritic. For all we care, you could punch some numbers into a machine every week and you would accomplish the same thing. Unless you can provide some kind of unique insight, unless you can offer something that I can't get somewhere else, then you can't offer anything. There is so much information at my fingertips that I have no need to read a generic review, especially when review-aggregate sites have created the Frankenstein's monster of generic reviewers: bigger, stronger, and faster than any mere human.

To the readers: you've won. There exist sites that boil an entire critical community down to a number. You literally do not have to read a single word if you don't want to. But I want to remind you that critics do more than generate a number. Critics do more than declare something good or bad. Critics are much, much more than cultural gatekeepers and dispensers of consumer advice, and Metacritic will never obsolete a critic's ability to help you understand and appreciate what you did not before, and there is not a single one of us who would not benefit from being more understanding and appreciative.

I invite everybody to read this journal post by Roger Ebert, because he outlines exactly why he is a great and terrible critic all at once. He freely admits the weaknesses in his star-rating system. He freely admits that he favors certain genres. He freely admits he has given movies scores higher than most people would agree with. He freely admits that he is swayed by his political sympathies, his personal sympathies, and his personal history with film. He freely admits that his reviews are intensely subjective, and he cannot envision them any other way.

I respect Roger Ebert a great deal, and I do not think any less of him for what he wrote above (I already knew or suspected most of it anyway), but to many people, yes, this makes him a terrible critic, because when all you look for is a simple yes-or-no-should-I-see-this-or-not review, Roger Ebert is not the man you want to talk to.

But if you want to understand film more, or appreciate film more, then I cannot think of anyone better. Ebert obviously knows much more about film than any of us, and he has demonstrated a sharp intellect time and time again (they don't just give Pulitzers away), but he is also remarkably honest, intellectually and emotionally. He will never say something unless he fully believes it, and his passion for film is evident in everything he writes. If I want to know whether to see a film, I will explore other avenues; if I want to know more about a film, if I want to hear from someone who will aid my understanding and appreciation of film, then I will turn to Ebert first, because I can trust him to give me some honest insight. He is not interested in being a robotic, "objective" critic, nor am I interested in hearing from such a robo-critic. 

Ebert concludes his post above with the following:

I cringe when people say, "How could you give that movie four stars?" I reply, "What in my review did you disagree with?" Invariably, they're stuck for an answer ... If you disagree with what I write, be my guest. If you disagree with how many stars I gave it, you can mail your opinion to where the sun don't shine.