BY ALEX HO

In print | March 6, 2008

In the controversy surrounding the College Republicans’ “Coming Out” posters, (I promise, I won’t be beating a dead horse) one unexpected target of attack was the Internet forum, where much of the discussion unfolded. On the Daily Gazette forum, some comments asked others to refrain from personal attacks or ridiculed how petty the whole thing was. The Daily Jolt, of course, had far less civil comments.

In spite of the unorthodox writing in these Internet forums, the depth and instantaneousness of some of the discourse that they produced made me anxious about The Phoenix’s continued relevance as a media source. As a weekly publication, The Phoenix can only publish Op-Eds at a painfully slow pace. Sometimes, discussion of articles and columns even transfer over to the Net, as was the case with one of Yoshi Johnson’s columns on the Jolt. Though, as the sole printed newspaper on campus, the Phoenix does have some institutional authority, this is also a hindrance that makes it less adaptable to changing media habits. It’s a situation I see paralleled in an area that is my column’s bread and butter — pop culture criticism, where I feel that the Internet has really helped the quality of work to flourish.

I have a mad love for blogs and webzines about popular culture, and the site that started it all was Slant Magazine. What first struck me about the webzine was that it didn’t always slavishly praise prestige pieces like most big-name papers did. Comprised twenty-something, even college-age, writers, the webzine struck me as being far less smug than established film critics. I liked that their reviews were largely unconcerned with taste and family-appropriateness, issues that reduce the rating of a film to how easily it goes down its audience’s throats. Instead, the reviewers weren’t afraid to get intellectual, and they also weren’t afraid to use less formal language.

The Internet grants a far greater freedom of language, no matter how crude. While crude or colloquial language can come across as juvenile or unjustifiably mean, it can also be used in clever ways to strengthen a point and to diffuse the pretense inherent in critiquing art. In a classic example, Roger Ebert was clearly taken aback when, in Slant Magazine’s review of 2005’s “Chaos,” Ed Gonzalez wrote, “What’s the point of this shit anyway?” While equally indignant of the film, Ebert also referenced Gonzalez in his own review as a point of amusement, affectedly differentiating him as a “Web writer.” What critics like Ebert don’t get is that they are still playing on their perceived position of authority. Web publications like Slant Magazine seem to have far less derision for so-called low culture, if only because they reside in the gutter of Internet trash.

That these blogs and webzines flatten conceptions of high and low art is another thing I love. Slant Magazine pays equal attention to pop music in its music section, for instance, giving a very thorough and funny retrospective of Mariah Carey’s career titled “Finding Subtext Where There Is None” or hailing Madonna’s “Vogue” as more understanding of the racial politics of voguing than bell hooks gives her credit for. Even lower maintenance than webzines, blogs strike me as an even better means of critiquing popular culture. The option of starting a blog is free to far more people, and the personalization of a blog further destructs the elitism of cultural criticism and leaves the blogger wide open to criticism.

Undoubtedly, there are plenty of sickeningly pretentious blogs out there. The Internet, as an alternative to the oligarchy of mass media, easily lends itself to counterculture. But what’s interesting is that much of the blogosphere seems to have fostered a culture that calls out ego-stroking contrarianism. Today’s most infamous film contrarian, the New York Press’s Armond White, is cursed with an entire blog titled “Armond Dangerous” that monitors his every transgression. In many blogs I’ve found, there is a self-awareness and self-critiquing of the practice of cultural criticism. In the blog “The Stranger Song,” Paul Schrodt has a post titled “Is film criticism worthless?” that comes to terms with how elitist and frivolous film criticism has the potential to become. In my opinion, the Internet has made critics today more understanding of the contradictions of their craft than any previous generation of critics.

To conclude, I am eagerly anticipating the Phoenix’s new website, so I can get me some vitriolic backlash. The only reactions I’ve received thus far have been vaguely positive “I liked your column” comments and I’m aching to break loose from my ivory (fourth floor Parrish) tower and engage in the dynamic and endlessly enlightening dialogue that the Internet affords us.

Alex is a sophomore. You can reach him at aho1@swarthmore.edu.

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