Constant Viewer: Credentials? We ain't got no credentials. We don't need no credentials. I don't have to show you any stinking credentials!

Let me put this bluntly, in language even a busy blogger can understand: Criticism — and its humble cousin, reviewing — is not a democratic activity. It is, or should be, an elite enterprise, ideally undertaken by individuals who bring something to the party beyond their hasty, instinctive opinions of a book (or any other cultural object). It is work that requires disciplined taste, historical and theoretical knowledge and a fairly deep sense of the author's (or filmmaker's or painter's) entire body of work, among other qualities.

Thus sprach Time film critic and book reviewer Richard Schickel, who makes the other salient observations that Edmund Wilson and George Orwell were better critics than most (all?) bloggers trying their hand at it and that, presumably among many others, Philip K. Dick and Cornell Woolrich are currently enjoying inflated reputations or would enjoy them if they were still alive. These things are true. Constant Viewer readily admits them.

Schickel goes on to say:

[W]e have to find in the work of reviewers something more than idle opinion-mongering. We need to see something other than flash, egotism and self-importance. We need to see their credentials. And they need to prove, not merely assert, their right to an opinion.

Here, alas, he loses CV on several grounds. First, he conflates reviewing with criticism; that is, were he writing about criticism his position would be far more defensible. Second, by his own standards, much of professional (read: paid) reviewing fails utterly as well. Schickel might not mind that so much, but CV hazards the guess that were he to dredge up some of Schickel's work from the mid 1960s it wouldn't fare all that well by those standards, either. CV, um, asserts this opinion having never read much of Schickel's work under the principle that anyone who doesn't get better at what he has done for over forty years should have packed it in long ago.

Criticism aside, a film or book reviewer's work is little more than an aid to the prospective viewer or reader. Here are the credentials required to be a useful film reviewer: be consistent in your tastes and write what you believe. Readers will fairly quickly discover after several reviews whether and where you can be trusted to share their tastes or not. Knowledge of film making and of the principle cast and crew is useful but not essential. People do not read reviews to educate themselves generally or to improve their taste. Their question is "Will I like this movie?" Just about everything else in the review is posturing; entertaining posturing, maybe, but posturing nonetheless and specifically film reviewing posturing as film criticism. CV knows of one reviewer who apparently doesn't know his aperture from a hole in the ground as far as film making or film history credentials go, but if this guy likes a movie, chances are very good that CV will like it, too. Maybe not for the same stated reasons, but that makes no difference in his value as a litmus test.

Sure, an informed and talented reviewer can occasionally accomplish the loftier goals to which Schickel would have him constantly aspire. But Schickel fails to understand how his elitist perspective and attitude (the latter of which CV largely shares) nonetheless fails to support his implicit conclusion that this internet free-for-all is a bad thing. Yes, most blog reviews suck. But so do most paid reviews, a fact Schickel all too quickly acknowledges.

Maybe Ernie the car parts guy has something worth saying and maybe he doesn't. Chances are he doesn't, but so what? Maybe Ernie will turn into a decent reviewer if he keeps at it long enough. The notion that all real writers find publishers or that, at the very least, they keep writing despite rejection after rejection is, one notes, a notion held almost exclusively by published writers. Let Ernie have his fun, even if it is little more than "cocktail-party chat."

Chances are good that more people decide which film to see or book to read next from cocktail party chatter than from Mr. Schickel and his ilk's reviews or criticism. Chances are even better there's a good reason why.