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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

Is it bad if we don’t like it?

July 18, 2019 by Terry Teachout

In today’s Wall Street Journal “Sightings” column, I discuss the problem of critical error—and how unconscious prejudices often contribute to it. Here’s an excerpt.

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Critics like to think their opinions are more than that, but we all know better. We’re always getting things wrong, usually by failing to appreciate the virtues of the new. Otis Ferguson, one of the shrewdest film critics who ever lived, actually panned “Citizen Kane” for being too talky. Another case in point is the now-notorious review in which Brooks Atkinson dismissed the original 1940 production of “Pal Joey” as “drab and mirthless.” To Atkinson’s credit, though, he changed his mind when he reviewed the 1952 Broadway revival, praising “Pal Joey” the second time around for “the terseness of the writing, the liveliness and versatility of the score, and the easy perfection of the lyrics.”

I have a feeling that Atkinson fell victim in 1940 to unconsciously letting his prejudices get in the way of his perceptions, a less well-known but equally insidious source of critical error that can apply to revivals as well as new works….

H.L. Mencken was onto something when he claimed that criticism is “no more than prejudice made plausible.” Take John Simon, the dean of American film and theater critics, who nevertheless once wrote that “I consign anyone considering ‘The Searchers’ a masterpiece…beyond the critical pale.” Yet John Ford’s now-classic 1956 Western ranked #7 on Sight & Sound’s most recent critics’ poll of the greatest films of all time….

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Read the whole thing here.

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Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout, who writes this blog, is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. In addition to his Wall Street Journal drama column and his monthly essays … [Read More...]

About

About “About Last Night”

This is a blog about the arts in New York City and the rest of America, written by Terry Teachout. Terry is a critic, biographer, playwright, director, librettist, recovering musician, and inveterate blogger. In addition to theater, he writes here and elsewhere about all of the other arts--books, … [Read More...]

About My Plays and Opera Libretti

Billy and Me, my second play, received its world premiere on December 8, 2017, at Palm Beach Dramaworks in West Palm Beach, Fla. Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, closed off Broadway at the Westside Theatre on June 29, 2014, after 18 previews and 136 performances. That production was directed … [Read More...]

About My Podcast

Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I are the panelists on “Three on the Aisle,” a bimonthly podcast from New York about theater in America. … [Read More...]

About My Books

My latest book is Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington, published in 2013 by Gotham Books in the U.S. and the Robson Press in England and now available in paperback. I have also written biographies of Louis Armstrong, George Balanchine, and H.L. Mencken, as well as a volume of my collected essays called A … [Read More...]

The Long Goodbye

To read all three installments of "The Long Goodbye," a multi-part posting about the experience of watching a parent die, go here. … [Read More...]

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