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Pop Culture critic/journalist/historian
Writing: The Ringer, IndieWire, Vanity Fair, Roger Ebert, Cosmo, The Verge
Former: Sundance Copy Editor
OCPD đ«
Letterboxd: Djoyaux
Also love and may post about: basketball, comics, democracy, dogs
I kind of wrote about this here:
www.theringer.com/2023/12/29/m...
From âOppenheimerâ to âKillers of the Flower Moonâ to âNapoleon,â 2023 saw the old-school historical epic reenter the zeitgeist. Could the trend last, or was it just a flash in the pan?
Is this the first time Jim Lee has officially drawn an X-Men character since the â90s?
(Wildcats/X-Men: The Silver Age came out in 1997)
But! I must take severe umbrage with your omission of Peter Jacksonâs King Kong remake, which I think is an underrated masterpiece. I wrote a bit about it here:
www.theringer.com/2025/03/06/m...
With Bong Joon-hoâs long-awaited âParasiteâ follow-up, âMickey 17,â about to grace our screens, weâre counting down the best films from directors coming off of Oscars glory
Iâll never forget seeing that in theaters as a 23-year-old, and having my mind blown with the way the opening scene created a false understanding of the âscreenâ
So. Itâs been quite a wretched week for professional criticism, and for good writing in general.
Thereâs a tendency to blame companies for valuing the wrong things, and of course thatâs partially true.
But the larger issue is that American consumers simply donât want good criticism.
(1/)
When the entire goal is just to erroneously blame other people, factual chronology isnât a particularly relevant element of the equation
Yeah, it fucking sucks that Vanity Fair, WaPo, and others no longer want to publish good criticism.
But what sucks even worse is that publishing good criticism has become such an obvious financial sinkhole for American media outlets.
And thatâs a pure product of American consumer stupidity.
(end)
I would bet that there are dozens of YouTube videos of white guys yelling about how a teenage Muslim girl superhero is ruining America that each have more views than the single most widely read piece of professional, written film criticism in the last five years.
(9/)
But Americans DO still want criticism. Thatâs the saddest part of all this.
YouTube and TikTok âinfluencersâ are thriving.
American consumers actually still love criticism, and probably engage with it more than ever. They just donât want it from smart people, capable of nuance and expertise.
(8/)
Itâs absolutely true that media companies donât value good criticism, but thatâs not why good critics are getting fired left and right.
Itâs because good criticism no longer gets clicks. Americans donât want good criticism anymore.
(7/)