Blog, Interviews, Ricky D’Ambrose - Sunday, November 16, 2008 16:13 - 2 Comments

A.S. Hamrah

A recent n+1 panel discussion at the Kitchen addressed the anxieties of online culture, including the effects of instantaneous access to information on how we engage with and think about literature, criticism, and so on. It seems that now, more than ever, an alarm has been sounded within literary communities concerning the Internet’s potential to slight or undermine patience, attention, and contemplation (I am thinking of Nick Carr’s article, Is Google Making Us Stupid? as well as Lee Siegel’s book, Against the Machine, both troubled by the Internet’s ability to hyper-kinetically modify our experiences). Jonathan Rosenbaum addressed somewhat similar ideas about the future of film criticism at a time when more and more film viewers seem to be referring to blogs and websites like RottenTomatoes and MetaCritic rather than, say, Film Comment or Film Quarterly. My question is: has the Internet contributed to a growing disinterest in (or dismissal of) a film criticism that moves beyond mere binary, simplified opinions and analyses of films? Is there a risk that complexity is being undermined?

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