There are lots of sports at which we do not excel. We are not great at the tourism game. We are terrible at keeping roads in decent repair, and we have no idea how to stand in line for anything. And I have recently had word that no one knows where all the capybaras have gone. But. But in this country you will find the best ole talk. I know of no better.
Everyone thinks their way of talking, joking, mocking, scoffing, arguing, gossiping is unique, sparkling. It is a thing over which I have no control.
We live lives rich in picong, satire and comess. We talk about everything and everyone. And we know about everything and everyone. A natural extension is that we're no different from the rest of the planet in thinking we are allowed an opinion about these everys.
So what I want to know is, how come we don't fight harder to have a healthy culture of criticism? I don't mean oh-God-what-were-you-thinking-wearing-that-shirt? We don't need encouragement to criticise. Criticism in the analytic sense. In the looking at, or listening to, or experiencing something, and assessing whether we find it good or bad or both, asking questions about it, and - hark - discussing it.
Criticism exists in the academic world. It can be a lengthy, nasty, brutal business, but it is an essential one. If you publish scholarly material and no one reviews it, does it really exist? In that world, not having your work evaluated is worse than having it read and found wanting. That is the power of discourse and analysis for the work that underpins a solid piece of research.
Books, paintings, film, music, dance, theatre - all arts - are reviewed. They're just not reviewed a whole lot by us. This needs a bit of qualification, because I know you've seen some fine writing in local publications that fall under the review banner.
Soca, pan, mas, all the Carnival competitions - they need to be properly studied and written about. They need to be judged. Not by the judges, but by public opinion and by those who have given their lives to observing and studying. How will this come to pass (it barely comes to pass now) if we don't do it in the traditional places?
The thing is, somewhere along the way we stopped having permission to offer balanced discussions about anything. Everything, for some inexplicable reason, has become wonderful, great, amazing, and such like.
No show by a visual artist is anything less than stunning. No performance fails to wow its audience. No book is less than a must-read. How? How is this possible? This cannot be possible. The only world in which everything is so perfect is brochures. You are entitled to like something. You can love something. I have written reviews for books I've adored.
But I've also had to write when I saw flaws. And you don't want to be mean, but you have a job to do, and maybe you have a sense of responsibility, so you try to do things to start a discussion. You give what used to be called 'constructive criticism,' but is now referred to as 'what the woman who hates me wrote.'
Not in my time,
