Mu Nansen had a thought-provoking blog entry this week, and I thought I’d post some thoughts on the subject here rather than in a comment thread somewhere else.

He talks about reviews and reviewers (everyone’s one nowadays), and at one point talks about the utter uselessness of most of them from a content creator’s perspective, writing this off to an educational / experiential gap rather than outright ignorance. I tend to agree. Look at freakin’ Amazon.com.

There is another aspect of the value of reviews worth noting, that which is not intended to inform or assist the filmmaker, but instead to inform other viewers. While I’m sure that if I made a film and had it reviewed by Roger Ebert, I would very likely learn something of value to myself the filmmaker, that is not his (primary) purpose for giving the review. He is influencing the decision making process for potential viewers of the films he reviews, and compared to most of those viewers, Ebert’s expertise on films and filmmaking is massive, while professional filmmakers might ascribe less value to his opinions. Mu isn’t talking about Roger Ebert or anyone of that grade, of course, but I thought the distinction of purpose was worth noting.

The angst between filmmakers and critics is not new, of course; find a professional in either category, and they’ll likely besmirch the other. But what Mu has hit on here is what makes the internet different; suddenly, opinions do not even require the pretense of expertise. (Not that expertise is always required to validate an opinion, but you know what I mean.) I think that’s something great about the internet; the blogosphere is built on that principle.

HOWEVER, I want to qualify that praise. There is a pervasive attitude that has emerged over the years, as more and more people find their voice, that states that you must not only ALLOW my opinion, you must also hold up my opinion as VALUABLE, whether you agree with it or not. I disagree with that assumption.

So, as in Mu’s /. example, no one is calling for a person to be DISALLOWED from voicing their opinion; rather, I think what is being challenged is the notion that all opinions be assigned some innate VALUE on the basis of nothing but their existence. If we’re talking about human beings, certainly. [Not all worldviews accept that, but most do.] But ideas / opinions? No, they are not all inherently valuable. I surmise that the key evil to avoid in the acknowledgement of that is to never allow ourselves to feel comfortable legislating the assignment of value to the ideas; we must remain free to do that ourselves, individually.

As an alternative to legislation (read: censorship), I think simply a “grain of salt” approach is prudent. I was fortunate enough to have a philosophy professor who encouraged us to do this with ideas we encountered in that environment, too. Review the reviews. Apply critical thinking when digesting a review, and actively DISCERN whether you believe it to have value, rather than buying into the notion of value by default. The blogosphere is built on that principle, too; note the proliferation of comment functionality.

Avoid the temptation to review the reviewer when it’s the review you disagree with. It’s ad hominem and breeds flame wars. Reviewers, of course, benefit from the same caution. There are two ways of reviewing content: focusing on the product vs. focusing on the person who made the product.

It’s not always easy, for reviewers and review-reviewers alike, to separate the content from its progenitor. Sometimes it’s the creators themselves who are reluctant to let their work take criticism without absorbing the fullness of those wounds into themselves. If a content creator injects some of his/her self into the creation, criticism is going to raise defensiveness (and sometimes hostility) with near inevitability. In that regard, it is the Makers who could benefit from learning the judo of objective separation from their art.

Much easier said than done, of course.