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Tuesday, September 21, 2004
Great Expectations
How important are expectations when it comes to evaluating comics and other works of art? I’ve found that lots of criticism use phrases like “it lived up to my expectations,” “what did you expect reading a book like this,” “it certainly wasn’t what I was expecting” and other like those. I wouldn’t say that’s an invalid way to criticize or analyze something, but could it lead to unfair criticism?
To me, it can come off as bringing the reviewer too much into the review of the work (and if any sentence looks silly starting with “to me” it’s that one). But perhaps it’s useless for a critic to try to distance him/herself from the review in the first place. I know I was taught early on to not use “I” when writing commentary in essays. The idea being that it would alienate readers or some such, I’m not sure and I don’t consider it a good rule.
If an audience is expecting a laugh-out-loud comedy but instead get something that employs a dryer wit, is it fair for the audience to declare that movie/comic/whatever “unsatisfactory” or even, as they probably will, “bad?” How much should criticism be about what is being criticized and how much should be about the critic?
Remember, there is no right answer here so you are all wrong.
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