Literary Criticism isn’t Music for the Blind and Deaf
Literature has a problem with the type of journalism that believed
writers for the English music press, for example, Melody Maker (1926-2000), New
Musical Express (1952-), and Sounds
(1970-1991), was criticism. Such writing was ostensibly for the effectively deaf,
who’d never heard the musical composition, wouldn’t have any opinion other than
that of the critic, and read ’rags’ purely for their bullying of musicians who
didn’t care what the writers thought. The listeners could decide for
themselves. The music papers were only good advertising, or bad, ‘A never-ending
supply of throat sweets is one of the secrets behind the continued success of
the Beatles, who come crashing into the NME Chart this week with 'From Me To
You' at No. 6! "We couldn't go on without them," says lead guitarist
and vocalist John Lennon.’1 What’s important is the writer’s pose in relation
to the music being criticized, rather than the sound, as most readers hadn’t
any possibility of listening, either because they couldn’t afford to buy any
music recordings, which was the reason for the existence of the music papers,
that is, they were written for the impoverished, or they were deaf.
The ghettos of
science fiction, fantasy and horror, became the journalistic home for the
equivalent of the writer of criticism for pop music, ‘My personal take on
literary criticism is largely derived from the work of Stanley Fish who argued
that the text only exists as something constructed from the words on the page
and the mind of the person reading it. Perhaps this makes me a coprophile but
some of the books I read are, in the words of The Firesign Theatre, “really good shit."’2 Referred to here
by Marc Ortleib, ANZAPA (Australia and New Zealand Amateur Publishers
Association), for the sake of appearing superior in knowledge, is a US’ surreal
comedy troupe, who first appeared in a live performance on November 17th,
1966, for the California state capital Los Angeles’ program, Radio Free Oz, station KPFK FM, but it’s
deliberately over the head of most casual browsers, because the critic wants to
obfuscate the understanding of the reader to ensure ignorance, as a matter of
routine, although the assassination of intelligence to rival a smattering of savvy
is ritualistically evil.
However, the readers
of science fiction, fantasy, and horror aren’t illiterate, as they have to be
able to understand the material in order to read, whereas the readers of Melody Maker, New Musical Express and Sounds,
for example, were taught they were reading some really heavy duty criticism, if
they weren’t able to comprehend what was supposedly being communicated, ‘I
can’t comment on “The Purge” or any of its sequels. I’ve never seen it, nor
heard of it.’3 That Ortleib doesn’t care whether you’ve seen the movie, The Purge (2013), or not, and isn’t
interested in what you think, is too peremptorily dismissive of the US $ 83
million the film made at the box office, regardless of the plot, which is based
on the notion of what would happen if people were allowed to police themselves.
That the critic hasn’t seen The Purge
is meant to indicate its and your worthlessness, which isn’t a measure of its
value. The role of the critic is to experience a work in order to make an
objective attempt at measuring its value for others, rather than to despise the
attempt to evaluate on the understanding that the other’s opinion is irrelevant
and can be safely disregarded, because the critic’s secluded in his ivory tower
of academe.
The writers of
literary criticism for ghettoized fiction such as Cyberpunk, which includes the
seminal movie, The Terminator (1984),
starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, about a world in which humans war with machines
for survival, and Space Opera’s wars between its good Princesses and its Empire
of evil, for example, in the box office successful ‘blockbuster’ movie Star Wars: A New Hope (1977), with the prequels
and sequels of its lucrative franchise, were encouraged by the ostensibly
obscure provenance of science fiction, fantasy, and horror, to write in a style
similar to those of the deafening and dumbing down of the music papers, which
seemingly also wanted to blind the readers to the value of going to see the
musical performance by indifferently dismissing its significance.
Genre criticism is
the condemnation of the writer on the basis of a self-fulfilling prophecy, that
is, it isn’t readable, so it isn’t written; for example, Ortleib’s comment on
futanarian women’s seed, who’re women with their own penis’ semen, therefore
identifiably a separate species from men, as a subject more than fitting for
exploration by the science fiction genre with a remit to examine alternate
social systems, ‘As far as I can see this is just a concept from manga or
perhaps Japanese culture in general.’ Japan’s practice of ‘foot-binding’ of
women to prevent their escape isn’t a cartoon, but a determined effort to
prevent the human futa race from
developing enough brainpower to rid itself of slavers through women’s mode of
sexual reproduction with each other as a species, while anime manga depicts the torture of these humans as entertainment
for the alien: just.
1 Smith, Alan ‘Throat Sweets Keep Us Going Say Beatles!’, New Musical Express, April 19th,
1963.
2 Ortleib, Marc Australia and New Zealand Amateur Publishers
Association (ANZAPA), Wednesday, May 4th, 2022, 6: 35 pm, https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/h/tmxqemfvddxw/?&th=18092489a4a3e9fa&d=e&v=c&s=t
.