Here are some perspectives from which to analyze art.
- historical analysis
- sociological analysis
- psychological analysis
- formal analysis
- relaying the experience
- relaying your experience
- analysis of artistic quality
- interpretation
I'll go over these different approaches and offer my thoughts on which ones are most effective.
1. Historical, sociological, and psychological analyses
These are the preferred approaches of academics in film studies. They generally adopt perspectives such as poststructuralism or feminism and apply this theory to every film they encounter.
Historical analyses position works within a specific historical tradition. This could be a relevant movement in film history or simply refer to a broader era with different narrative conventions, aesthetics, and technical limitations.
Sociological analyses situate works within a particular culture. They identify the similarities between groups of works and tell of what these similarities say about the culture that produced them. Or they take a particular work and show how it is or isn't typical of the culture that produced it.
Psychological analyses can do many things. They might try to pin a fictional character down to a particular psychological state. Or they might argue that a work or group of works operate from a particular psychological perspective.
I find these approaches uninteresting because they flatten out all the complexities of the work, replacing the dynamic spirit of the great works of art with static psychological states and rigid ideological categories. This is why these theories generally only account for the weakest works of art. The great ones operate on a level of experiential complexity irreducible to abstractions and generalizations. Great art is not rigid. It is alive and present, confronting viewers with new experiences, difficult experiences, and don't recycle pre-packaged combinations of emotional punches. Works like these are not understood by decoding, by historical research, or any other method of criticism where the critic talks down to the work, wielding his power over it, showing off his ability to unlock its secrets. No, works like these ought not be decoded but to be navigated, engaged with humbly, allowing for the possibility that the work can teach you something that you don't already know. This is what it means to take art seriously: to engage with the deepest works on the deepest level, without ego, irony, or cynism.
2. Analyses of artistic quality
This is what laypeople are typically interested in when they discuss movies or music or video games. "Did you see this? How awesome was it? What do you mean you didn't like it?" The prime topic of discussion is whether the work was any good or not. In slightly more sophisticated versions of these conversations, arguments are mounted in defence of the value judgments that are made.
I am no relativist. (Not anymore.) I don't believe that judgments of the quality of art are entirely subjective. The world can be mathematically described and mental states are of the world. The map is part of the territory. There are facts of our biology that make certain elements of art appeal to us more than others. We can speak practically about art even in the absence of absolute certainty and even scientific certainty.
Nevertheless, this approach to art criticism is uninteresting because it is shallow. It doesn't get anywhere. It ends with a thumb up or a thumb down. Or a rating on 10. Who cares? Everything that works of art actually have to offer is lost in the discussion over what rating a work deserves. Also, the good-bad dichotomy can contribute to the building of an Us-vs-Them mentality and the harbouring of biases such as The Affect Heuristic (one good quality tends to make other qualities appear better than they are). In this mind state, people eschew open inquiry for one-sided cheers for certain kinds of movies or filmmakers.
3. Formal analysis & Interpretation
These two are grouped together because I think one follows from the other. In any case, some people include interpretation as part of a formal analysis.
A formal analysis is what one would expect to find on blogs and in movie reviews. Here, the critic unpacks the methods and techniques of the artist, revealing the effects that these techniques create. It describes the formal elements of the work without necessarily attempting to convey the experience of the work to the reader.
Formal analyses can be useful for aspiring filmmakers because unlike any of the approaches discussed above, they supply the reader with some insight into making movies.
After breaking down the formal elements of the film, the critic may choose to interpret what these things mean. This isn't quite like asking what a sunset means or what life means, it's an interpretation of the authors intentions. A common conflict here is between whether to interpret the artist's intentions or the work itself. I think we should generally let the work stand on its own, as there is always a gap between the artist's intentions and the ideology suggested by the work. We should remember, however, that there was an artist, that it is man-made, and that when we look at art, we are not looking at a sunset.
In interpreting the work, I look for its contained ideology. Art-making is world-building. A good interpretation knows the God of built worlds.
Both of these approaches appeal to me because they teach us the language of cinema. They allow us to get a sense for what motivates artists to make the work that they do without ignoring the uniqueness of individual consciousness. This is useful both for understanding movies and for learning how to make them.
4. Relaying the experience vs Relaying your experience
Another approach to art criticism attempts to relay the experience of the film so that the reader can imagine what it feels like. This could work either in a review where the reader is trying to get a sense for whether they would like the film, but also for formal analyses where the critic is trying to explain the effects of the artist's creative decisions.
The critic could try to be as objective as possible, describing what the film is likely to feel like to over viewers. This means that the experience of the work is abstracted to the point that the description is uncontroversial.
Another approach is to write a more personal account of the experience. I felt this way, I felt that way, and it reminded me of this. This is when the experience of the film is dealt with on a concrete level, where details of the experience are brought up that may not be experienced by others. Martin Scorsese often speaks this way when he rambles on about his favourite movies. "I remember I was just a little boy in Italy, and my father took me to see the movie, and it was just amazing, and I sat in the theatre for 12 hours and watch it six times in a row, and the woman reminded me of my grandmother and of the time she baked me tortellini but got mad that I wouldn't eat any of it....." This can turn off some people as they feel like they are reading an autobiography, learning more about the critic than they are about the work. Others love this kind of analysis because it brings their favourite aspect of art to the surface.
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So that is my account of the different ways to approach art criticism. I don't doubt that there are others.
On my blog, I'll mostly be interested in formal analysis, relaying the experience, and especially interpretation. As a rationalist and a naturalist, I believe the world is reducible to math. The worlds that artists build are equally knowable. When I watch a movie, I want to receive the artist's ideology. What is the artist trying to tell me? What does this movie teach me about life? Then I try to convey these ideas to my readers. An analysis of artistic quality would ultimately come down to an evaluation of the work's ideas as I understand them.
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