If you can, with a straight face, say the answer is exactly the same for both of these, then you win. But it isn't. So you're wrong. Because the two are talking about the same movie, or even the same medium, of course they are going to use vocabulary in common. There is even an overlap of practitioners. But they aren't the same thing, and exist for different reasons, with different goals.
It's not like they're reporting on the Middle East, here. Gaming Journalism is right up there with NASCAR on my list of things to take very seriously. Sorry.
This is movie criticism, focusing on analyzing the shots and scenes of a hugely influential director:
Actually, that's more of an analysis rather than critique.
Right. Analysis is a tool of movie criticism. It's also a tool of movie review.
But, again, a movie reviewer is trying to influence your viewing habits, to steer you towards a movie or away from a movie. And movie criticism can talk about the SAME MOVIE without the same objective. They are using it to talk about movie making in general, the history of movie making, what modern movies do differently/better/incorrectly in comparison.
And, again, this brings me back to Sarkeesian, and my main point. Sarkeesian isn't bringing out tropes in video games to say you shouldn't play the games, or that they are bad or not worth your time and money. It's really hard to say nobody should play Mario, one of the most famous and influential series of games ever, and the most fun, because one of the core tropes is sexist. She is talking about that trope with a wider view.
This is IN CONTRAST to video game reviews where ethics may be a problem, where game producers want to gain influence over reviewers who ARE trying to convince people that a game IS worth their time and money.
Splitting hairs. There is a ton of overlap between the two with the main accepted difference being that a review does not have to have criticism. When a review adds in criticisms it becomes a critical review of the source material.
The end goals of either form of writing is irrelevant to their contents.
In my original example, the end goal is the very essence of the point I was trying to make. It might seem like splitting hairs to you, but on one side of the half of split hair is one side of my argument and on the other side of the split hair is the other side of my argument.
The end goal does not change the means used to get there. You can not effectively write criticism without reviewing what it is that you are criticizing are. That is how you form the basis of your criticism.
Are you trying to make a high brow vs low brow argument? Because that is what it is starting to sound like. It sounds like you view a review as somehow poisonous to criticism. Like it is a piece of shit in your sandwhich rather than the beautiful bread used as a foundation to build upon.
Maybe I am just too stupid to understand your point. Can you link to a good piece of criticism that does not also contain elements of a review within its structure?
You can not effectively write criticism without reviewing what it is that you are criticizing are. That is how you form the basis of your criticism.
I easily can.
"Five Nights at Freddy's uses specific psychological and media techniques to effectively induce fear."
That's a critical statement about FNAF that implies no positive or negative review of any kind.
"Citizen Kane made effective use of scene transitions to weave the movie together in parallel to the weaving together of the subject's life and motivations."
Nothing about the above statement tells you whether or not you should see or will enjoy the movie.
The end goal does not change the means used to get there. You can not effectively write criticism without reviewing what it is that you are criticizing are. That is how you form the basis of your criticism.
The end goal is the only thing I am talking about in this example.
My definition of a review is a statement of your subjective enjoyment/experience of a piece of media to influence the media consumption of your reader/viewer/etc. Yes, of course, to make your opinion carry more weight you explain your feelings and views and ideas by doing criticism, and showing how the strengths or weaknesses of the original media influenced you, and even how others might have a different reaction to the same media.
Criticism may also contain subjective opinion, but the goal is education and/or influencing the intellect of the reader. Often criticism assumes you have already consumed the media in question, and is going to deepen your understanding of it, or of the medium it belongs to, or the history of culture. If the criticism is focusing on good, positive, or exemplary elements in the media, it could also influence people to consume that media, and while that feels review-like, it isn't the point. The converse is also true, if the focus is on the failings of the work.
If you are using the meaning of "review" as in "looking back at" or "going over point by point or in order" then no, criticism probably can't be done without a bit of that.
Are you trying to make a high brow vs low brow argument? Because that is what it is starting to sound like. It sounds like you view a review as somehow poisonous to criticism. Like it is a piece of shit in your sandwhich rather than the beautiful bread used as a foundation to build upon.
Steve, I have a podcast. It is called the Science Fiction Book Review Podcast. I have recorded over 260 episodes. Reviewing books with the aim of making other people also read them, or not read them, is what I do. It's one of my favourite things. I'm good at it, too.
I try to use critical analysis to back up my opinion on books. I'm also happy to say when a book that is bad by many objective measures was enjoyable for me to read, and I give it a high rating. And, conversely, when a book is objectively good, but I have a bad reaction to it or just don't enjoy it, I've no problem saying that and giving it a low rating. I make it clear that my ratings are purely subjective, and that other people will have different opinions.
You can not effectively write criticism without reviewing what it is that you are criticizing are. That is how you form the basis of your criticism.
I easily can.
"Five Nights at Freddy's uses specific psychological and media techniques to effectively induce fear."
That's a critical statement about FNAF that implies no positive or negative review of any kind.
"Citizen Kane made effective use of scene transitions to weave the movie together in parallel to the weaving together of the subject's life and motivations."
Nothing about the above statement tells you whether or not you should see or will enjoy the movie.
The 5N criticism may not be positive or negative to you but to the reader it can be. I read that as a definite positive. Even the Citizen Kane criticism comes across as a positive.
Like Steve, I read it as a positive. I may not be into horror games, or Hitchcock, but simply calling the techniques used "effective" reads like an endorsement.
I didn't want to have a semantic discussion. I thought my original point was clear: How are Sarkeesian's videos considered journalism, news reporting, or even game reviews, that could even be affected by any form of ethics violations?
They aren't. The stated goals of the creator is pure criticism. That's it. End of story.
Was Sarkeesian the subject of the ethics allegations w.r.t. her own journalism (or not journalism)? I thought it was the reviewer(s) she slept with? Now I'm more confused.
Sarkeesian's videos have nothing to do with journalism ethics in large part because she is open and honest about what she is doing. The only areas that have valid ethical questions are when she discusses game she has not actually played or only played a small part of or when she plays a game counter to the optimal way it is meant to be played in order to push a narrative. Namely the portion she did on Hitman.
Like Steve, I read it as a positive. I may not be into horror games, or Hitchcock, but simply calling the techniques used "effective" reads like an endorsement.
No. You're wrong.
You know what I also like doing apart from reviewing science fiction books? I like biblical criticism. I REALLY like reading about the Bible. I love source criticism and form criticism, a bit of text criticism, all that kind of thing. I love digging into specific questions about tiny details in the text, and find out all kinds of interesting ideas, concepts, facts and nuggets.
My favourite book of the Bible is the Gospel of Mark. I think it's a genius work, and by all accounts is the reason Christianity became as big as it did, when it did. It was VERY effective, and it's undeniably one of the most influential piece of writing in history. That is my opinion, and there's all kinds of criticism backing that up.
But is any of it an endorsement? Nope! The Gospel of Mark is booooooring. It's repetitive and dull. It contains ideas that I disagree with strongly. If you are Christian, I would recommend John and Luke. If you're not a Christian, I would recommend almost anything outside of the Bible as more worth your time.
There's implication and subjectivity in English no matter how much it pisses you off. Calling a game's atmospheric techniques "effective" and calling propaganda "effective" are two entirely separate concepts with two very different implied meanings of "effective", like it or not.
Sarkeesian's videos have nothing to do with journalism ethics in large part because she is open and honest about what she is doing. The only areas that have valid ethical questions are when she discusses game she has not actually played or only played a small part of or when she plays a game counter to the optimal way it is meant to be played in order to push a narrative. Namely the portion she did on Hitman.
Well, I can't say anything about that either way. It's disingenuous to review a game without playing it but letting people believe you have. If you've not played a game, and never said you had, and are critiquing a non-gameplay aspect, I'm not sure it's unethical. It might be sloppy or counterproductive, but unethical? Not so sure.
Was Sarkeesian the subject of the ethics allegations w.r.t. her own journalism (or not journalism)? I thought it was the reviewer(s) she slept with? Now I'm more confused.
The witch hunt was over Zoe Quinn's sex life, not Anita Sarkeesians. GG losers just hate Sarkeesian because she's a vocal feminist.
The former nearly always begets the latter. Especially on the internet. English is crap, but mostly people are just determined to be right.
Literate people know what words mean and are capable of using them to exchange ideas.
The idea that literacy eliminates ambiguity in the English language is patently, absolutely, irrevocably ridiculous.
Millions of people around the world are capable of having meaningful discussions, in English. They do not have to constantly pause and spend more time dealing with semantic discrepancies than the topic at hand. Apparently you are not one of these people as it is blatantly obvious you are once again going to attempt to avoid the topic by disputing the meaning of the word "literacy."
It can be unethical if you take one small piece of a video game (or any media) out of context and use it to push a narrative.
Things can be 100% misogynistic and still belong in the game because it fits the story. Is it a trope to have the strong male character rescue the weak female character? Certainly. However, the trope can be forgiven if it is used creatively.
You can also have a game that appears sexist but is actually an homage to something. Imagine a game where the charismatic male protagonist always loses his shirt when in combat while a female character watches. At first it looks sexist but later on you find out that the joke is meant as an homage to Shatner's Captain Kirk.
Is anyone in the world still capable of having a discussion of substance and not semantics?
It's not a lack of capability, it's a lack of new substance to discuss. All the arguments about GG have been made and both sides are dug in and fortified so there's nothing to debate except semantics at this point because no one is going to change their minds about the issues that matter.
The former nearly always begets the latter. Especially on the internet. English is crap, but mostly people are just determined to be right.
Literate people know what words mean and are capable of using them to exchange ideas.
The idea that literacy eliminates ambiguity in the English language is patently, absolutely, irrevocably ridiculous.
Millions of people around the world are capable of having meaningful discussions, in English. They do not have to constantly pause and spend more time dealing with semantic discrepancies than the topic at hand. Apparently you are not one of these people as it is blatantly obvious you are once again going to attempt to avoid the topic by disputing the meaning of the word "literacy."
Firstly, no I'm not debating the meaning of the word literacy, but you may be.
Secondly, you're right that millions of people the world over communicate in English.
However, nearly every argument that goes past first principles usually includes, formally or informally, an agreement on terminology and semantic parameters. It's pretty much unavoidable ESPECIALLY once you start talking about social/cultural issues which have impacted the entire evolution of language in the first place, like say, gender equality.
So.. I see your shaky pointing finger and I raise you an arched eyebrow.
For the purposes of this "debate," there is a clear and generally-agreed-upon line between analysis, criticism, and review. A work may include 1-3 of these things, or effectively only include one.
To imply that there is more overlap in these words than this implies that these words are useless. Some of the definitions proposed here make them meaningless.
And that's the evolution of the English language outside of the hallowed, padded halls of academia. In other words, that's life, yo. I'm still pretty miffed about "comprise".
Is anyone in the world still capable of having a discussion of substance and not semantics?
Apparently nobody on this forum - I think mostly because the arguments we make are usually logically correct but founded on differing semantic definitions, so we argue on which person's semantic definitions are correct. On that note, Steve, muppet, your assertions that critique necessarily implies a review is ridiculous. Though I particularly enjoyed the part where Steve implied that Luke was being a snobby intellectual (sorry, "high brow") by drawing a distinction. Luke's argument that a review has the explicit objective of communicating to the reader if they will enjoy a piece of media is pretty exactly how that word is generally used in English. And it seems clear that criticism can occur in contexts other than review, e.g. the Anita videos are clearly not reviews, and if you think they are you should re-evaluate your understanding of a word. A single point of critique on a work isn't a review in itself (although it may communicate a reason to experience/not experience the work) because by the earlier definition a review should be holistic - in the sense that a review by definition tries to describe the experience of the work as a whole, not just one or two aspects of it.
I hope that what I just wrote is comprehensible, but it's roughly my train of thought on this stupid silly argument.
As for Luke's original question, the non-semantic-argument posts pretty much have it - GamerGators don't care if what Sarkeesian is doing is reviews or journalism or whatever, they just care that she's a woman and she's PUBLICLY SAYING THINGS THAT SOUND BAD ABOUT VIDEO GAMES WHARGARBL
Comments
What is the objective of a movie review?
What is the objective of movie criticism?
If you can, with a straight face, say the answer is exactly the same for both of these, then you win. But it isn't. So you're wrong. Because the two are talking about the same movie, or even the same medium, of course they are going to use vocabulary in common. There is even an overlap of practitioners. But they aren't the same thing, and exist for different reasons, with different goals.
But, again, a movie reviewer is trying to influence your viewing habits, to steer you towards a movie or away from a movie. And movie criticism can talk about the SAME MOVIE without the same objective. They are using it to talk about movie making in general, the history of movie making, what modern movies do differently/better/incorrectly in comparison.
And, again, this brings me back to Sarkeesian, and my main point. Sarkeesian isn't bringing out tropes in video games to say you shouldn't play the games, or that they are bad or not worth your time and money. It's really hard to say nobody should play Mario, one of the most famous and influential series of games ever, and the most fun, because one of the core tropes is sexist. She is talking about that trope with a wider view.
This is IN CONTRAST to video game reviews where ethics may be a problem, where game producers want to gain influence over reviewers who ARE trying to convince people that a game IS worth their time and money.
That is the distinction I'm trying to make.
The end goals of either form of writing is irrelevant to their contents.
Are you trying to make a high brow vs low brow argument? Because that is what it is starting to sound like. It sounds like you view a review as somehow poisonous to criticism. Like it is a piece of shit in your sandwhich rather than the beautiful bread used as a foundation to build upon.
Maybe I am just too stupid to understand your point. Can you link to a good piece of criticism that does not also contain elements of a review within its structure?
"Five Nights at Freddy's uses specific psychological and media techniques to effectively induce fear."
That's a critical statement about FNAF that implies no positive or negative review of any kind.
"Citizen Kane made effective use of scene transitions to weave the movie together in parallel to the weaving together of the subject's life and motivations."
Nothing about the above statement tells you whether or not you should see or will enjoy the movie.
My definition of a review is a statement of your subjective enjoyment/experience of a piece of media to influence the media consumption of your reader/viewer/etc. Yes, of course, to make your opinion carry more weight you explain your feelings and views and ideas by doing criticism, and showing how the strengths or weaknesses of the original media influenced you, and even how others might have a different reaction to the same media.
Criticism may also contain subjective opinion, but the goal is education and/or influencing the intellect of the reader. Often criticism assumes you have already consumed the media in question, and is going to deepen your understanding of it, or of the medium it belongs to, or the history of culture. If the criticism is focusing on good, positive, or exemplary elements in the media, it could also influence people to consume that media, and while that feels review-like, it isn't the point. The converse is also true, if the focus is on the failings of the work.
If you are using the meaning of "review" as in "looking back at" or "going over point by point or in order" then no, criticism probably can't be done without a bit of that.
I try to use critical analysis to back up my opinion on books. I'm also happy to say when a book that is bad by many objective measures was enjoyable for me to read, and I give it a high rating. And, conversely, when a book is objectively good, but I have a bad reaction to it or just don't enjoy it, I've no problem saying that and giving it a low rating. I make it clear that my ratings are purely subjective, and that other people will have different opinions.
I don't consider it high brow or low brow.
They aren't. The stated goals of the creator is pure criticism. That's it. End of story.
You know what I also like doing apart from reviewing science fiction books? I like biblical criticism. I REALLY like reading about the Bible. I love source criticism and form criticism, a bit of text criticism, all that kind of thing. I love digging into specific questions about tiny details in the text, and find out all kinds of interesting ideas, concepts, facts and nuggets.
My favourite book of the Bible is the Gospel of Mark. I think it's a genius work, and by all accounts is the reason Christianity became as big as it did, when it did. It was VERY effective, and it's undeniably one of the most influential piece of writing in history. That is my opinion, and there's all kinds of criticism backing that up.
But is any of it an endorsement? Nope! The Gospel of Mark is booooooring. It's repetitive and dull. It contains ideas that I disagree with strongly. If you are Christian, I would recommend John and Luke. If you're not a Christian, I would recommend almost anything outside of the Bible as more worth your time.
Things can be 100% misogynistic and still belong in the game because it fits the story. Is it a trope to have the strong male character rescue the weak female character? Certainly. However, the trope can be forgiven if it is used creatively.
You can also have a game that appears sexist but is actually an homage to something. Imagine a game where the charismatic male protagonist always loses his shirt when in combat while a female character watches. At first it looks sexist but later on you find out that the joke is meant as an homage to Shatner's Captain Kirk.
Secondly, you're right that millions of people the world over communicate in English.
However, nearly every argument that goes past first principles usually includes, formally or informally, an agreement on terminology and semantic parameters. It's pretty much unavoidable ESPECIALLY once you start talking about social/cultural issues which have impacted the entire evolution of language in the first place, like say, gender equality.
So.. I see your shaky pointing finger and I raise you an arched eyebrow.
To imply that there is more overlap in these words than this implies that these words are useless. Some of the definitions proposed here make them meaningless.
On that note, Steve, muppet, your assertions that critique necessarily implies a review is ridiculous. Though I particularly enjoyed the part where Steve implied that Luke was being a snobby intellectual (sorry, "high brow") by drawing a distinction.
Luke's argument that a review has the explicit objective of communicating to the reader if they will enjoy a piece of media is pretty exactly how that word is generally used in English. And it seems clear that criticism can occur in contexts other than review, e.g. the Anita videos are clearly not reviews, and if you think they are you should re-evaluate your understanding of a word.
A single point of critique on a work isn't a review in itself (although it may communicate a reason to experience/not experience the work) because by the earlier definition a review should be holistic - in the sense that a review by definition tries to describe the experience of the work as a whole, not just one or two aspects of it.
I hope that what I just wrote is comprehensible, but it's roughly my train of thought on this stupid silly argument.
As for Luke's original question, the non-semantic-argument posts pretty much have it - GamerGators don't care if what Sarkeesian is doing is reviews or journalism or whatever, they just care that she's a woman and she's PUBLICLY SAYING THINGS THAT SOUND BAD ABOUT VIDEO GAMES WHARGARBL