It’s Easy to Criticize

If you don’t have something nice to say about someone,  put it down in writing.

There was a time when I enjoyed my own little power trip with every word I put in print. For that brief period, I was a critic.

Like managers, nobody is born with the innate skills for this profession. We are supposed to develop the smarts and the knowledge over time to be able to turn an expert eye to what lies before us, whether it is sampling an expectant delicacy or sizing up the acting chops of oversize figures on the giant screen.

But in Indonesia it used to be pretty straightforward to become a critic, or the more generic pengamat (observer). The very term means that you don’t have to be an absolute authority on the subject, but your observations will do. Anybody and everybody can lay claim to the title, as long as they’re willing to give their 5 cents’ worth.

And so it was for my stint at the age of 24 as a film and food reviewer. My qualifications were a liberal arts education, experience working as an intern at newspapers, magazines and a New York City art museum and, perhaps most importantly, a sometimes waspish turn of phrase developed from reading a bit too much Pauline Kael.  

At the time, local film reviews mostly consisted of a neutral plot summary, very safe, very studio-friendly, as Hollywood tightened its stranglehold on local movie theaters. Daring to be different, I jumped right in with reviews gleefully ripping to shreds the cinematic also-rans at Jakarta theaters.

Red Shoe Diaries was dismissed as a “penchant for piffle”; Sylvester Stallone’s acting in the risible Stop! or My Mom Will Shoot was compared unfavorably to a potted plant; and there was a sarcasm-dripping description of Melanie Griffiths’ German-by-the-way-of-Brooklyn accent in the World War II thriller Shining Through.

I did, however, give a thumb’s up to Lorenzo’s Oil and My Girl  (better forgotten that one).

In the smugness and conceit of our early 20s, before the world teaches us that playing politics is the name of the game, I really believed that I could say exactly what I wanted and had every right to say it.

But some people did not think so. I began to get word that there were those in the film community who believed I was too harsh, and that I should give the public a chance to decide on the movies’ merits.  The Upstart needed to be put in his place.

In fact, a Very Big Man in charge wanted to have a word. I was reluctant to go, but was persuaded to have lunch as it would be the right thing to do, a means to maintain good relations.

I showed up at the restaurant at the appointed time, but the head honcho was not present. He will be here soon, his willing go-between told me, as we ate our way through an Italian meal.

But he didn’t show by the time we had finished our coffee, so I was ushered upstairs to a gleaming eyrie of an office boardroom. He’s on his way, the grinning go-between assured, but in the meantime, could I help edit a few poorly worded English-language letters? Just a minute, if you please.

A friend asks incredulously today if I really did not know what was coming next. I can honestly answer that, at a more idealistic age and time in my life, I really did not.

For when I was finished with the letters, he handed me a fat envelope full of cash, roughly half of my monthly salary at the time. “Thanks for helping with this,” he said. The Very Busy Big Man never showed, but he did not need to.

It was such a shameful, shocking, and in a way intimidating, experience, that I told few people about it. I wrote several more reviews, and I don’t believe that I consciously toned them down. But I had been put in my place.

I later segued into something of a food critic (it was before the flourishing of the Jakarta restaurant scene, and there were very slim pickings to be had). While it was not from the utterly sycophantic school of reviews, much of my writing was certainly more about me, myself and I than the culinary samplings.

Today I know that reviewing takes more than just a clever, withering way with words. You have to know your stuff, and it takes responsibility.  For on the line are people’s creativity, their egos and also their livelihoods.

In communal Indonesia, it also takes bravery to stand out from the crowd when that almost epithet sok tau (know-it-all) is always within earshot.

But just as reviews should not be a chance to let those inner demons run wild and get back at the world through a poison pen, neither should they be a gushing rehash of the complimentary night out on the town. No, dahlink, it really isn’t.

And being a critic carries over to our everyday lives. Many of us – and I am among those who can be self-righteous to a fault -- choose to be the judges and juries of the behavior of those around us, without knowing or understanding their situation.  

A few years ago I interviewed a man about town, a brilliant raconteur, dedicated foodie and a fearsome disher of delicious gossip. He bemoaned the shortcuts to success employed by most people, the unwillingness to learn a craft and also the lack of real critics able to tell the difference between the talent and the trite.

“But you know,” he said with a wicked twinkle in his eye, “in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”

So true. I was once that self-appointed monarch. No more – today, I would rather leave that job to those who know what they are talking about. Or think they do.

+ Bruce Emond

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