Awakened to the Death of Criticism

Mark Judge is a journalist and filmmaker whose work has appeared in the Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal and the Daily Caller. Judge has been awakened but he is not yet Woke. That in my view is a good thing. He still has a grip on reason. He has been awakened to a new kind of criticism. A criticism that judges art, literature, and music not by its quality but by what identity group it represents. It is a tangential form of criticism that has sprung from the hub of Identity Politics and has been weaponized to glean Whiteness (a concept that covers everything) from the artistic perceptions and aspirations of a nation.

From where did this avant garde criticism come; the backstreet film noir of misty, fishy smelling back docks that Allen Ginsberg refers to in his poem Howl as “the negro streets”? I first encountered identity politics reading the work of Fredric Jameson, a postmodern scholar, and Linda Hutcheon, a Canadian scholar. Her book, The Politics of Postmodernism (1989), foretold the coming storm of race identity politics and should be required reading for anyone who considers himself culturally literate. I also believe that the pangs of Identity Politics were dormant and hidden from society for years but were prevalent behind the closed doors of our public school system. In the mid-sixties, content-centered curriculum gave away to student-centered curriculum. Educators were insistent on making the curriculum more relevant at the expense of rigor. While conservatives salivated over the economics of education by attacking teachers' unions and promoting privatization, identity politics infiltrated the curriculum. It was low-key until 2016.

Identity Politics didn't hit full throttle until 2016. When Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the 2016 Presidential Election. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Hillary was scorned by the nation even though it was her own fault for taking the nation for granted. She felt that she had won the heart of the nation, at least enough of the nation, so that she didn't need to woo the White man. While she was wooing the Black man in North Carolina, her unfaithful White man slipped away out the back door in Wisconsin and found a more attentive political lover. A MAGA lover.

Democrats and their cadre felt that the nation was on the cusp of a White man resurgence. There was lamentation in the streets, on TV, and in the universities. The White man even had his own media outlet, Fox News, to salt Hillary's wound and with the likes of Rush Limbaugh spewing their White poison on the airwaves, something had to be done to reverse the tide and requite Hillary for her loss. The Left was so hurt by Clinton's defeat that they mustered all of their influence to denigrate Trump. Blacks, women, Gays, the university intelligentsia, and even corporate capitalism felt betrayed by the country they had ushered into the 21st century on the popularity of the chosen one, their magical messiah, the Old Spice Man incarnate, Barack Obama.

The Left was threatened by this new White image and movement. The world was sure that Whiteness would disappear in the next generation or two. They were repulsed by its resurgence. They underestimated White resiliency and Chutzpah. Just as the Jews can thank Judas' idolatry for the risen Christ; the Left can thank Hillary's fragility for the risen Trump. Hillary Clinton was the catalyst for Identity Politics. Trump was her instrument. Never again would a White construct lead the nation. Even if the president were a White President, he would be miscegenated by a Black running mate or at least thinned and diluted by a Latinx, Tranz, Gay, Lesbian, or generally speaking, a non-binary woman.

Mark Judge's essay in American Greatness, an online conservative journal, assuages the bad taste of the new criticism born of Identity Politics and announces the death of Criticism (Note the large cap C.). The Criticism that Judge proclaims as dead is the Criticism that relied on precedent setting conventions and critical, logical thinking that have a historical lineage in the arts. It just so happens that these conventions and this form of thought have been laid down by mostly White men over the centuries with a smidgen of White women to garnish the potpourri if we look hard enough and POC copycats who lay claim to a substandard sub-genre. These smidgens and copycats are the marginalized voices that Hollywood and publishing houses seek today. The great Replacement is well underway in the arts and continues to pick up steam.

Judge believes this old school Criticism is dead and cites the example of the way critics have garnered undeserved praise upon Beyoncé’s newest album Renaissance, a rather oblique object of art to use as an example. There are many better examples of Identity elevated art that are more deserving of contempt than Beyoncé’s album. The album itself is worth the price especially for those fence jumpers who can imagine the scent left by the rider on the English saddle leather. If you have not had that scent in your mouth you can barely call yourself a man.

Great Criticism according to the likes of Graham Hough and Northrup Frye and their progeny in the field has been dead for a while now so Mark Judge is a little late for supper. I have to admit that before I read Frye's book, The Anatomy of Criticism, and Hough's book, An Essay on Criticism, I didn't know how to write. Frye and Hough have a different view on the nature of criticism which in my view is a great advantage for a writer. That's how important Criticism is to all disciplines. Here's what I took from Frye and Hough.

At its core, criticism is an analogy, a comparison to what is and what has been. Research is criticism. Research is an analogy between what you believe and what is true. The problem with Critical Race Theory (CRT) and the flaunting of the characteristics of Whiteness as bad habits is a false analogy that leads you to believe something that isn't true. Linguistically analogies are made by the use of coordinating conjunctions that compare equal things or subordinating conjunctions that compare unequal things. It is impossible to coordinate unequal things just as it is impossible to subordinate equal things. This is called faulty coordination and results in our thinking to crash. CRT expects us to be bystanders to the crash, staring at the ruins of a wreck, and expecting them to reassemble on their own. That re-construction doesn't happen without the reliance on the past. To her credit, Nikole Hannah-Jones knows this. That's why she wrote The 1619 Project. What Hannah-Jones doesn't admit is that Constructivist methodologies have a Hermeneutical lineage. In other words, she's using Whiteness to promulgate Black claims and for that she deserves her Pulitzer.

When educators compare Black academic achievement to White academic achievement (in the same way they compare Black History to White History), they find that when the data is disaggregated for wealth, Black students still score lower on achievement tests than White students. If the objective is to close the achievement gap, educators need to either redefine achievement or use a different kind of test to measure achievement. Rather than redefine achievement or change the tests, school districts blame White teachers for the manner in which they deliver instruction. It's a cheap antidote for the achievement gap that won't work in the long run because it undermines and restricts the play with which teachers need to have with language. It is politically incorrect to blame the habits of a culture for the lack of academic achievement and too condescending to Blacks to redefine achievement or change the tests so that they are more successful at test taking. I mentioned that educators compare Black and White History the same way the compare Black and White achievement. The outcomes will always be the same. Whites will come out as the dominant force over Blacks in history and they will come out as dominate over Blacks in academic achievement until we change the history and the test.

Aesthetic criticism, criticism of those creations of humanity that came from Man's imagination, like art, literature, music, and architecture, prior to the postmodern era relied upon the conventions of the art form's genre to base a judgment. Critics looked to the past for advice on the quality of the piece they were critiquing and even though it may be different, if genius were spotted in the work, it was praised with caution. Time was the best judge of its universality and endurance. This was the idea behind The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand's 1943 novel about an architect who battles against the conventions of building design. Postmodern criticism in the hands of the Woke crowd isn't just about battling conventions. It's about battling Whiteness, that is, it's about celebrating and promoting non-White artists. Woke criticism favors those artists who have been marginalized in the past and critiques them by how well their art represents their particular identity group. Here is where Judge lags behind the times.

According to Mark Judge in his August 1, 20022 essay, “Beyoncé's Awful New Album and the End of Pop Music Criticism,” another critic Spence Kornhaber almost admitted that Beyoncé's new album is junk but couldn't because “it’s not possible to criticize a woke 'icon' like Beyoncé.” Not impossible, however, if you judge Beyoncé's new album according to how well it represents her identity group, Black people. Based upon our new Woke age criticism, Beyoncé's album is a success if we accept Kornhaber's descriptors as accurate both of the album and Black people. Here is where the logic of Identity Politics demands that we refute our logical conclusions.

Kornhaber, who writes for The Atlantic, said of Beyoncé's album that “conventional songwriting rules, polite-test paradigms, and the best practices for headache avoidance were clearly not priorities here. The songs scatter, wobble and lurch into each other while Beyoncé wavers between singing and doing silly voices, in multitrack.”

Judge complains that before Kornhaber completely condemns the album he back pedals:

Renaissance will play, to many, as exhausting, as indulgent, as ridiculous, as childish, as oversexed, as too much. But committing oneself to pleasure as fully as Beyoncé has here takes defiance and guts—and, more deeply, faith in the preciousness of one’s own experience. Somehow she has found a way to make messages of individual empowerment, which can be so trite in pop, jolt again.

Kornhaber's back peddling is confirmation of Representalism; the form of artistic criticism that judges a work of art by how well it represents the identity group of the artist.

Does Beyoncé's album represent? If it does then as postmodern critics we must say it is a success. Are Black people exhausting, indulgent, ridiculous, childish, and oversexed? Is Kornhaber's critique fair?

According to Judge:

Kornhaber’s surrender is a case study in how music writing, like everything else, has become cowardly and politicized… All that matters is politics and woke ness….Thus, Beyoncé’s train wreck is genius, while anyone with the wrong pol- itics, no matter how brilliant, is vilified.

Judge echos the sentiments of Joyce Carol Oates who recently said that publishers are preventing editors from reading White writers who may be brilliant and critical of their own privilege. Who really proffers the most dangerous critique to Black identity, Judge or Kornhaber?

Kornhaber is not surrendering like Judge thinks he is. Kornhaber is returning to the roots of postmodern criticism and Identity Politics. He is recognizing that he is as inadequate at critiquing the work of a Black artist as a White artist is at covering one, that is, appropriating, the work of a Black artist. Any critique of a Black artist is a defamation. Garner praise and you are appropriating; garner negative criticism, and you are a racist exerting White Supremacy.

Judge also criticizes Chris Richards, a Washington Post pop critic, for his condemnation of White artists who cover Black artists. Judge calls Richards, absurd. Richards asserts that “musicians should self-censor themselves in deference to prevailing political orthodoxies.” Richards believes that it is fine for Black artists to be mimetic because Blacks can't appropriate due to the power imbalance between Blacks and Whites. I fail to find the connection here between power and emulation but I am sure it can be located somewhere in the jingoistic logic, faulty coordination, and false analogical thinking of White Privilege.

Richards believes that it's fine for Beyoncé to write a country song because “it feels more like making. The borrowed elements become an essential, integrated part of a new, previously unheard thing.” That's mimesis. That's Irving Berlin, a Jew, writing "White Christmas," and Bing Crosby, a Christian, singing it, and then everybody else interpreting it. Would we have Rodin without his interpretation of Michelangelo? Would we have Christianity without Christ's interpretation of Judaism? And on and on. The appropriation ladder is so steep that eventually it tilts back and collapses on itself. In the case of the artist where there's no emulation, there's no audience.

For Oscar Wilde, “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness.” Mimesis, creative imitating, an accepted way to transform another artist's work into your own, is condemned as appropriation by Black ethnocentrists. This is another form of ressentiment; rendering your art exclusive so as to make it appear more valuable. That's like making the country club swimming pool off-limits to make the swimming hole at the creek less refreshing. Jim Crow for Whites and cultural appropriation for Blacks gives both races a sense of inflated racial pride and at the same time destroys the very thing that the artist craves, popularity.

According to The University of Chicago's Theories of Media Keywords Glossary:

Mimesis is integral to the relationship between art and nature, and to the relation governing works of art themselves. Michael Taussig describes the mimetic faculty as “the nature that culture uses to create second nature, the faculty to copy, imitate, make models, explore difference, yield into and become Other. The wonder of mimesis lies in the copy drawing on the character and power of the original, to the point whereby the representation may even assume that character and that power.”

Mimesis is very important in the music industry because artists cover each other's music. Today, the White artist is permitted to reach into the past for structure and inspiration only if that structure and inspiration comes from artists of his own race; he may not imitate or interpret artists if they are not White. Elvis is turning over in his grave.

The tentacles of the death of literary criticism, freshly discovered by Judge, reach into how the acceptance of the work of White males in artistic circles, is becoming rare. In my case as a poet and in the recent comments by writer James Patterson and Joyce Carol Oates points this out. Patterson writes about White male scriptwriters and Oates writes about White writers.

Writer James Patterson like Spence Kornhaber had to take a step back and apologize after telling the Times that he worried that White men were having difficulties finding work in film and publishing, calling it a “just another form of racism.” Paterson was promoting his memoir James Patterson: The Stories of My Life. Joyce Carol Oates, a progressive to the core, however, is not stepping back. She has called out publishers for blocking White talent. In a Tweet she stated, “(a friend who is a literary agent told me that he cannot even get editors to read first novels by young white male writers, no matter how good; they are just not interested. this is heartbreaking for writers who may, in fact, be brilliant, & critical of their own "privilege.")” According to Christian Toto, “This brand of discrimination powered an expose shared by Bari Weiss earlier this year. That story detailed how Hollywood is aggressively promoting diversity to the point where white male artists fear for their creative livelihoods.” Weiss is a New York Times apostate whose writing has gained a wider audience since she left the Times.

Patterson should explain that Woke criticism favors those artists who have been marginalized in the past and critiques them by how well their art represents their particular identity group.

I'm all for hearing unheard voices. However, in my opinion, there is a problem when the need to give voice to a poet or any artist who represents a marginalized group far exceeds the importance of the quality of the poetry. In our desire to give voice to the voiceless, we publish and praise bad art. I had an experience with this first-hand at my high school. The English Department was so intent on providing our students with female heroes that we elected Hunger Games to the curriculum. In my opinion, Hunger Games had no depth and was barely readable as a beach novel. There are many classical works with female heroes that are far far better than Hunger Games but they may not have been written by female writers.

Isn't Gay, Black, or Feminist poetry a genre? If the answer is yes then you are lowering the work of any Black, Gay, or Feminist artist. Art must stand on its own merit. Good art must achieve a universality whereby anybody can identify with it. If not, it may be popular, but it won't be timeless. Plus, if you limit who can mimic or interpret the art, its popularity won't escape the generation from where it was created.

Yes, I do believe that White male poets whose poetry may be better than the poetry that is published may lose their places in publications at times in favor of giving voice to those who may have not been heard in the past.

After taking the time, and it is exhausting not fun at all, to submit my poetry to various journals over a two month period in 2011, I received 43 rejections. Not one poem was accepted. I read the poetry in the journals to where I submitted.  I thought to myself, "My God, that got published and mine didn’t.  You have to be kidding." The problem with my poetry was that it didn't have the right angle. I’m afraid that if I am correct about a poet having to have an angle in order to get noticed in postmodernity, “having to represent” in order to get attention, then I can look forward to many more rejections. Zero for 43 is very improbable and I know my poetry isn't that bad. Forty years ago I wasn’t writing any where near the quality of poetry I am writing today, and I had no problem getting published then.

I have said that in order to get one's poetry published you have to have an angle. If you have to write something with an angle to it in order to get it read, chances are that if it is poetry, it won't be very good.  Today the angle in poetry, in postmodern poetry, is what the poet represents.  The poem, the poet, and what both represent are indistinguishable. Gay poetry and feminist poetry are angles and so is ethnocentric poetry; political poetry is an angle when it exhorts for example, revolution or the national zeal of a fatherland. This kind of poetry does not ignite the imagination or a desire to search for personal significance in the poem. The horizon of this kind of poetry is narrow. Lord Tennyson had an angle when he wrote patriotic poetry during the Victorian Age to celebrate the up and downs of empire building. “The Charge of The Light Brigade” is a prime example of poetry with an angle or jingle poetry. Milton had the same braggadocio about England but rarely showed it except for a few hegemonistic and anglophile lines in Paradise Lost. That's why Milton is a better poet than Tennyson.  

Sources

Toto, C. (2022, July 28). Joyce Carol Oates: Yes, White Authors Face Discrimination.      Hollywood in Toto. http://shorturl.at/eMOUX

Judge, M. (2022). Beyoncé's Awful New Album and the End of Pop Music Criticism. American Greatness. http://shorturl.at/eIKY2

Oppenheimer, Mark. "Poetry's Cross-Dressing Kingmaker." The New York Times Maga- zine, New York Times, 16 Sept. 2012, www.nytimes.com/2012/09/16/ magazine/ stephen-burt-poetrys-cross- dressing-kingmaker.html. Accessed 17 June 2022.

Taussig, Michael. Mimesis and Alterity. (New York: Routledge, 1993) xiii.