Hurt Like I Do

Sucker.

Actually, I do like the song, and the title hits too close to home, a little too often. It’s a sentiment people have, including critics on occasion, and including myself sometimes, though I try to be careful not to. Whenever someone recommends something to me that just doesn’t sound that interesting, I have to wonder whether they just want me to hurt like they do.

Caveat Emptor

It’s something consumers of criticism of any kind need to be wary of. People want to connect. They want to share experiences. Recommending a book or a film or a restaurant or a vacation is only natural.

But is the recommender really being a critic? Are they really evaluating what is being offered and recommending it over other possible alternatives? Or do they just want to have something to talk about with you. They’ve already spent their time and money. They won’t admit it wasn’t worth it because they can’t afford to. Now they want you to spend your time and money on the same common ground.

O Canada!

If I haven’t made my case yet, let me give you some examples.

I started reading a book on the early settlement of Canada, written by a European woman. She was clearly all alone in this foreign land, clearly feeling disconnected, and her book would praise every bank, shoreline, and eddy as God’s most wondrous landscape. She so wanted the world to understand her own life that she practically insisted that every reader of her memoirs hop on the next boat and follow in her footsteps.

She didn’t come across as an informed critic, nor a travel writer with broad experience, but as one who was lonely, wanted human contact, and recommended her own experiences to friends from fear of loneliness rather than from informed critique. She sounded practically selfish.

Mea Culpa

And yes, I have to admit, I’ve even done the same thing myself. Whether I’ve done it in the last year, I can’t say. Ask my most loyal readers.

But when I went to L.A. to try to make it in the film biz after college, I felt exactly the same way the European-Canadian woman did. I was lost in a strange land with no friends, who had all stayed back home. I fancied myself quite the epistler and imagined I’d start a little movie newsletter through which we friends could keep in touch, me recommending whatever movie I happened to see that week as a sort of common ground.

Ever the sensitive person, I was brought back to earth by some smart-aleck remark about my “newsletter.” But I like to think I’ve learned my lesson. Every critic sometimes overpraises an underdog movie, but I’d rather not be the kind of person who wants the rest of the world to suffer, just because I did.