Opinions are Like Smartphones; Everybody’s Got One

By ROB PATTERSON

With the rise of social media, now everyone seems to want to be or acts like they an arts critic. Having been one for more than 40 years now, one thing I can say is: be careful what you wish for.

Not that it’s been a bad run at all to opine professionally on music, film, books, TV, food and – what I’d most like to write more about (and get paid for it) – architecture and more for at all that time. I won’t lie: it’s a pretty cool way to make a good part of your living. But it can have its downsides even when you get paid for it.

Let’s face it: Most any intelligent consumer of the arts has opinions on what encounter there. And that’s OK. As long as it doesn’t get out of hand.

It did get way out of hand recently during the final season of “Game of Thrones” and its last episodes, IMO. Not just on social media but also the journalistic media.

(Warning: what you may read below has spoilers. If you have yet to see the last season of “GOT,” as it’s become known, and plan on doing so, you might want to stop here. If you haven’t seen “Game of Thrones” and don’t intend to, I’d suggest you reconsider that. At first, I thought I wouldn’t watch, not being much of a fantasy fan. When I finally gave it a try I got hooked. There’s a reason why it became a worldwide phenomenon. It’s that good, even for whatever its flaws. I recently just started watching it again; it’s that rich. But I digress, even if what I just said is germane to my points to follow.)

The shrill scream of fan and viewer criticism I found on Facebook became near unbearable after the third episode of season eight, “The Long Night.” It’s the battle at Winterfell between the Army of the Dead and a coalition of the living that happens in the darkness of night. The darkness of how it was filmed had people up in arms. And as I watched it that quality did feel challenging to me.

But after reading people going nearly nuts over it, I found how one of their complaints – it was hard to follow the action when filmed that darkly – had an interesting side effect, which I in no way know if it was intentional but worked for me in a very effective fashion. Not knowing right away what happened, as well as who died and who survived, was akin to the real life effect such a huge battle in the dark would have: initial confusion as to all that went down.

Then reaction to the last two episodes boiled up into even greater mania. A fan started a petition on change.org requesting that HBO remake the final season with “competent writers.” As of this writing nearly 1.7 million people had signed it.

It saddens me that so many people who, one might assume, liked the show enough, yet hated how it ended. There’s almost an internal contradiction in that.

As for me, well, I jokingly wished that the dwarf, Tyrion Lannister, ended up on the Iron Throne. More seriously, yes, that Daenerys Targaryen decimated Kings Landing and one assumes slaughtered many thousands of its residents by riding her dragon over the city as it blasted fire did seem an unlikely plot twist and personality shift.

But one thing I learned from being a professional critic is that it can dampen one’s enjoyment sometimes to be overly judgmental and analytical. So I just let “GOT” unfold as it did. It’s someone else telling the story, not me. And might well by doing so have enjoyed the show maybe a bit more than the passionate fans who got so upset by how it ended.

Populist Picks

Historical Fiction: “Good King Harry” by Denise Giardina – An absorbing and myth-busting tale of the English King Henry V. One way I enjoy learning about history I have yet to study.

Movie: “7 Days in Entebbe” – Another way to delve into history, albeit more recent. The story of the hijacking of an Air France flight that ended up in Uganda, and the Israeli mission to rescue the Jewish hostages.

Rob Patterson is a music and entertainment writer in Austin, Texas. Email orca@prismnet.com.

From The Progressive Populist, November 1, 2019

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