Comments on: Scott McCloud on reviews http://blog.newsarama.com/2009/10/14/scott-mccloud-on-reviews/ The Blog@ Team and prominent comics personalities share what’s on their minds. Sun, 26 May 2013 00:52:03 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1.1 By: Sam http://blog.newsarama.com/2009/10/14/scott-mccloud-on-reviews/comment-page-1/#comment-476139 Sam Wed, 14 Oct 2009 15:51:22 +0000 http://blog.newsarama.com/?p=12887#comment-476139 Reviewing is a tricky thing. Some people think it should be all about your personal reaction to the work, which can never be walled off from context (creators' espoused political views, etc.). I have sympathy for this view, as long as the personal aspect of the reaction is clearly disclosed by the reviewer. Even a formalist critique of the art, language, and interactions thereof is going to have that real-world bleed-through, and it can be disingenuous to ignore elephants in the room. Check out this review(?) of Chinatown from Salon written in the context of the Polanski flare-up: http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/btm/feature/2009/10/13/chinatown/index.html Interesting take on a similar issue from the video game world: http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=24627 Reviewing is a tricky thing. Some people think it should be all about your personal reaction to the work, which can never be walled off from context (creators’ espoused political views, etc.). I have sympathy for this view, as long as the personal aspect of the reaction is clearly disclosed by the reviewer.

Even a formalist critique of the art, language, and interactions thereof is going to have that real-world bleed-through, and it can be disingenuous to ignore elephants in the room. Check out this review(?) of Chinatown from Salon written in the context of the Polanski flare-up: http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/btm/feature/2009/10/13/chinatown/index.html

Interesting take on a similar issue from the video game world:
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=24627

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