Is Armond White Just a Professional Troll?

Can I immediately say that this is not intended to be a personal or direct attack on anyone, not even the subject of the article? Nor is it based purely on opinion, it is instead based on certain aspects of the subjects particular methods, basis for criticism and stated comments (this is beginning so sound like a terms and conditions agreement).

For those of you who don’t know, allow me to elaborate. Armond White is a film and music critic renowned for his provocative and idiosyncratic film criticism. What that basically means is that White’s opinion of a film will repeatedly and frequently be in direct contrast to the widespread opinion, this year alone he praised ‘Taken 3’, ‘Get Hard’ and ‘The Cobbler’ while denouncing ‘Spotlight’, ‘The Martian’, ‘Inside Out’, Bridge of Spies’ and, perhaps most bizarrely, shunning ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ yet somehow finding time to praise ‘Furious 7’ as ‘action movie utopia’.

But opinion alone is not enough to criticise someone (at least when it comes to something like movie criticism) and it would be out of order to say that one critic is forbidden from liking one film and hating another. As when it comes to film, nothing is universally above criticism and the main point of the profession is to inspire debate and discussion. It would be a pretty boring world if everyone felt the exact same way about everything.

That is not my main issue with White’s writing. My main issue comes firstly, from what he advertises himself as. White claims to be a ‘truth teller’ against the ‘oppression of modern criticism’ due to his opinions. In his opinion every other critic is merely following the crowd instead of actually registering true views on the quality of movies, apart from White of course, as he clearly stands alone against the dictatorships of IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes. Once again, this is a valid argument, as after all, it must take courage to go against the general opinion based on your personal views even if you know you may take heat for it. But White takes this a step further, he argues that the only reason his reviews are disputed is because of underlying racism within the scholarly circle, and the other film reviews are not actual opinions, but rather a direct reaction to his review in a deliberate attempt to oppress him because of the colour of his skin. Right…. I will immediately say that I can never claim to understand the prejudices certain people endure repeatedly, but I find it hard to believe that such prejudice can be found over something as relatively menial as a movie. Also, racism certainly is not going to end if you use it as an instant defence against every differing opinion over movies instead of actually admitting that you contrast the accepted opinion. There is nothing wrong with going against the widely accepted opinion (in terms of film criticism), so why someone needs to play the racial card is beyond me.

 My point is, according to White, if you loved ‘Toy Story 3’, then you are harbouring racist beliefs (which is shocking as it has a 98% approval rating on RT). But for someone who is quick to point out how other people attack him merely for having different opinions, White is very quick to attack others simply for having differing opinions on film. He has informed his readers not to trust the 98% of critics that enjoyed ‘Toy Story 3’, personally insulted Roger Ebert multiple times (more on that later and god forbid you try to write a comment of differing opinion on his reviews’ internet page as his devout readers will swiftly insult and demean you.

Of course, White will point out an incident of persecution against him, when he was expelled from the New York’s Film Critics Circle for allegedly heckling Steve McQueen (director of ’12 Years a Slave’), despite White arguing that the story was a fabrication. Now, I am not in a position to dispute or support either claim, I have not looked into the case, am unaware of what evidence was used and have little interest. I will simply say this, is it not slightly odd that an Oscar winning director would fabricate a story to punish one specific critic that disliked his movie when a majority and the Academy of Motion Pictures deemed it a masterpiece. The fact that White condemned ’12 Years a Slave’ for its ‘depiction of violence concerning slavery’ is in itself bizarre. What would his ideal movie depiction of slavery be, oppressed people happily skipping through a meadow without any of the brutality and cruelty documented in history? This comment holds even less validity given that White has also critiqued ‘Inglourious Basterds’ and ‘The Hateful Eight’ for historical inaccuracy, while hating ’12 Years a Slave’ for its historical accuracy.

This is part of a much more frustrating part of White’s writing for me, the hypocritical nature of it. This shines through in virtually every single review from a week-to-week basis. One moment he can be despising ‘Birdman’ for copying the psychological analysis set in the movie industry of ‘Sunset Boulevard’ and ‘8 ½’, and then hailing the latest Adam Sandler movie despite the rehashed plot, characters and comedic stylings (that are all, in my opinion, AWFUL) from every other Adam Sandler movie or whatever Luc Beeson has to offer even if it as generic and clichéd as every action film prior.

 Not only that, but even his ethnic ideologies seem to be contradictory of themselves. As someone who has hated ‘Dope’ and ‘Selma’ for their ‘racial stereotypes’, White has never been uncomfortable with crossing into that territory himself in an often insulting and offensive way. In his review of ‘Birdman’ he referred to the Mexican directors Guillermo Del Toro, Alfonso Cuaron and Alejandro Inarritu as ‘the three amigos’. As well as that, in Inarritu’s latest film ‘The Revenant’, White censured the film for not including any material on the Mexican-American war of 1846, despite the fact that the film takes place in 1823, so the only reason it could be associated with that conflict at all is the fact that it has a Mexican director. That’s like saying every modern British film has to reference the Falklands Conflict. Even more offensively, he disregarded 'The Danish Girl' on the grounds of being a 'politically correct tear jerker' that promoted 'freakdom'. I'll just let that statement speak for itself.    

This leads to another key issue that I have with White’s writing. While he claims to judge movies on their ‘political context’ his political viewpoint seems to be very specific, specifically on the right. White has singularly hated any movie that dares to criticise America or American values, he deemed ‘Foxcatcher’ to be ‘the worst film of 2014’ due to its ‘un-American values’, a term he also used to condemn the Edward Snowden documentary ‘CITIZENFOUR’. For years White championed Steven Spielberg (which I am actually in agreement about, I can say now that I loose respect for any critic that looks down on Spielberg simply because he directs blockbusters) but lately he has taken a dislike to Spielberg’s films such as ‘Lincoln’ which criticised the U.S method of law making as it chronicled a devoted man lifelong struggle to pass a Constitutional Amendment, and ‘Bridge of Spies’ which highlighted the paranoid nature of U.S government in the Cold War. As for any films that recreate documented and proven corruption within U.S government such as ‘All the President’s Men’, well shockingly White also detested them.  

This warped political ideology from which White judges films can best be found in his two articles that chronicle the ‘destruction of culture’. According to White, our film culture was destroyed in 2004 due to the divisive reaction to Mel Gibson’s deeply Christian, subtly (if not intentionally) anti-Semitic ‘Passion of the Christ’ and the commercial and critical success of Michael Moore’s ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’. So according to White, culture was destroyed because people had differing opinions of religion and politics (because obviously that has never happened before in all of human history, and in case you cannot tell, SARCASM!) and also has nothing to do with how the George W Bush, the subject of Moore’s documentary started an illegal war, while Mel Gibson was recorded saying ‘the Jews are responsible for all world wars’. I’m sure neither of those factors played a part in each films reception.

The next article was a lit of twenty films that, according to White, ‘destroyed art, social unity, and spiritual confidence. They constitute a corrupt, carelessly politicized canon’ but also represent that right wing viewpoint of White. The films that White condemn include ‘Good Night and Good Luck’ and ‘Che’ (two films that portray or sympathise with communists or those suspected of communism), ‘WALL-E’ (the Pixar film that values environmentalism) ‘Frost/Nixon’ (another film dealing with U.S government corruption) ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ (I wonder why a right-wing viewpoint would hate a film about a poverty stricken Indian man portrayed in a positive light?) as well as the already mentioned ’12 Years a Slave’, ‘Lincoln’ and ‘Inglourious Basterds’. Also, White denounces ‘There Will Be Blood’ for its ‘anti-Christian values’ (perhaps failing to recognise that there are other religions and beliefs other that Christianity) and adds that ‘The Dark Knight’ promotes ‘anarchy’ (which is a trait shown by the Joker, but maybe White forgot he was the villain of the film, whereas the hero, Batman, upholds order).

 Going back to this direct attack against certain people, I want to highlight his insults to Roger Ebert in particular. According to White, what many see as the most renowned film critic of all time ‘destroyed criticism’ and he seems to hold some grudge against him, despite Ebert’s praise for White’s talent as a writer and publically apologising for referring to him as ‘a troll’ in an offhanded comment. Reading White’s review of ‘Life Itself’ (a documentary about Ebert’s life and final days as he succumbed to illness) is frankly sickening. He seems to gloat over Ebert’s death, mocking his terminal cancer, demeaning his friends and relatives as they grieve, insulting the critics career as well as the work of the documentary maker that made the film. It is utterly sickening and repulsive that a professional would stoop that low and disguise it as film criticism.   

Speaking of which, some of White’s writing, above all else, simply comes across as poor criticism. In a recent review of ‘The Martian’ White used three paragraphs to summarise the film, two of which were used to discuss the soundtrack and the other pointed out how it was similar to other films (these similarities included the fact that the film features the planet Mars, and features a stranded astronaut).

Additionally, some of his comments just seem so random and provocative it would be hard to deny that they are deliberate. In his review of ‘Gone Girl’ (which he also hated, shockingly) he referenced previous movies of Ben Affleck’s career, maybe his early work in ‘Good Will Hunting’, his critical disappointment in ‘Pearl Harbor’ or his directorial resurgence in ‘Argo’? No, instead White refercned the much forgotten and widely loathed ‘Gigli’. Then in his ‘Bridge of Spies’ review he referenced the Spielberg scene that even his most loyal fans will likely roll their eyes at due to its ridiculous nature, the nuclear fridge from ‘Kingdom of the Crystal Skull’. Then when he was once asked to name the best films of 2013, White gave his answer, ‘Pain and Gain’ but then without any prompting added that he thought it was ‘much better that ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’, randomly comparing a widely reviled film with a widely praised one.

There also seems to be a distinct pattern to the way he dishes out praise and criticisms. I have yet to see a film by PT Anderson, Quentin Tarantino, Spike Lee, David Fincher, Sofia Coppola or Pixar Studios that he liked. While you would also be hard pressed to find a film by Adam Sandler or Michael Bay that he dislikes. White annually publishes ‘Better-than-lists’ in which he compares ten underrated movies and ten overrated movies. Without even looking at 2015’s upcoming list I am going to guess inclusions such as ‘The Cobbler > Cinderella’, ‘Furious 7 > Mad Max: Fury Road’, ‘Get Hard > Straight Outta Compton’, ‘Burnt > Carol’ and how about ‘Black Mass > Sicario’? These are likely to be wrong but I find it mildly amusing to guess. Can you imagine if they were right?

What I am trying to say here, is that though I think White writing itself is of a high and skilled level and think he has an excellent knowledge of cinema history (as opposed to his knowledge of real history) and there is nothing wrong with displaying differing opinions on film, even from a right-wing standpoint, the fact that he advertises himself as a truth teller (and his readers believe him) is what infuriates me. White is essentially one of the prejudiced and politically warped critics he claims everyone else is. Perhaps the best thing to do is just ignore him I just wish his reviews were not so unintentionally hilarious.
So that's about it, find me on Twitter with @JoshuaPrice97. Thanks and bye.

From Cowboys to Communists; Hollywood and the Cold War

With the release of ‘Bridge of Spies’ acting as another film in the line of tackling the Cold War, I thought about writing an article about various films to deal with the Red Scare in a direct matter. But something about that just seems too easy, too straightforward. What is fun is to examine some well-known films and see if you can find any allegories to the communists and McCarthyism (my idea of fun is quite different to most people). So in the fifties genres such as science fiction, westerns and epics were flourishing and though they seem to have little to do with the Cold War there are a few hidden meanings behind some incredibly popular films.

Elia Kazan, an exceptional director from Hollywood’s classic era and often credited for launching the career of Marlon Brando with his two seminal dramas ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ and 1954’s ‘On the Waterfront’. That second film has a complex and convoluted history, as does its director. In 1952 Kazan was brought before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA), they were basically a witch hunting organisation that encouraged people the name and shame any suspected communists, and some of the most heavily targeted areas were those liberal thinking writers of course (Arthur Miler used his play ‘The Crucible’ to draw comparisons between the HCUA and witch trails). To many the stories of proud artists upholding their integrities by not naming any of their colleagues is well known and admired, but the same does not apply for Kazan. He named eight colleagues in the film industry to the committee and was subsequently shunned by a number of other colleagues who he did not even name, including Miller himself who had even penned an early draft of ‘On the Waterfront’.

 For those who have not seen the film, it involves around corruption within the longshoremen community and the moral turmoil experienced by one worker, Terry Malloy (Brando) as he must sum up the courage to use the information he knows to bring the corrupt system down, at the risk of his own personal safety or personal ties with the mobsters, his brother Charlie is a key player in the criminal activities. You can probably see the parallels already, for Kazan the film was a way for him to justify his actions before the artistic world and how even though he walked away with no place on the blacklist or criminal charges, he was badly affected by the ordeal.

But Kazan was not the first director to do this, as a battle of cowboys and communists was about to erupt in Hollywood. It began in 1950 with ‘The Gunfighter’ was keen to emphasise the values of American life, with tight communities banding together to uphold authority and supress violence and rebellion, with the help of a fearless and bold leader, in this case the titular gunfighter (Gregory Peck). The security through unity aspects are heavily emphasised, almost as much as the dangers of change and outsiders. This was hardly the only western to do so, but the significance of ‘The Gunfighter’ is how it was directly challenged and contradicted by ‘High Noon’ two years later.

The writer of ‘High Noon’ was Carl Foreman, another artist brought to trial by the HCUA and chose to make a strong challenge to the American government in a way that hurt it the most, through a western. The upshot it this, a sheriff (Gary Cooper) has one day to either leave town or be gunned down by bandits, though he asks the townspeople for help he is unsuccessful and must face them alone. The film gained an appreciation by the lift wing due to what they interpreted as an allegory for the American people being too afraid to stand up for their own beliefs and values and the few that do are at risk of being persecuted and punished for their courage. It also suggests that the best way forward for America is to maintain a mix of individual freedoms and self-determination.

 ‘High Noon’ was unsurprisingly quite divisive at the time, mostly along political lines. Where the left admired it, the right hated it, no one more so than Marion Morrison, better known by his stage name John Wayne. Together with director Howard Hawks, Wayne set out to make a response to ‘High Noon’, a film that in Wayne’s opinion promoted a ‘leftist’ image or collectivism, a departure from good old fashioned American ideals, for Wayne ‘High Noon’ was something a commie would make, not a manly and masculine American man, with manly ideals and other male… stuff. Wayne and Hawks made ‘Rio Bravo’ that emphasised rugged individualism in the face of unprecedented adversary as Wayne stands alone against numerous bandits, except he doesn’t do what a sissy like Gary Cooper would do and ask for help, he stands alone and takes them down with just his two buddies (a self-described cripple and youngster), cue ‘America….. F**** Yeah! This lends itself to the idea that for more conservative filmmakers, America had to be portrayed as not only withstanding the outside threat of communism but being alone in the fight, because that is more compelling. If you take the idea that the bandits are communists and Wayne is America, ‘Rio Bravo’ becomes essentially a propaganda film.

However, it wasn’t just westerns that got their allegories for the red scare in their story. ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’ came out in 1956, and we’ve already talked about it here. But for the sake of sustaining and padding out this article I’ll mention it again (because no movie franchise was ever ruined by repetitiveness). This science fiction film involves a man discovering that his entire town has been replaced by alien life forms known as pod people as they slowly invade his town like a creeping infection. So it is fairly obvious that these pod people are interpreted to represent communists, a new race of people replacing American ideologies one by one as they entrap normal citizens and drag them into their system, all the while spreading their disease even further (at least according to Joseph McCarthy). Speaking of McCarthyism though, an alternative interpretation of ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’ comes from the fact that as the crisis worsens, the man becomes a nervous wreck, running through the town in a blind panic and not knowing who to trust. So does that make the man McCarthy, a delirious and paranoid person, accusing everyone left, right and centre of being an enemy?

But the following year there was an even heavier political allegory in the form of one of the most iconic historical epics of all time. It was one of Stanley Kubrick’s earlier and decidedly least Kubrick-like film, ‘Spartacus’. The historical epic is still very good, but there are few differing interpretations, trippy visuals or mind bending plots. Or are there? Having been scripted by Dalton Trumbo (played by Bryan Cranston in an upcoming movie) under a pseudo name as he had been blacklisted for refusing to name any colleagues suspected of communist sympathies before the HCUA, well surely if you remember anything about the film, especially its finale, you may already be drawing parallels. The film is about a slave revolt led by the titular ‘Spartacus’ and in the most iconic scenes of the film the slave army is defeated and offered an ultimatum by the Romans; Give up and turn in their leader Spartacus, or die. What do the slaves do? Well as Spartacus steps up to turn himself in, another slave stands up and announces himself to be Spartacus, then another and so on until the entire army is claiming to be Spartacus. This may be a work of genius by Trumbo as a script to highlight his own resentments towards the government and blacklisting, to make the climactic and most memorable moment of his film one where individuals refuse to name a specific person, accepting whatever personal risk comes their way before proving their strength as a united force. You have to admit, for a script by a man blacklisted for communist sympathies, it is one hell of an allegory.