A thick, black nausea of the soul

There are many, many reasons why I have contempt for critics as the lowest form of life on the planet (no, there are some good critics, but they're generally those who are creators first and critics second), but mostly it's just experience and observation of the fact that my tastes are almost always at variance with the tastes of critics. I notice a pervasive stream of values that I don't exactly know what to call, because they belong to such a wide, wide spectrum of critics, but that at least seem coherent enough for there to be a distinct negative correlation between my tastes and that of the cri-ticks. Since this stream of values is so wide and vague, I feel the need to apply a wide and vague label. Maybe something like 'humanism' for instance, would encapsulate the smugness with which a wanker like Harold Bloom dismisses in one line the works of Edgar Allan Poe, saying they would benefit from translation, "even into English". Bloom, presumably, to give a similar one-line response to his work (which I've read) would benefit as a critic from being repeatedly beaten in the skull with a cricket bat and then having a golf club rammed down his throat and his tongue cut out with antique sheep shears. I hope that his criticism may receive the benefit of such treatment very soon. Emerson was just such another, simply calling Poe "the jingle man". Emerson did at least hang out with Hawthorne, which makes me inclined to withold judgement for the moment, but I can well imagine him spouting gnomic platitudes in an expansive humanistic manner as he looks at the watch dangling from his waistcoat and yawns. I notice on his Wikipedia page, with no surprise whatsoever, that he has influenced Bloom. Wise old, white-haired American.

Then again, maybe even 'humanism' is too specific. Maybe I should just say 'idiocy', and leave it at that. Or perhaps the two are synonyms, anyway.

I didn't mean to write this much, actually. I was just going to do one of my Youtube clip-only posts with a clip someone just sent me. I watched it and thought it was the best film scene I've seen for a while, and immediately wanted to post it on my blog:

Knowing nothing about the film, I looked a little up, and found that it had been very poorly received critically. Let's have a look at some of the criticisms:

No one in their right minds could call this a good film, but it's certainly unique.

That's from Andrew Pulver, of the Guardian. The Guardian gave a Harold Bloom-on-Poe-style review of Mark Samuel's The White Hands, a work that someone who knows about these things, Thomas Ligotti, has described (accurately) as: "a treasure and genuine contribution to the real history of weird fiction". The Guardian critic in question should have been given the treatment I've suggested for Bloom above. The Guardian, eh? Is that the best that the British intelligentsia can do? What Lister from Red Dwarf would, I'm sure, call a bunch of yoghurt-eaters. Anyway… "no one in their right minds". Pffft. Well, I haven't seen the whole film, but I definitely thought the clip above was outstanding. So, I'm sure I'm not in my right mind. Big deal. Interesting the concession that it's "unique".

There's something films like this reflect in our nature… that we seem to delight in propped up monsters that give the protagonist an excuse to behave like one.

Fair comment on the clip I saw. I really wanted the woman to blow those two away, and she did. Great.

Presumably patterned after Robert Rodriguez's Sin City, but substantially more graphic, there is surely an audience for this empty brutality, but you would not want to know anyone to whom this picture appeals.

Well, as I say (and won't repeat from now) I haven't seen the whole film, but the clip I saw definitely did appeal to me. You wouldn't want to know me, apparently. Fine. That one from Hap Erstein. Nice one, Hap.

This is a vile, violent film with no raison d’etre.

It has at least one raison d'etre, and that's the clip that I've just seen and posted.

You know, I don't actually like thrillers, or action films, and that fact, coupled with the quotes above, and the title of the film – Running Scared – would have been enough to put me off the film for life, especially if I actually trusted critics not to be mentally unevolved creatures. However, having seen the clip, I do want to watch the film. There is, however, one of the supposedly negative criticisms that would have had the opposite of the intended effect and really whetted my appetite:

The film's moral compass swings wildly out of control, blanketed in all manner of hyper-violent digital gore effects and a thick, black nausea of the soul. It's not even fun watching the monsters get their just deserts; it's just depressing.

That's from someone called Marc Savlov of the Austin Chronicle. "A thick, black nausea of the soul." Sounds fucking excellent! I think he was trying to convey, however, something like the feeling I get after reading various film and book reviews.