Criticize This

On leaning toward positivity when I write reviews.

This week I’ve been thinking about how sometimes a piece of media just hits you in a way that stays with you when you’re done.

This weekend, I watched and reviewed the upcoming show Sterling Point for Autostraddle (keep an eye out for my review that goes up tomorrow!) and it was one of those shows for me. Something about it drew me in and I didn’t even realize it until later but I wasn’t even on my phone while watching it, I was just totally locked in and entranced.

When I get like that with a show, when I love it a lot, I want everyone I know to watch it so I have more people to talk about it with. BUT I also feel weirdly protective of it and don’t want to hear people say bad things about it. I want to live in this bubble of joy and emotion I’m in and not have anyone point out the cracks and flaws. Or worse, just dislike the things I liked about it. As if I personally had any stake in creating the show. It’s an irrational feeling, likely brought on by years of just trying to enjoy things and then seeing fandoms and critics tear things apart in ways I never would.

Now, I don’t mean valid criticism. I’m always open to hearing valid criticism. No show is perfect. But also I don’t want to know if someone found my favorite character annoying, or if the scene that gave me butterflies felt contrived to them. I just want to gush about it and have someone gush back. I want to overanalyze a character’s feelings and motivations and theorize about what they might do next. I just want to enjoy this honeymoon phase a little longer.

I have, over the years, learned that there is often no obvious rhyme or reason to what critics decide to hype up or tank. It never seems to be a matter of opinion; the bigger outlets all tend to agree with each other, which feels unlikely generally speaking. The hopeless optimist in me wonders why they let people who seem to hate TV write TV reviews; too many critics seem to take their job too literally and feel the need to overly criticize. Sometimes a TV show or a movie is just meant to be a good time, and you can find things you enjoy about it instead.

I also just don’t have the temperament for that. I am painfully aware when I’m writing about a show for my professional job on a professional website that there is always a chance someone involved in making it could read it. So when I have criticisms, I try to make it clear whether it’s A Problem (e.g. bad queer representation, harmful stereotypes, etc.) that I feel they do need to hear about, or whether it’s just a personal preference. I also don’t read other people’s reviews until I’ve finished writing mine because I want to be as honest and authentic as I can. I don’t care if mine is the only positive review aggregated on Rotten Tomatoes. If I loved it, I’m going to say I loved it. If I didn’t like it, I’m going to explain why as kindly as I can. Especially because the shows and movies I review professionally are always queer, and I don’t want to be the review people point to and go “See, queer people didn’t even like this” when complaining about queer characters being on their screens. Also because review bombing is real, and I want people to be able to read a balanced take and not just bigots being loud and wrong. We need to be celebrating queer media as much as possible so it keeps being made. I feel very “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all” about queer media that I don’t have to professionally review. If I love it, you’ll hear about it all over my social media. If it was harmless but bad…you’ll hear about it in a text if we’re friends, but otherwise you won’t even know I watched it.

Of course, here on my newsletter I can be a little more harsh when I REALLY don’t like something. Because this isn’t a place for professional reviews, it’s a friend recommending (or not recommending) media to friends. Plus, sometimes something is so bad it deserves a humorous takedown. But even my harshest reviews are caveated with the truth: this is just MY opinion, and opinions aren’t facts. No matter what other professional critics might lead you to believe.

Anyway, I loved Sterling Point, which you’ll read all about in my review tomorrow, and also probably in the next Media Mayhem favorites list if I’m being honest. And while I will be someday, I am not open to criticism at this time.

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Paid subscribers, keep reading to learn about a TV show I watched recently that I DO actually have a little beef with.

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