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Currents by Geoff Edgers

Taste Test

The gap between what everyone likes and what critics praise is widening. Are these writers way out of touch?

ere, in the land of the media elite, we don't pay much attention to the musings of an MTV tart like Britney Spears. But Ms. S caught my ear when she brushed off the bad reviews last year for her film debut, Crossroads. "Everything the critics like, I hate," she said, "and everything that they hate, I like." Don't call these the mad ravings of another spoiled star whose push-up bra is cinched too tight. Britney's flick made $17 million in its first week of release. And it made a bucketload on DVD.

I think of Britney in light of the latest victims of the aesthetic intelligentsia, Liz Phair and her new album. She's a songwriter whose raw, unvarnished lyrics and lo-fi recordings made her the critical darling of the 1990s. But that was before this summer, when Phair released her new, eponymous album.

"She has lost touch with what once made her great," Greg Kot wrote in the Chicago Tribune. Phair has "committed an embarrassing form of career suicide," scolded Meghan O'Rourke in The New York Times.

All because Phair hired the producers behind teen star Avril Lavigne, sported a Britneyesque miniskirt for a press shoot, and --get this --she's a 36-year-old smartie who should know better. The outrage doesn't surprise me. Nor does the collective silence from the general public. As a professional taste arbiter --er, arts writer --I've watched as the gap widens between what everyone likes and what the critics deem worthy. It's a disturbing trend, a disconnect that hurts both sides.

Why? Because the critic is rendering himself irrelevant. He's become a snooty ogre crafting clever critiques to an ever-shrinking audience. The consumer, in turn, tunes him out and is left defenseless against the wiles of marketers or the star-power suck-ups on all those shows masquerading as entertainment journalism.

Raise your hand: How many of you go to a movie that stars somebody who's been high-fived by Access Hollywood's Pat O'Brien? You know who you are.

You need guidance; the critic is supposed to provide it. At his best, he's the filter, paid to make choices on an intellectual basis, not emotional. He is not afraid to scold us for our weaknesses: museum shows of motorcycles, the assembly-line art of Thomas Kinkade, and Opera Babes CDs (ah, finally, bare midriffs and "La Boheme"). Critics know that mediocrity unchecked grows faster than kudzu.

So they might be right, but do they have to take everything so seriously?

When a critic goes to see the Rolling Stones, he snickers when the almost 60-year-old gazillionaire Mick Jagger shouts that he can't get no satisfaction. He's there for free, but he's outraged at what everyone else paid. He also knows that no amount of money could make this band as good as when it played Boston Garden in '73. "A self-parody," he scribbles into his notepad.

And you? You're in the 119th row, shaking a fist in the air next to a couple of buddies. You paid good money, tossed back a few during a tailgate party, and can't imagine a better time than this. So when you open the newspaper the next morning, you can't believe what you're reading. Was this guy at the same show?

Witness contrariness as reflex --a critic who's become as predictable as anything on American Idol.

The critic needs to realize that there's something at stake. As film reviewer Michael Medved warns, critics face "the danger of isolating ourselves from everyday reality and talking to each other."

So here's my plan: Publications should require every critic to watch a reality- TV show, visit a museum featuring a Dr. Seuss exhibit, or read the contemplative Jewel's latest volume of poetry. And when American Idol winner Kelly Clarkson comes to town, the critic should pay his own way to see her. He'll need to let himself go, though --maybe even sway with the crowd. For one night, he won't be ashamed to embrace the obvious, to admit to the stranger next to him that, indeed, the movie she made this year with her Idol runner-up, Justin Guarini, isn't so bad.

For once, the critic will be out there with real people who aren't interested in showing off an encyclopedic knowledge of art history or Norwegian dance music. He won't drop references or insider jargon, and he'll suppress his usually unvarnished disgust for the simpletons who make up the general public. He'll be there just to have fun.

Of course, he'll probably have made a deal with his editors before he left that he won't have to write about it.