You Don't Know What You Think Until You Write It

Frye: "Our first step, therefore, is to recognize and get rid of meaningless criticism: that is, talking about literature in a way that cannot help build up a systematic structure of knowledge. Casual value-judgements belong not to criticism but to the history of taste, and reflect, at best, only the social and psychological compulsions which prompted their utterance" (Anatomy of Criticism, 700).



Frye strongly feels that we should have a "systematic structure" of criticizing the arts, a universal standard, if you will, when we speak about literature, film, art and music. I think that he is all about order when going about criticism; if there is no structure, one has no case. If there is no research or deeper thought on a subject, one has no case. If we cannot compare the art to something done previously, one has no case. Therefore, my peers, we must educate ourselves on this systematic structure that Frye speaks so highly of.
But I have to ask myself: once one is tainted with the criticism portion of literary criticism, will we ever read a poem again and truly enjoy it? Will we ever be able to watch a film without mocking it? Can we listen to an album or look at a piece of art and appreciate it for exactly what it is? I would like to think that criticism will enrich our views of the arts, but at this point, I am weary that it may jade my vision of what the arts are or should be. That old saying "Ignorance is bliss" could pertain to this situation. If we take art at face value with no knowledge of who the artist or writer is, where they came from, what they were trying to do by creating it, would we appreciate it more...or less? Once we are cynical critics, won't we just look at everything with disdain because it's juuuust not quite good enough? I'm not answering any of these questions, you see, because I don't know.
What I do know is that being a literature major has enlightened me in many ways, and for that, I will never watch a film in the way my roommate (who is finishing her nursing degree) may watch a film; when I speak of a film in Lit-Nerd-Speak (meaning eloquently and insightfully), she looks at me as if I'm insane. She'd rather look at the biological aspect of something. Another one of my best friends just graduated with a degree in psychology and environmental studies; she looks at everything psychologically and how people's decisions affect the environment with their bad choices. She also looks at me in a manner that says to me: "WTF?" Another one of my friends is business-minded, another adds historical insight to all we watch, and another likes to look at architecture and interior design in films. We indeed all bring something to the table while watching a film, but being the literary snob that I am, I feel that I can appreciate its content more than they can; I pick up on the beauty of metaphors and know what foreshadowing is. I can analyze a character and determine why they belong in the plot. I detect the irony in the film. And when one of my friends says, "Oh, that movie was great!" And I reply, "Actually, it was quite terrible", I am hated and looked at as a cynical bitter pessimist who hates life and likes to watch small animals die in horrible ways. BUT, I am being a critic, and the difference between a good critic and a bad critic is this: a good critic can explain to you why something is so bad; a bad critic cannot - they are the ones who look at art at face value. The good critics take that deeper, more appreciative look at something.
So here I have it: through writing this blog today, I have answered all of my questions that I had previously. I have had an epiphany, if you will. Criticism will not taint my appreciation for the arts, but rather, it will enlighten me and make my knowledge of the art deeper and richer. So what we don't know may be blissful, but what we do makes us knowledgeable...and it makes us all literary snobs - which I love being. Maybe Frye isn't the nutcase we all made him out to be.

Groups:
#1 - The New Criticism
#2 - Deconstructors
#3 - Feminists
#4 - Reader Response
#5 - Marxists
#6 - Psychoanalysts