Middle-Aged Film Critic Writes a Book Railing Against Snark; Man on Internet Agrees

In January, film critic David Denby published an essay called Snark: It's Mean, It's Personal and It's Ruining Our Conversation. It's not a perfect book, but he's right. His book is a bit like Harry Frankfurt's popular essay "On Bullshit," which opened with the famous sentence, "One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit." Frankfurt distinguished bullshit from lies, arguing that lies are opposed to truth, while bullshit is unrelated to truth. Snark is a serious attempt to understand what actually defines all of the rampant purposeless guttersniping that inhabits so much of the Internet and so much of the public discourse.

Denby is the film critic for the New Yorker magazine, and his sensibilities make him a perfect target for snark, of course: he's white, middle-aged, and writes for a magazine that persists in spelling a word like "cooperation" with an umlaut over the second o. Snark these days is mostly a product of the young, and the generation gap may make him especially sensitive to it, but he has a persuasive argument. Snark tends to be reflexive, a pale imitation of satire lacking wit or intelligence. Most things on the Internet these days are immediately greeted by a chorus of "that sucks"; most political discourse seems to devolve into winking or overt insult; and most people seem resigned to the idea that there's no way to stop the spread of snark.

Then again, Denby hastily adds, not all snark is bad. Some people really deserve to be insulted, and some insults are really artful. However, as with Harry Frankfurt's definition of bullshit, snark is generally divorced from factual considerations, trafficking instead in rumor, prurient innuendo, and juvenile scatology. The difference between snark and satire seems to be that satire is informed by a sense of righteousness: the satirist reacts negatively to his object of derision because there is something about it that is outrageous and deserving of indignation. Snark is utterly without righteousness. I don't care, but that sucks, says the Platonic snarker.

Denby attempts to give snark both its due in history and a proper definition. He gives two historical examples: revenge-minded classical poets like Juvenal, and recent smirking-society magazines like Private Eye and Spy. He identifies (and rips) two main snarkers by name: Tom Wolfe and Maureen Dowd, to whom he dedicates the penultimate chapter, a woman whose political poison pen is betrayed by what he describes as an utter failure to believe in, or advocate, any actual kind of policy. A satirist has to believe in something in order to satirize: things couldn't be so bad as to deserve satire unless the satirist had conviction that they ought to be much better. Snark is usually agnostic. It believes in nothing other than the worthlessness of its target.

According to Denby, there are 9 principles of snark:

1. Attack without reason.
2. Appeal to common, hackneyed prejudices.
3. Reach into the rotting heap of media referents for old jokes, old insults, and give them a twist.
4. Assume anything negative said about someone with power is true -- or at least usable.
5. Ignore the routine responsibilities of journalism.
6. Reduce all human complexity to caricature.
7. Glom onto celebrities in an attitude of adoration and loathing.
8. Attack the old.
9. Attack expensive, underperforming restaurants.

His principles start out general and end up specific, like his book itself, which starts with Carroll and Juvenal and ends with Gawker, Perez Hilton, and Maureen Dowd. His archetypes describe most categories of snark, but the definition can be stated even more simply. Film and music critic Nathan Rabin of The Onion AV Club calls it "Everything sucksism":

[It's] a cheap adolescent nihilism that delights in taking down celebrities and pop-culture entities that are already walking punchlines. "Everything Sucksism" reigns on E! and VH-1, where seemingly half the shows (especially those with "Awesomely Bad" in the title) consist of anonymous C-listers making agonizingly banal, snidely delivered comments about tacky celebrities and failed projects... Everything sucksism is ugly, it's cheap, it contributes nothing of value to popular culture and worst of all, it's not funny. Everything sucksism reduces all of human endeavor to a cheap punchline.

Of course, film critics like Rabin and Denby both use snark in their work, but both are rather quick to defend their occasional uses of it. (Tellingly, Rabin says the worst thing about snark is that "it's not funny.") Bad snark is indiscriminate; good snark is discriminating, they would say. Good snark targets only bad things, not all things. And, of course, good snark is not anonymous. When Denby or Rabin or Dowd kills something in a column, everyone knows who wrote it. When a web commenter attacks, he hides behind a mask. Though he holds his targets up to arbitrary standards -- this movie is terrible, that woman is a slut, this guy is a moron -- he doesn't have to take responsibility for his own words. The anonymous snarker is safe from snark blowback.

Though it isn't perfect, Denby's book is welcome. Snark has become so ubiquitous that it generally passes without comment. As Denby says, much snark is like a middle-school rumor: vicious, authorless, and anyone who objects gets slagged as having no sense of humor. It's good that he's publicly objecting, and worth trying to convince the adherents of everything sucksism to focus their vitriol on the things that actually, you know, suck. We'd be better off without the hypocritical moralism, reflexive cynicism, and desire for cheap laughs that calls every woman a slut, every man a douchebag, and every idea bullshit. Denby and Rabin are fighting an uphill battle, but it's a good fight.

Comments

[RobinSeattle]

"We'd be better off without the hypocritical moralism"

You mean such as your article?

If you want to read material akin to that of H.L. Mencken, S.J Perelman or Jonathan Swift rather than the kind of drive by sniping a lot of us engage in then it is up to folks such as the Washington Post to hire writers with that kind of ability. But they don't. Instead, what you guys give us are hacks such as Bob Novak, Bill Kristol, Jonah Goldberg and, yes, Maureen Dowd.

The elevation of the public conversation has to come from the media first. Unfortunately, the level of discourse and reporting in the media has been declining for about 40 years because there is a perception in the media's corporate penthouses that thoughtful reflection on the issues doesn't sell and food fights, irony and sarcasm do. As long as the media is going to give permission to disseminating the lowbrow dialog we see in newspapers and television now, well, you sold it so don''t blame the consumers when they buy it and then decide to resell it back into the product stream. Your complaint would be better directed at your own bosses at WaPo and not us. Do you have the courage for that?

[Alex Remington - Huffpost Blogger]

Second part of the answer:

To some extent, I'm heartened by your comment that the elevation of the public conversation has to come from the media first, because that implies that newspapers can still have a purpose, even as they're suffering through very public death throes. But ultimately, I'm not sure I completely agree with your premise: you say that the media "give[s] permission to disseminating the lowbrow dialog," effectively leading by example by hiring writers who have little sense of taste and decorum. First, I think that you're conflating what a newspaper like The Post or The Times does, and what an entertainment network like VH1 (which Nathan Rabin criticized in his comment) does. Obviously, The Post tries to have people who are entertaining to go along with the standard beat reporting, and maybe it's the very search for "edge" that gets all media into so much trouble. But second, I don't think that the dissemination requires the media's permission. Anyone can start a blog; anyone can make their views known. Whether those views find an audience is an open question. But many of them will, and many do. Tucker Max started out with just a blog, and just about everyone in the world has read about one of his drunken escapades.

Snark may begin with the people who already have a platform, but it definitely doesn't end there. Still, your point is taken. And, yeah, the media -- all of them -- need to do a better job.

[Alex Remington - Huffpost Blogger]

First part of the answer:

Short answer: I don't disagree with you.

Long answer: my bosses draw a distinction, and I'll agree, between reporting and opinion, between journalists who are supposed to report the news as objectively as they can and between opinion columnists from Novak (who always reported his columns and said that for the 50 years he wrote it he always tried to include one previously unpublished piece of information) to Dowd.

Frankly, I'm not a fan of many of the long-tenured columnists at many publications. I think that the longer some people are away from the imperative to report, the easier it becomes to fall back on the same assumptions masquerading as new opinions, to apply the way you felt about something 30 years ago as an analogy to how your readers should feel now. That's hacky, not to mention an abdication of intellectual responsibility, and it happens far too often.

[caphillprof]

Perhaps snark has always been with us, but I suspect that it ebbs and flows. We are awash in snark now, and the Romans were awash in snark, because both systems were unable to offer hope for the betterment of their masses and instead put their energy in the ever more enrichment of an underserving aristocracy.

[MoMoDo]

Dennby is A film critic at the New Yorker, not THE critic. Anthony Lane is the much better one. This book is a thin whiny screed and he picks on Maureen Dowd not because she has no ideas but that her ideas offend the politicians he likes.

Read the list of Rules of Snark again. By Rule 9 he is running out of steam and self-parodying himself. He can't even make it to ten like a decent Letterman list.

[Alex Remington - Huffpost Blogger]

You're right, and I should have been better with my use of articles. Lane is the primary film critic at the New Yorker, which may have been the one reason Denby didn't mention him -- snark is Anthony Lane's stock in trade.

Denby's arguments on politics get awfully muddled, and I simply didn't want to get into them. I think he's right about Dowd as a writer, though. Her columns aren't written from a specific point of view or belief system so much as a uniform desire to cut literally everyone down to size. She's talented, but empty.

My favorite poison pen film critic, as I've written before, is David T. Lindsay of Atlanta's free music magazine "Stomp & Stammer." Politics inform every review he writes, but when he goes for the kill, he pulls no punches. I almost never agree with him, but he's incredible to read. Here's something from a review he wrote for the Coen Brothers' "Burn After Reading":

"I’m tired of the excuses pretending that anyone who doesn’t like the Coen Brothers’ movies are somehow subculturally artless. There’s nothing to their movies. Having actors turn in frenzied, aloof and distorted performances with a brutal flashy style of jump-cuts doesn’t mean the duo is bizarrely innovative. It means the Coens make long, wailing pleas for failure by focusing on irrelevant aspects of daily routines so their audience of elitist highbrow snobs can get their rocks off. I abhor their every crap-filled strip of film."

[zola77]

Hmmmm, some food for thought. I have to say i dont think its a problem - its always been around - in EVERY generation. I dont know why the author puts it down to a generation gap!?

Recently when archaeologists found an ancient roman 'joke book', there was snark in it directed at greek philosophers, eunuchs etc - who i guess were kind of like the freaks and public personalities/ legends of their time, and therefore easy targets for ridicule and amusement. It really is no different to now. Similarly, if you look at some stuff from the middle ages... This stuff doesnt have much intelligence behind it, but its purpose seems to be to tear people off their pedestal and set up dividing lines between people. Again, no different to now.

I think its a feature of people in their 20s. Its an expression of disillusionment and frustration. Teens at the moment (and in general) are quite idealistic­/optimisti­c. I think that the majority of snark arises when you get into your twenties and you begin to lose that youthful optimism because the world doesnt look so new to you anymore.

In australia we call this 'the tall poppy syndrome". That is, when you think someone or something gets a bit too big you automatically want to 'snip' them, or cut them down to size. It's seems to be a normal human reaction towards hierarchy of any kind but having said that it is something i will chew over...

[Alex Remington - Huffpost Blogger]

I'm not saying snark arises from a generation gap -- I'm saying that Denby's sensitivity to it arises from the generation gap.

As I said, Denby traces snark back to the classical era, like you do, particularly mentioning the Roman poet Juvenal as a master of the form. The point is, there's more snark now than ever before, and it's because the internet makes it a whole lot easier to say it instantly, and to spread it.

You're probably right that a lot of snark arises from a general feeling of youthful disillusionment, common feelings that everything is fake, nothing is worthwhile, nothing is worth believing in. Saying that everything sucks allows you to assert a measure of control over it. The people who are cut down to size are invariably people who are more successful and more famous than the people who want to do the cutting. Power inherently deserves skepticism, and many of the powerful deserve to be cut down to size, but plenty don't. Some people truly are jerks, and some are not. Snark rarely makes such distinctions.