I’m both fascinated by and a bit scared of cultural criticism. The seemingly inevitable result of claiming to be a critic is that one has to exile oneself from a creative community in order to discuss it from afar. But there is an emerging transformation in cultural criticism. There is an understanding that every review is autobiography. That a critic is not regarded as a mere parasite who is “useless and dangerous”, but an essential service in a world with endlessly available and streamable culture. The critic is a vital connection point: one who connects with the work, connects the work to other works and connects a potential audience to the work.
For someone who loves culture, who perhaps wants to slow down from solely consuming creative work after work, I want to suggest that cultural criticism can be a kind of personal sacred practice of deeply appreciating works and exploring their layers of meaning and how it can connect and inspire one’s life.
I’m thinking about what this would look like in real life and immediately think of two podcasts I’ve been listening to ritually lately that represent this new way of engaging with cultural criticism. I don’t even know if these critics would self identify as “cultural critics” – more like cultural lovers or cultural guides pathfinding and pointing out the sites of note for the interested audience who follow them into new territory.
The first is the podcast Poetry Unbound from Onbeing Studios, a fifteen minute immersion into a single poem. Padraig O Tuama unhurriedly guides the listener through the poem, firstly reading it through with his melodious Irish lilt, and then drawing out the poem’s components, pointing out connections and perspectives, and finally ending the episode by reading the poem through one last time. This second read through at the end is key to the experience. After all Tuama’s intricately woven connections and invitations for discussion and thought, the poem feels freshly illuminated through the reading. It shows the potential for literary criticism as an opportunity for a critic to lead an initial experience of a work by exploring the technical components before presenting the completed work, similar to the Song Exploder podcast format, where Hrishikesh Hirway hosts a songwriter who takes their song apart piece by piece before listening to the song as a whole. Both podcasts give the listener the experience of slowing down time, appreciating a work with a meditative magnifying glass, and one can feel one’s soul expanding through this dismantling and reconstructing process.
The podcast Harry Potter and the Sacred Text from Not Sorry Productions offers a similar sense of experiencing a work through the rituals of cultural criticism, this time by engaging with each chapter of Harry Potter through various sacred text practices which opens up the text as a vehicle for reflecting on one’s life, struggles and questions. This approach expands spiritual practice to apply to any text, not just designated texts from religious traditions. It is very deliberately shaped around the reader’s personal response rather than literal discussions about the technicalities of the world that the author-that-shall-not-be-named has created. The text becomes a tool to unpack meaning in a way that connects with and
Inspired by these podcasts I’ve been thinking about how I can use cultural criticism to enrich my experience of music, podcasts, TV, film, books. How I can describe pathways of understanding myself and the world through the work and find levels of meaning like an archeologist sifting through sands.
What this criticism as sacred practice could look like:
- Describe what is there. What is the intended meaning/literal meaning of the work?
- Describe the history of the work and the place of it in the author’s life. How does this become relevant in the cultural landscape, in our own lives at this moment.
- What are the symbolic connections? What do these symbols remind us of in our own lives? How do these symbols connect in our own lives?
- Can we trace these symbols through the cultural canon or similar works? What threads can we follow that can enrich our understanding and appreciation of the work at hand?
- What might the message be, what is the invitation of the work for changing our perspective or our actions? What might we be inspired to create ourselves in response?
Erin Lancaster 