Robert Warshow

A joy to read, Warshow asks that you consider your relation to movies and mass culture, and argues that the intelligentsia has lost the ability, the vocabulary, to discuss or assimilate popular materials. He demands that producers of popular culture be fearless and audiences evaluate what they have seen or read. Audiences have lost the ability to critically approach media, the media often abandon real ideas and become polluted and unfocused, and the guardians of the gates of culture pander to emotions. Not that everything must be profound; comics and Doc Savage have their place, though he wishes it were a more limited one. His most biting criticism is saved for authors, producers, etc. he feels have abandoned core beliefs, or failed to adapt.

As an example, he dismissed Henry Miller’s ‘The Crucible’ as lacking substance- ideas-and asks why, if it was supposed to be written as an attack on McCarthyism, it didn’t actually do so? Why was it superficial look at the Salem witch trials—where’s the beef? He also points out that audiences loved it but he’s (I believe) angered by the effusive reaction the play got on Broadway. Liberal audiences cheered the play because they felt that it made a statement, even though Warshow argues that it did not and felt that audiences were not asking enough of their favorite playwrights and may have lost the clarity to even know what their demands should be. They cheered the play because they felt that somebody was saying something at last, when in reality Miller had chickened out of an actual exposure and condemnation. Where was McCarthy in the play?

His chapter on EC comics is dear to my heart, since I’ve collected them since I was a kid. (He doesn’t really care for them, but thinks there’s nothing harmful and that the censors who were lining up to do away with them were more dangerous. In a later chapter, he quotes his son Paul asking about comics “What’s the matter with things being exciting?”

Two things he discusses that I’ve always felt were important but taboo- Ethyl and Julius Rosenberg were cuddly grandparents who loves each other very much, but they also betrayed the nation. Even if they did it for the cause of peace, are they blameless? And the idea is absurd that dialogue should be limited in movies because the lens should tell the story. Warshow was a fearless liberal and a demanding critic. One of the few books I’ve read and kept.… (mehr)

http://spacebeer.blogspot.com/2006/05/criticize-this.html

Re-read in 2017: For a guy who died of a heart attack at the age of 37 back in 1955, Robert Warshow sure has the number of modern American popular culture. This collection of essays ranges from the Rosenbergs, to Charlie Chaplin, to Stalin, to comic books and while the content may sometimes be a little dated, Warshow's voice is always fresh, pointed, and smart. I wish he had longer to make his mark on the world of American intellectualism, but I'm glad we have this sampling of his writing. Worth reading for anyone who likes words.… (mehr)