Pushing Aside Nostalgia: The Act of Criticism

I can say, with certainty, that I am only nostalgic towards one thing: Super Mario Brothers on the NES. I remember plenty of times as a a five-year-old when my cousins and I, or my parents and I, or my brother and I would get together and just dig into that game with the intent to wring everything out of it we could. We would search for every secret, get as many extra lives as we could, and even beat our own speed records. These were good times.

That being said, my fond memories attatched to that game in no way influence my feelings on the game's own merits. Don't get me wrong, I think it's an amazing game that saved the video game artform, but that's because of the work done by the game itself. I say this, because it seems we live in the Age of Nostalgia, an age of revisiting old works from one's youth and attempting to judge them not in light of itself, but in the light of our fond memories surrounding it. 

I'm more than inclined to think that any attempt at objective criticism will be hurt by the attempt of the person making the criticism trying to include their own sense of nostaligia into their final asessment.** A good example of this sort of thing is some people's reactions to the "Transformers" films. I've heard many a person say that "it's like all the toys and the cartoons, come to life!" and that, seemingly, be their only assessment of the film, as everything else they say about it ends up revolving around that initial statement. To say what they said, and to mean it, says that they ignored massive sections of the films in favor of the (rather poorly done, dramatically) action sequences. They ignored the character inconsistencies and "maturity" (sexual innuendo, tough-guy posturing, borderline R-rated violence) in favor of the identification with their childhood. 

To state a critique of anything, the best rule of thumb is to take it on its own terms. It doesn't particularly matter if some older iteration of that thing was something you loved as a kid, because this new iteration is just that: a new iteration. It's something different. I don't see any real way to give a film, or movie, or book, or whatever a fair shake if we weigh them down with our nostalgia. 

The same can be said with updated versions of older childeren's works (looking at you again, "Transformers"). It seems some of us wish to age them up with us. As though we aren't content with them simply being works intended for children that we can enjoy as adults (I don't really see anything wrong with that), but that since we are mature then the work itself  must also be mature. That's simply not true. Pixar makes a killing off of creating works aimed towards families, as in, many different age groups. There's the superficial layers of their films and those appeal more to the children. Yet, there are deeper thematic layers for the older ones in the audience, and these things work not with posturing, but with emotional sincerity. 

You have to be willing to look at something you enjoyed as a child and say that it's not so great. If your own emotions towards the piece are stopping you from seeing the possibility of you not particularly thinking that thing is that great, then you are going about critique all wrong. There has to be an openness to reconcideration. Otherwise, you're essentially refusing to grow. 

** Of course, by "objective criticism", I mean approaching a work and judging it on it's own terms.