Critical Emotions: Cultural Criticism as an Intrinsically Emotional Type of Journalism

ABSTRACT

This article engages with a part of journalism that has long been emotional but gained less scholarly attention in recent debates about journalism and emotion—cultural criticism and reviewing. The article argues that although emotions are not new to cultural reviewing, emotionality and a subjective style have become more important in recent decades due to media technological changes and changes in the organisation of news work. Taking its empirical point of departure in a qualitative content analysis of reviews by and an interview with Danish film critic Christian Monggaard, active since the late 1990s, the article shows that emotionality has long been part of his critical and stylistic approach but that emotional subjectivity—and personality—have become more visible over time in his work. The article contextualises the empirical study in research about aesthetic emotions, the subjectivity/objectivity nexus of cultural criticism and the changing institutional, technological and professional circumstances for the production of cultural criticism in the news media.

KEYWORDS:

• Cultural journalism
• cultural reviews
• emotion
• film criticism
• precarity
• subjectivity

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the editors of the special issue and the anonymous reviewers for their very helpful comments. I would also like to thank film critic Christian Monggaard for his participation.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Emotion-triggering events are key to the appraisal theory of emotion. Emotions are typically divided into two broad dimensions – valence (positive or negative emotions) and excitement (aroused or calm; Scherer 2005, 718–720). Stenvall (2008, 1572) summarises some of the basic emotions most frequently highlighted across disciplines: sadness, anger, fear/anxiety, disgust, contempt, happiness, joy, love, acceptance, anticipation and surprise.

2 According to Steensen (2017), byline subjectivity differs from source subjectivity in journalism and is found in commentary genres with a long tradition of cultivating the journalist’s subjectivity, but also in the reportage genre, which takes its point of departure in the journalist’s own experience of a given event. Source subjectivity is similar to Wahl-Jorgensen’s (2013a) strategic ritual of emotionality, as subjectivity is outsourced by placing the personal experience of the source at the centre.

3 In the Danish context, this precariousness is confirmed by an unpublished survey from 2015 by United Critics Denmark, organising more than 200 Danish critics and journalists specialising in arts and culture. The survey, which included 92 responses, showed that critics’ hourly pay rate was much lower than the hourly freelance rate for journalists working in specialised areas, at the time recommended by the Danish Union of Journalists (approximately 250 DKK/30-35€ compared to approximately 1,000 DKK/130-135€ per hour). The chair of United Critics Denmark, Line Rosendvinge, gave permission to use the data in April 2018.

4 According to Information’s Annual Report, the average number of full-time staff members was 98 in 2019, and the newspaper had a circulation of 23,000 daily copies, reaching 187,000 readers per week, while the digital platform, Information.dk, had an average of 750,000 users per month (Information 2020). A search in the Danish online media archive, Infomedia (the largest media archive in Denmark, with more than 75 million articles from more than 2,500 news sources), shows that Monggaard has published 5,145 articles across platforms since 25 August 1997, when his first article registered in the archive appeared, until 20 June 2020 when the data collection was finalised (search term: “Christian Monggaard” as article author). Information is Monggaard’s main outlet, with more than 3,500 pieces, which is the reason why the present study focuses on his work published here. Among the more than 5,000 articles with bylines by Monggaard, several are published on multiple platforms or are syndicated.

5 According to Twitterjournalister.dk, which collects data about more than 5,000 Danish media, communications and journalism professionals, Monggaard ranks as the 7th most active user, with around 100,000 tweets since the end of April 2009, and 35 in number of followers, with around 38,000 followers (as of 3 July 2020). Only 17% of the Danish population above the age of 12 have a Twitter account (Slots- og Kulturstyrelsen 2020), but the platform is popular among politicians and media professionals.

6 The interview was conducted and recorded via Zoom, on 18 December 2020. Interview quotes are translated from Danish by the author.

7 Reviews published in August 1997–2007 (35 in total) had an average word count of 635, reviews published in August 2008–2019 (50 in total) had an average word count of 634.

8 These include co-produced films and films from Europe in particular (France, Germany, Great Britain, Ireland, Norway, Spain, Sweden) and in a few cases beyond Europe (Australia, Iran, Japan).

9 The reviews were categorised as mainly positive, neutral or negative, using the headline, the lead and the concluding remark as cues: 44 were positive, 24 were mixed (both positive and negative), and 16 were negative. One review was not coded, as it involved three films.