Word: barts
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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SKETCHED COMEDY Introduced as a short on The Tracey Ullman Show, cartoonist Matt Groening's subversive serial about a dysfunctional American family became its own show in 1989, with bratty Bart as its star...
...YELLOW AGE The show soon outgrew Bart and embraced unabashedly brainy satire. Homer, the Everydunce, became the centerpiece. The beloved two-parter "Who Shot Mr. Burns?" ranks among the best season-ending cliffhangers in any TV genre...
...Bart, who once was a Paramount Pictures executive, and to other Hollywood sachems, the ascent of the fanboy critics must be like manna falling from above. They rose from the culture they speak to, they're as obsessed with horror films and special effects as the industry currently is, and they love nearly everything they see. Whereas the mainstream critics--they're so damn critical...
Implicit in Bart's argument is that a popular film is a good film, and vice versa. If critics can't validate that tautology, we're useless. That's why studios screen fewer and fewer of their films early, and if they do, they invite everyone but critics. Until the fall, that is, when they want their prestige releases on 10 Best lists. Those citations sell tickets and tip off the awards folks. In that sense, Hollywood uses us as heralds to our own constituency. We're the fanboy brigade for Oscar films...
...when TIME's reviewers were two of the all-time greats, James Agee and Manny Farber, their critiques had zero impact on a film's earnings. Back then, Hollywood courted the gossip columnists and feature writers as assiduously as they woo fanboys and Jon Stewart now. Bart says we don't matter in making a film a hit? Yeah, well, get this, pal: we never mattered...