Sometimes My Reviews Hurt People's Feelings and That Makes Me Sad
Not too long ago, I got a direct message from a filmmaker I was friends with on Facebook and whom I had interacted with a few times. He or she wrote that it probably wouldn’t matter to me but that he or she read a piece that I had written about one of their films that hurt their feelings and made them sad, so they unfriended me.
Being hyper-sensitive myself, I understood where they were coming from. I’m so sensitive, in fact, that I stopped reading the message at that point because the words were making me feel sad and hurting my feelings.
For what it's worth, I’ve given positive reviews to 90 percent of this mystery filmmaker’s oeuvre, and they are not exactly a critic’s darling. But I could see where he or she might be hurt by criticism of a project that was particularly personal and important to them.
This message and the sentiment behind it highlight the complexities, contradictions, and all-around messiness of relationships, even casual and online, between critics and the people they write about.
If I were a purist, I would choose not to have a relationship with anyone whose work I might cover to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest. But I’m not a purist. I'm not a film critic for The New York Times or The Washington Post.
I’m a weird dude who runs a sad little lemonade stand of a pop culture website where I write about the weird shit that I find fascinating that the world more or less ignores.
I actually have three separate sites where I write about the weird shit that I find fascinating and that the world more or less ignores in Nathan Rabin’s Happy Place, Nathan Rabin’s Bad Ideas, and Every Episode Ever.
I don’t have any concrete rules regarding relationships with the people I write about. I make it up as I go along. I try to be as honest, principled, and compassionate as I can be in my writing. That’s all I can control.
Every once in a very long while, I will hear from someone about whom I have written about critically in a way that makes it apparent just how angry they are at me.
Many years back, I got an enraged email from someone who had ghostwritten a book I had pilloried in my Silly Show-Biz Book Club column at The A.V. Club. From the email, it was apparent that I occupied a fairly central place in this writer's mind. I was the bastard who kneecapped his literary career maliciously and with great spite.
I, on the other hand, had not thought about this writer in years.
Publishing books gave me a fascinating glimpse into what it's like to be at the other end of a critic's wrath.
For example, several months after I published my debut memoir, The Big Rewind, in 2009, The Washington Post ran an absolutely brutal review that seemingly took great pride in eviscerating a memoir of mental illness from a man with a Dickensian childhood.
This review took up massive real estate in my psyche for months, even years. Certain phrases stuck in my mind, like a passage where they referred to me as the “Snarkitect" behind what the critic considered the A.V. Club’s nastiness.
The worst, most personal review I'd ever received was also the first thing potential buyers of The Big Rewind saw on Amazon. The biggest bookseller in the world was seemingly intent on discouraging people from buying my book.
It wasn't just that the review was negative; it was the pan's nastiness, unfairness, and personal nature that really got to me.
Remarkably, people agreed with my assessment. A hero at Amazon removed the Washington Post review from my book's Amazon listing because he thought it was just wrong.
Even more incredibly, the Washington Post critic who panned my book sent me an email years later, maybe even a decade later, in which he apologized profusely for the review's nastiness. He felt so guilty that he even donated generously to my various crowd-funding campaigns.
It's the kind of validation everyone wants, but that very few receive. It felt great and crazy and surreal, in part because the Washington Post critic went on to become both a best-selling novelist and a notorious fabulist.
Here’s the thing. I am barely able to get through life. It is a daily struggle filled with guilt, shame, and consciousness exacerbated by my autism, ADHD, and Bipolar.
If I devoted time and energy to worrying about hurting the feelings of the people whose work I review, I would not be able to function. The guilt, shame, and self-consciousness would be too much for me.
In order to avoid going crazy, I need to let go of my pieces when I publish them. My work as a writer is done. Then, it is up to the world to interpret my words and ideas.
I hate that due to the nature of my career I have undoubtedly made a lot of strangers feel bad, particularly when I was head writer of The A.V. Club and had a fair amount of power.
I tried to wield that power responsibly, in the same way that I try to be responsible with the powerlessness that comes with having a tiny little website that never grows more popular or lucrative no matter what I do.
I try not to be cruel or even unkind, but I also try to be honest, and that has a way of hurting feelings no matter how good my intentions may be.
Join the movement and contribute to the Gofundme to get my new, permanent teeth that work over at https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-nathans-journey-to-dental-implants
Did you enjoy this article? Then consider becoming a patron here
AND you can buy my books, signed, from me, at the site’s shop here