>> Robin Givhan: Thank you all so much for being here. And I'm going to leap right in with this question. What's the difference between a critic and someone with an opinion? (laughing) (inaudible) >> Celeste Marcus: Yeah. >> Arash Azizi: I mean, the job of a critic, is that we sort of spend our lives reading and writing the good and the bad and also have sort of a systematic approach to things now, whether it's movies or politics or cinema. So it's really not a matter of opinion, actually, I would say it's... I mean, there is always an opinionated aspect to it. But it's an attempt by... I don't think people are that interested to know, like what our actually thinks necessarily about a movie, whether it's good or bad, but it's trying to put it in some historical context. Try to sort of cultivate some meaning of what good films should be, and it's always a conversation. So there's an opinion aspect to it, but it's hopefully more than having an opinion. >> Celeste Marcus: I think also there's the discourse and we sort of find ourselves in the middle of it. And frequently the things we have opinions about are the things that are being talked about. But a critic's job is not to just be reactive. So you can have opinions about things that a lot of people are already talking about. But I also think it's a really important part of the job and a really difficult part of the job to step outside of the conversation and think, are these the questions we should even be asking? Like, should you have to have... Usually it's like you're at a cocktail party and you're supposed to have the opinion about whatever it is that everyone's talking about. But a critic's job is to think, wait, hold on. Are we paying attention to the right thing? Like, if the subject is movies, and everybody has an opinion about "Barbie" and "Oppenheimer." And I know I'm a year late, but I'm still upset about it. (laughing) Maybe it's that there are other films that are worth considering or other books that people don't know about, and I think that's true about every realm of culture and politics. Very often, especially in politics, we end up thinking about and developing opinions about the most asinine aspects of whatever it is that's going on. >> Robin Givhan: Well, it also seems like there's the question of, are you being a cheerleader or are you being a hater? I mean, that's there always seems to be this sort of binary when we start talking about the idea of criticism, and how do you make sure that if you are trying to elevate something that is not as well known or you're trying to say that this thing that everyone has been obsessing over, it's not so great. How do you balance cheerleading versus being labeled a hater? >> Arash Azizi: I would say no. I like to think of it as advocacy, right, instead of cheerleading that you know... >> Celeste Marcus: A much better word. >> Arash Azizi: That... >> Celeste Marcus: That's being a cheerleader (inaudible). >> Arash Azizi: And there's a couple of aspects to it, right? So in film festivals I was like a team of tonight is that, that when I was thinking about tonight, right, about the job of the critique. When you go to a film festival, I'm always sitting there with this lament in my heart that vast majority of people, including my friends, would never get to see any of these films. So I try to in my writing, I try to advocate when I see a good film and what I consider to be a good film, I try to advocate for it and sort of draw out its themes. And in the history, we have great examples of this. Like Pauline Kael would write a film review and would change the fate of the film, and she would put all her into it. Now, when it comes to critical like or writing negatively about something, I'm very always sensitive about it because there's the real battle, if you will, for me, is between people who are making films at all and paying attention to them at all, versus and those who don't. So I would never want to put down a film in which people have worked hard. Nevertheless, it's necessary, I think. I think it's sort of a I think you would insult someone. If someone thought my book was bad, I would be much less insulted if they hid their opinion than if they told me. Right. >> Robin Givhan: Would you? >> Arash Azizi: I'd like to think so. I'd like to think so. And I think there's a... I think my point is that bad art or whether there is such a thing. Right? There is such a thing as bad art. And or that there are bad aspects to an art or, and I think they should be set. I think someone I don't remember if I've read this or not, but I wish there were more negative reviews of "Sorry to Bother You." I think it's a terrible film. And then there was all these reviews were positive. And I think something bad happens when we do that. I think and maybe his second film would be great because it was his first film. Maybe it would be like, maybe his second film would be great because of the criticisms. But the answer that I got when I expressed the negative opinions is sort of like you're almost betraying someone, but surely that's not the case. I don't think it's betrayal to discuss the qualities of a work of art. >> Robin Givhan: What about you, Celeste? >> Celeste Marcus: I think that it's important to be able to take something seriously enough that you can recognize in it when it fails, and actually something that our movie critic liberties has the best movie critic on the planet, Sheila O'Malley, and she wrote something in an essay for us a couple months ago, and it really changed the way that I watch movies. Everything she writes changes the way that I watch movies. But this changed the way that I like, read and look at art. She said, basically that when she's in a theater, what she's trying to do is think, what were the artists trying to achieve here? Not what do I want from it, but what did the artist mean to do here? And that's really different. Those are really different things. >> Robin Givhan: Very different questions. >> Celeste Marcus: Very different questions. And you can think that that's not the job of the critic to consider what the artist was trying to do. I think that it is, I find that I get so much more out of art that I wouldn't know how to like or how to learn from, even if I don't like it, if I can try to adjust and see like what is the person who made this thing trying to achieve? And if you then can figure out how they failed on their own terms, and very few people never fail. I mean, I just had to write the hardest part of my book yesterday, which was conceding that sometimes Chaim Soutine does paint bad paintings. And because it was important for me to realize when he's not succeeding, like when his vision is too much for him and he can't pull it through. What does that look like? And it actually helps me understand his successes better. So I think that that's important. And I think I definitely want that in an editor and in readers to point out to me, if I miss something and on my... I can tell when somebody is reading it and they're just like being they're being uncharitable because they are not entering into my understanding of the subject. And then they just want to tell me that the whole thing is wrong, and they can tell me that that's fine. But I feel it with my readers, and I definitely feel it. I feel it when I'm consuming art. I mean, this is controversial, but I go to the Phillips all the time, the Phillips collection, and there's the huge Renoir there is like, the reason that everybody else goes to the Phillips. And I don't like it. (laughing) >> Arash Azizi: We all know she pulls us away when we are there. (laughing) >> Celeste Marcus: It's true. I do do that. And I went and I sat in front of it and I was sitting with a friend of mine, and I said, he said too. He was like, I don't like it. And I was like, yeah, but we're wrong and we were wrong. We should like it. I mean, and it's wrong to just be like, we don't like it. It's like, well, who the hell are you? I mean, what do you mean you don't? And can you... What is it? Why does everybody else like it? >> Robin Givhan: Well, this leads me to an issue that Arash raised before we sat down, which is the idea that a critic's job is to promote an idea of what good taste is. And to some ears in this room, I think that sounds very elitist, because who are you to say that something is good taste or not? But it made me start to think, are we giving elitism a bad wrap? I mean, is there something to be said? >> Arash Azizi: I mean, I think when Barack Obama was running for president, he was on a campaign and a sort of a campaign stop, he asked for Dijon mustard. And the people told him, he said, look, this is America. You can't do that. This will destroy your chances. This is so elitist. So I think we have the word elitism has lost all its meaning now, right? We have a billionaire running for president with a vice president who is backed by hedge funds and they're running on an Anti-elitist ticket. So the word has lost all its meaning, right? Obviously, if someone is reading if someone is kind enough to read what I've written about a topic, they must think that I know a thing or two about it more than them. Otherwise why bother? And it's the same for all of us, right? As we're both writers and readers. When I want to read about Rachmaninov or classical music, I hope that person is some sort of elite. I should hope so. They should have some reason. I mean, it doesn't need to be formal education or something. So I believe so yes, I believe in good taste. I don't believe that you need a credential to talk about it. I grew up in Iran where... And I've written about this for liberties, where a lot of people surrounding me, people who were some of them formerly educated, some of them were not, were always discussing good art and bad art. I never forget I was once in a movie shop where you sort of rent movies, and there was this guy from outside Tehran who had just arrived, and he looked like a kind of a provincial guy, very humble in Tehran. And he walks in and with a very sort of heavy rural accent he said, "Do you have the Last Tango in Paris and on the waterfront?" And then he sort of was saying what kind of additions he wanted, like, not the 1973 cut. I want the other ones. And I think the guy was so... So it's not about so it's not about where you're from or how much like formal education you have or. It's about but he cared. Right? And I think we should care. And if you care about art, and I'll give you one example, for example, that I in my film criticism, I sort of bring. This terrible, terrible tradition of didacticism that is now all over art, which needs to be fought. It's bad taste. These films that really need to make sure to tell you exactly, leave nothing to chance to tell exactly what the message is. I think that's bad art, right? And we can talk about what the hell does that mean? But I don't think that's just. Oh, I like ketchup. You like another sauce, right? So I don't think it's just a matter of sort of purely subjective. I think there's a thing that happens. Right? I think there's a reason some and durability perhaps is one measure. I think the great films or books that we keep talking about is that because they didn't do this, for example. They didn't and there is good didactic art and there's Brecht and all that, but there's very I think it's very few and far in between. It's very hard to do as well. That's just one example. And I think if you don't do that and yeah, I think people should try to cultivate, I mean, don't we do that with everything else? With food, with everything else. There is... You cultivate a taste in something, right? And I think if you see more films and, read more books, you're going to end up having a higher taste about it, and the job of the critic is to help you on this journey. >> Celeste Marcus: I think that good taste is hard. I think that having an understanding of what makes art good is difficult to cultivate, and that's not the same as elitism. It's not the same. I mean, if what if I don't know what the word means anymore either, but I think the implication is that it's classist and that's the problem with it. And I think that there is a lot to be said about the problems with class in America and especially America, but everywhere. But I don't think the problem is good art and its accessibility to people without the resources to get it. Obviously, there are people who have more privilege, who have better access to culture, and that's a terrible thing. But that doesn't mean that trying to figure trying to discern between good and bad is an act of elitism, or an act of like sequestering the good away from the people who, like, don't deserve it. I do think that there will never be any danger of bad commercialism just leaking in and destroying the realms of human life that should be kept safe from it. >> Arash Azizi: Oh, I definitely think that. (laughing) >> Celeste Marcus: Art, music, movies like these, there will always be just such a powerful pull to make the things that are going to sell best, and those things are easily digestible, and they're not complicated. They're very flashy. And so the advocates for really fine taste are in some ways the underdogs and they deserve cheerleading. I mean, artists who are not going to compromise, who are not going to sell out and who want to make the good stuff because they believe in it, even if it's not going to sell big, and we all know stories of designers and directors and artists who have chosen to do that, who go in both ways, like have chosen to sell out because there's just no way to make it work. And the people who haven't, and they never get picked up by the galleries, and it's hard for them to sell their books, and they can't make their movies because they can't get the money for it, and so it's like, there have to be critics telling people that what they're doing is worth something, that they're in an illustrious tradition of grand artists who are married to something more than money. >> Robin Givhan: And it also seems like that having those critics telling them that they're doing something worthy and wonderful, even when the mass audience isn't receptive, it in some ways allows that work to exist so that perhaps 10, 20 years later, the audience comes around. >> Celeste Marcus: And we all know stories of works that when they first came out, I mean, many of the greatest works of art in human history were not understood when they first were made, and they didn't make a lot of money. They tanked the box office. And the salon d'Automne was a whole in Paris. They had to have their own salon because they weren't allowed to get into the main one. So there's a long history of this and we know that that's how art happens, that's how progress happens. And so yeah, I definitely feel like it's a moral obligation for sure. >> Robin Givhan: One of the things that you do as an editor is finding those new voices. What do you listen for when you're trying to find a new voice? And how does that sort of figure into the idea of telling people what is good taste? >> Arash Azizi: She picked me, so. (laughing) >> Celeste Marcus: Never be forgiven for that. (laughing) Yeah, so it's such a joy and really just the best part of the job, one of the best parts of the job being able to do this, and it's consistently that there are writers who just can't make themselves sound like they were produced by a factory, and they are not going to write in a voice that is got a brand or a logo on it and want to find a place where they can sound like themselves. It's not pegged. It's not about it's not pegged. So like often if a writer is pitching an editor, they have to say like, oh, this is a review of a book that just came out, or this is something about a movie that's about to come out. So or like, this is about the election and it's really hard to have anything written about just something that you just read that changed the way you see the world. That's really hard to get that kind of thing published. And it says something to me if a writer has a vision that doesn't fit neatly in a box, and I want to be a place for those kinds of writers. I mean, there are people, Arash is one of them who I will go to and just say, like, I love your writing, I love your ideas. I know that there are things that you want to be able to write, that people aren't letting you publish. There's some obsession that you have. There's something that you can't stop thinking about that you want a place to flesh out. And I know you're not going to be able to pitch it to anybody else. That's what I want from you. And I know that I'm right because they'll immediately give me or one of my writers who's just amazing was like, okay, can we have a Zoom call about this? I have to like it was like a confession that he wanted to tell me about this weird idea that he wanted to write about. He was like, you're definitely not going to want this. This is so weird. But I did definitely want it. It was amazing. So that kind of thing, that kind of excitement, >> Arash Azizi: If I say something that I love, that she brought the idea of of the pegged thing. Because I think this is one of the real problems we have. Speaking of good taste, one of the real problems we have in the media if there are any editors out there. Right? I mean, there's very often you go to a journal or a newspaper or a magazine, and 80 or 90% of the content sometimes is about like two topics, because the idea is people are excited to read about this. So it's a Democratic National Convention. People are going to want to read about Democrats. And the next... >> Robin Givhan: The algorithms say that people have been searching for information about that. >> Arash Azizi: Exactly. So driven by this idea. Exactly, it's driven by this idea that the primary way people get into this is to... And I mean, it's a terrible way of doing things because, number one when is Van Gogh going to be in the news, right, so someone can write about it? I mean, it would be a very sort of boring life if we just talk about the stuff that are in the news and they're usually in news for about six minutes and they go away. So I'm grateful for the liberties that I write about different topics that don't have that sort of necessarily daily relevance. But I hope that when I'm reading myself, I mean, it's a sort of it's a bit generational as well, but I mean, you get a magazine or something and you read whatever it's in there. And I mean, I don't know, you're sure one wants to learn about things that are current, but there's a few thousand years of human history. It's nice to like look around different corners of it from time to time. >> Robin Givhan: Well, since you brought up the media, I mean, one of the things that I wanted to ask you is in the role of critics and when you're looking for new voices, we are at a time when media is very siloed and people want to hear things that reaffirm what they already believe. So how do you try to go about finding people who can speak across those divides? Or is that something that you aim for? Would you rather go narrow and deep as opposed to wide and I don't want to say shallow, but wide and less deep. >> Celeste Marcus: Yeah. I think I don't have the nerve endings to do wide and less deep. I just don't know how to do that. And that's like, that's why I added a small journal. (laughing) But I do want to just say something quickly. This is connected just in relation to what you were saying about the algorithm. It is such a dereliction of duty. It is like egregious that major newspapers decide what to put on their homepage based on what people click on. It is so terrible because we will be reading day after day about Gaza, and then all of a sudden, we're not reading about it at all because you have to scroll all the way down to the bottom of the home page in order to get there, which is. So it's not that it's not happening anymore, but it's not happening for anybody who just goes to the top of The New York Times homepage and just says, "Oh, there's the DNC," and then it's just not out of sight, out of mind. >> Robin Givhan: I'm glad that you said that The New York Times had a problem with that. The Washington Post would never have. >> Celeste Marcus: Absolutely not. But it is terrible, and it's true that if you're not... if your job as an editor of a publication is to think about all of the things that people should be thinking about, the homepage wouldn't look that way. It would look very different. It would not look like just what the average American wants to click on. There would be some spinach somewhere. I mean, Rachmaninov would at some point be and that's not... >> Arash Azizi: On the front page. >> Celeste Marcus: On the front page. That's not a crime. You know it's not and there's something to be said for that. I do think and this is what I was going to say, I do think people would click on it. I mean, they're just not being given it. They're not being told. It's so condescending of whoever these machines are, whatever that means. Like whoever's paying for them to decide that the average person wouldn't click on that content. And so I was going to say about this what drives me to young writers is they're not even just young writers. Any writers is that they have a unique voice. And I believe like, this is my humanism. This is my faith in humanity. I believe that people really do want that. I believe they're excited about it, and they're so tired of being lied to or being misrepresented in the literature that they consume and treated as if people just want shallowness and the easy route all the time. I really do think that they want to be surprised. They want to be told, actually you haven't... You didn't think a person like this existed, but they do, and this is what they think. Or maybe you've never encountered a mind like this. And this is what it would look like to be this kind of person. I mean, I think that people are interested in things that are unlike them. They find it curious. It's just not easy to find. So I think that that's my... as long as it's really good and we're really good. >> Robin Givhan: Sorry I wanted to bring up a line very early in your book, "What Iranians Want" which I found devastating, at least for me, and it was "The arc of history, sadly, doesn't always bend towards justice." That devastated me. How difficult was it to write that line? >> Arash Azizi: Yeah, it's very difficult. And in fact, the whole book, in many ways, it's a very sad thing for me to talk about it. I started writing the book when this movement in Iran, the woman life freedom movement, what was going somewhere in January. And by the time it finished, it was clear that it sort of was going to go down to defeat in this phase. There's things that proponents of movements do. They believe that defeat never comes. And then in 30 years, something happens. They say this was our eventual victory. I don't look at politics or life like that because it's about us. It's about people. It's about young girls and boys that I write about in this book who are 15 or 16 in ten years, they're going to be 25. This is their life. >> Robin Givhan: I want a normal life. >> Arash Azizi: Yeah, and exactly and they want a normal life. So I think but I think I'm very glad you brought that line up because I think actually speaking of problems kind of discourse that we have, there's this idea always when one writes about social movements, it's always about praise. It's always about how these people are showing what a sort of great life is and they're morally victorious. And it's nice to feel other people are morally victorious when it's sort of you don't have a stick to them, but they don't want to be morally victorious. They want to be victorious, right? They want to get to the demands that they want. So I think we should be brutally honest when writing about social movements and talk about their shortcomings. And unfortunately, you don't always get that, and if I say something about the last conversation that also relates to this a little bit, I really agree with Celeste about people would read different stuff because the conversation you usually have is that, oh, it's the supply and demand. It's like a very basic capitalist relationship. We give people to read what they want. So The New York Times runs article now we can talk about New York Times, I love it. I have written for both New York Times and Washington Post. So I am a neutral there. But no, it's not just about New York Times, right? They would run articles on like TikTok trends and they would say, well people want to read this. So we give it to them. You know, I don't think it's true. I think the job of the cultural elite, which is there are people who are running the stuff. Right? And we can call them elite or not. But there are a small number of people who get to decide what people read is to try to say, no. Actually, let's think about Rachmaninoff this week. We can do it, and it will help us understand... >> Robin Givhan: I feel a book on Rachmaninoff coming. (laughing) >> Celeste Marcus: No, I don't know. >> Celeste Marcus: But neither of us know Rachmaninoff. >> Arash Azizi: No, it's the randomness is sort of the point, right? As I said, there's so much in human. I mean, after all, isn't that how... >> Celeste Marcus: And writing about Chaïm Soutine. >> Arash Azizi: Chaïm Soutine the French painter? So it's the same thing when we were in university, right? We love to take classes on different things and you do get... I wrote about Yugoslavia a while back and our publisher, we had a conversation about theater groups from Yugoslavia in the 1970s who had come to America and had had some reception there. So this led to that conversation. I mean, thousands of Americans might have had the same reaction, and when you write about it, it... So my point is, things are relevant. Things that don't seem to be relevant are actually relevant to different topics. It's this bizarre idea that people have that I don't know. Everyone wakes up and just thinks about the three biggest news stories of the day. And surely that's not how humans work, right? And yeah, so I think we can cultivate that. >> Celeste Marcus: Do I think the arc of history bends towards justice? (laughs) I think that it's really difficult to live in a world without having... If you care about human life and you care about justice without having a lot of help from literature and history and art, I think it's really hard to be able to be as present and alive to injustice as the world demands of us. If you don't have teachers, like really, they're available to us. The best minds. >> Robin Givhan: Can I pause you just for one second? Because that brings up this amazing sentence that is in one of your essays, "Reason, Treason, and Palestine." And it refers to a friend of yours, Ali, who grew up in Dawisha, which has no.., and I'm quoting, "Which has no parks, no playgrounds, no art museums, no movie theaters. The streets are marked by potholes and littered with the detritus of a population which lives on memories. There is nothing beautiful there. A life without beauty binds the mind as ropes bind hands and feet." That last sentence just was incredibly moving, and I think also gets at the importance of critics. >> Celeste Marcus: Totally. Yeah, Ali has definitely taught me more about the importance of art and beauty than anybody else. He is an angel, and he grew up in this refugee camp and just committed his life to trying to create an after school program for kids in the camp, because beauty is just not there. And it's really wild what that can do for a person if you have access to literature and movies. There's no movie theater in Dawisha, it closed a long time ago, so all of his students have never been to a movie theater. The schools... Anyway, there are no other after school programs. That was one of the hurdles of getting the parents to agree to have one was because they just had no familiarity. I mean, If you've never heard of after school programs, it's kind of weird to have somebody say, hey, can I have your kids after school? It's like, what are you talking about? And they would do paint projects, which was there's not a lot of access to art. There's no art museum. And there is one in Ramallah. But it's hard to get to, especially now. So it was just really, it's... This is what I mean by it's not elitist. It really is basic. And it really is so unfair to pretend that people in dire straits don't need that kind of beauty. They really need it. I mean, there are kids there that if we could just give them the opportunity and all of the means to understand, like ten years from now, what it means to have access to modern art, be able to watch Casablanca, read Tolstoy like they need that, and also, they need it for the same reason we do, which is escapism. I mean, one of the ways to contend with brutality is to encounter it in literature first, because it teaches you how to deal with it in your life. Yeah. >> Robin Givhan: I mean, what do you think are the qualifications for being a critic? I mean, you had said that you don't think that you necessarily need to have a specific degree or have come from a specific class or background. So what do you think are the most important elements? I mean, would one of them be empathy? >> Arash Azizi: I think it's a great question. I mean, it's another way of asking what makes a good critic. I definitely don't believe in credentialism. People have... One of the main reasons I got a PhD is to be able to say that being a PhD doesn't mean anything. So now I... Now when I say it, I know it's not out of envy or I mean, of course it can mean things, but whatever. It's about what you can do. It's about what you can do. Right? So I mean, it's about the basic question is what makes a good... And let me be the reader for a second. When I write, I mean as a writer, by the way, as a matter of how good or bad the writing is my process is I write it, I give it. If the editor thinks, it's good enough to publish, it comes out, and then you get a bunch of different reactions and you have to live your life. I don't have the whatever mental thing to be able to judge myself. >> Robin Givhan: I say that every day. I write if it's good enough. (laughing) I don't say that. >> Arash Azizi: I don't know whether it's good or bad. I don't know whether it's good or bad. I can't really judge my own writing, but I am a reader, right? So others can say whether I'm a good critic or not, but I can tell you as a reader what I think a good criticism is. And I think it's work that makes you think about a film or a book or even international affairs, right? I mean, that's also a form of criticism makes you think about it, and also, as I said, tries to cultivate an idea, right? Tries to take it seriously. I think this is the key. Taking it seriously, right? The reason I said I really won't be offended if someone wanted to say negative things about a book, as opposed to saying facile things, is that if you really take something seriously, right? If you say a lot of negative things about something, it means you took it seriously probably. Seriously enough to have an opinion on it. Right? As opposed to like blah, right? Whatever, it's me. So I think the job... So let me say this. I think the most important qualification is someone who takes art or whatever topic it is that they're critiquing seriously, and that also means there's one other qualification that's important. It does mean endless reading and watching films. There is no version of the world in which oh, I mean, I've met people who say, well, I'm not sure it's important to read a lot of books. No, no, it's important. Right? There is no version of the world in which you don't read a lot, but you still write about books or something like that? I mean, I don't. I'm not sophisticated enough to understand that maybe, but I have met people who proudly say that. So I don't understand that, I guess. >> Celeste Marcus: Moving right along. >> Arash Azizi: We don't know those people. Great, we have an agreement. >> Celeste Marcus: Yeah, I do agree with that. I think that taking it seriously is really important. I think that caring a lot is really important. If you can really tell if somebody who is giving, offering criticism about a work cares deeply about the thing that they're offering criticism about, I think you have to be careful not to let your feelings overwhelm your analysis, but it is... Here's what I'll say. You can tell if a critic is criticizing something because they think that they're supposed to, and not because they actually care very much about the content. And I am very interested in hearing any person talk about a work that has provoked them seriously and intelligently, whether or not they've read a lot about it. Now, I don't know if that makes them a professional critic, but it definitely makes their criticism valuable to me. I'm interested in it. I really want to hear it. >> Robin Givhan: Do you think that you have to like the subject matter? >> Celeste Marcus: No. I mean, absolutely not. I think that you learn a lot from people who really dislike a work. If the dislike is fully formulated because it tells you something true about the nature of the work, it might not tell you what they think it tells you, right? Like, often somebody will have a strong reaction to a work and they'll find it revolting or they'll find it, I don't know, provocative in a way that you don't and you wouldn't have noticed it. That happens all the time with me. Like people will have a response to something we've just seen. This just happened with that movie about the man who died falling out of a window. And it was like one, like a bunch of Oscars. I don't remember what it was called. Analysis of the fall. >> Arash Azizi: Oh, "Anatomy of Fall." >> Celeste Marcus: "Anatomy Of a Fall." I watched it with my girlfriend and her dad, and I walked out, and I was like that woman was so cool, and they were like, that woman was terrible. (laughing) I was like, wow >> Robin Givhan: I'm on your side. >> Arash Azizi: Very funny aspect. The funny aspect is in the film festivals, right? So the point of like, film festivals is that you are seeing something for the first time ever, right? So no one else has formed an opinion on this. There's no one to tell you whether to like it or not. And then it's very weird for me, it always happens. You come out and then there are other your critic friends and you can see their faces. You really like something or they didn't. And reading Iranian critics at Cannes every year, there's usually a fight, sometimes physical about it, about Iranian films. Right? I mean, I remember Leila's brothers, which I saw in Cannes a couple years ago, and I loved and I wrote about it in detail, and I had a friend who just said, oh, wow, what a soap opera or whatever, and I was just so angry. >> Robin Givhan: I don't know, it's like balling up the fist here. >> Arash Azizi: It was a great film. But I would say, eventually just such a soap opera is that seriousness. So I feel like I respect the film enough when I come out of the cinema I don't dismiss it easily. There's never films that I don't like. Also, I don't just sort of dismiss them very facilely. I'll try to take it seriously, I don't know, think about it a little bit and yeah. And I think that's something I think that's what the work the director or the creator deserves is seriousness, but they don't deserve adulation. And yes, unfortunately, there are consequences, right? So if you are the film critic for New York Times, The Washington Post, and you write a bad review, you might help destroy someone's career. They say... But I mean, that's life. Like you can't write... I mean, hopefully not with one film. But the thing is, you can't. It's not that person's fault that they thought that. I mean, there are Pauline Kael that I mentioned. I mean, I guess some people basically always saw her negatively. They were saying, oh, she's crazy, she hates everyone. And there was always this sexist undertone, basically, oh, she's this... stuck up or whatever. But I think if you look at her work now, I think she was honest. I think you can see she took her work seriously. >> Celeste Marcus: But sometimes she was wrong. >> Arash Azizi: Sure. Well, you know... >> Celeste Marcus: I mean, I think the genuine misogyny is still it's not like, better than misogyny that's just feigned. And Pauline Kael definitely was. >> Arash Azizi: So we can talk about who Pauline Kael was. But I mean, I think she took her work seriously. I think clearly there's. >> Robin Givhan: Clearly there's a disagreement among critics. >> Arash Azizi: Yeah, exactly. So I think we can have this.... >> Celeste Marcus: The night porter so I'll never forget. >> Arash Azizi: I think this is the key point, right? I think there is a that one can disagree, right? I mean, of course. >> Celeste Marcus: Yeah, absolutely. >> Arash Azizi: One can disagree on things. But what I don't like is when some people say, oh, it doesn't matter. It's just her opinion. I mean, it wasn't just her opinion, right? I mean, it's something more than just an opinion to go back to your opening question. >> Robin Givhan: Well, that leads me to this whole idea of a group of critics witnessing something for the first time and then having to form... having to digest it. And it's interesting to me because I spent a lot of time looking at fashion shows and then walking out and having someone immediately say, what did you think? And at least for me, the most interesting shows were the ones where I said, I don't know what I think. I need a minute to figure out exactly what I think. And the shows that were probably the least interesting were the ones that were the easiest to form opinions about quite quickly. So do you find that you want to have conversations with other critics? Do you want to bat ideas around, or do you want to go into a solitary room and just contemplate it and then write? >> Arash Azizi: So I have a very simple answer to this. I definitely don't want to talk to anyone after film. And my wife by now knows after a film when we go with friends and someone says, what did you think? And she says, like, don't ask. >> Celeste Marcus: Don't ask him. >> Arash Azizi: No, I mean it needs to sit a little. And even by the time you're in film festivals, usually you have to write a... You have a... >> Robin Givhan: A deadline. >> Arash Azizi: You have a deadline. Like you can't tell your editor. I'm contemplating philosophical thoughts, right. You have a deadline. >> Celeste Marcus: This darn editor. >> Arash Azizi: But it needs to be a little later. It needs to be and it definitely... So I believe it's interesting. I believe writing is, I think, a cruelly solitary profession for me. I mean, I don't like to talk to other people sometimes, but I think at the end of the day I mean, I'd be... I don't think it helps. I mean, I think that's how I work at least, like, I need to sit down with myself and be alone and form it. And in film festivals, this is a problem because you can't escape others, especially very senior critics who, like, come out and you tell everybody and they're trying to shape the opinion of the critics there right before they write. This is the thing that happens. And yeah, it doesn't. And this is the problem with seeing films after so "Anatomy Of a Fall," I didn't go to (inaudible) and I saw it with everybody, and it's just so hard because by that point everyone... >> Celeste Marcus: This is elitism. (laughing) >> Arash Azizi: But it does make a big difference, right? You know, a square that won the Palme d'Or in Cannes a few years ago, I saw it, I came out of the cinema like literally crying, thinking, this is a great film. And then when it wins the Palme, you're like, oh, look, some people agreed with me. And there's something beautiful about that. Like, no one told me to like it, right? It was just my own. It was just one person who says, okay, maybe there is something to it. Right? >> Robin Givhan: So, Celeste, do you ever have to save critics from themselves? And by that, I mean you are reading their work, and they have had a visceral reaction to something either positive or negative. And perhaps the context has gotten away or the... or it's become too effusive or a little too tough. Do you ever feel like you have to rein them in? >> Celeste Marcus: I don't often feel that way. Sometimes if that's a problem, it's an easy problem to fix. I think my problem more often is that it can be difficult. It's the hardest... One of the hardest projects for a writer is organizing the thoughts that they have. It's hard. That's hard. And when you're trying to figure out on paper what you think of something, it can be difficult for an editor to try and help you do that. But I think it's a really important thing for an editor to do. I think the thing that I'm trying not to do all the time is tell them what to think. Like I can say, we have to get you to a place where the reader knows what you think. And it's not this monologue where you're confusing the reader because you go back and forth, but I can't tell you what it is, so that that's tricky for me. I definitely I only work... I'm very lucky. I only work with people whose opinions I really value, so it's so interesting for me to get on the phone with a writer and say, okay, let's just talk this through. Let's figure out what it is that you want to say here. There are lots of different pieces that have to be pulled together, but you have to come to some decision, and I think that that's really valuable for the reason that Arash was saying, I do think that consuming art, even if you're doing it with everybody else, is solitary and there has to be time for that. But it is such a gift to give people, the community, to come to an understanding after that solitude, and it can be really sad and lonely if you don't have an editor or you don't have people to talk to about whatever it is that is most exciting to you. Which is another reason why I think that publishing work about high culture is just never going to be a thing that doesn't have an audience, because the people who want it really want it because it's hard to find. So actually an example that I was thinking of was... Oh, God, "Challengers." Yes, "Challengers," which everybody loved all together. And I was told that everybody was going to love it. And then I watched it, and I didn't think it was going to be as good as it was, because I had no idea. People love movies that are terrible all the time. And at the end of that movie, I was my poor mother. My girlfriend and I went to see it with her, and we jumped up and we were like, "This is great cinema. It's great. It's back." And my mom was like, "What is wrong with you guys?" So I think that that's I think that that's really exciting. But I think that it is like it took a long time for me to figure out all the pieces of why it was so good, and I think I wanted to have an editor for a piece about challengers because I thought I needed the time and I wanted a me to be like, well, really, what are you saying here? Why is it really good? >> Robin Givhan: You know, one of the things that both of you have talked about is sort of giving people a sort of a guide toward through art or cinema or whatever music, whatever it might be. And I was reading this incredible essay that you wrote about rape as a counsel to others. And one of the things that I was left with was that as a friend to someone who has been a victim or as a relative to someone, that there's no real answer for what you can do to make things better. So, I mean, do you think that is the job of a critic to provide answers, or is it to allow people to recognize that sometimes there are no answers? >> Celeste Marcus: I think and I try to do this in that essay. And it was a... that's exactly what I was trying to do in the essay was I call it a guide, I call it a guide for the tormented. But it really was like, what does it look like inside a person's head who's going through this kind of thing? And I think that that is the role of the critic is to give you the chance to conceive of a universe that you cannot comprehend, to give you access to things that you wouldn't already be coming into contact with. And I hoped that in writing that essay, people who are reading it and people this was so moving to me to be to have people write to me and tell me that it helped them. One man wrote to me and said, like, I know how to talk to my daughter now, which I tear up whenever I think about that because they're just things going on in a person's head that you cannot... You wouldn't imagine that those would be the questions you were asking yourself unless it had happened to you. And that kind of creativity, that capacity for thinking, okay, this is what everybody is saying, but what are they not saying? What's happening underneath here? I think that kind of creativity is essential for a critic, for sure. >> Robin Givhan: Now we're going to take a few questions. If people want to sort of organize their thoughts. And I know that Washington audiences are full of people with massive, massive brains and lots and lots of knowledge. So just remember, it's a question. (laughing) Not your PhD dissertation. One of the other things I want I'm curious about is who do you feel that you're writing for? Are you writing for people who are already interested in your topic? Or are you writing for people who really have no idea what to expect? >> Arash Azizi: It's a really great question. You know, I really, I spend a good 20% of my life thinking about this question, especially when it comes to, let's say, Iran, so there are different levels of knowledge when it comes to Iran. There's Iranians themselves. Hopefully they know something about their country. There are people who know a lot, and then there's people who don't know anything. I basically and this is not a cop out. But I try to I hope to believe or I write with the perhaps naive hope to believe that it's for all of them that hopefully a page of my writing will be of interest both to someone who knows the topic really well. But it's still interested enough that they picked up a book and to someone who is very new about it. So I definitely it's the question of elitism, right? You know, I'm a Marxist. All cards on the table and one of the core ideas of Marxism in some ways is the idea, I think, Marxist tradition of writing. And it's the idea that every worker could be an intellectual basically. The idea is that that's what... it's not about credentials. It's about someone who wants to think seriously, so I would like to think the only real qualification for reading is that you want to take the topic seriously, but if it's your first entry to the topic, just like all of us when we grow up. I mean, I remember I took books from my parents, you know, books, and I read them and I didn't understand anything. Right. But you do enough at at some point you start to understand something. >> Robin Givhan: Yes, ma'am. Oh, hi. >> Thank you, guys, so much. This has been a great talk. You spoke a bit earlier about the impact of algorithms on the news, and I was wondering specifically within, like, the current digital media landscape a lot of smaller digital media companies have shut down. A lot are switching to newsletter models. And I was just wondering and liberties obviously has a print magazine. And I was just wondering how you guys see sort of the future of print for these smaller magazines and if you could speak a little bit to that. >> Celeste Marcus: Yeah, so should I go first? >> Celeste Marcus: Should I go first? >> Arash Azizi: Sure. >> Robin Givhan: You should go first. >> Celeste Marcus: I should go... Okay. Liberty's journal.com/subscriptions. (laughing) So I think that we do hybrid, but it's definitely the focus is the print journal. And as I was saying before, we really believe that if we could get to all of the people who would want to read us, our subscriptions would be off the charts it would be huge. I do believe the readership is enormous. It's just about getting to the readers. So and I do feel loyalty to the people who still want to read and print. I mean, they're my people and I just don't believe that people would rather read a magazine that's 350 pages online. I think that they want to read it in print. And I think that the other magazines that are like liberties or feel the same way, we just know that there's a certain kind of person who wants to get their copy in the mail, and they want to sit down on Sunday afternoon and go through the table of contents, read an essay today, read an essay next week. Like there is just that kind of person. And they want the news. They want to know what's breaking news. And they have their apps for that. But they also want to read the essay on Bergman and the essay on Mozart, and also about the history of Navalny's effects on Russia and the history of the Democratic Party. Like these are long form reads. They want to have time to read, and they do want an editor telling them, these are the writers you should read on that thing. So I think the future is continuing, and I think it's finding new ways to find those communities. But I don't think it's coming to the conclusion that those communities don't exist. >> Arash Azizi: So I feel very passionately about this. You know, the arc of history doesn't bend toward justice, right, necessarily, and it's up to us. The answer to that question is not given whether print magazines and what it comes with it, which I believe is something valuable, as I say in a minute, survives or not. Depends on all of us, right? Does it come from somewhere else? It depends on us. It depends on readership. It depends on... And we can talk about sort of policies like economic policies and all that, that that can make it happen. But it depends on all of us. And yes, we lose something enormous if we get our history from TikTok. No, you can't put there's something to the genre. Everyone likes to say, oh, well, there's all these crazy TikTok history stuff. I wish that good historians could also go and create rival TikTok’s to stop them. You know, there's I think I'm not saying that sort of that battleground, if you will, should be seeded. So sure, people should make it, but you lose something. It's about being alone, for example, that thing that we talked about, it's about being alone. And I teach in university and I sort of say this to my students and I see some of them are looking at me like, oh, here we go again. (laughing) But you lose something like, I mean, Hegel taught reading the newspaper in the morning was was sort of a replacement for prayer. But there's something if you're alone with a... I mean, I'll tell you how I read my liberties. (laughing) >> Celeste Marcus: Hegel could do it. >> Arash Azizi: So I tell you how I read my copy of Liberty's. I really get it, and I sit on my couch and I read through every essay, and I really love that time. And no, you could not get that time in any other form. Right? And I think I have one life I'm 36 years old. I will dedicate the rest of my life as much as I can to fighting for that idea, to tell people that, no, you don't get the same thing off TikTok, that the only way you can, if you want to understand the world better, you should read the 800 page book on Austro-Hungarian history. You know, and there is no alternative. And I'm heartbroken and terrified and sad that if you go to any party in this town now, people are age or people getting degrees in history and political science, people who should be interested in this stuff. You're much more likely for someone to say, oh, I heard this in this podcast than I read a book. You do not, you cannot learn from a podcast the same way. And as I said, I have one life and I will dedicate it to that, you know, hopefully. >> Robin Givhan: I love you so much. We have time, I think, for one more question. >> Thank you. I was curious, as people who hold the position of cultural critics, what is the place for changing your mind at some point as people who are talking about your thoughts and giving some kind of opinion? When are times that you have changed your mind and how did that happen or why? >> Arash Azizi: I change other people's minds. (laughing) >> Celeste Marcus: I change my mind a lot. >> Arash Azizi: No, it does happen. You know it it does happen. It obviously does happen that one changes one minds. And I said the thing about conversation. So you talk to people and they bring points that you didn't see that that way. And I think we should have no fear of trying to change our minds and should be honest enough to say I was wrong about a film. And it has happened to me that I've even gone and asked, tell someone that I'm sorry, I think I was wrong about your film. I didn't get a good response. (laughing) >> Celeste Marcus: I think that changing a person's mind is a lot more than just changing an opinion. I think it can be changing a worldview. And that happens all the time with me. And, I mean, I still have my ideals, I have my values. But the part of the reasons that my friends are my friends and I respect them so much is they're very different from me, and I really respect them. And we talk about things that matter a lot to us. And it's really important to me that I will often have intense conversations with them about movies or art or politics, God knows, or history that mean a lot to me, that I really think that I know what I think about them. And after conversations with them, it's not just that I changed my opinion. The architecture of my mind has been rearranged, and that happens a lot, and I'm so grateful that that happens a lot, so I think that's important. I think if you can't do that, you need to do a rain check and sort of give yourself a break, go to the mountains and do some deep thinking, because I think it's a really important part of being a critic. >> Arash Azizi: We did go to the mountains, but I wasn't able to change her mind on some of these things. (laughing) >> Robin Givhan: Well, I think sometimes we need to remind ourselves that changing your mind is not the same thing as flip flopping with new information and changing circumstances, opinions change, minds change. >> Celeste Marcus: Definitely. >> Arash Azizi: Exactly. >> Celeste Marcus: Thank you so much. >> Robin Givhan: Thank you so much for being here. >> Arash Azizi: Thank you. >> Robin Givhan: Thank you all so much for being here. (applause) (upbeat music)