You Don’t Play for the Critics

Before I go to see a movie, I normally read the review in the New York Times. They have smart reviews, and I always learn something.

Then I look at Rotten Tomatoes to see what the reviews there say. Rotten Tomatoes has two scores, the critic’s score and the viewer’s score. The critics score is always way lower than the score of the civilians, the people who went to see the movie because they wanted to see it. Sometimes the two scores are so far apart that you might easily believe they didn’t see the same movie. They didn’t.

Critics are paid to be critical. Some people who believe themselves to be critics take their payment in the form of significance or importance (see Yelp). They both watch the movie from the same place, a place of judgment, a place of discovering what is wrong with the movie, rarely looking for what is right.

Creating For Critics

There are some who create to please the critics. They want to be recognized by the establishment, the people who they believe to be invested with the authority to pass judgment and sort the wheat from the chaff, the worthy from the unworthy. They want to be told that their work is good by people whose judgment they somehow believe increases their worth. They need acceptance.

Creating For Your Audience

But there are others who create because they are creators. They don’t create to try to please anyone other than themselves. They do their work because it brings them joy and satisfaction, and they hope that it is appreciated by the people it is designed to serve, the audience. They don’t create with the critics in mind because they aren’t trying to please the critics.

You don’t play for the critics. You play for the audience. You don’t create in hopes that someone will judge your work worthy. You create because you are a creator, because that is what creators do.