City Research Online

Abstract

A prominent strain of discourse sees digital-age German film criticism in a terminal trajectory of commercialization and dumbing down. This article demonstrates that this rhetoric is not unique: neither to German-speaking countries nor to the digital age. Complaints about slipping benchmarks and declining quality, the fragmentation of the filmgoing public into niche markets, and above all the anxiety about the authority of the critic to definitively speak for and interpret culture to a receptive audience have animated international film criticism since its origins. The article proceeds to examine the supposed new threat to critics: algorithmic recommender systems for video-on-demand platforms such as Netflix. Based on the author’s mixed-method empirical audience study, it concludes that the need and desire for human cultural mediators has not decreased despite the digital-age explosion of content and computational tools.

Publication Type:	Article
Additional Information:	This is the author accepted manuscript of an article published in New German Critique: An Interdisciplinary Journal of German Studies (NGC) on November 1, 2020 available at: https://doi.org/10.1215/0094033X-8607577
Publisher Keywords:	German film criticism, empirical audience research, media change in the digital age, recommender systems, video on demand (VOD)
Subjects:	P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN1993 Motion Pictures T Technology > T Technology (General)
Departments:	School of Communication & Creativity School of Communication & Creativity > Media, Culture & Creative Industries
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

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