youUntil relatively recently, an apology in the artistic criticism columns of any publication was extremely rare, if not nonexistent. If the crow were to be eaten, it would be the end result of some unprecedented legal action in which the defendant and the plaintiff severely established – through an exchange of letters of attorney in a poker game – what would be the likely outcome on court.
No more. In 2018, the then New York Times drama critic Ben Brantley filed an apology after being accused of transphobia for a joke about the Broadway musical Head Over Heels. He had affected a satirical confusion about his star, the transformative artist Peppermint whose character was identified as non-binary.
Now Variety – a magazine with a list of first-rate film critics – felt the need to apologize for its critique of Carey Mulligan’s Promised Young Woman, in which critic Dennis Harvey said he thought Mulligan had been ill- climbed. Harvey wrote that “although she is a great actress”, Mulligan was “a strange choice” and seemed to be in “a terrible travesty”. He said the film’s producer, Margot Robbie, may have been better in such a conflicted and sexual role.
The analysis was published in January 2020, but after Mulligan attacked it in an interview, Variety did something that can only be described as eating its humble pie and eating it. They apologized: “Variety sincerely apologizes to Carey Mulligan and regrets the insensitive language and innuendo in our analysis … which downplayed his bold performance.” But they are still running the review below, with the supposedly offensive passage quite intact.
This is very weak on their part. And in Christopher Hitchens’ immortal words: “Excuses are boring. What we want is an explanation. Perhaps Mulligan was particularly irritated by this review because it appeared in a magazine considered to be the industry bible, vital in award seasons, and so a review is closer to a school’s Ofsted report than the subjective article that could be. in other publications. And, as Robbie Collin of the Telegraph suggests, it may very well be that Variety’s timid half-descent is due to a terrible fear from the all-powerful studio and the talented PRs, fiercely threatening to shut down access to the stars in their stable.
But this is not the issue. There are legions of women commenting on social media today to say that – guess what – they’re also bored, in Hitchens’ sense, with Variety’s shy half-expenses and what they want is a broader and more diverse range of critical opinions and a lot more voices women passing by. And something else: they will want critical freedom and publications with the intellectual courage to support them.
For what it’s worth, I totally disagree with Harvey about Mulligan being mistreated. She doesn’t just play “English rose” characters. This is a performance that can be compared more with his brilliantly challenging and embarrassing role in Steve McQueen’s Shame. But critics can have opinions, however unpleasant they may be, and even comment on the image of an actor on the screen – as long as they are offered in good faith, which I think Variety’s criticism was. Mulligan is also entitled to her opinion, and critics are not immune to criticism.