Critical mountain

Before wandering into the world of political punditry, I spent a number of years working online, in print and on the radio as a film critic. I screened several hundred movies, panning some, praising others and coming down somewhere in between on the vast majority.

One of the unspoken rules of being a film critic, I learned, is to essentially review movies in a bubble – see the flick, take notes and offer an unbiased opinion. Don't pay attention to what other critics are saying until your review is already complete. (Nor do you normally get such a chance; with films being screened for the press in advance of their release, just above every critic finishes his or her review before most of their peers' work is published.)

And while I certainly came across some politically controversial films, from twisted biopics to flicks starring drug addicts and directed by pedophiles, I never encountered any pressure to review a film positively or negatively because of its politics. Sure the studios would offer their bribes, but that was merely a universal effort to gain positive reviews of everything – politics were not the discriminatory criterion. The closest I ever came to feeling any pressure was a picket line in front of the theater showing “The Siege,” and even then I think they were more concerned with myself and other critics not seeing the film at all than what we would eventually say about it.

So needless to say, I am flabbergasted to learn that the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) is demanding an apology from NBC film critic Gene Shalit (who happens to be one of America's most tenured reviewers, at that) for panning “Brokeback Mountain.” In particular, the activist group is furious that Mr. Shalit described a gay character in the film as a “sexual predator” and didn't join in the national trend of praising the film without so much as a critical word.

The blogs have been going nuts all over the Internet on this one, and it is with good cause. GLAAD is not only being patently absurd, but this may well rise to one of the most transparent incidents of flagrant hypocrisy the public has seen in some time. The group's message is clear: “Please give us unlimited free speech to offend at will, but don't you dare upset us, even by being mean to a movie that serves our cause.”

Rubbish!

It is a film critic's job to offer a fair and unbiased review of a movie. If the picture is terrible, the whole idea is that the public will know before people blow $7.50 on it. And if the movie is particularly good, the notion is that people will be encouraged to see it.

But what GLAAD is doing is roughly tantamount to having a dairy lobbying group go ballistic at a food critic because he or she panned a new restaurant specializing in cheese fondue. Mr. Shalit wasn't being anti-homosexual – he was merely warning the public that “Brokeback Mountain,” in his opinion, isn't exactly must-see material and that one of the characters in the film is a “sexual predator.”

Yet perhaps most moronic of all is the idea that GLAAD probably realizes how absurd it is being. Mr. Shalit isn't exactly the most hostile of targets for the cause to take on, considering, as GLAAD notes at the end of its call for action against Mr. Shalit and NBC, “Shalit is the father of openly gay physician Dr. Peter Shalit, author of 'Living Well, the Gay Man's Essential Health Guide.'”