Rules for academic reviewers
Academics are a sensitive lot. Actors typically ignore the bad reviews they get, or stop reading reviews altogether. Academics, though, have to read the reviews their fellow academics write about their work, particularly before publication, in order to do their jobs. Peer-review really is a wonderful thing; at its best it ensures the quality and credibility of the work that researchers do. Unfortunately, there are some academics who don't seem to be clear about the responsibilities of a peer-reviewer. We are told how to format our responses, how to avoid using our names, how to separate comments for editors from comments for authors. But just as there is little systematic training for college teaching, so there is little advice offered for how to be a fair and useful reviewer.
Maybe someone has already written on this, but if they have, it's not popping out at me in any google search. So, for what it's worth, here's my list. Add, delete, modify if you wish, or point me in the direction of a better list if there's one out there.
Rules for academic reviewers.
1. Stick to the deadline.
2. You are a reviewer, not a censor. Some criticism legitimately comes after publication, not before it.
3. Be concrete.
4. Be unobtrusive. This is not an opportunity for publishing-by-proxy; it's another person's paper, not yours.
5. Be succinct. Don’t let major critical points get buried in a welter of nitpicking.
6. Write clearly, but not “cleverly.” Is your goal to get the writer to take your criticisms seriously, or to concede that you are a wonderful prose stylist -- who also happens to be an asshole?
Rule for a writer who’s reading a peer-review.
1. Although the reviewer is probably an asshole, they may also be right.
America in film
I hate the word “meme,” but it seems unavoidable in the blogosphere these days. More on the term “meme” another time; for now, I want to write about a
film “meme” that’s been going around, asking for suggestions of films that would best explain America to non-Americans (via
Majikthise).
There is now a gargantuan pile of lists dotted throughout virtual space. I have read a few, perhaps some of the first ones hot from the keyboard. What struck me was how “American” the lists were: enthusiastic, hopeful, fixated on the “best.”
When I think of films that explain America, I don’t necessarily think of the best America has to offer, socially, culturally or cinematically. I don’t think of explaining America’s history either. Instead, I think of film as caricature, as the extended and exaggerated portrayal that captures the essential truth of the portrayed. By this measure, many of my choices may seem cruel; others, not so. I now leave the list to speak for itself:
Deathwish
Animal House
Goodfellas
Hairspray
Independence Day
Showgirls
Blue Hawaii
American Graffiti
Do the Right Thing
Tender Mercies
Kong's people
One of my favorite blogs is Pharyngula, where there was recently a perceptive, and to my mind, spot-on
critique of the film King Kong. Most people I know who've seen the film -- the under 13 year olds aside -- agree that while it was moving and extremely well-acted, the island scenes were tedious and silly. The odd humans who inhabit the island do conform to all the usual, offensive stereotypes of "the natives" although they are shoved out the way pretty quickly to make way for the numerous examples of animal gigantism the place has to show for itself (I refer here, obviously, to Kong, and to the big bug pit into which the crew fell -- for no other reason that I could tell than to gross the more delicate members of the audience out (not me; I laughed heartily), and to finish off those annoying mariners who hadn't managed to get killed yet.)
It was hard to get a fix on the exact model for the dark-skinned charmers who waylaid the gallant, pasty-skinned crew of the doomed ship (first mate excepted). The nouveau-primitives from Mad Max II came to mind. Then the real-life Ilongot and Yanomamo, on grounds of physical appearance and their reputation (subject to serious and important debate) for violence. Who were these actors, I wondered? Light-skinned people made-up to be dark? (I'd recently seen something like this from the files of a make-up artist in the Hindi film industry, wherein an entire supporting cast was rendered several shades darker with body paint to become "tropical primitives" for a song sequence).
None of this speculation would mean a whole lot if it were not for the briefest moment, towards the film's end, in the midst of the performance that Carl Denham (Jack Black) has composed to showcase the giant ape. Miraculously, the bedraggled, fearful, and belligerent island natives have turned into athletic, handsome, well-dressed, consumately choreographed ... Africans? This visual shift suggests to me that Jackson has a lot more insight into the stereotypic representations of "natives" than the islander scenes, by themselves, suggest. After all, Denham wasn't just restaging Kong's abduction of Ann; he was staging Skull Island, and absent Tyrannosaurus Rex and a posse of raptors, the only other resource to hand to create the spectacle was "primitives." The challenge for Carl, one assumes, was coming up with the kind of primitives that would be convincing, decorative, and above all, harmless (unlike the memorably harmful Kong).
The anthropologist part of me would have loved to explore this part of the film more; the ordinary film viewer rolls her eyes and complains that the thing was long enough already, you'd want it to go on for another hour? Not that I didn't enjoy seeing the film, on Christmas Day, in a Bombay multiplex, seated in leather reclining seats for the princely sum of five bucks. It's amazing how comfortable chairs can make a long film pass quite tolerably. A few days later, I read that some provincial theater operators -- unblessed with upholstered seats and laz-y-boys for the butts of the hoi polloi and deeply frustrated at the running time of King Kong (even most Bollywood productions clock in under three hours these days), decided to take matters into their own hands. Chopping off the credits saved fifteen minutes; allegedly they trimmed some other parts too, although I've no idea what, or even how they did it. One owner boasted he got the film down to "two hours and twenty minutes, and it's just as good."
No doubt it was. I can't help thinking what a great study it would have made to see the different edited versions these enterprising theater owners created; imagine if we could have, as well as the self-indulgent "director's cut," the pragmatic "theater owner's cut." One thing you could be sure of: it wouldn't take over three hours.
It's been a while
I should have blogged and blogged and blogged from India, but didn't. Hard to say why, exactly... I suppose in part it's the problem of internet access, but my excuse isn't that great. The last two times I've been in Bombay, staying out in the suburbs where most of my film interviewees live, I've used the Guru Nanak Cybercafe across the road from the hostel for my emailing and surfing. To be sure, the place has its drawbacks: it's little more than a shed with a really, really fast internet connection, and it's way too close to a garbage-clogged creek for olfactory comfort. But it's advantages are many: convenient; nice, helpful proprietors; reliable connection and not too many pop-ups. There are flashier places with bracing A/C that you can go to, but the "help" is hostile, the connection gets lost all the time, pop-ups drive you mad, you can't download files without paying an extra fee, and so on and so on.
But even with the redoubtable Guru Nanak Cybercafe close by, I didn't blog. Why not? Exams to grade for one thing; work for another. In three weeks, my assistant -- more co-researcher -- Mona and I did over ten interviews. Pretty good for such a short time in India, given the inertia of getting any research project going, particularly here.
Perhaps the world is made up of good and bad bloggers, by which I mean the ones who can sustain a habit as formidable as daily bowel regularity, and those who are, by comparison, constipated. I can't be the only person whose blogs are so intermittent.
The other thought that occurs to me is that solitary blogging is just harder for some people. I enjoy the repartee of long email threads, the sort you can now see on gmail. My daughter is a prolific contributor to my space and live journal; nothing seems to hold her back there, where she knows she is immediately part of an active reading (and writing) community. If one person in three months reads my stuff, it's a miracle. My friends know the link, but who can really be bothered to read what I have to say when there are other, more important things to do? So, the virtual "community" is really like any other "traditional" human community: there are always wallflowers.
