Oh, I Loved You, LOVED Your Work (or else you'll sue me...)

I thought that you were supposed to grow out of the constant need for praise when you left your amateur student theatre group. The "Oh my god you were so great, how great was she Jenna?" "Yeah she was FANTASTIC" gushing rubbish should surely finish once you graduate into the real world and choose to begin publicly "performing" in whatever field you choose to pursue be that acting, singing, public speaking, politics... or cooking...

The nature of public performance of any kind, especially when people are paying to be the 'audience', is that you are placing yourself in a position to be judged. If your performance falls below expectations or a set of industry standards, you can hardly expect people to go on applauding. As a critic of any kind of 'performance' if you sycophantically support substandard fare, giving reports which are incongruent with reality, you cannot expect to enjoy a very long or illustrious career. The position of the critic is to judge and inform the public of such judgments. In short, to criticise. But this may all be set to change in the future...

If you missed it in 2003, a court case against a Herald food critic was launched by Coco Roco, a King Street Wharf outfit, for defamation resulting in loss and damage.

The original review was damning, but I would say, probably deserved. Paying $50 or more for a main, you would hope for something pretty damned spectacular!

At the initial hearing , the jury concluded that Coc Roco had served substandard food and gave bad service - but this was fair reporting, rather than defamation. But the High Court and the Court of Appeal disagreed, ruling that the review consituted defamation as the review "had been an attack on the restaurant as a business and that the harm had been more acute."

The High Court judgment was 6-1. SIX-ONE! This was no hung case, closely contested and contentious. This was apparently a clear cut case with only one dissenting voice (Justice Michael Kirby of course, bless his dissenting cotton socks). 

This sets an uncomfortable and potentially dangerous precedent, both for freedom of speech and for restaurants, theatres and their critics. 

There is no point in having a critic who is unable to give fair assessments of what they are reviewing and they woudl be failing in their duty to the public to gave positive reviews where there is no substance to back up these claims. Do critics restrict themselves to reviewing only the good? what do they do if they waste their time at a bad place? Chalk it down to experience and move on to the next place in search of something better with not a word spoken? 

Surely the way forward is for places which are badly reviewed to lift their game? It concerns me that they'd take it as far as litigation. It seems a great pity if restaurants are resorting to suing critics, rather than taking their criticism constructively and seeking to improve themselves.  Perhaps this is indicative of a broader trend in society of constantly seeking approval, of thinking that good enough is sufficient rather than constantly striving to improve, of building shallow self esteem rather than the more worthy and sturdy self respect. 

Give me fair, honest appraisal any day over shallow praise - even if it stings for a bit. It presents opportunity for improvement and at least you know that praise, when it comes, is genuine.

 
Hausman's Critic