If nothing else, The Help has certainly stirred up some of the most interesting arguments amongst the critical set that we’ve seen in a while. Check out, for instance, this very excellent Indie Focus piece by Mark Olsen for the LA Times. It’s a retort to this piece by critic Stephen Farber, lauding The Help for its very middlebrowness. Here’s an excerpt from Farber’s piece that nicely sums up his stance:

These once-fashionable message movies came to be derided as earnest, simplistic and sentimental. There’s another key word that succinctly defines these earlier critical favorites: middlebrow. The word means “somewhat cultured” or aspiring to intellectual substance without quite reaching the exalted heights. Virginia Woolf defined the middlebrow reader as “betwixt and between,” devoted not to art for its own sake but to “money, fame, power, or prestige.” In other words, the middlebrow is not quite as smart as the true highbrow and not as spirited as the unpretentious lowbrow. Today’s critics wouldn’t dream of keeping company with this crowd.

But here are a few other words that might describe the films mocked as middlebrow: ambitious, humanistic, impassioned, moving, hard-hitting. When did all those adjectives turn into dirty words?

Apart from the obvious issue that Farber here is attempting to fine-tune a definition to serve the angle of his piece, the more pertinent point is that films that tend to be described as “middlebrow” are, to many of us who write a lot about indie film, indicative of the broader problems faced by independent filmmakers in finding their audience when middlebrow genre films are held up as what films should be. Aiming for “middlebrow,” to many of us, is indicative of a filmmaker sacrificing “art” for the sake of reach or commerce, something I’ve written about a lot here, most recently with this piece on art versus commercial potential in filmmaking.

While there are certainly independent films that end up reaching much broader audiences than you might expect, very often smart, intellectually ambitious indies flounder along, hoping to connect with enough ticket buyers to at least make back what they cost and allow the filmmaker to go on to make the next project (see, for instance, the rather depressing theatrical performance of Mike Tully’s ballsy debut, Septien).

When you’re aiming to make something closer to “art” than “commerce,” you’re not necessarily firing a wide scattershot, hoping to connect with as many people as possible. If your film happens to exceed its reach, by great luck, great marketing, or a combination of both, hey, fabulous. But if you’re starting out aiming for that middle ground when you’re developing your film, how likely is it that you’re going to create something that hits above that “average” watermark of easy-to-digest bromides that so much of the film-going public seems not just to accept, but to expect when they go to the movies?

When I was a kid, if I brought home, a test with, say, a 95% grade — which is an “A” — the first thing my dad would ask me was, “What happened to the other 5%? If you could get 95%, you could have gotten 100%. Don’t aim low.” A grade of “C” — denoting an “average” performance — would have been completely unacceptable. A “C” average in filmmaking is just that — average. Middlebrow, if you will. It means that, while there are certainly a good many films worse than yours, there’s an equal number of films that are better. How are you going to achieve anything approximating artistic excellence aiming for that? I’d far rather see an ambitious, but flawed effort, than one that takes the easy path of cinematic comfort food.

In his piece, Farber bemoans that critics don’t appreciate the middlebrow anymore, arguing that genre films have become: “…slighted while the press was slavering over movies with weightier themes.” I take exception to his use of “slavering” in this context, as it implies that this “new generation” of critics of which he speaks are a mindless herd of pseudo-intellectuals, drooling and fawning over highbrow cinema that the average person couldn’t hope to understand. That’s bullshit. Your average person has been trained by Hollywood — and by critics who laud mediocrity — to accept the “movies are just entertainment” mantra that keeps the big blockbusters profitable, and that’s what they’ve come to expect when they go to the movies.

If you feed a kid nothing but processed American cheese and chicken nuggets and such, you can’t expect them to decide suddenly that they love roasted beets and kale; we like what we’ve been taught to like, until we get old enough to figure out that there’s more flavor for the cinematic palate out there. And a lot of folks, even when they’re older (an awful lot, judging by box office receipts) will keep gravitating back to the cinematic fare that’s entertained them and made them happy since childhood. We’re raised to expect the “average” is as good as it gets, so that’s what a lot of people reach for.

Olsen argues — and I agree with him — that critics’ time and energy is better spent not on writing impassioned defenses of genre films, but on championing ambitious, smart indie films that are more accurately skewering broader societal issues. Olsen mentions some films I’ve written about recently, like Green and Without, and also tosses in The Color Wheel and Amigo for good measure. There are quite a few more indie films that could be added to that short list. I would go even further and argue that it’s not just that a critic’s time is better spent on writing about such films, but that it’s imperative for promoting and preserving the idea of cinema as an art form that we do so.

Look, the middlebrow genre films will have their reach and their audience and their box office dollars, with us or without us. There’s a very different mindset to writing about the films your average person is looking to choose from on that Friday night date at the multiplex (“Which of these flicks should I plunk down a chunk of cash to be entertained with this weekend?”) versus critiquing more challenging films (“What’s this director doing that’s out of the ordinary, that’s reaching for something smart and ambitious and maybe even a little — or a lot — challenging?”)

It’s the little films that need their champions, that need smart critics writing about them, to encourage potential ticket buyers — the kind of folks who are actually inclined to ponder which film playing at their local arthouse theater they should check out — to get off their duffs and go see them. And if you love independent film, supporting film as art means not just nodding sagely when someone mentions the latest Miranda July film over drinks at happy hour, but buying into the idea that art has to be supported, and that means it has to be supported by all of us who love independent film, with our dollars, at the box office.

Is the middlebrow really what we should be lauding? If that’s what criticism means, well, let’s just give everyone a nice, shiny “participant” ribbon and a pat on the back, bypass any discussions or intelligence or art or ambition, and leave it at that, shall we? No, I think not.

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