YOUUntil relatively recently, an excuse in the columns of the art review of any publication was vanishingly rare, if not exist. If crow had to be eaten, it would be the end result of some unprecedented legal action in which defendant and plaintiff cruelly determined – through a poker exchange of attorneys’ letters – what the possible outcome would be in court.
Not anymore. In 2018, then-drama critic Ben Brantley of the New York Times apologized after being accused of transphobia for a joke about the Broadway musical Head Over Heels. He got a satirical confusion about his star, the trans performer Peppermint whose character was identified as non-binary.
Now Variety – a magazine with top-notch film critics – feels sorry for its review of the Carey Mulligan film Promising Young Woman, in which reviewer Dennis Harvey said he thinks Mulligan was broadcast wrong. Harvey wrote that “although she was a good actress”, Mulligan was a strange choice and that it turned out to be in bad clothes. He said the producer of the film, Margot Robbie, was perhaps better off in such a confrontational sexual role.
The review was published in January 2020, but after Mulligan attacked it in an interview, Variety did something that can only be described as having your humble pie and eating it. They apologized: “Variety apologizes to Carey Mulligan and regrets the insensitive language and insinuation in our review … which kept her daring performance to a minimum.” But they still carry out the review below, with the alleged offensive section quite intact.
This is very weak of them. And in the immortal words of Christopher Hitchens: “Apologies are boring. What we want is an explanation. ‘Perhaps Mulligan was particularly angry about this review because it appeared in a magazine considered the industry bible, which is vital in award seasons, and so a review is closer to the Ofsted report of a school than the subjective piece that it may be in other publications. And as the Telegraph’s Robbie Collin suggests, it may well be that Variety’s sheepish half-climb is due to a shrinking fear of the almighty studio and talent PRs, who are fiercely threatening to block access to the stars in their stable.
But that’s not the point. There are legions of women commenting on social media today to say that – guess what – they too are bored, in the languishing sense of Hitchens, with the timid semi-apology of Variety and what they want is a wider and more diverse range of critical opinions women voices coming through. And something else: they want critical freedom and publications with the intellectual courage to support it.
For what it’s worth, I disagree with Harvey on the fact that Mulligan is being broadcast incorrectly. She does not just do ‘English rose’ personae. This is a performance to compare more with her brilliantly challenging and offensive role in Steve McQueen’s Shame. But critics may have opinions, however unpleasant, and even comment on the image of an actor at the top of the screen – as long as it is presented in good critical faith, which in my opinion was the Variety review. Mulligan is also entitled to her opinion, and critics are not immune from criticism.