Creating Cultural Authority and Voice: Roger Ebert’s Film Criticism

• In Event: 1148 - Popular Culture: Cultural Taste and Aesthetics

Abstract

The research reported here addresses how the practice of film criticism speaks to a wide range of taste publics by focusing on the work of the reputationally consecrated American critic, Roger Ebert (b. 1942 – d. 2013). What was distinctive about Ebert was his unique ability to speak to multiple audiences in ways that were meaningful to them, an achievement that was widely recognized by the critical community as well as the filmgoing audience. Through a textual analysis of Ebert’s writings, the findings bring historical perspective to scholarly understanding of the incursion of the popular aesthetic into professional film criticism.

Author

• Denise D. Bielby, University of California-Santa Barbara