History Main / StrawCritic

* In ''{{Film/Birdman}}'', Tabitha Dickenson is this. The New York Times' theater critic, she vows to Riggan Thomson that she will destroy his play, simply because he's a washed-up Hollywood actor who's going to fail to achieve "real art." He, in return, [[TheReasonYouSuckSpeech delivers a much-needed smackdown to her]], chewing out her usage of labels without risking everything like he's doing.

* ''VideoGame/{{Psychonauts}}'' has Jasper Rolls, a critic boss character who was the absurd epitome of this trope; an ugly, obese, snobbish man who has many jokes at his expense and who [[WordsCanBreakMyBones literally hurls]] cliched derogatory adjectives like "tedious" and "monotonous" etc. whilst you battle him. This gets even more interesting when you remember that the battle takes place [[JourneyToTheCenterOfTheMind in the mindscape]] of [[WhiteDwarfStarlet demented former actress]] Gloria van Gouton, whose insanity is partially due to the harsh mockery of critics when her act fell apart. Jasper is a manifestation of their criticism combined with Gloria's own insecurities and self-doubt. In a bit of a [[FridgeBrilliance Fridge Brilliant]] [[SubvertedTrope subversion]] to this trope, Jasper doesn't die after you defeat him--he just shrinks from his previously huge size. Having an inner (or outer) critic isn't ''bad'' in and of itself (without it, [[ProtectionFromEditors we wouldn't feel the need to improve ourselves]])- but if it grows too harsh or too negative (like in Gloria's case), it can become a problem.

See also ReviewerStockPhrases. Compare FanDumb, UnpleasableFanbase, CausticCritic, and FanHater.

* The ironically named ''Zesty'' Gourmand of ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'' was a food critic who somehow managed to get almost every restaurant in Canterlot to serve bland and stereotypically tiny food dishes even though no one else seemed to like eating them. While she is often compared to [[{{WesternAnimation/Ratatouille}} Anton Ego]] by the fanbase, her characterization is considerably weaker, as is to be expected from this show, and she doesn't even ''try'' the restaurant's more unique food at the end of the episode, even going as so far as to complain that ponies were eating there when it didn't have her coveted "three hoof" rating.

* The ironically named ''Zesty'' Gourmand of ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'' was a food critic who somehow managed to get almost every restaurant in Canterlot to serve bland and stereotypically tiny food dishes even though no one else seemed to like eating them. While she is often compared to [[{{WesternAnimation/Ratatouille}} Anton Ego]] by the fanbase, her characterization is considerably weaker and she doesn't even ''try'' the restaurant's more unique food at the end of the episode, even going as so far as to complain that ponies were eating there when it didn't have her coveted "three hoof" rating.

Can occasionally be a case of TruthInTelevision, since some critics have been known to [[CowboyBebopAtHisComputer make pronouncements about media]] [[ComplainingAboutShowsYouDontWatch which they haven't even seen firsthand]]. But this rarely happens so spectacularly as in fiction.

# The caricature conservative who is incapable of understanding any TrueArt created by a living person, and judges it harshly based on its stubborn failure to be like [[NostalgiaFilter the stuff he likes that was created]] [[TrueArtIsAncient over two hundred years ago]].

* ''Webcomic/{{Starslip}}'''s Memnon Vanderbeam is an art critic from TheFuture who sees amazing depths in 21st-century relics like ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'' and the movie ''Film/{{Catwoman}}'', but goes into a fit when he discovers the woman he loves owns a [[{{Pun}} "Hang In There!"]] poster. He resolves his cognitive dissonance by writing a hundred-page dissertation defending the "Hang In There!" poster as an example of TrueArt.

** As {{Anvilicious}} as that is, it may have some small basis in reality. In talking about his career, Anthony said that he used to do detailed, extensive write-ups for stories, all of which were rejected. When he started submitting small blurbs that basically communicated nothing more than the general idea of what he wanted to write, he got approved. Which doesn't make the story any less strawmannish, really, but hey, write what you know.

[[folder:Videogames]]

* [[Creator/JerryPeet Lily Orchard]], in spades, at least with her more recent videos. It's gotten to the point several other critics are actually doing video critiques OF her.

* Creator/BobChipman discussed this trope in episodes of ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FzzIDgVLm8 In Bob We Trust]]'' and ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5z0ikXGuRqI The Big Picture]]'', specifically its more modern incarnation of online video critics who specialize in lengthy, pedantic, [[HairTriggerTemper blisteringly angry]] hot takes on movies, games, and TV shows that they don't like. He feels that, while some of these folks are good (specifically citing WebVideo/TheAngryVideoGameNerd, WebVideo/TheNostalgiaCritic, and ''WebAnimation/ZeroPunctuation'' as "angry critic" shows that he's a fan of), most of them are contributing to a coarsening of the discourse surrounding criticism as a whole, and fueling stereotypes of critics as people who can never be pleased, [[AccentuateTheNegative look for any excuse to bash a work]], overly prioritize plot mechanics and structure at the expense of theme, aesthetic, and impact, and take their subjective opinions to be objective fact -- stereotypes that many critics proceed to internalize themselves. He created a web series of his own called ''Really That Good'' to serve as a SpiritualAntithesis to this style, analyzing movies that, while popular, he thinks deserve recognition as legitimate classics as opposed to pieces of pop art that are kept alive because [[PopCulturalOsmosis everybody just "knows" that they're good]], and for the longest time he resisted doing a "''Really That Bad''" episode (until his sheer hatred of ''Film/BatmanVSupermanDawnOfJustice'' finally convinced him otherwise in order to get it out of his system) because he wanted to avoid what he saw as just joyless negativity that would contribute little.

* [[Creator/JerryPeet Lily Orchard]], in spades, at least with her more recent videos. It's gotten to the point several other critics are actually doing video critiques OF her.

[[Creator/JerryPeet Lily Orchard]], in spades, at least with her more recent videos. It's gotten to the point several other critics are actually doing video critiques OF her.

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Ratatouille}}'' features Anton Ego, an antagonistic restaurant critic who doesn't seem to care much about his journalistic ethics, as he publicly discloses his identity and tells restaurants ahead of time that he's giving them a bad review. In the end he proves to have HiddenDepths, but this is communicated via a monologue about how critics are inherently inferior to artists.

* ''Manga/{{Bakuman}}'' has an arc with a new editor, Miura, who has a passion for gag mangas that he tries to force onto the protagonists. After a lot of argument he and the protagonists find a compromise, getting into a style that the protagonists prefer, but with much more humour. His approach is partially influenced by his believing that gag mangas generally do better and, being a new editor, needing to edit a successful series in order to keep his job.

* Creator/BobChipman discussed this trope in episodes of ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FzzIDgVLm8 In Bob We Trust]]'' and ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5z0ikXGuRqI The Big Picture]]'', specifically its more modern incarnation of online video critics who specialize in lengthy, pedantic, [[HairTriggerTemper blisteringly angry]] hot takes on movies, games, and TV shows that they don't like. He feels that, while some of these folks are good (specifically citing WebVideo/TheAngryVideoGameNerd, WebVideo/TheNostalgiaCritic, and ''WebAnimation/ZeroPunctuation'' as "angry critic" shows that he's a fan of), most of them are contributing to a coarsening of the discourse surrounding criticism as a whole, and fueling stereotypes of critics as people who can never be pleased, [[AccentuateTheNegative look for any excuse to bash a work]], overly prioritize plot mechanics and structure at the expense of theme, aesthetic, and impact, and take their subjective opinions to be objective fact -- stereotypes that many critics proceed to internalize themselves. He created a web series of his own called ''Really That Good'' to serve as a SpiritualAntithesis to this style, analyzing movies that, while popular, he thinks deserve recognition as legitimate classics as opposed to pieces of pop art that are kept alive because [[PopCulturalOsmosis everybody just "knows" that they're good]], and for the longest time he resisted doing a "''Really That Bad''" episode (until ''Film/BatmanVSupermanDawnOfJustice'' finally convinced him otherwise) because he wanted to avoid what he saw as just joyless negativity that would contribute little.

* Creator/JMichaelStraczynski's Franchise/{{Superman}}: Grounded had an entire slew of straw critics in the form of reporters asking Superman a series of ([[StrawmanHasaPoint perfectly reasonable]]) questions about why he randomly decided to walk across America. Not only does this attempt completely fail to recognize the in-universe hypocrisy (Clark Kent is a reporter) but it also foreshadowed that we'd get a series where basic logic is ignored (even though the story is ''supposed'' to take place in a more realistic depiction of America) in favor of [[{{Superdickery}} Superman being a dick.]]

* Subverted in the Tony Hancock film 'The Rebel' where George Sander's art critic Sir Charles Broward is portrayed as being the only one to recognise that Hancock's work is actually rubbish and that Paul Massie is the real genius.

* Creator/BobChipman discussed this trope in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FzzIDgVLm8 an episode]] of ''In Bob We Trust'', specifically its more modern incarnation of online video critics who specialize in lengthy, blisteringly-angry hot takes on movies, games, and TV shows that they don't like. He feels that, while some of these folks are good (specifically citing WebVideo/TheAngryVideoGameNerd, WebVideo/TheNostalgiaCritic, and ''WebVideo/ZeroPunctuation'' as "angry critic" shows that he's a fan of), most of them are contributing to a coarsening of the discourse surrounding criticism as a whole, and fueling stereotypes of critics as people who can never be pleased and [[AccentuateTheNegative look for any excuse to bash a work]] -- stereotypes that many critics proceed to internalize themselves. He created a web series of his own called ''Really That Good'' to serve as a SpiritualAntithesis to this style, analyzing movies that, while popular, he thinks deserve recognition as legitimate classics as opposed to just pop art that's kept alive because everybody just "knows" that they're good, and for the longest time he resisted doing a "''Really That Bad''" episode (until ''Film/BatmanVSupermanDawnOfJustice'' finally convinced him otherwise) because he wanted to avoid what he saw as just joyless negativity that would contribute little.

* In Gian-Carlo Menotti's opera ''Maria Golovin'' is the character Dr. Zuckertanz, who scoffs at the sentimental duets that the mother keeps, insulting nineteenth-century Romantic music that Menotti himself was fond of emulating, asking "must music only be sweet?" [[CrowningMusicOfAwesome Then he sings an Italian duet written in precisely that style.]]

* In ''Film/{{The Raven|2012}}'' (2012), the killer's first victim is a literary critic who had bashed Creator/EdgarAllanPoe's work, and had been killed with a contraption from "The Pit and the Pendulum", which leads the Baltimore police to call on Poe himself to help solve the crime.

* The Creator/StephenSondheim musical ''Theatre/MerrilyWeRollAlong'' features a Broadway producer who dismisses a certain song as not having "a tune you can hum," which Sondheim himself has heard once or twice during his career. The song, revised with a new lyric and accompaniment, becomes a chart-topping success; indeed, the same producer is caught humming along to it.

* Creator/RichardWagner's ''Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg'' has Beckmesser, a talentless SmallNameBigEgo who takes Walther's first song to task for all sorts of offenses against form. When he tries to do better, he fails epically and hilarity ensues. Loosely based on Eduard Hanslick, a fierce critic from Vienna, who hated Wagner.

* The last page or so of [[MacdonaldHall Macdonald Hall Goes Hollywood]] describes a film critic who hasn't liked a single thing he's ever seen in his whole life... until he happens to watch the video tape made by one of the characters that happened to capture all of the crazy events that took place during the novel. Which the critic, of course, immediately declares to be brilliant.

# The caricature ''avant-garde'' lover who only likes TrueArt, which is, of course, [[TrueArtIsAngsty angsty]], foreign, [[TrueArtIsIncomprehensible incomprehensible]], daring, political, and often repugnant or [[BrownNote actively dangerous]] to the average audience member. He [[FanHater thinks less of you]] for liking whatever it is that [[ItsPopularNowItSucks you do like]], and firmly believes that ViewersAreMorons. After all, if viewers weren't morons, they obviously wouldn't be watching LowestCommonDenominator crap!
# The caricature conservative who is incapable of understanding any TrueArt created by a living person, and judges it harshly based on its stubborn failure to be like the stuff he likes that was [[TrueArtIsAncient created over two hundred years ago]].

* In the third novel of the ''BabylonFive'' Psi-Corps trilogy, a fugitive Bester makes a career of this as a literary critic who ''never'' gives a positive review (A typical review: The plot is revealed on a need-to-know basis. You don't need to know). He actually has a small crisis of professional ethics when he picks a book to review that he actually ends up enjoying.

* Creator/BobChipman discussed this trope in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FzzIDgVLm8 an episode]] of ''In Bob We Trust'', specifically its more modern incarnation of online video critics who specialize in lengthy, blisteringly-angry hot takes on movies, games, and TV shows that they don't like. He feels that, while some of these folks are good (specifically citing WebVideo/TheAngryVideoGameNerd, WebVideo/TheNostalgiaCritic, and ''WebVideo/ZeroPunctuation'' as "angry critic" shows that he's a fan of), most of them are contributing to a coarsening of the discourse surrounding criticism as a whole, and fueling stereotypes of critics as people who can never be pleased and [[AccentuateTheNegative look for any excuse to bash a work]] -- stereotypes that many critics proceed to internalize themselves. He created a web series of his own called ''Really That Good'' to serve as a SpiritualAntithesis to this style, analyzing movies that, while popular, he thinks deserve recognition as legitimate classics as opposed to just pop art that's kept alive because everybody just "knows" that they're good.

* The ironically named ''Zesty'' Gourmand of WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic was a food critic who somehow managed to get almost every restaurant in Canterlot to serve bland and stereotypically tiny food dishes even though no one else seemed to like eating them. While she is often compared to [[{{WesternAnimation/Ratatouille}} Anton Ego]] by the fanbase, her characterization is considerably weaker and she doesn't even ''try'' the restaurant's more unique food at the end of the episode, even going as so far as to complain that ponies were eating there when it didn't have her coveted "three hoof" rating.

* ''FunnyOrDie'': Creator/AlfredMolina as Arthur H. Cartwright, [[http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/0a662de547/children-s-theater-critic-with-alfred-molina?rel=player# children's theater critic]].

** Hilariously JMS gave up on the series completely because it sucked. A series that uses a Straw Critic in its very first issue pretty much screams "I refuse to do my job competently!".