Beyond Professional and Fan Criticism: Affinitive Rhetoric of Czech Video Reviews of Films on YouTube

Existing scholarship on film and cultural criticism in the digital era points to blurred boundaries between the so-called professionals and amateurs or fans. How, then, can we delineate and define the intersections, shared practices and points of contact between these different, yet converging critical schools? This study, based on a rhetorical analysis of three Czech Youtube channels (Toren, Medojed, Hroty Algernona), argues that film reviews in the digital age can be productively described in terms of affinitive rhetoric. Affinity here does not stand for a personal emotional bond to films or their publics, but rather represents an ambiguous blend of attachment and distanced recognition of its boundaries. On the one hand, youtubers intuitively tie themselves to norms of classical Hollywood narration, and as microcelebrities strive to influence and unite with their followers. On the other hand, they see Hollywood cinema as rooted in conventionalized and commerce-driven entertainment industry, and with regards to the YouTube economy differentiate between their own aesthetic preferences and preferences of other fans or viewers. As this study finally suggests, affinitive rhetoric can be shared both by film fans and professional critics, and therefore allows us to make a step towards rethinking contemporary film criticism and its possible ways of categorization.

Keywords: film criticism, affinitive rhetoric, video reviews, YouTube, digital media