Armond White

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Armond White (born in Detroit, Michigan).

1 Career
2 Books
3 Favorite directors
4 Controversy
5 External links

[edit] Career

Originally making his mark as a critic for the black-owned New York-based weekly newspaper, The City Sun, White, himself an African-American, quickly established a persona as a fearless critic of filmmakers who he thought sullied the black American experience, including Eddie Murphy and Spike Lee. At the same time, he also exposed The City Sun's primarily black readership to the esoteric work of such film directors as Jean-Luc Godard, Terence Davies, and musicians such as Morrissey, The Pet Shop Boys and Erasure. With his wide-spread, eclectic taste in multiple art forms, White became the subject of much media dispute and reader fascination.

As a curator and lecturer, White has been commissioned by the Film Society of Lincoln Center to present a yearly show of the best in music videos and discuss their directors as part of the Society's annual Video Festival. Since 1993, White's program has been the festival's most popular, receiving invitations for presentations in several such international venues as Tokyo and Mexico City. In books, essays and lectures, White pioneered the case for the music video being one of the most significant postmodern art forms.

[edit] Books

Two books about popular culture are authored by White:

The Resistance: Ten Years of Pop Culture That Shook the World, published in 1995
Rebel for the Hell of It: The Art-Life of Tupac Shakur, published in 1996

White also contributed an essay, "Speaking Truth To Power" to the anthology, New York Calling: From Blackout To Bloomberg, Marshall Berman and Brian Berger, eds., published in 2007.

[edit] Favorite directors

As a film scholar, White is best known for his support of such directors as Steven Spielberg, Brian De Palma, Robert Altman and André Téchiné. He generally dismisses mainstream critical favorites like Todd Haynes, Jim Jarmusch, Michael Mann, and Lars Von Trier. White's reviews stand out for their numerous references to standard-bearing "classic" directors such as D.W. Griffith, Carl Dreyer, Fritz Lang, Jean Renoir, and Jean-Luc Godard. He has also hailed little-known African filmmaker Ousmane Sembène of Senegal, and the American filmmakers Charles Burnett (Killer of Sheep), Wendell B. Harris Jr. ("Chameleon Street"), and Charles Stone III (Mr. 3000, Drumline, and Paid in Full).

[edit] Controversy

Many mainstream critics accuse White of contradicting the grain of mainstream criticism only to provoke debate^{[citation needed]}. He frequently praises films that almost all other critics have drubbed, such as Little Man, Sahara and Against the Ropes. He often focuses a large portion of his reviews to attacks on the critical establishment. In 2002, he voted for A.I. - Artificial Intelligence as one of the ten greatest movies of all time[1]. He is also frequently accused of being an aggressive pop culture writer who lends intellectual legitimacy to commercial product.^{[citation needed]}

Meanwhile, Vanity Fair columnist James Wolcott cited White as the nation's most "fearlessly independent minded" film critic.

In 2003, White caused great controversy^{[citation needed]} when his article, "Their Souls for a Freebie"[2], was printed on the front page of New York Press. The broadside attacked the questionable motives of national film critics who sided with the film industry's protest against the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) ban of DVD and VHS screeners of movies during the year-end award season.

MPAA president Jack Valenti saluted White's stance, saying "I'd like to embrace you warmly." Other critics bristled at White's in-house criticism.^{[citation needed]}