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Joyce Carol Oates has decided she should be a film critic.
Not professionally, of course.
These opinions are just that: opinions.
Since Christmas, she has tweeted at least a dozen times about her distaste for Steven SpielbergsThe Fabelmans.
Oates retweeted someone demanding shecongratulate de Armas.)
It is almost aggressively slow-moving & irresolute; serious themes resolved as in situation comedy.
ugliness of antisemitism tidily resolved.
determined to be a feel-good movie for the holidays (?).
All right, sure.
But since then, Oates has launched a tirade.
She calledThe Fabelmansremarkably mediocre and likened it to a sequence of made-for-TV scenes w/ exaggerated acting and inane dialogue.
Oatess Spielberg skepticism didnt start withThe Fabelmans,either.
She thentoldNewsweekthat the latter was a joke, but how were we to know?
Oatess Twitter feed will tell you she is almost never joking.
All of it has made Oatess online persona resemble a Film Twitter caricature.
If you enjoy the engagement that inflammatory tweets invite, I guess its hard to stop making them.
Oates doesnt think of her tweets as engraved in stone, as shetold Bustlelast year.
Its more like Im just talking, like you talk to your friend on the telephone.
Im always surprised when anybody cares.
As for Oatess Spielberg commentary, its only as self-aggrandizing and ephemeral as anything else on Twitter.
