(This article contains affiliate links. If you order something from an affiliate link, the seller still gets full price, our website gets a small commission, and it costs the same as if you went to Amazon without the link.) In her essay “Eighty-Six the Mother,” in 1995’s “From Mouse to Mermaid: The politics of film, gender, and culture,” Lynda Haas discusses the penchant for Disney films to kill the mother and avoid telling stories about the mother-daughter relationship. There’s no question that Disney has gotten rid of the mother in many of its stories. Even if it’s because of the story told by the source material, Disney still chose the type of material it wanted to bring to the screen.
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What does 1980’s ‘Popeye’ have to do with creativity and criticism?
1980’s “Popeye” starring Robin Williams and Shelley Duvall is a bad film. The chorus sings off-key or flat, which is pretty terrible for a musical, and Williams mumbles his way through the role eliminating any sort of comedy that would have come from his adlib skills. The lone bright spot is Duvall, who was seemingly born to play Olive Oyl. (You can read my longer review, which is criticism and not being critical, at Penguinate.weebly.com.)
Normally, as a Penguinator, you don’t want to criticize anything. While criticism may make you look smarter, it can snuff out a person’s creative spark. Engage in too much criticism, and you may find your own spark for creativity failing.
We don’t want to discourage creativity, but there are times when it’s important to be critical. The not-so-subtle difference between criticizing and being critical is that being critical is designed to help the person get better. Criticism tears people down; being critical helps to build them up.
The next time you’re about to point out the flaws in someone else’s idea, be sure that your helping the person to build up on the idea. The spark you save may be your own.
Be active: Nurture your own spark. Turn off your inner editor until it is needed.
For more on creativity, check out these books:
7 Episodes in: ‘Instant Hotel,’ Creativity and the Power of Critique
It doesn’t take any special qualifications to be rated one of the top one percent of TripAdvisor raters. The only thing you really have to do is write a lot of reviews about places you’ve been. You don’t need to have any expertise in what you’re writing about, you don’t have to take into account anything but your own opinion. There are no other qualifications for being a reviewer.
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Penguinate! Positive Creativity 