the public do vote with their wallets, but if they see enough so-so or negative reviews, they won't even take their wallets out of their pockets. So these critics have MUCH more power than you seem to think.
I don't think you read my post correctly. I never said that critics didn't wield power, or very little power. In that passage you quoted, I used the word "
IF." Critics would have no or little power IF we don't give it to them. Applying your comment, that means the public not seeing "enough so-so or negative reviews"
from critics. So whether we take out our wallets would have nothing to do with their reviews.
As an aside, let's take the examples of
Wicked and
Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark. The former had mixed reviews when it opened yet is now considered a bona fide hit, and even, a classic. The touring production is one of the longest in history. But even the NY Times' very influential Ben Brantley panned it, calling it a "sermon" with a "generic score." The same ambivalence happened when it opened in London's West End, with critics calling it "a mess," "overblown," "incoherent and dreadfully superficial." Its success was all due to word-of-mouth. Composer Stephen Schwartz told an interviewer, "What can I say? Reviews are reviews.... I know we divided the critics. We didn't divide the audience, and that's what counts." If you want more details, go to Wikipedia.
Spiderman's troubled history is legendary and well-known, so I won't go into details. In previews, the show was universally panned and ridiculed, and any normal show would have closed before opening. Yet word of mouth, mostly from thrill-seeking kids, kept it afloat until major changes were made. And even when the revised show opened, the reviews were pretty bad (the average critic review went from an F+ to C+) but through word-of-mouth, it became a record-breaking hit. In the first full week of 2011, it grossed $1,588,514, the largest in Broadway history. After three years of mostly soldout audiences, it will finally close early next year. The failure is mostly due to the extremely high production cost. The bottom line is that despite the very negative reviews, word-of-mouth proved stronger. The show catered mostly to thrill-seeking kids and tourists who didn't give a damn about critics. This runs counter to your claim, "if they see enough so-so or negative reviews, they won't even take their wallets out of their pockets." The fans knew all about the negative reviews, which had become part of popular culture, but opened up their wallets anyway.
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