Dazed and Confused: No Longer Confusing and also, Why Criticism Matters

Just recently New York Times Book Review published a set of articles titled: "Why Criticism Matters," and while, I didn't read any of these articles, the very answer to that question seems to be answered in this video below. A.O. Scott, the New York Times head movie critic, does a video review of 'Dazed and Confused' -- an old favorite of mine, that I used to watch in my cloudy, dingy basement. I liked the movie for the same reasons I liked American Pie and Superbad: it offered comfort and empathy to the world of high school I so desperately wished to escape. Here in this video though, the critic says exactly that but in so many ways, offering clarity and understanding to a movie that I didn't think needed any. In essence, that's why I think criticism matters, to illuminate a work to a new level of understanding, just how a professor does when he takes a poem that seems like a crowd of nonsensical meaningless words, and shows how they are so much more.