The Pitfalls and Bias of Reader Response

When iconic Jewish songwriter/singer Bob Dylan publicly devoted his life to Jesus Christ in 1979 it stirred debate amongst long time Dylan fans, Jewish leaders, Christian leaders, and cultural critics of the time. Some saw Dylan as a trader to the social causes they claimed he championed, others viewed him as a trader to his "former" religion of Judaism, and finally some saw him as using Christianity as a way to gain attention for his career. When looking at reviews by music journalists of these three albums, they were often marred by prejudice or bias because of the journalists looking at Bob Dylan as a Christian. Focusing too much on the beliefs or non-beliefs of the artist, some reviewers and so-called ardent fans of Dylan could not focus on the music itself. Even if some of the reviews generally looked past Dylan's biography, usually at least one mention of his Christianity occurs in the review. The fatal flaw of reader-response criticism is that it pervades what are supposed to be objective reviews on art with personal bias about the artist.  Certainly, the job of the "rock" critic is not to give a history or judgment of an artist's life in order to review a collection of music. This website serves as a reminder and a look in the rhetorical process of album reviews and the problems with reader-response criticism as it pertains to the utilization of biography in the album review genre.