Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

This summer ArtsBeat is inviting members of the theater world to contribute to the weekly Theater Talkback column, alternating with the critics Ben Brantley and Charles Isherwood. Writers have examined the challenges of casting the role of Fanny Brice in “Funny Girl”; unusual settings for Shakespeare stagings; the buzzkill of pre-show announcements; and the etiquette of booing at the theater.

This week, Jason Zinoman, a New York Times freelancer and the author of “Shock Value,” a book about horror-movie directors, explores the meaning and purpose of bad reviews.

Last week, a neighbor from down the hall stopped me in front of our building to say that two years ago I panned his play. It was actually worse than that. I walked out of his play and then wrote a blog post about exiting early, saying that at the point I left it seemed like maybe the worst show I had ever seen at the New York International Fringe Festival. It was not a very neighborly thing to do.

My first thought was to look out for sharp objects. He was unarmed. My long-held belief is that anyone roughed up in The New York Times should have a free pass for murderous thoughts and revenge fantasies. The problem for my neighbor is that seeing me regularly pushing a stroller past his door surely takes away some of the fun of imagining me being tortured in a subterranean dungeon. He also didn’t appear to be in a vengeful mood. In fact, we had a good-spirited conversation about the review and play that was far less awkward than you would expect. Time heals some wounds.

As the child of a theater director, I learned from an early age how much negative criticism can hurt. It can have a terrible impact on box office, careers and states of mind. Critics who think otherwise fool themselves. Bad reviews are also an essential part of the job. If you don’t write them, no one would believe the good ones. But more importantly, the popular idea that tough criticism emerges from malice or cruelty is almost always wrong. So why do critics write brutal pans? And can they go too far?

In her classic 1914 essay in The New Republic, “The Duty of Harsh Criticism,” Rebecca West argued that the English arts press had become so reverential that “a new and abusive school of criticism” was necessary. That seems less urgent in the age of the Internet, but her evisceration of the supposed virtue of amiable, boosterish coverage is not. Such criticism, she writes, “excuses itself by protesting that it is a pity to waste fierceness on things that do not matter. But they do matter.”

This summer has seen its share of fierceness in the theater scene. The first big public dust-up began with an indignant letter to the editor written by Bill Lawrence, the creator of the television show “Scrubs,” to New York magazine. He thought that its critic Scott Brown was “too mean” in his review of a play by “Scrubs” star Zach Braff. The review was indeed biting, as was the response from Mr. Lawrence, which included a sympathy-killing line suggesting that the critic would benefit from some sexual attention.

Mr. Brown’s rebuttal to the rebuttal turned this into a Ping-Pong game of insults generating a rush of Web traffic. It’s worth analyzing, however, the substance of Mr. Lawrence’s letter since it rests on a revealing notion of the role of the theater critic. “In the age of social media and immediate reader reaction,” he writes, “it’s tempting to skip over the fair critical assessment (your job).”

That description of my job is sort of like defining “Scrubs” as a show that needs to entertain enough people so it will not get canceled. It’s accurate, but not the whole story. Context, description, insight and readable prose can be just as important in a review, but also, what does “fair critical assessment” actually mean? Mr. Lawrence suggests since Mr. Brown did not like Mr. Braff’s work as the writer and director of the film “Garden State,” reviewing his play fails the test. Or as he colorfully puts it: “Let’s say I hate cherries. Should I be the one to tell everyone how your mom’s homemade cherry crumble tastes?”

To answer Mr. Lawrence’s question, one fair thing for a critic (of cherries or plays) to do is make his or her prejudices transparent. Then the reader knows where the opinion is coming from. That’s what Mr. Brown did in the first line of his review (“It’s oh-so-easy to hate Zach Braff”), which Mr. Lawrence himself points out. You could argue that Mr. Brown could have made his point more explicit by putting it in the first person, but it seemed clear to me.

No critic, however, approaches a work of art from a position of blissfully ignorant objectivity. We bring taste and experience, just like everyone else. The perfectly even-handed critic is a fantasy that doesn’t fit the profile of its finest practitioners. Kenneth Tynan once said he doubted he could love someone who didn’t want to see “Look Back in Anger,” and compared George Bernard Shaw’s criticism with the work of a bulldozer. That was a compliment. Pauline Kael flaunted her tastes, championing and denouncing with equal fervor. Her intensity of feeling was an argument that art is too important to leave to the detached.

Chad Batka for The New York Times

The passion of harsh words is often just the flip side of effusive praise. That comes through in every sentence of Stephen Sondheim’s jeremiad against Diane Paulus’s stated intentions for her revival of “Porgy and Bess,” sparking the other firestorm of the summer. In a letter to The Times, Mr. Sondheim declared his opposition to filling out the backstory of the characters of the show and changing its ending. His tone was angry, even mean, and while some speculated about ulterior motives, anyone who has read Mr. Sondheim’s opinionated book “Finishing the Hat” knows this argument stems from strongly-held beliefs about “Porgy and Bess.”

Ms. Paulus will have her chance to prove him wrong, and while she was surely not pleased with this feedback, I suspect it will only increase interest in her production and debate about the show. What was startling about Mr. Sondheim’s letter was its disregard for the diplomatic etiquette usually practiced by artists in the press. It suggested there are things in the theater more important than hurt feelings.

Of course, fairness is important in criticism. Critics are human and a negative review can go off the rails and veer into cruelty and personal attacks. The temptations of the witty put-down are real, and when it comes to the Fringe, seeing five shows in a day can also play a role. We should take our responsibility seriously. But I would rather live in a theater culture where discussions about plays can get as contentious (and occasionally rude) as those about politics. Theater may be known as the fabulous invalid, but artists and critics who go into this low-paying, highly competitive field are tougher than you think.

The proof is online in comments sections, chat rooms and blogs. Social networking has made critics more accessible and increasingly allowed artists and those who cover them to exchange ideas, while retaining necessary distance. With the explosion of new media, being a critic today also means you know what it’s like to be harshly attacked. The sting fades.

As a matter of fact, my friendly neighbor asked me to speak on a panel with him about the relationship between critics and artists. I agreed. Then he invited me inside his apartment to read the ending of his play. The conversation continues.

Sometimes the harshest critics are readers. So tell me: Are there bad reviews you still remember? Or learned from?