This whole list phenomenon is getting out of hand

I understand the need for top 10 lists at the end of the year. No critic likes them, but they sell papers, so they must. But what I don't understand is providing lists when they are unprovoked, just for the hell of it. I thought this was the whole phenomenon High Fidelity mocked. Witness every issue of Time magazine of the last decade for how these things get out of hand. The only pseudo-unprovoked lists that work, in my mind, are the A.V. Club's weekly feature, which are so over the top in their specificity that they usually end up mentioning every relevant work. McSweeney's lists are a clinical study of pretension.

In any case, the most recent absurd list may top them all, and it comes from someone who should know better. Benedict Nightingale, general guru of all things British Theater and The Times's head theater critic, recently came out with his list of top 10 Hamlets he's ever seen. His analysis of what makes a good Hamlet is interesting, but nothing new. Of course, very few people will actually read his analysis, they'll skip to the list, where he not only mentions the top 10 Hamlets (out of 60) that he's seen, but gives them a numerical order (ugh). Simon Russell Beale at the National Theatre in 2000 (woohoo this blog's namesake!), who of course gives a mind-numbing analysis of the role, summarizing Hamlet as a "decent chap."

In my mind, why not go further back? Why not go to David Garrick, inventor of the famed "dramatic pause" or Edmund Kean, famous for wowing audiences in the ghost scene by spinning three times, or Richard Burbage, the man who started it all?