was leafing through a copy of the rough guide to cult films i picked up in a charity shop earlier today, its like one of those dime a dozen books written by some snarky opinionated film buff reccomending films he likes amd trashing ones he thinks suck with a vague pretence at objectivity amd ngl i think this is how all film discussion should be handled,online film discourse has gotten way too letterboxdified and now the prince charles inema basically only does reruns of the first quarter of the letterboxd top 250 narrative films list.
everyones got way too far up their own asses about this shit, we need to retvrn to the video store spiritually and get a beer, go on tubi and watch some dumb italian bullshit where a load of guys get shot and lose a bathtub of blood each and the title sounds like the name of the average 14 year olds first doom wad
Art is cool and taking art seriously is cool, this post is just anti-intellectualism of which we certainly don’t need any more
I don’t think what theyre talking about is anti-intetellectual at all. They’re talking about the commodification of “taste.” They’re talking about the affectation of being intellectual about film, as opposed to the genuine affection for the art of film.
I saw a meme once that really resonated with me about this, it went something like this -
Person who’s seen 100 films: 2001 a Space Odyssey is the greatest film, it opened my eyes to what film can be etc.
Person who’s seen 1000 films: you really need to get on this Ghost Rider Spirit of Vengence.
The idea isn’t that people shouldn’t watch film seriously and enjoy it seriously. Art deserves that, and its fun to engage with art that way, as you said. But the performitive “taking art seriously” is not people opening themselves up and embracing art or building their own taste or ideas about it as a medium. They’re cutting themselves off by believing that there’s “correct” films to watch and “correct” opinions to have about them.
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My proper non-bit thoughts on this are that the same thing is happening to movie fans as it is with video game fans desperately clammering and overcompensating to be considered one of the big boys of art (though to a lesser degree). Film is an art form but terms like “cinephile” are just ridiculous, when did you last hear an avid reader call themself a “literatophile” or a lover of paintings all themselves a “paintophile”?
The increasing approach to the enjoyment of art as if it’s an identity, combined with all these checklists of the most important films to see “to be a cinephile” has led us to a point where there’s a million people who’ve seen almost all the (easier) films on the list and have a familiarity with the single most popular film of an art movement / genre and might not even know the names of more than a couple of its bedfellows, it’s a symptom of trying to fill out letterboxd lists and get the green completion bar rather than organically engaging with the number 1 film because of name recognition, then checking out a load of other films by director and their contemporaries.
I was being a bit hyperbolic with my example of a film to watch, but i was mainly referring to like all the corbucci films that arent quite django or the great silence but are still a blast like navajo joe, specialists, or hellraisers - they’re like perfect examples of good, well made films that are really enjoyable but barely anybody watches them bcs they’re not the absolute peak of their genre. The point is to learn to engage with art for the reason of loving art (even if its not the absolute peak of human creation), not for conferring the label of “high brow art appreciator” to the viewer.
Bibliophile is what book lovers call themselves. I’m not sure about painting, but it’s probably also something in Latin or Greek.
What repulses me is that these social identity things are actually intrinsic to our psychology and are pretty much what healthy humans do naturally, but while the impulse is natural, the mechanics and focal points around which groups form is, I think, mostly inorganic and the product of marketing and consumer culture.
Not to just boil it down to a low brow critique of the “consoomer” but it feels like I’m seeing people being exploited for their money but are paying with their minds and sense of self and belonging.
Mind you, this pursuit of social identity is, in my opinion, orthogonal to a genuine pursuit of a love of art. Possibly antithetical. So this consumption of media commodities (encouraged by capitalism and exploiting the social identity drive) is actually wearing the skin and appropriating the symbols of art appreciation, but it’s a obviously not the authentic thing.
Ehh, sometimes candy does not hold up to review
Wow. I actually agree.
We can have both. Art should be varied. Have like the serious high brow films and b movie slop
I’d hate for all media to be the same
see my other comment under this post
Oh! Thanks. I getcha now
big heap of talk from “battleship pokemon”
im getting nerd sniped smh
Oh, you’re a cinephile? Name four video rental places that you’re not allowed within 500 feet of
My hobby is finding likely bad or upsetting movies and downloading them. Then I go read reviews to confirm that I have found something “bad” and then I try to enjoy the movie to prove that I’m a better cinephile than the critic.
Lotta unfinished movies on my server. :(
Give me $600,000 and I’ll make the best Mid-Western film ever
Blood Bath On Badger Boulevard
White Guy Karate, Shootouts, squibs
You’ve bongled your last flake
any ya’ll see that draw?!
average 14 year olds first doom wad
W…what?
Edgy names, wads are custom maps for DOOM
Oh wow. Not what the word ‘wad’ evokes in my mind
it’s because the files for mapsets were called .wad files, apparently it originally stood for “where’s all the data?”
Well if it was .cum it would be a lot harder to explain
Completely Unnecssary Mess
Glad i read the thing about doom maps before this…
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Reminds me of those breadtube videos explaining why Shrek is a Communist masterpiece in six parts, each one uploaded months apart and being 8 hours long
I feel like that style of video started as a tongue in cheek joke that was designed to educate and inform while being entertaining. But some people probably just thought it was like “Breadtube game theory” or something and started making content like that without any self-awareness.
“Breadtube game theory”
as in they thought that style of video is the “correct formula for success” ?
Yeah, they saw a formula to imitate without understanding, where you talk at length about nothing at all and then connect nonexistent dots about nothing, but take it all extremely seriously and act like it is “media analysis.”
If you do this but make it sufficiently funny, it’s actually good, as proven by Brian David Gilbert in his Unraveled series
personally I wouldn’t refer to myself by any word ending in “-phile”
found the cinephobe
doing serious deep dive reviews of some real trash-garbage schlock is a fantastic bit though
The word cynic, cyanide and cinephile has the same root, few will admit this.
Watching Atman and disassociating is the real auteurs experience.
not trying to say watching good films is bad, just trying to neg “cinephiles” btw 🙏
Actchually don’t you know it takes serious talent and dedication to sit down and stare at a screen for four hours
no
