If You Want To Critic Culture, Watch Movies

by Terence A. Anthony

Everyone wants to be a mind reader. They want to observe people and create conclusions out of it. The feeling you get is empowering. It feels as if you obtained a skill where there shouldn’t be one. Then to complete that rush, they want to leave a comment about it. “Oh, X’s actions came from K culture, filtered through the eyes of F.”

The common method is normally through observation and through some detective work from reading a few books. For obnoxious tourist, it could possibly stereotypes derived from the tourism department pamphlets.

However, if you really want to critic culture on a bigger scale, watch movies. Better yet, watch commercial movies. If the main reason of the movie wasn’t to make money, then make sure that there is still an interest for the producers to stay sane and not bankrupt. Don’t watch films produced by the state. They’re propaganda created by a force from above to control those below. If there’s state funding, pick one where creative expression is in the director’s dictionary.

This is because movies project where they look towards to (signalling, a shift in their views), the expression of a person in the most apolitical setting (remember, money is the motive) and it projects what will the culture emulate subconsciously.

Most Hollywood films nowadays don’t just look at the domestic market to make sure they break even. Pacific Rim and Warcraft were two movies that have sequels planning thanks to the sweet-sweet RMB. A Chinese satellite got featured in the movie “Gravity” and became Sandra Bullock’s only way back to Earth. All of this shows that American businesses are willing to please a foreign power in order to get money. It is a superior force that all other moral preoccupations that an American might have are secondary. This is pandering 101. When pandering, the values of those they are trying to appease will slowly seep in. Whether you think it is a positive thing, that’s up for you to critic.

Commercial, blockbuster films are also meant to appeal to everyone. It is to get as many people as possible to buy tickets, and hopefully buy the Blu Rays if Netflix has not obliterated their market yet. So in order to do that, political ideals have to be sacrificed and if not sacrificed, it has to be popular enough in order for them to turn a profit. Let’s take Batman v Superman. The main characters are meant to be mythological deities and looked up to. One figure lost all faith in the political establishment and has decided to become a vigilante. The other is an all-powerful figure that wants to convince the establishment that he is able to act on his own on foreign sole. Though both are on opposing sides yet they reflect each other. Both have authoritarian tendencies, but they do not come from the traditional mould, shaped by the political establishment. This reflects the nature of politics in the recent American Presidential election. The two polarizing figures now, Trump and Bernie are both outsiders that voice out wishes to take control and beat the political establishment. It shows that people want an answer to their problems be it illegal immigration or student loans but they don’t want it from the people who have been trying to fix it all this while. They’re the establishment. Young democrats despise Hillary Clinton and rather vote for Gary Johnson or Jill Stein. However, one cannot deny how Bernie Sanders acted as the person with the answers that pathed their way. So even in the most apolitical arena, Zach Snyder is able to portray some political motive in his art.

Superman in Batman v Superman tried to convince the government that he still can be a responsible demigod yet towards the end shows his trust towards the government. Batman on the other hand wants to act without government supervision. Here, Zach Snyder as a libertarian has accidently projected himself as the person who thinks government control couldn’t solve anything. Let the rich billionaires like Wayne or Koch Brothers solve our problems, they are the super-patriarch.

So what about political ideas that still get projected through these commercial movies some would wonder? They exist because they’re popular enough. Now, it’s up to you to judge these political or cultural statements. Take for example the recent Ghostbuster reboot. The characters were all gender swapped, even the secretary. Why go through the effort? That’s because identity politics are popular today. Even if there is a staunch opposition to the ideas projected, the producers are confident enough that there will be people defending it. They don’t actively take part in identity politics but they could see the cultural threads in the media. Bernie Sanders, who is popular amongst young voters still, has a race and identity politics problem. He was blamed to be seeing things from a white perspective. Some analysts even argue that his refusal to explicitly mention race early in the election cycle, costed him the Black vote. Clinton on the other hand embodied the identity politics that was reaching its peak in the Obama administration. So in a commercial endeavour that is also a cultural undertaking, political overtones have to be popular enough in order for it to make money.

However the most important reason why those who want to critic culture need to watch movies is to see predict how people act in the future. Everything we do in this world is informed by our surrounding. In the past, it is informed by the words of elders. However, that role is now subsumed by the television, the internet, memes, blogs like this or even by music. Filial piety needs to be enforced and juvenoia is at an all-time high.

In this era, movies still hold a bigger sway because it is one of the few shared cultural experience that still exist. It is one of those few activities people still plan to watch together. So you will have one generation of people being informed of the ideas behind a movie and carry it to their behaviour. Nowhere this is more evident in the way men treat women today.

Men; who more often than not the main character in a movie is often portrayed to undertake a task in order to impress a woman. The character, if he abides by the orders given by society, act in a certain manner or work hard enough is promised the girl of his dreams. Who cares about what the woman feels? Her consent is taken away from the plotline and her agency is reduced to at what point she wants to be the trophy.

That’s why we now have a generation of men who feel frustrated not getting the beautiful trophy wife despite working hard. The only outcome for all the hard work, attainment of cultural capital and the imaginary pressure received from the rest of society is a woman lying at the side of their bed after a long hard day. If she isn’t next to you after a day at the office, then you’re not working hard enough. Who cares about the taste of these women or whether do they even want to be with you? Who cares if it’s probably nothing to do with your looks? Women become a blank slate of what these men want to project upon. They’re not in love with the women they see, they are in love with the idea of who these can be and are in their imagination, informed by the movies they watch.

So if you want to know what are the frustration of the next generation, study the tropes of the movies of today. These tropes are the common desires or convenient explanations to plots that seep into real life. Unfortunately, the next generation is going to be shaped by these hacked writers. The frustrated, projecting their fantasy becomes the reality in the mind of these young men.

Movies at the end of the day, is the distillation of these values. They are presented at its rawest format. They are not constructed arguments, but demonstrations on how cultures are played out. They are the direct application on how fantasies are portrayed as reality in their heads. So if you want to deconstruct and critic that reality, go and watch the source where did this reality come from.