I have noticed a trend online and it is…annoying. Someone will talk about a movie they like, consider it underrated, and then post about it. That’s fine. The annoying part is when someone acts as if people don’t love the film in question.
It started because I saw a tweet about Nightmare Alley that stated the film should have gotten more love and attention. While yes, I do think it is an underrated Guillermo del Toro movie, the film did get nominated for Best Picture. This is, for me, just the most recent example of this concept and why is this something we feel the need to do? Can’t we just talk about movies we love without making grand statements that are false?
We’re living through a time when people think that the only way a film can be recognized at large is by giving it award buzz. Frankly, that’s incredibly dismissive of art. To think that the only true test of a film is the awards given to it means you only want to value art that others feel is worthy. Yes, it is easier to judge how people felt at the time about a movie given where it landed at award shows like the Academy Awards but it still shouldn’t be the end all be all.
But also you should not need anyone else’s feelings to form your own on a film. We have this need to make everyone see a movie the same way we do and that’s just never going to happen. Art is subjective and even though you love something doesn’t mean everyone else will.
Why did we start forcing everyone to agree with us?
This is a three pronged issue. A lot of the time, it is rewriting the history of a film. We maybe stopped talking about a movie because time has past but, at the time, it was a different story. Then there is the issue of your own personal feelings about a movie vs. how other people feel about it. Not every movie is going to be a hit.
Then finally, there’s an issue with this way of thinking because it then leads to people angrily forcing others to tell them they’re right. Which maybe isn’t true! It is like those prompts that tell you to “say hi to x thing or get bad luck” which plays on people’s anxieties and forces us to engage with them.
Why are we now constantly doing this on social media? With movies, pets, and more? We’re forcing people to engage with our “content” but we don’t want to engage with them on an intellectual topic. It is upsetting and weird.
So, maybe let’s stop pretending like movies that were, at the time, praised and nominated for awards are less than. Because all this is doing is having people fight online or talk badly about a movie because of someone not knowing what they’re talking about and that’s not fair to the movies in question!
(featured image: Kerry Hayes/20th Century Studios)
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