The Cinematic Commentary

Recently I've been doing some thinking about movies.

Last week I introduced a friend to Iron Man for the first time, the new Disney movie Frozen and the slightly less new Tangled have been pretty big topics of conversation among my social circle, and my Sociology class is putting an emphasis both on the general commentary of film and the Hunger Games in particular. These four rather different films don't really have anything particular in common, but movies in general have been floating around in my head, and since I know the readers of this blog just wait with baited breath between my posts, I thought I would share these mental meanderings with all of you.

Also, my university closed today in light of the weather so I can actually justify taking the time to write something.

While my Sociology professor and I have some pretty significant variations in opinion on some pretty fundamentally important issues, we both agree that movies all have an overarching commentary that goes beyond the story displayed to viewers at face value. In some situations, like in Avatar this commentary is pretty frank and obvious, but in other movies the purpose or message behind a film is pretty subtle. In movies like Iron Man, Frozen, and Tangled that seem to exist solely for the sake of entertaining a target audience (albeit pretty different ones) and reaping the financial rewards, underlying political, social, religious, and ethical messages don't necessarily seem entirely obvious or prevalent. Still though, I would argue that even movies that seem to center entirely around thematic adventures and explosions (like Avengers) there are ideas and opinions being expressed and a story being told that goes beyond aliens invading the city of New York.

I think this stems largely from the fact that movies are made by human beings, and when people create a form of art, to some extent they put their beliefs and worldviews into what they are creating. When we watch a film, even one without a story based on political opinion, I think we are given a glimpse into the opinions and beliefs of that films creator even if we can't predict them with absolute certainty, and I would also argue that there is almost always something that a film's creator intends for their audience to get out of their film.

As I go through rehearsals for this production I am going to be in at my university, I am developing and watching my fellow cast members develop back-stories to their characters, and I am hearing my director paint a picture of the kind of world in which our theatrically presented story is supposed to exist. Many of these details will very likely be completely missed by our audience; certainly they are not expressed in the script itself, but they form a background commentary surrounding the main story of the play that our director and our cast is hoping our audience will perceive.

This whole idea of subtle, opinionated messages being presented to use under the guise of harmless children and action films poses some of the same kinds of risks I mentioned in my past blog post about music and the kind of subconscious impact that songs have on us and our emotions. It can be kinda scary to think that everything we watch, and our children watch, is attempting to fashion a worldview for them through cinematic entertainment, but I don't think it is actually that hard to look anything from Sponge Bob and Happy Feet to Man of Steel and The Long Ranger and see that the movies we watch are all putting forward some kind of worldview or another.

The argument that stems from this observation is that we have to be  on guard when we watch films and let children watch films to make sure that what they/we are watching isn't attempting to teach them/us false ideas about politics, religion, social roles, and the reality in general. There is a great deal of merit, I think, to this idea in so far as it extends to teaching ourselves to actually think about what we see and hear before simply absorbing it and tucking it away into the back our heads to sit and grow, but the question I ask is: How do we actually absorb the messages we are being presented with?

I would like to believe that humanity, in general, is capable of rationally thinking about the world around them such that they are able to form intelligent decisions about how things really work without just accepting the worldviews and opinions being spoon fed to us through any kind of medium (film or otherwise). While I know it is impractical to assume that everybody actually thinks about an opinion before accepting or rejecting it, it would be foolish to suggest that even children are incapable of forming their own opinions of the films and books being presented to them beyond those intended by the author.

I have had discussions with friends of mine in the past about whether or not the intent of an art creator is the "correct" reading of that art and whether or not interpretation is entirely up to the viewer once the creator has released their work to the world at large. While I definitely think that is worthwhile to think about what a director or writer might have been thinking when fashioning their creation and about what they hoped to express, I think it is also true everyone is going to see films differently because they are going to be seeing them through a lens fashioned by their own beliefs and life experiences.

You car fight over whether or not your reading of a movie is correct, but I think we are faced with either deciding that A) there is not correct interpretation of any particular piece of art or B) the correct interpretation is the one intended by the original creator. You can likely make a good argument for either one of these stances if you try, but I don't see how you could fashion a reasonable argument around the opinion that really know what a movie is about unless are the originator of that movie, and even then your stance is up for debate.

Where am I going with this?

Wait until I finish writing and then maybe I can tell you.

So far I've proposed that all movies have some kind behind the scenes meaning being delivered, and that the meaning people are going to get out of a movie is likely to differ from person to person. If everyone is going to view a movie differently, why bother worrying about the message being presented?

Well, every movie is a piece of fiction. Even if they are "based on a true story" or a documentary, they are fashioned and constructed by individuals to serve as some kind of representation or depiction of  reality with fictional qualities. Unless we are talking about raw, unedited footage of real events not being manipulated by the one taking the film, every movie has some kind of a fictional aspect to it. Sometimes those fictional elements are really obvious (we all know New York was not really destroyed by Loki and his army alien warriors, and I am pretty confident when I say that the Hunger Games never really happened), but sometimes they aren't.

When it comes to analyzing a film and paying attention to what matters in it, I think it is a lot more important to look at how people carry out basic conversation and generally treat others than it is to dissect the climax and overall plot, because while we aren't likely to start believing in Batman's existence from film, the way that Batman behaves and the way he makes decisions are works of fiction that can easily work their way into our own day to day thoughts and behaviors.

In in a lot of movies, particularly the kind that I think my peers and those younger than I watch, it is easy to view the film for the flashy elements and entertainment factors without considering the basic views of humanity, dignity, integrity, family, and community being displayed.

When you want to seriously consider the value of a movie, look at the way that men treat women, women treat men, parents treat their children, and children react to their parents. Look at moral justifications that the villains and heroes use to explain their actions, and look at the kinds of words and actions that are deemed permissible and the ones that shunned. These are the kinds of things that play a significant part in the development of the characters we are watching on screen, but they are also the kinds of things that are easy to gloss over and absorb unconsciously in light of the grander actions occurring on screen. Ever young boy wants to be a hero like Batman, Iron Man, Spider-Man, and Superman, but when the costumes come off and they aren't saving the world, what kind of person are those heroes really? Every little girl has her favorite Disney princess, but if you put a princess's personality into a real world context, what kind of a woman are they really?

In every film there are people we are supposed to love, and people we are supposed to hate because of what they do in the course of advancing the plot, but taken out of that context, are they really people deserving our support or contempt?

Maybe they don't seem like important questions (it is all fiction after all!), but I think they are the questions worth considering; especially when young people still forming opinions about themselves, human interaction, and their roles in the world watch the movies. Even though they are fictional relationships, the relationships that people in movies have with each other are still going to have impression on us, and I think they are actually more influential the more we disregard them as being nothing more than make believe.

It is from fiction that we often derive some of greatest heroes, especially as children, and so I think it is important for us to understand what fiction is trying to tell us and what we are actually seeing, because every movie is has commentary that is going to keep running through our heads after we're done seeing it. The question is whether or not we let the movie create that commentary for us, or if we make one of our own.

I know that all of that probably came out as a scrambled discombobulation of random ideas, but such is usually the way I end up thinking. I do typically feel pretty bad when I finish writing a blog post, and look back to an almost impossible trail of thoughts that could probably be summed up in one or two sentences.

In any case, thanks for reading and think about whether or not Tony Stark is really a hero.

Pax