Over the past few years, I have found myself obsessed with unpacking the media I consume to further understand what sort of commentary it makes. Through my intensive exploration, I have found this “cinematic” commentary to be extant in some combination of three main capacities. First, the commentary may be explicit and directly articulated in a film or video; second, implicit in some aspect of the film (be it the narrative or the technical stylistics); finally, latent within the cultural context of a film and only accessible through an unraveling of the historical background in concert with the diegetic elements of the piece in question (diegetic here meaning within the world of a film’s narrative).
As a Film and Media Studies / Sociology double major, I am interested in the ways in which the media we as a society consume is related to, intertwined in, informative of, or otherwise in conversation with facets of the dominant social order. I am a subscriber to Marx and Engels’s conclusion from “The German Ideology” that “The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.” Operating from the perspective that a) individuals are affected by the culture in which they live and b) that the ideas expressed in film are a refraction or mirror of the ideas or values of individuals, film can be seen to be mirroring or refracting the culture itself. Perhaps more concisely, I have been analyzing how popular film and television changes our understanding of ourselves as individual actors within larger social complexes. An examination of this sort is especially important, as I see it because I locate the fullest impact of exhibited arts (especially film) as being within the mind of the spectator and not intrinsic to the project itself. It is not the suggestion of an emotion in a story that causes it to be truly effective, but rather its ability to cause an audience to experience an actual emotion for themselves. If conceptualized in this way, it is evident that cinematic expression has a much more literal impact than the figurative one that is often ascribed to it.
With this in mind, I find it quite interesting that the dominant film culture of today is so heavily saturated with films and shows that, in one way or another, contradict the realities of daily life. Analysis of popular media shows that the programming we intake with the most voracity is predominantly predictable and escapist. Genre tropes -while convenient in their ability to relay familiar narratives and concepts- are often rendered devoid of true meaning in their extreme repetition of stylistics and ideas. This might sound harmless but these tropes, if consumed readily, normalize unrealistic expectations for one’s life. The witty connection of a couple in a romantic comedy becomes the expectation. The extreme resolution of defeating one’s enemies and conquering internal demons at the end of an action film becomes a subconscious and quixotic hope. These unrealistic expectations, while innocuously conceived, can cause an intense dissatisfaction with our everyday. Yet, there is beauty in the normalcy of our lives. Constant engagement with escapist material not only skews our understanding of how we are meant to live our lives, but also distracts us from the subtle resplendency constantly around us.
Thus I have perceived a need to address the realities of the times in which we live. It is my goal to create the foundations of a communally accessible form of cinematic expression by providing a set of stylistic guidelines. If followed, these rules should allow filmmakers to de-alienate themselves from reality by unshackling the creative cinematic process from the prevailing escapist modes of production. It is my hope that this will allow filmmakers to showcase the subtle beauty of their everyday thus creating a cinema of substance, of social merit, and of naturalized expression.
This blog is one of three aspects of my larger thesis project in conjunction with a physical manifesto and a short film completed in the Spring of 2017. Considering the technical and thematic restraints of included in my manifesto, I thought it best to utilize myself and my environment in order to retain control of every aspect of production. That piece, therefore, is a self portrait examining the ways in which I have made sense of my experiences over the past year.
Within the pages of this blog, you will find the “live” version of my manifesto (so called because it is currently a dynamic copy and is still subject to alteration) along with a great deal of the theoretical writing that I have been doing in preparation for the creation of my manifesto.
Furthermore, this blog is meant to serve as a connection between myself and anyone in the general public gripped by the basis of this project who would like to contribute to the development of my theoretical tenets and broader project, or anyone simply hoping to further understand the work I am doing. I implore any and all persons who would like to have some input to contact me directly or to send me a message through the “Contact” form on this blog.
Special thanks to the friends and family that have been giving me preliminary feedback!
Please take the time to browse all of the content on this blog and please make use of my curated Spotify playlist on the right-hand side of the page!
*This project served as my Honors Thesis Project as a Film and Media Studies major at Amherst College, ’17.*
A Cinema of Substance 