The dangers of (re)watching films with a subconscious bias

Skizzerflake can I get an answer to this?

A film buff is a cinephile. You can look it up.

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I’m here only on Mondays, Wednesdays & Fridays. That’s why I’m here now.

Nuances.

I know that this is anathema for you, but really, movies are art in service of profit. Someone has to pay for all the very large costs of making a movie, it's not a charity or a funded government project. Most of them are a one-shot investment, some are expected to pave the way for a franchise, but there are salaries to pay, props to buy, digital processing and animation to pay for and none of these are free. If they are lucky and creative, the movie will also spawn other products, toys, posters, action figures or whatever someone else can use to make more money from the franchise.

Any movie maker who does NOT care about not just my attention span but also that of the potential audience will just be an unemployed movie maker. They can bask in the glory of being an Artiste from the unemployment line.

You're talking about the high-end capitalistic status quo and accepting it as something that just is instead of criticizing it, let alone fighting it.

Besides, you're wrong. Art has been funded by patrons for centuries. Many countries do indeed have government-funded projects that give money to artists. That most films made with public money are terrible is another thing, but the point remains.

Milking money on a franchise is a disgusting, consumerist thing that big corporations make for profit. This has nothing to do with art and talking about it as something neutral or normal is a sign of a much bigger problem in someone's approach to art.

I think the fact an artist is an occupation is where all these problems stem from. Money is the problem. Always has been.

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San Franciscan lesbian dwarves and their tomato orgies.

For better or worse, that money-based capitalism is the reality of life in this time and place. There is a lot of non-profit money that goes into art, though not much into movies since they ARE such a high-cost and risky investment and since, unlike a painter or sculptor, movie makers DO have a revenue stream.

Milking $$$ in sequels and franchise flicks is just a part of that reality; why would "I" not make a Batman II or Mission Impossible 18, if I think it will sell. The other alternative, where some sort of government entity decides what's valued in art or the one where they just open up the spigot and tell people to bring a bucket ain't going to happen on any predictable time scale.

If anything, during my life, it seems like public sympathy for anything like subsidies or financial support of the arts (not just movies) has shifted even further away, compared to some of those old New Deal kind of subsidies. To make matters worse, where there is assistance of a financial type, the ideological/partisan component becomes more strident, AKA, I don't want MY tax money going to THAT sort of movie, whatever that might be.

You need to get out of your American bubble.

Get us all Euro passports and we will

I'm having a hard time thinking of the country where movies are made with no mention of finances and popularity. Oh yeah, that's nowhere now that the old Soviet Union is gone and "socialist realism" had faded

Everybody knows that in the Soviet Union there's no such thing as a box office hit, because every movie is given the same exact number of spectators.

Also, everybody knows that a film director in the U.S. can't have a career without hitting box office every single time, as famous audience darling Woody Allen has kept proving for more than 50 years.

I have something for everybody, you know

"I believe MoFo has only one self proclaimed cinephile. Don't think anyone else has ever referred to themselves by that term. Which other MoFo members would you say are cinephiles? Just curious, it's not a complaint or anything like that I just can't think of any myself."

I don't claim to be a cinephile, just a guy who likes movies. Occasionally, I might love one, but those are rarer than the ones I don't like.

Cinephile is just the Latin/Greek version of person who likes movies. I don't need Latin anymore and I never spoke Greek.

It's a rough business.....costs a lot to participate, ticket sales can soar or crash, streams are dubious revenue sources and everybody who invests expects to make money.

There ain't no business like show business!

Monkey business sometimes passes for show business

That's not the question. The proper comparison is what you take away from a given film compared to a version of you that spends more time with them.

See above. But also, there's no reason to think the kind of insight you get from breadth of viewing experience is going to be the same as the kind you get from deep focus on fewer things. They're obviously going to yield completely different types of understanding.

Not at all, because I never implied there were not corresponding benefits to your posture. I dispute only the constant claims (or, at least, heavy insinuations) that it's some kind of objectively superior way to view films, as opposed to something with its own upsides and downsides like any other.

Yes, we've had this argument before. I'm not going to convince you, I'm simply pointing out that the things you seem to think are obvious, inevitable, are really just axioms. They are not truths. The idea that art must only be experienced and not analyzed is a thing you have personally decided. And as I've indicated in our other exchanges, I find the distinction between emotions and intellect to be largely a false one, anyway.

Peasants can think. In fact, a peasant who watches a film a dozen times will probably understand it better than an intellectual/cinephile/<any other self-aggrandizing term> who watches it once.

So you say. I don't think this is true, it definitely is not obviously or necessarily true, and I suspect it's a false dichotomy anyway.

I certainly agree that you can "get" a film without understanding it, particularly certain types. The difference is, I get tremendous enrichment from exploring the gulf between those two. If you don't, that's fine, but that's because you're a different person whose brain works differently and whose experiences have shaped them differently.

Notice, BTW, how I'm currently deploying exactly the kind of empathy I said can/should be part of our reaction to art. I'm putting myself in your shoes to understand why you watch films the way you do. Or, at least, attempting to. In other words, my view has "room" for other views.

Ah. Well, alas, I think it gives a lot to the world when done properly. If you don't want to partake in it, that's fine, but I'm sure glad lots of people do. I don't like working with pipes either but thank God for plumbers.

Don't agree, and I wouldn't know how to begin testing this claim either way.

So do "peasants." We should probably not be judging films based on how people react to them. That orientation, where you compare your tastes to others, or go on forever about "normies," I think that's deeply harmful to your own ability to ingest films. If your first thought is "what kind of person likes this?" then you're doing the exact thing you're warning about, about letting other people's opinions influence yours, you're just doing it a) inversely and b) preemptively.

If you didn't care about other people you wouldn't care about film, or art in general.

Also, you clearly care, given how much time you spend talking about them.

"It is the sign of an educated mind to be able to entertain an idea without accepting it."

I think it's very odd, and possibly revealing, that when I talk about merely imagining how people might react, you immediately equate that with some kind of capitulation. Do you dislike the idea of thinking about films because you can't just think about them? Can't just sit in tension with possibilities or interpretations without embracing any idea that comes along? Serious question! Because you make these kinds of leaps a lot. You seem to regard thinking about something as a much deeper commitment than it is. If a thought is a contaminant that can spread without your say-so, rather than a thing you mostly retain control over while considering, then that's a personal challenge to be overcome.

Precisely. So the question is: should all your interaction with film be a reflection of you? Or is there value in focusing on the film itself and what it might reflect to others? It seems odd to draw an arbitrary line between valuing film for the way it can show us other experiences, yet not care about people's other experiences with film.

If that were really true, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

Depends on the reasoning.

I'm not sure how this changes anything I'm saying, or defends anything you're saying. Every journey is made up of individual steps. If you are inwardly-focused forever, after awhile, you'll become extremely so. After years and years you'll be watching 25 films a day and yelling about normies on the Internet.

Giving primacy to your own, unalloyed and unanalyzed reaction bears a high likelihood of falling prey to self-aggrandizement and narcissism.

Also, stop knocking down the easiest possible counterarguments, about made up people who love a film but dislike its politics, or things like the above. Argue with the most difficult counterexamples, like the people I keep describing, who simply watch a film a lot, and think about it a lot.

Anybody can construct a hypothetical idiot who goes to reddit to decide what he thinks before thinking for himself. That has no bearing on this discussion.

I really do not. I think the idea of bombarding yourself with films is something that happens for reasons unrelated to the appreciation of their art, and more importantly, I think treating them only as transient experiences rather than detailed works worthy of being pored over, is depriving you of access to at least one entire side of the form.

Follow-up, since you posted this in The Shoutbox the other day:

I'm not sure why you think your first reaction to something is more "sincere" than the reaction you have after thinking about it more, or having something you missed pointed out to you, or anything else. That seems like an unexamined assumption. It is certainly an unexplained/unjustified one.

You want to tell me I must discuss films politely with the notion that everybody has their reason for liking films I don't? That's pretty lib. and I can't do that, as I'm a militant cinephile on this site! Besides, I'm already using all my good-hearted energy not to bash my friends for their film tastes.

If there's only one thing I get from this conversation, it's that Yoda doesn't like plumbing.

Not what kind of person might like it. Just what the film is. The fact normies usually like bad movies is another point. My taste deteriorated throughout the years, unfortunately, as I warmed up to the normie movies. There's a sort of freedom to it, though. I always based everything on my and only my opinion anyway, even if I was influenced by what to watch, I wasn't necessarily influenced by what to like. And even if I was, it was an illuminating, legit, and good influence, as I chose who to follow myself.

Well, I need some distraction & entertainment of a different sort between my 6th and 7th film of the day.

You're very intelligent and a master debater, but you could use some mindlessness when it comes to discussing art, no matter how weird this sounds. Do you think that everything one does comes from a thought-over reason? People do many things mindlessly and there's no explicit motive or implicit reason for what they do. Thinking there always is one sounds like something a psychology class undergraduate would say.

Anyway, when I say critics make middling films seem good - you're similar. You make the right, legit opinions on cinema seem shaky or ungrounded by merely saying they're subjective and/or some people disagree with them. I'm not surprised you're doing this because this approach usually works in other fields. The difference is other fields have a set truth or at least the least terrible choice. In art, it's all so subjective, that there's no least terrible choice, not to mention a set truth, 'objectively' speaking. In other words, if somebody says that humans are birds that walk on three legs, they're factually wrong, and we have science and even our own lived experience that proves them wrong. However, if somebody says that Tarkovsky's films are masterpieces, that's just their opinion, and there's no way to prove them wrong in a scientific or philosophical sense. They can try to convince you, but their criteria, whatever it is, is arbitrary. If they say, Tarkovsky's films are deeply philosophical - sure, but why should this matter? If they say his films have long takes that are masterfully crafted - sure, it takes skill to do that, but what if somebody prefers rapid cutting? And so on. So, this doesn't come as a surprise that people who just get Tarkovsky create a group of, let's call it, elitist cinephiles, that spite the normies that don't get Tarkovsky. That's THE ONLY thing they can do to present their taste, APART from peacefully advertising Tarkovsky's films and agreeing that he's not for everyone, which is, again, boring, and the internet shouldn't be boring!

Sometimes a film is decently crafted and has everything in place, but the outcome is still bland and mediocre, whereas a film that makes simple mistakes in story continuity or is shot in a weird way, is still amazing. There's no explanation for why, or at least I don't know it. You can try and list things you like in a film, and that might help, but then comes another film that negates all that. That's why I find it funny when reviewers create a set of criteria they judge a film by, like acting, cinematography, story, enjoyment, etc. Not just because these are arbitrary but also because they might not apply to all films, and with some films one criterion's importance overtrumps all others.

Maybe we shouldn't! It's obvious to me I'm right, but there's no way for me to prove I'm right, so talking about it seems pointless unless you think sharing perspectives has value in itself. I think it does, as it helps me educate the uncouth normies.

No, it doesn't depend on the reasoning. Or rather, your reasoning is faulty if it overtrumps your experience. I'm sure one could come up with some fringe cases when this isn't true, but it's true in general. That's exactly what I'm talking about. A reviewer who cannot embrace their own taste, what they actually like, and champion it for what it is, is a failure of a cinephile. I'd much rather see somebody gushing over & overrating mindless US entertainment than somebody who loves watching it but then puts on their critic cap and dismisses it in a review, or bashes it for something it wasn't trying to be.

25 films a day? I wish. My best is only 15 in a single day.

But it's MY self-aggrandizement and MY narcissism. Don't try to frame it into both-sides-bad kinda rhetoric again. If you claim it's impossible to be 100% unbiased, I concede, but it doesn't preclude us from trying to be as unbiased as possible.

Steelmanning makes sense if one's having an actual discussion about something. This discussion started from something else, something that is stated in its title, and my example portrays exactly that.

I think you underestimate the power of a subconscious bias.



Hopefully, you get the reference.

Either way, I do think that poring over films is worthwhile. It's just that it's impossible for every one of them when one watches so many of them, and this makes the best ones break through anyway, so what gives? Also, it's not you choosing which films are worthy of poring over, which would be biased. It's you deciding, let's call it, "none are", and then some break into your consciousness anyway. Your intent wasn't to discriminate against any given film (like people who choose to watch the MST3K version of a movie do *nudge nudge*). It's just that some of them proved memorable/thought-provoking regardless! This is the purest, most unbiased way of approaching films when you watch as many as I do. If you know a better way, lemme know. And no, watching less films is not an option.

It's more sincere because if you are sure you haven't been influenced BEFORE watching the film, you can be sure that your reaction is unbiased! All sorts of biases come into play after you start talking about the film with others or reading up on it, and so on. It's fiendishly hard not to have any sort of bias before watching the film, I admit, so ensuring you don't add anything afterward is a no-brainer.

In addition to that, it's not "after thinking about it more", but "after somebody else says they love it and describes why they like it." If your idea is that somebody says something about a film, and this will make me think about it in a different light... yes, it might, but then I'll have been influenced by others, a third-person bias would be introduced, and this doesn't mean that my mind would be changed, anyway. Thinking about a film more after I watched it and retrospectively changing my opinion - this happens and I'm not against it. I'm against letting other people influence my opinion.

Your reply would probably be that we learn through conversation, or something like that, and this is true for science and knowledge, but art is different in that art bypasses our reasoning and stabs us directly in the heart. I bet you love some films irrationally, for example. That's a good thing.