The Discourse is Ruining Film Criticism
Can’t we just watch films on their own terms?
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In the mid to late 2010s, during the time of #OscarsSoWhite, conversations about representation in mainstream cinema led to a communal critical evaluation of how marginalized people, especially Black people, had been portrayed onscreen since the invention of cinema. These critiques were overdue, covering a variety of films and genres.
In the tradition of film historian Donald Bogle and filmmaker Marlon Riggs, the Obama era of media reevaluation expanded on their work in print, online, podcasts and video. Suddenly, there was a media ecosystem for the kind of racial analysis that had often been relegated to college spaces and exclusive intellectual circles. And thanks to the internet, these new critiques came instantly and often without any longstanding editorial review. Necessary critiques of films like The Blind Side (2009), The Help (2011), and Green Book (2018) pushed back against the idea that we were living in a post-racial society.
As consumers and social media users, we posted and read these essays and Twitter threads in real time, which allowed us to respond immediately and keep the discourse going. But the downside to having a steady stream of criticism is that every film becomes a critical battlefield of its own. Every marginalized character is evaluated as if they are a stand-in for every single member of their community, usually as they relate (or don’t) to the person critiquing the piece of media.
When it comes to cinema, representation has become the viewer’s primary concern as well, with little formal analysis of the cinematic image itself.