A couple years back, I was in a bad place. I had left university with a bunch of degrees but no clue what I wanted to do. As a last resort I had tried to get into law school, which was a terrible idea. On top of that there were some family tragedies which made that year feel even more hopeless. One day in December, I was at my low point. There was literally nothing on the horizon for me to look forward to. That morning, I checked my email - there was a Google Alert in my inbox. I cannot remember what for. It's not important. What is significant about this email was that one of the links was to an advert for a free-lancing writing job from a pop culture website.
I had studied film at high school and university - it was one of my favourite subjects. But until that month I had never considered writing about it as a job. At that point, I had nothing to lose. The application process was fairly easy: a few questions, a pitch for an article and a writing sample. I sent in my application with no expectations - after that year I did not want to jinx myself. And then I heard back and suddenly I was writing a feature about the Mission: Impossible series. And then I pitched another feature. And another, and another. The pay was not good, but it gave me something to do, and for the first time in a long while I had a sense of purpose. Based on this experience, I caught the bug: I needed to write more. A friend ran a theatre website and needed reviewers. I put up my hand and wound up reviewing a show about a mind-reading hot dog. This was un-paid, but I got to see shows for free, and gave the opportunity to see a variety of projects that I would have probably never sought out myself. I've been writing theatre reviews for almost three years now, and it was one of my favourite side-projects. Since then I have written for a variety of other places, and was able to include some of my work when I applied to journalism school.
As an additional outlet, I re-started this blog so I could have an outlet for non-commissioned work that I wanted to put out into the digital ether. I saw this blog was a chance to force myself to start catching up on movies I had missed, and to have an outlet for writing about things I liked. This blog would also give me a chance to step outside of my comfort zone and take a look at movies and music I had never considered.
This year I decided to try and make this blog more of an on-going project, with specific focuses and topics. Before this year, the blog was kind of all over the place in its focus, with no set template to follow. As part of this 'upgrade', I decided set a goal to do 10 posts a month. Unlike past years, I now had the capacity to see and review new releases, which gave me some material which could draw more readers in. Overall, this strategy was good because it forced me to write consistently, but over the course of this year I have become increasingly aware of its drawbacks.
My next point is going to need some context.
We are finally seeing some moves toward greater racial and gender diversity in Hollywood, but when it comes to disabled performers and stories, we are still stuck. This year saw the release of Everything, Everything, a movie based on a Young Adult novel where the author, star, and director were women of colour. The story concerned a young woman with an auto-immune disease who was unable to leave her house and falls in love with her new neighbour. In a final act twist we learn that the mom has faked her illness to keep her daughter under her thumb. Cue our heroes running happily in slow motion through the busy, probably disease-riddled streets of New York City.
Now I ended up watching this movie two times. I do not usually do this unless I really like the movie but with Everything Everything, I felt so conflicted I needed another look.
On the one hand, I liked the main character, Maddy - she had agency, and while she could never leave her house it felt like she was the character pushing the story forward rather than her boyfriend or anybody else. So as a female character in a dippy romance movie, the movie gets points. It also gets points for making the disabled the centre of the story, rather than another story where a non-disabled person learns about life from a relationship with a disabled person (who generally dies). See the furore over last year's Me Before You, or A Walk To Remember, or any other movie in which some emotionally stunted jerk learns the meaning of life from someone who is exiting theirs. The main character in Everything, Everything gets to live to the end. Yay!
But taken in overview, that is the lowest of low bars. When it is revealed that Maddy is not sick, the movie is basically sending the message that if Maddy really had her condition she had no chance of a good life at all. She is just a prisoner who cannot take part in life happening outside her window. And that is terrible.
But when I watched the movie again, these elements did not stand out as much. I ended up writing a fairly positive review where I highlighted the things I liked, and de-emphasised the ableist nonsense at the end.
And then I read this piece by a writer I follow, Jazmine Joyner. Her lived experience is far more appropriate to analysing how insidious Everything, Everything is in terms of its portrayal of people living with conditions similar to Maddy's. And she had done something that I had not considered. She went looking for reactions from other people with lived experience. I had not even thought to do that.
Reading Joyner's article, while insightful about the film, was a re-affirmation of the importance of avoiding unconscious bias. Looking back on my process in watching and reviewing Everything, Everything, it highlighted how narrow-minded and (frankly) arrogant I was about my perspective eon the film.
Reflecting on my Everything Everything review, I am more convinced that I will need to change my approach if I want to write more insightful criticism. In my rush to write a set number of posts, I have brushed over some films which deserved more time and consideration. I have also ignored other perspectives which could help me develop a more fully-realised critique. This is not just important in relation to this blog, but also in my real life. There are a lot of issues and voices that I have been ignorant of, and I need to be more open to - and active in - seeking them out. Ultimately this is not about improving myself as a pop culture critic - it is about me - a middle-class, white cis-gendered man - becoming a more empathetic and incisive observer of the world we live in.
I enjoy reading about movies, and I am always wishing I could rise to the level of my favourite critics. Well, wishing time is over. Unlike them I have no deadlines to meet, so I have no reason not to spend more time building a strong thesis on a film with more consideration for the discourse around whatever subject I am writing about, rather than blasting out 1000 words to hit an arbitrary quota. To that end, I am going to be cutting back on the blog next year so that I can concentrate on longer, more in-depth pieces. This (hopefully) means fewer Geostorms/Mummys and more reviews on movies I actually like, with more attention on cinematic technique, story construction and themes.
Bring on 2018.
No comments:
Post a Comment