“Does everything have to always be ‘intellectual’ for you”?
It’s happened a few times now where a conversation about a piece of media ends with the other party frustrated at my constant analysis and breakdown of something until they say the above or some similar form of it (“You need to stop always being critical” etc).
I want to lead with saying that I do not believe that my opinions on media are inherently “superior” in any way, or that my way is the only way to approach something. I find this sentiment frustrating, however, because I feel it distracts from actual critique of a work and in a very real way diminishes it. It is often followed up with statement similar to “Isn’t there anything you just, turn your brain off and enjoy? The implication here is that some media doesn’t need, or deserve, intellectual energy spent on it.
Does a “nonsense action film” like The Fast and Furious deserve intellectual pursuit, they ask me? Well, sure, because pop culture can tell us a lot about our world and what we value as a society. The surface of a piece doesn’t necessarily define its worth, personally or culturally.
What do these Jackie Chan films say about the British colonization of China? How do Godzilla films speak to the cultural and political climate of the only country to experience the effects of a nuclear attack in history? Frustratingly, the mentality of “turning your brain off” often obscures not only the subtext of these works, but the text itself. Jackie Chan’s Drunken Master uses the British theft of and profit from Chinese cultural artifacts as one of its main plot drivers. Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla explicitly explores the implications of using the corpse of the original 1954 monster (itself a manifestation of post-WWII Japanese anxieties) to build a cyborg defender with regards to cold war politics and respect for life. It’s not even subtle about it:
Maybe everything doesn’t have that much to tell us, you might tell me. Rarely, however, have I anything that is that completely void of substance. I can’t even think of one off hand, to be honest. As FILM CRITIC HULK details in “NEVER HATE A MOVIE” even rancid works like the Transformers films are a reflection of the society we live in and the artist’s vision. In fact, Tony Szhou even uses it as part of his analysis of “What is Bayhem?” that details Michael Bay’s notorious aesthetic.
No, I do not expect, or even want, every movie I watch to be Bullet Ballet or Synecdoche, New York. But I do believe that even “shallow entertainment” can benefit or be worthy of critical analysis. There’s a reason that I love the original Robocop and can’t stand the new one. There is a value in simply being able to enjoy something for what it is. That doesn’t preclude it from being worthy of intellectual thought.
