Films and Movies: Activism for Movies on Social Media
https://twitter.com/Films_n_movies
Film isn’t the first thing people think of when they think of academia. While that probably will never really change, when I see an opportunity to focus on film in any class, I take it. So I have decided to attempt to advocate for film. My page tagline, if you will, is simply “Films and Movies”. The purpose, however, is to show that movies that make loads of money do not win Oscars and other awards. That said, I am not attempting to condemn the fact that these movies aren’t winning awards and that the movies that do win awards are winning those awards. “Films and Movies” is meant to both question why the blockbusting films don’t win Oscars and to popularize the movies that do win awards. So I chose to make a Twitter page for “Films and Movies” to Tweet images and brief sentences about the upcoming Academy Awards, filmmaking in general, and films that are on their way. It is currently mostly — if not entirely — populated with posts about the recent Oscar nominations. I chose Twitter because it allows one to reach a massive audience and is perfect for getting people’s attention with little blurbs about movies. Ultimately, I hope someone sees these Tweets and begins to open their minds a bit. Meaning, if this reader is a fan of blockbusters, I hope they learn to enjoy films like Manchester by the Sea, The Artist, and From Here to Eternity. Or, if this reader is more of a fan of the award winning films, I hope they open up to movies like The Way Way Back, Die Hard, and maybe even The Underworld Series.
In today’s world, we have nearly unlimited access to information regarding film. Say, for instance, I want to learn who the first recipient of Best Actor in a Leading Role was. With a simple Google search I can tell you that Emil Jannings won the award in 1928 for his work in the film The Last Command. That is a fairly new convenience that is at my disposal. But does this make me forgetful? or less intellectual in some way? Plato and Nicholas Carr would likely argue that it does. Obviously Plato wasn’t arguing directly against the same technology that Carr does, but, in a way, his points do still fit: “no discourse worth serious attention has ever been written in verse or prose” (Plato 554). How can this be? The written word is simply a product of thought. Plato says that the only true way to make an intellectual claim is by thinking it then speaking it. But I would argue that thinking and writing are actually made better by the other’s presence. That is to say that a thought becomes real when I write it down and words become truer when I’ve think them out. I would strictly argue that Plato’s claims agains writing are flawed. However, he does make an interesting point about what it means to produce thought. He says, “what is truly written in the soul, concerning what is just, noble, and good can be clear, perfect, and worth serious attention: Such discourses should be called his own legitimate children” (554). Essentially, once one produces a true, useful thought, it becomes something outside of you. In all honesty, I still struggle to decide how I feel about this. Over the course of the semester I hope to find out.
All that in mind, Nicholas Carr argues something in a similar vain: “[Technology] is so much our servant that it would seem churlish to notice that it is also our master” (Carr 4). Carr is arguing that technology is the entity that is in control of us. Most humans would probably see the other way around, but, after some serious thought, I find myself leaning towards agreeing with Carr. But I don’t think that technology is inherently bad. I believe that it is doing far more good that damage. Carr goes on to quote Katherine Hayles, a literature professor at Duke University. She says, “I can’t get my students to read whole books anymore” (9). This phenomenon can be viewed as the “‘death’ of the literary mind” (slide 5). I would like to argue that this is true. But I’m also going to argue that this is not a bad thing. In my mind, the literary mind is the canonical mind. It’s high time we threw out the canon and opened the doors of academia to include any and everything that can be taught and learned. For instance, who won the first Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role?
