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Post: Blog2_Post
  • Writer's pictureRoman Arbisi

Addressing "Let People Enjoy Things"

Updated: Nov 5, 2021


Seven years ago I started actively watching movies. Shortly after, I started engaging in online discourse with the release of Captain America: The Winter Soldier. In some ways I view it as a very formative film for me. Purely in the sense that it opened my eyes to the option of being able to engage with people online through agreement, or disagreement, and that everyone is not going to see eye to eye. Having conversations about the inner workings and emotional outreach a movie can have, became a daily routine. With the rise of The Russo Bros. and the peak of the MCU’s success, online discourse began shifting. As the narrative went from the underdog being the kids who loved splashy comic-book pages, to being fans of the biggest monolith in pop culture this side of the 2000s. Now, the rise of the MCU isn’t to blame, it’s also competing properties and studios that tried to replicate their own respective universe of big, superhero movies in general.


When we look at the studio system and their obsession with viewing films as “franchise based content” instead of “artistically motivated art”, we see the cracks within the studios. Cracks typically filled by online personalities slotting themselves into whichever studio creates an output most appealing to them. In many unbiased instances, someone will simply appreciate both. Recently though; we’ve noticed an increasing trend in defying the artistically motivated, and uplifting the financially engineered monolith that slates release dates for the next big movies that we simply cannot wait to see. As the pandemic rolls on and movie theaters struggle to even dim the lights, streaming has become that avenue for many people to revisit films that replicate a sense of joy, or a childhood memory. What happens when we harness that feeling once more, and it faces some form of criticism? How do we respond? Does it spark conversation? Does it feel antagonistic? Does it feel insightful and combative enough to challenge why you love what you do?


There are plenty of ways to discuss, communicate, relay how we feel about someone else’s opinion, and sometimes, we don’t do it well. As for myself; I remain guilty of not doing this as best as I could. When you take social media into account, and our lack of true personal knowledge of each other, it can come across in ways unintended. Sometimes, not always. It’s something you would think I’ve been able to fix with all the prior communication issues I’ve had over the years of film discourse. Alas, I am still running in place. As for the inspiration of this blog post; What’s the deal with, “let people enjoy things”, being used as a response to online criticism of art, franchises, books, or any form of entertainment for that matter? It’s a puzzling phrase used as a defense mechanism for what may be a simple criticism, or even an onslaught of it.

As someone who has pursued dedicating my life to engaging with film through a critical lens, grappling with the reality of someone potentially chastising your favorite movie is a part of that experience. Now, I’m not here to give answers or to direct you in the “right” direction, I’m simply too naïve and incapable of doing that, but I am here to challenge your thought process. When it comes to film discourse, I can’t think of anything more meaningless than saying that someone should lay off on criticizing something because other people enjoy it. This, to me, is how we start communicating with art on a lower level. I say this because films, most notably the greats, are constantly communicating with us in a way that directly challenges us in some capacity. That challenge can come face to face with an emotion, an idea, a belief, a political ideal, you name it. Yes, even the films that studios incubate through the monocle of “content” over “artistically engineered”.


When we sit down to engage with a movie we are dedicating our time to listening, watching, communicating, and understanding a presentation of various swings in emotion. It, at a time, can become one of the most personal experiences we have. Movies don’t make us smile without reaffirming a sense of humor, or make us reflect on a current event without being inspired by an experience, or leave us wiping tears away at an unearthed emotion that was recently buried for personal safekeeping. Movies are personal, sometimes deeply, and that’s why we can, at times, lose ourselves to that passionate feeling. Perhaps using it as a way to defend what is deeply personal to you on some conceivable level that the other person may not understand. But this is where we adjust “letting people enjoy things”, and move beyond such a shallow phrase. Utilize that critical challenge to inform, educate, and guide that person who has all of a sudden directly attacked something you cling to. How are they to know how you’ve been personally moved by a movie that tapped into a part of your life that it never did for them? This is why communication and information is vital, and diluting that down to telling them to back off and stay silent so people who do enjoy something can do so without obstruction, is film discourse’s number one enemy. I can count numerous instances where I negatively reviewed a movie, and someone’s positive review allowed me the opportunity to realize how deeply personal that movie was to them. If that person had told me not to bother and to “let people enjoy things” I would’ve lost that opportunity to connect with them in a way I never could before.


Film inspires emotion, inspires creativity, inspires discussion, inspires personal connection.

That is some of the roots of film criticism, and why we should all greatly value it. Criticism, and consequently film critics (worthy of a whole other blog post), don’t intentionally seek to uproot that of which you love. It exists to explore perspective through a different subject’s grappling of ideas, emotions, ideals, and experiences. In a way, film criticism and the film itself go hand in hand in how we experience someone else sharing their perspective with us, and what we take away from it. Taking these criticisms as some form of personal attack on what we love isn’t going to allow us the opportunity to empathize with the “whys” and “how's” of someone else’s experience. In some instances, you can learn so much more about why you love what you do from someone who feels differently. In a way it becomes a form of validation you never thought it could have been, because it was presented differently than it typically is. I wouldn’t understand why I love the movies I do without understanding why people disagree with how I feel, and I’m certain the same can be said for just about everyone who actively watches movies.


Film is a visual and verbal communication tool that expands on an idea planted within us. The film can either plant it there, or it always has been. When a film appeals to us on a deeply personal level, we’re essentially communicating with another form of ourselves. This entire medium is built around communication, what it can explore through its ability to do so, and reserving that communication to ourselves and to people “who get it”, is detrimental to spreading empathy to one another through our distinct journeys with film. So please, let us abolish this conversation-killing, shallow, meaningless, trite, ridiculous phrase amongst film discourse. We want to hear your stories, we want to understand, and we want to empathize. Allow people the opportunity to do so, and we can all begin to enjoy the wide-variety of empathy that film allows us to understand, together.

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