Psycho. #13
Are the cinephile kids alright?
Is Letterboxd Neoliberal or right wing? I err towards it being Tory because of its emphasis on rampant individualism and packaging of oafish consensus in the name of democratisation, plus its inherent consolidation of the internet’s libertarian/anarchistic potential, but perhaps its touchy-feely, “your feelings count” cloyishness is more a neoliberal thing?
Ha ha. You’ve obviously given a lot of thought to this one, whereas I — coming much later to the subject and being, perhaps, less animated on the topic of the politics of various sites and trends — can only hope to approach that level of commitment.
I would probably take issue, first off, with this binary you have established, which sets neoliberalism and rightwingery as two discrete poles. In the era of our new, forbidding Labour overlords who have so far not cast off their stern election-period mantle to reveal a party that has any kind of positive plans for improving people’s quality of life, I fear that this will not do. Over the channel, neoliberal “centrist” Emmanuel Macron just teamed up with France’s harebrained and embattled right to impose his choice of speaker in the French parliament, despite not winning the latest election, and having nearly thrown his country to the far right wolves of Marine Le Pen recently. Please insert here a meme of the shot from Jaws where the guy says “You’re gonna need a bigger boat” but replace the word “boat” with “definition of political trends in a fragmented post-truth world that would seem to be more split along generational lines than any other traditional sectarian values.”
Letterboxd seems to be this to me: youth-oriented more than anything, and speaking a language all of its own, with a roughly “apolitical” ethos save for the prevailing progressive socio-cultural outlook of the age. There is a certain individualism at play here, as you note, but I think that the site (which I cannot for the life of me get into, which is fine because I am old!) does promote a certain giddy feeling of community alongside that. Crucially, I think Letterboxd holds appeal because it still champions enthusiasm — I don’t find it to be a very critical forum, but I think its denizens by and large seem hopeful and excitable, happy even (??) to be discovering films. And so what if the progressive and relentless iTunesification of culture now puts every single thing on there on a crazy-making equal footing, meaning that Tropical Malady (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2004; sample review: “mavericks unite”, 4 stars) can be apprehended in a similar mode to Pitch Perfect 3 (Trish Sie, 2017; sample review: “strangest part of this movie was fat amy being actually called patricia”, 2 stars).
I don’t have room to get into a full consideration of Letterboxd, a site towards which my predominant feeling is one of incomprehension. I also don’t understand LinkedIn (people get jobs… there…? They post about… jobs?) or Charli XCX (the music is kind of tinny and horrid but maybe in a… clever… way???), and have essentially given up trying to ‘get’ these things that are either outside of my generation or my tastes and abilities. Letterboxd, I will admit, is a little bit different in that it has come to be associated so heavily with contemporary cinephilia, and I am a cinephile who — I have just checked my pulse to make certain — is alive right now. So I have perennially had an account, which I have updated for a few weeks before considering that I was getting next to no enjoyment out of it. As an online person who is into films, I see Letterboxd content online: it’s fine! Relatively zingy, cheerful, inclusive, harmless.
I think maybe it takes a place that we have always had, from fan clubs of yore to online forums, through Twitter and right up to the present day. I’m not too concerned about the politics it embodies, but I suppose I have some questions, niggling thoughts occasionally about what it vehicles, what it says to us about the modern day. I reckon it reflects the world back to us, like Stendhal’s characterisation of a novel as being akin to a mirror carried along a dirt road:
“At one moment it reflects to your vision the azure skies, at another the mire of the puddles at your feet. And the man who carries this mirror in his pack will be accused by you of being immoral! His mirror shews the mire, and you blame the mirror! Rather blame that high road upon which the puddle lies, still more the inspector of roads who allows the water to gather and the puddle to form.”
What I think Letterboxd projects back to us is a world of uncertainty — a deeply fractured world, in which we seek to find a home of sorts because we know that there are no actual homes for us. This is the cinephilia of the housebound, for better or worse: people mainlining films because they’re almost infinitely available and you can still text during them. Perhaps you gulp down a brief meal and quickly log your four star, five-word appraisal in between movies. Look, there I go again, allowing judgmental snark to infiltrate my viewpoint; there’s that generational gap once more. Essentially, I think this is a different sort of cinephilia, which exists on an individual level, principally in the home, and which is associated with comfort in a way that cinephilia of old was not, because it entailed going to the cinema, and hiring films and owning films. That kind of cinephilia was more informed by other art forms, I think, and it was a much smaller part of, and experientially different from, the surrounding world. With Letterboxd, you can use the same machine to watch the film and write the review. What a difference in opinion that alone must create.
And yet, at the same time, there are probably some weird 22-year-olds on there who get really into the work of Lee Chang-dong! So I can see the value of Letterboxd, and see too that there are positives to the cocooning, perhaps even rather coddling universe it creates. Why shouldn’t the youth fuck about with film reviewery and riff ironically on the very notion of having, let alone strongly outlining, an opinion? “In these times?”, the crouched but still upbeat inhabitants of Letterboxd seem to chorus to me as one, “in these times, you imagine there’s a big, reasoned opinion to be had? About a movie?!”
For what it’s worth, I think a lot of the people who are very committed to Letterboxd and enjoy rooting around on there for whatever clubby movie-related fun they can get in this often brutal world are bright, good people who are serious about cinema as an art form, and they seem to have space for being politically engaged and open. We’ve always needed playgrounds, forums, collective entertainment. This latest iteration of these is, merely, at a remove from what we have come to consider ‘real’ human contact.
Maybe the cinephilia of Letterboxd is like the modern tattoo. In my generation, people would get tattoos mostly to show that they were a bit different, and the tattoo was supposed to hold some type of significance because of the seriousness of its permanence on your body. You picked a picture that meant something deep, you would probably only get one, and it marked you, perhaps, as being alternative to ‘polite’ society in some way. Today, the tattoo is everywhere, and the pictures chosen really don’t have to hold any particular meaning, because, hey, it doesn’t really matter. That marks a different outlook towards one’s self, I think; also towards art, and the world. The new way is getting pleasure where you can, and being less stiff about its import towards you, its role in constructing your unbudging identity.
All this is by the by. I’m sure you’ve been wondering, as I waffled on, just what my fucking Letterboxd 4 is. Just shut up, smile, and give us your Letterboxd 4! Who is this cunt going on and on about platforms or whatever, tell us the Letterboxd 4 you boring bitch!!!! Fair enough. L’atalante, Some Like It Hot, Stranger by the Lake, and A Portrait of Ga.
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