Wednesday, December 23, 2020

The Dojo's Ten Films that Encapsulate 2020

 

 


In this shit year, there has been many casualties both personal, (as of this writing over 325,000 dead from COVID-19) and industrial (various economic crises). One of those casualties has been the film and television industry. Even before the Coronavirus ravaged our planet, movie theaters and the film going experience has diminished. Today, movie theaters are on the life support of the big budget tentpole films of our monoculture.  Once COVID-19 became the 21st century plague, theater chains[1] across the country began the nebulous cycle of shut down, open with heavy restrictions on capacity, proximity, and amenities, until the infection rates rose, then shut down again. As the industry scrambled to figure out the best way through this crisis, there were fights between creatives and studio executives:  about pay, residuals, release dates, and control over the final product.  Then, in an industry shaking move, AT&T (parent company of Warner Bros Studios and HBO) decided to place all of their 2020 and 2021 slate of films on the streaming service HBOMAX, around the same time as its release in theaters. This decision seems prudent and practical given the context of COVID-19. With the world in lockdown a lot of the year, and the US going through a holiday wave of Coronavirus spikes, streaming has been a coping mechanism for a lot of people; Tiger King, The Mandalorian, LoveCraft Country, The Crown and the Great British Baking show; all are being consumed at a rapid pace through a variety of streaming applications. Pre pandemic, we consumed an average of 16 hours of streaming content a week. Since the lockdowns began, that number has increased to an average of 8 hours a day (This includes all content: tv, music, film). This change, along with the aforementioned shut down of theaters, has led to a 79% drop in the box office from 2019-2020. At the end of 2020, we’ll see the box office top out at 2 billion dollars compared to last year’s 10-billion-dollar gross. Thus, due to this cultural, social, and economic calamity, I cannot write a piece about the Top 10 Sociological films of 2020. Instead, I have decided to curate a list of 10 films that collectively encapsulate the events and feelings of 2020.   Enjoy!

 

10-Wildfires- Only the Brave (2017)


 

In January, and later in the year, wildfires devastated both Australia and the West Coast of the United States. Only the Brave is the story about the Granite Mountain Hot Shots who fought the Yarnell Hill Fire in Jun 2013.  While this story is about career fire fighters, a lot of the firefighting, especially in California is done through prison labor. Prisoners from men’s and women’s prisons work on the front lines for less than $2 an hour; and up until recently in California they could not get a job as a firefighter upon their release.  Much of the possible destruction of the 2020 wildfires were abated by those who have been discarded by many and monetized by heartless system.

 

9- Impeachment-All the President’s Men (1976)

 


The Impeachment trial of Donald Trump dominated the first few weeks of this year. Accused of an Abuse of Power and Obstruction of Justice by the House and was acquitted by the Senate on February 5, 2020 in a vote that was along party lines. A film that sums up this event of 2020 (yes, it really did happen in 2020) is the political thriller, All the President’s Men, that details the investigation into the Nixon’s Administrations involvement in the Watergate scandal.  Just as the Watergate investigation implicated behaviors of Obstruction and Abuse of power causing Nixon to resign before Impeachment proceeding could begin,  The Mueller Report (on the possible collusion in the 2016 election) determined that while there was a lack of sufficient evidence to prosecute Trump; predominately due to a lack of bureaucratic follow-through (meaning that Obstructionist behaviors were attempted, but never completed) rather than innocence.

 

8- COVID-19  * Double Feature*  Outbreak (1995) and Contagion (2011)




 

The deadliest disease of this generation, the Coronavirus or SARS-COVID2 (COVID-19) has ravaged the planet. Over 70 Million have been infected and 1.7 million people have died worldwide. Up until this ‘Outbreak’, a global deadly pandemic was always something of fiction, regardless of numerous health experts for decades emphatically expressing its inevitability. In the United States, preparedness was greatly compromised by the Trump administrations restructuring of the CDC response team, and politicizing public health measures.  The double bill of Outbreak and Contagion gives you a sense of ‘what we thought a global pandemic would be like” under the most extreme positions possible. Now, for Nostalgia sake, look back at what these films got right, and what they were wildly wrong about. The interesting question I have: if a virus was isolated in a small town, do you think there would be conversations about wiping out the entire town with munitions?...        

 

7- Quarantine- Groundhog Day (1993)

To protect the populace and slow the spread of the Coronavirus in the United States, on March 13, 2020 massive stay at home orders were implemented. Outside of those classified as “essential workers” many of the industries had to switch to working remotely from home or shut down entirely. Our current level of technology has allowed our economy to limp on, without being completely annihilated. However, this has exacerbated social class divisions (more on that later).   Groundhog Day was chosen for this list not as a literal representation of quarantine, but to represent the repetitious feeling that accompanies being stuck in your home for 9 months (and counting), and to add some levity to a list that is considerably dower.  For some of us, the continued repetition of daily life in our homes was a welcomed respite from various social mores, especially if you were economically stable. While for others, quarantine has intensified mental health issues, especially depression leading to an increase in rates of suicide since the March lockdown began.

 

6- Police Militarization- Do Not Resist (2016)

 I broke my own rule of choosing only narrative films that represent 2020, to include Do Not Resist in this list representing police Militarization. While the current organization of police militarization has been going on since the civil rights movements of the 1950’s, the recent protests sparked after the deaths of George Floyd.[2] caused tensions between the over equipped/ under trained police to boil over again with civilians. The film Do Not Resist was made after the Michael Brown murder by police in Ferguson Missouri and touches on the several factors that allow  police militarization to continue namely: the surplus of weapons generated by the Military Industrial Complex, the MCLEA Act and the 1033 program.

 

5- Murder of Black People by Police – Do The Right Thing (1989)


Police Violence against black and brown people has been an epidemic since the formation of posses to capture runaway slaves.  There is an imbedded cultural and systemic racism of the criminal justice system (which includes policing, prosecution, and punishment) and the overall antiblackness of the United States. Mind you, this antiblackness refers to the blackness within black bodies, as the US culture has attempted and has been successful at the appropriation of black culture.  The same could be said for my selection here, Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing. Not only does the police murder in the film seem prophetically like the death of George Floyd, but the film also gets appropriated by white critics as a stellar piece of cinema, without questioning or contemplation of what the film means; especially to the black experience.

 

4.  White Supremacy – Skin (2019)

White supremacy and racism have been the bedrock of the culture and structural organization of the United States since its inception.  With the election of Donald Trump, we have seen an increase in visibility and activity of hate groups, culminating in the protests Charlottesville. In 2020, during the presidential election, Donald Trump identified Antifa as a terrorist organization and would not denounce white supremacy during one of the debates. Instead, he told the hate group known as “The Proud Boys” to “stand back and stand by” which they interpreted as a call to action.  Skin, dives into the inner world of white supremacy that has been written about extensively by sociologists in the field Based on a true story, the film reinforces the idea that love can conquer hate, and is supported by data from the new-ish book Healing From Hate by Michael Kimmel.  

 

3- Threat of Nuclear War – WarGames (1983)

In Jun of 2020, North Korea vowed to increase its nuclear program, as peace talks failed. Around the same time North Korea blew up the joint liaison office they shared with South Korea. This, coupled with Russian hackers infiltrating US Nuclear Launch systems in December of 2020, increased the tension and threat level internationally, causing many people to believe we were on the brink of nuclear war. A similar sudden shift in Nuclear fear was dramatized in the 1983 film WarGames. A film about a computer hacker who gets into the Government network and accidently starts a nuclear war thinking it is a game. The dramatization was so close to reality that it lead to the creation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1984. It is important to remember that pop culture is soft power.

 

2- Presidential Election * Double Feature* Wag the Dog (1997) and Election (1999)

  


The year’s presidential election has reinforced divided political lines scouring them deep into our collective psyche. The country’s conservative base has devolved into a bunch of increasingly vitriolic race bating xenophobic conspiracists, meanwhile centrist democrats, fearing the loss of their own wealth and power, pushed out/against more progressive ideas and candidates in their own party to nominate the most milquetoast candidate rather than a radical. And even with that centrist choice that was supposed to appeal to all people, the race was close. So close that we can not call the Biden win a repudiation of Trump or Trumpism. After these 4 years, especially this last one 74 million people still voted for Trump. This means that Biden only won because of A. Trump’s (mis)handing of the pandemic and B. The overwhelming support and activism of black and brown folk  The films in this double feature point to the relationships between politics, media violence and the insider “horse trading” that often goes on.  While these films directly parallel the 96’ election cycle, many of the tactics were repeated and perfected in 2020. 

 

1-           Ignorance  Idiocracy (2006)

2020 marks the 10 year culmination of the anti-intellectual movement in the United States. Over the last decade we saw increases in Anti Vaccers, anti- maskers, climate change deniers, and a multiplicity of conspiracy theorists. While there has always been a level of animosity for the academy, often viewed as isolated individuals in their “ivory tower”, there was an acceptance of basic public school science facts. Since 2010 we saw that acceptance and trust in facts and the scientific process be both questioned and rejected by tens of millions of Americans.  There is a fundamental flaw that is created if you can not agree on objective truth. The minute we start breaking apart the foundations of acceptable ideas of reality, our society breaks down.  Idiocracy  while does not pin point the anti- intellectual movement as the catalyst for the destabilization of society, it does present a future that is hauntingly similar to some of the events of 2020. This is particularly disturbing as we seem to have gotten there a lot quicker as Idiocracy is set in the year 2500.   

 

 

 


 

There seems to be irrational hope for the future that 2021 will be better than 2020. Sometimes, a fool’s hope is all we can hold on to. Yet, for Academic Cinephiles like me who worship film, I just want to back to church. Stay Safe everyone and have a acceptable holiday season, sheltering in place and remotely connecting with friends and family. 

 



[1] This hit the already strapped Independent films even harder. Many of them are getting by through the resurrection of the drive-in