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)
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
[2] I
wrote about this and
its relationship to pop culture (and batman)
