Here's a Massive Problem that Confronts All Movie Critics, Including You!

[@KrazyKat007]

A Hollywood movie like “Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner” was definitely attempting to prescribe reality.

[@gage6209]

Great movies aren't simply for or against, they just represent their characters honestly

[@jared361]

Fantastic video! Love the classroom/lecture type format for this channel so that we can all continue to think deeper about film and art in general.

[@adammontgomery5532]

Very good exploration of the topic! You might do a (or a series) follow up to this video inviting guests on to discuss different examples. It's a very broad subject.

[@keouine]

The personal project films are one thing. The films that studios count on to pay stock dividends have to be like rides at Disneyland meaning the greatest number of people will participate and want to do it again. I hope we're wise enough not to interpret too much or think a film represents a screenwriter or director's philosophy at least for the big merged studio films. I sub/consciously put the inclusion, PETA, anti-drug or smoking side of a movie in a different part of my brain for unreal stuff as I do for well-dressed, fit extras, overly spacious and beautifully decorated rooms, school classroooms of quiet children and the oddest weirdest thing in all movies: the frenzied, mostly clothed blitz sex upright against a wall.

[@whitneyjacobs7874]

Any film viewer has the choice of whether to act upon the proscriptive messages perceived to be coming from a film. So even a highly ideological film need not work upon the viewer in a deterministic way. Also, it is easy for films to make bad arguments or at least over-simplified ones but extremely difficult for films to make good arguments. This is due to the fact that the visual sense has an outsize influence on our cognitive processes and may be the enemy of subtle thinking or logical conclusions. So I tend to have a bit more respect for films that leave some ambiguity and do not try to answer every question of their viewers.

[@Otokichi786]

I see movies as a Janus mask: One side entertains us by taking us out of our otherwise ordinary lives. The other makes us face a mirror to examine our culture, beliefs, religion, etc. "Raiders of the Lost Ark" (1981) is an example of the "smiling side" of the mask. "Europa, Europa" (1990) is an example of the "frowning side," asking if this is what Homo sapiens is all about. The crew of the "Nostromo" in "Alien" (1979) smoke frequently, but that didn't make me start smoking cigarettes back then. On movie taboos: I saw a KZbin post about the most horrifying movie NOT being a Horror movie. "Come And See" (1985) is/was that movie, and left me shaken to the core. Will it ever be broadcast on Cable TV or shown at the Indie movie house? Probably not.

[@jessebbedwell]

The greatest goal of a work of art is not that the patron question the work, but that through viewing said piece the person must question themselves.

[@ddespair]

The answer isn’t idealism or realism. People don’t go to the movies for either of those things. They go to the movies for escapism. That’s why some people don’t want to see certain things like animals being hurt. Because this is supposed to be a fantasy for them and they can’t enjoy animals being hurt in their fantasy. It’s the same reason why conservatives hate seeing a lot of minorities in lead roles. These people grew up seeing mostly white casts and seeing minorities messed with their escapism because they can’t relate to it. Secondly, in regards to the Hays code vs today’s guidelines, you touched on the evolution of morality, but you neglected to address delivery and accessibility. When the Hays code was a thing, you had an extremely limited library of media to both look at and have access to. Cable wasn’t in households in any significant percentage, therefore it stands to reason that one would limit what people would see because that’s ALL they COULD see, so there was a far bigger chance of influence. -whereas today, it’s ok to have a diverse cast in a series because you have a thousand times more avenues to media, so if you don’t like it, you can watch something else. If it was a TV, the Hays era would have 2 channels and today you’d have thousands. It’s like showing one side of the story vs many sides, so if you can only show one side, I would assume you’d try to make it as safe and clean as possible. People would be easily influenced to believe one bad apple ruins the bunch if the only media they have access to is one movie a month that shows it. But if they have thousands, they get more perspectives

[@llamasarus1]

Reminds me of how I tried watching Training Day with my father, but he didn't want to finish half-way through because he thought the film had an anti-police agenda with how cops are portrayed in it and that violated his conservative sensibilities. But I didn't see it that way and thought it was a character study of how evil Denzel Washington's character was in it. If I see something portrayed a certain way, a lot of the times it's a situation unique to that story and not meant to be extrapolated to be some universal.

[@LearningaboutMovies]

good example, and great point in the last sentence. A lot of the "prescriptive" interpretations will claim that the film is making a universal statement, when it might just be discussing an observed phenomenon, making a probabilistic statement, or saying something far more hesitant. as always, when you think a film is "Anti-cop" or something like that, you should at least finish it! It might be good to think of films, some of them at least, as lyric poems rather than epics, which tend to universalize.

[@llamasarus1]

@@LearningaboutMovies There may be universal themes in Training Day but they are more broad and are masked in the backdrop of a story of drug cops and to see it as a commentary on cops per se is missing the point. There are also themes that are up for discussion. Like when a person uses their power to do bad, were they always bad to begin with or did they start naive and idealistic and later get corrupted by the institution of power they traversed in? In the case of Alonzo I don't know, but it's an interesting question. The point of Training Day was more complex than to reduce it to cop-bashing.

[@charlesfostercringe4903]

The hero in Training Day is also a cop.

[@bilguana11]

There was no Humane Society warning on "The Power of the Dog." So did he hit the horse? Most critics aren't.

[@cruddddddddddddddd]

It goes back to the question: does art reflect our reality, or does reality reflect our art? And I do think it's more complicated than saying, 'it's just a movie.' I want to see films that depict our reality, but sometimes I want to see films that portray an ideal - I've enjoyed both types of movies, books, comics/manga - fiction in general. A slightly different topic is how movies/shows should adapt existing fiction from another medium. Should a company adapt the book as is, more or less, or should it add its own baggage and use the source material to tell its own story (Rings of Power is a good example of what I'm talking about here). My issue is, I don't want Hollywood or any other big production companies to be the arbiters of what our reality should be, necessarily. I don't want them telling me what's 'good' or what's 'bad' for me or anyone else. These people make money for a living, lol - that's what the top dogs do. They are interested in putting butts in seats. Any moral high ground they think they have - based on what we've seen since Hollywood's inception - means less than nothing in my book. As far as diversity goes, I would rather watch an all-black casted movie from a director with a real vision than watch another quota-ticked piece of canned-ham production that insists on ticking all the various boxes. Diversity is great thing, but there are so many types of directors from so many different backgrounds and cultures out there that it seems like it would happen more naturally on its own. I watch many foreign films, and I think they are great. I get it's complicated, and part of the problem is social media. Many of the directors/screenwriters/actors etc. are so vocal now on apps like twitter. Everything is a news article, even when the thing is in pre-production. I miss the days when you saw the trailer and, without knowing the life stories and political-leanings of everyone associated with the film, went to watch it at the theater, and if you really liked it, you did more digging on your own. Social media has changed the way movies are made, as well as the way we watch them, and I don't think it's been for the better, as far as being able to critique movies objectively (as objective as each individual is able to, I should say). Anyway, good stuff.

[@kevmitchify]

As for whether or not harm to animals is depicted, I think it's more important to ask were animals actually harmed for the purpose of the film. That's what that AHA and other certifications (as toothless as they are) are trying to get at. It's kind of hard to argue that a film is merely being descriptive of animal cruelty, when the creators are actually doing it. This does however get murkier as time goes on and films become historical things in themselves independent of their creators.

[@LearningaboutMovies]

it is not, for this person, about real animals being harmed in the making of the film. It's about showing/staging animal harm. That is the point: the art shows a possibility that could happen in reality, which a viewer does not want to see or cannot accept.

[@willieluncheonette5843]

do movies control the viewer or does the viewer control the movie. I certainly hope it's the latter. Movies can depict anything they want but the viewer can react any way he/she wants.

[@LearningaboutMovies]

as in all relationships, it goes both ways, I'd think.

[@willieluncheonette5843]

@@LearningaboutMovies If that's what you want. But to be influenced in a harmful way by any film is not good. You should be in control at all times, not a light flickering on a screen controlling you. No film showing cigarette smoking is going to force you to smoke cigarettes. In the end it is all up to you.

[@keouine]

It's interesting to think how often people assume the real life 50s were as wholesome, bland and square as in Our Miss Brooks or first season of Leave It to Beaver. We know it wasn't true but it's a half lie that won't die. I think the fake TV family is responsible. The tendency to spiffy up reality and render it more pc might give false impressions about now and the past 2 decades.

[@bluetensormedia230]

Movies are constructed dreams. The movie viewer embodies dream-like states of mind (suspension of disbelief) when viewing the movie. Dreams are simulations of possible reality, a neat trick the human brain does in order to maintain predictable relationships in the world. We watch, and create, movies because we can simulate fictions in our minds, an indication that our minds are simulating reality for us, whether or not what we are experiencing is real. In this context, it is interesting that MPAA will provide content warnings, while commercial advertisements provide no warnings that say, "this is trying to influence your spending behavior." Synonymous to this relationship is the degree that limited violence is allowed in public television or general audience content, but nudity and sexuality are not. Let's be real, these industries of media are interested in access to human attention, and the human dream generator, such that media controls human attention, if only for a 30 second commercial, or 2 hour movie, in a relationship of economic exchange. This relationship is so powerful that regulating industries limit or label content that can trigger dramatic emotional changes in general audience. Multicomponent enhanced working memory is the science that can begin to unpackaged film theory.

[@hdurh7136]

An extremely interesting video thank you Dr.

[@gutrotten]

Liked and Prescribed

[@LearningaboutMovies]

thanks.

[@clumsydad7158]

conflict of interest and moral hazard is everywhere in nearly all fields

[@LearningaboutMovies]

Moral hazard example: as a college professor, I need to pass my students so that they can keep paying tuition here, and if I don't pass them, maybe they don't stay around and we lose tuition and then the university suffers, which means I suffer. KZbin is the same: make videos that get clicks, which is giving people what they want, which can be pandering, and which severely limits all of the possibilities here.

[@jordanjoestar-turniptruck]

Everything has the potential to be propaganda, and maybe we err on the side of "prescribed" propaganda when propaganda has had large and subtle impact on our lives or history. But we rob ourselves of a lot of nuance and challenge when we err too much.

[@Zalmoksis44]

This is a very interesting topic. On the one hand, I'm certain movies portraying handsome protagonsts smoking took part in making smoking look fashionable. The viewers are not objective, critical or self-aware. Propaganda movies and TV commercials exist, because we are generally speaking dummies and they work. On the other hand, I hate the minority quotas and the way they are implemented in modern American movies. It is done against any reason as if genetics didn't exist, as if historical truth didn't exist, as if logic whatsoever didn't exist.

[@nopizzawithoutpineapple]

The minority quotas exist because until pretty recently a lot were kept out of the industry because of discrimination and white cis actors would almost exclusively take parts of racial and sexual minorities. Black-, brown- and yellowface was very present until the 70s, and sexual minorities have only in recent years gotten parts to protray their own identities and make money as visible artists.

[@jitendradoc]

Hi Dr. Josh. This is just a question like "Is religion good or evil? "Or " Is there something like Sin? " Your take is very good. But, I think there can not be any straight answer. Everything depends on the original inception, or the root idea behind the creation. Schindler's List was great. Kashmir files is great . But Avengers with all sensibility is not.

[@LearningaboutMovies]

thank you.

[@heartofcinema3454]

Great video discussion and all well said.

[@richardpaz8803]

Thought provoking video. There are so many dimensions to consider and your presentation was crystal clear. Striving to be objective and asking the "right" questions is always a big challenge. I think we watch movies with a set of expectations that can cloud our judgement. Your video was stimulating and very helpful. I always "look forward" to your "balanced" presentations. HAPPY NEW YEAR!

[@omniviewer2115]

I think the advice you give at the end is good advice, particularly when it comes to older movies. Newer movies, though, tend to lack that kind of nuance, meaning it's much easier to tell when they are in the prescribing mindset. And if the film itself isn't enough, the people who made it will usually proclaim their intentions from the highest rooftops and remove all doubt. Just one more reason why I prefer older films.

[@Optophobic]

I clicked on this video thinking it was a new Tom Segura podcast.

[@LearningaboutMovies]

no idea who that was until you said something. Some of us resemble each other.

[@Optophobic]

@@LearningaboutMovies Just a stupid joke that popped in my head. I really enjoy your videos.

[@jimpickard3850]

This is an important aspect I have never really considered before. I would certainly subscribe to the ultra realism camp myself, except when a movie is deliberately setting out a moral position.

[@boba2783]

I nearly walked out on American sniper because it was US propaganda BS

[@BadClamsVideos]

I generally view films as a reality completely separate from ours. Laws of physics can be different, morals could be different, anything can be different from (or the same as) our reality. I suppose I view movies as a description of the reality of the movie/story, which could be used as a message or prescription of our own reality, but may not be (it depends). Like you point out - it's up to the filmmaker.

[@emanuel_soundtrack]

this problem only started after politization and moralization of art. Does not matter the amount of prescription or description, important is the catharsis. Good Art will be always a pleasant or painful call for awareness

[@OirichEntertainment]

Great discussion. I feel like it is prescribe because the films are selling its world to you. Most films you can't see in your reality so I think the reality represented is how we should interpret it.

[@FD-io4pk]

From everything you've said, most if not all movie critics are bs. None of them properly back their claim with thorough research and substancial evidence. There is not the time in a 10 min review and most people wouldn't have the necessary knowledge to understand any point they would try to make. Besides, before asking normal people to just become elevated beings with ethics far beyond the trash masquerading as wisdom these days, can we at least expect this level of rational thinking from actual movie makers ? Your points are all very interesting and valid but overall your discourse is plain wishful thinking, if people reacted like that to movies, there wouldn't be any buzz to make money from and the consumerist culture wouldn't take as well as it does nowadays. Very curious to watch one of your reviews, though.

[@mattpropp9192]

Describe vs prescribe is only an issue if you work under the assumption that all things are to be one or the other.

[@LearningaboutMovies]

another reply guy who didn't watch until the end of the video. Not a binary thinker here, a probabilistic one, and this is a teaching video.

[@mattpropp9192]

@@LearningaboutMovies it’s true- I did not watch the whole video. Sorry if you took my comment as a remark on yourself or how you view film. I saw the first few minutes and felt I came to my own conclusion as I’ve heard this topic before. I mostly clicked because of that tantalizing title. My comment wasn’t needed but it’s nice that we seem to agree. Good luck with your content.

[@jimpickard3850]

If the Hays code says that about depiction of clergy, then Charles Laughton and the producers must have had a lot of trouble over Robert Mitchum's evil priest in Night of the Hunter ?

[@shakenbake3249]

Hey, great video and very interesting topic! It’s a very tough thing to judge and evaluate a movie when it may have ideals that conflict with what you may agree with to be right or wrong. Some of the most important and best movies ever made (in terms of pure filmmaking) are promoting and putting forth very problematic ideals that most would consider to be morally wrong and unjust. Is a movie bad if it depicts something you don’t agree with even if it is a technically well made movie? It’s something I still think about a lot and still struggle with, especially when going back and watching older films which have some very problematic depictions and views being pushed on the audience. I do think there should always be art pushing what is considered to be “ok” or “allowed”. There should always be art pushing the boundaries and challenging taboos of our society because that is how we move past these things and how we end up confronting these subjects. Great video!

[@davicosta5358]

jimmy kimmel becomes a movie buff:

[@LearningaboutMovies]

I don't get it.

[@Morphed626]

I like these video breakdowns, thanks for the content. Regarding racial casting, I think its a little more nuanced than just box ticking ideology alone. For one, POC spend a lot of money at the films and would like to see themselves in the stories told (which i think is fair), so Hollywood being a business, they cater for that slice of money. I also think time and setting plays a part too. Something like downtown abbey makes sense to me given the time period, but a film set in a diverse city such as NYC with no POC always used to look off in my view. I think your appendix on context possibly covers this however.

[@TucoRope2Tight]

If you take "Friends", was it really rare for a group of NYC friends in the 90s to be all-white ? I suspect it wasn't. So it's a question of whether a TV show should go more towards a prescriptive view. But then who decides what is the ideal we strive towards ? In Hollywood (and america in general except for bigots), it's pretty evident that, now, racial equality is a good prescription, but I doubt millionaire studio execs will want to enforce strong prescriptive views towards class equality :)

[@Morphed626]

@@TucoRope2Tight Seinfeld, despite having its own problems with race and gender, was better cos you had all white friends living in a diverse environment of NYC, which made sense. Friends failed on this. To me, its more of a descriptive issue thats blended into prescribe in terms of main role casting as well now.

[@Madallen2002]

I mean to me at least. The beauty of the film is there is no clear-cut answer. It can be interpreted in any way. Why else do directors themselves even theorize their films? I've never nor will I just say that a film is anti-cop or sexist for example. But I also understand that as far as people who don't finish the film. Is that when you're not as passionate about film as we are? Of course, my dad will just immediately cut off a movie he doesn't like. Whereas I have pretty much never cut off a film until the end.

[@LearningaboutMovies]

thank you.

[@skyorrichegg]

Wow, really great video. With your comments about ideologies and villains, and tropes, I had noticed an interesting and weird trope in the past that has to do with American's views about the military: there tends to be a heirarchy of villains when it comes to the military industrial complex... the villain in a film with the military tends to be the highest ranking officer. Generals are often depicted as evil or callous, Colonels might be the evil one if they are the highest rank and so on down the ranks. There will generally be a more sympathetic lower rank officer or nco when there is a villain officer. The enlisted are almost always good unless all of the military in the film are evil. Paramilitaries are always evil. I think this has to do with some complex idealogies related to how Americans feel about their military. I see a similar parallel in procedural cop or cop-like shows where depending on what type of cops they are the antagonists will be some higher "jurisdiction" group... so if they are local police, it will be the FBI, if the protags are FBI, it will be the CIA, and if they are the CIA it will be the NSA. The only show that seems to actually understand what would happen in real life is The Wire where the orgs, beauracracy, and systems actually would fight to not have jurisdiction or responsibilites over things.

[@baslielberhanu5199]

An interesting quirk about American military films is that it US Pentagon will loan equipment such as vehicles and uniforms for shooting the film as long as the film adheres to a set of established standards. One of those standards it that you can depict corrupt or villainous individuals in the military but you can't show the military as a whole as being corrupt. At least I read somewhere that that was the case. That's probably why you get the "Evil Officer" trope

[@skyorrichegg]

@@baslielberhanu5199 yeah I remember reading some stuff in the past about US military uniforms in films and what standards need to be used in the story to get Pentagon approval and that if you do not get the approval they can not depict the military uniforms accurately or something like that. I am not sure how accurate some of those laws or the film industry's beliefs about those laws are but there have been a lot of very poorly done uniforms in movies about the modern US military. The military in general has never really been depicted that well in film or tv in my opinion, which probably points to basically no profession being depicted accurately, I just only notice the military inaccuracies as that is what I am familiar with (my wife says similar things about depictions of the healthcare industry). Generation: Kill was about the only one I felt has gotten the nuance correct and even that has plenty of stuff that is a little bit off.

[@mindlander]

I think we should just stop making movies. Every movie will offend someone, and that is just not acceptable.

[@TucoRope2Tight]

I want artists to be free to depict religious institutions, governements, and their agents, negatively. Otherwise we are just living in an autoritarian society. If people want to show deference towards magical forces or the political shape of the day (so-called "democracy", the political shape of capital…), good for them. But I certainly don't want others to enforce that over artists. Art is both descriptive and prescriptive, it certainly influences our imagination and representations, thought probably not as much as family, school, and material forces. So for things like cigarets, gun violence and things of that nature, I think if society agrees these are negative, the main problem is their manufacturing, not their representation in works of art. Capitalism and "puritanism" (or something like that) contradiction in american society.

[@doncorleone1553]

They are already free to do so. There have been plenty of anti capitalist anti religious authors and vice versa for as long as the concept has existed.

[@toddheffner9746]

A fascinating conundrum which can't, in fact, have a fixed answer. It is all inevitably dependent on the intentions of the respective artist. Just as there are those who feel bound to channel reality directly through their art, others may feel driven to envision the world as it could be or ought to be. In other instances, neither may be the case; who is to say that film has an obligation to offer any form of commentary on reality at all? Might a given film, for example, represent an evocation born entirely out of the mind of the artist; pure imagination committed to celluloid? In any event, if one were to require a concrete answer to the above dilemma, my feeling is that film-making as an art form would surely be limited and thus diminished, particularly given the propensity for some of the finest film-makers to succeed precisely by virtue of their capacity for raising engaging questions as opposed to making definitive statements.

[@charlesfostercringe4903]

A lot of contemporary movies, and quite a few old ones, have such a blatant and poorly presented agenda that they simply don't ring true, which is usually a deal-breaker for me. All the "diversity" nonsense nowadays is probably the strongest example, but it is far from the only one. It just reads as deliberately subversive without honesty or any genuine empathy. On the other hand, I can think of examples of movies that strive to be descriptive and leave any ideological interpretation up to the viewer, which are unfairly condemned for advocating the things that people do in the movie. For example, I saw a great movie recently with themes of suicide, which to me was obviously trying to create empathy for the characters involved, but not advocating for it. But I think a lot of people would have been confused by that.

[@LearningaboutMovies]

thank you.

[@doncorleone1553]

Yes most films can be interpreted in many ways… not always are they intended to be didactic

[@nyibangocosta6367]

I don't think the issue of having an all white cast is as severe as you make it out to be, particularly in period pieces. More often than not I think general audiences would be understanding, given the circumstances and even in different contexts, I doubt any serious uproar would be caused. Perhaps a few tweets here and there but nothing so major as to shift the mindset of hiring agents or force quotas for the sheer purpose of appeasing audiences.

[@ThePurpleLordLeoAnansi]

That’s the exact point … if only a couple of brown people complain, who cares? I appreciate your candor.

[@stephenkeen5737]

This helps me understand your reviewing more. Thanks. I accept a lot of films at fairly face value and enjoy it...which would seem to be more descriptive art. Sometimes analysing the moral or underlying ethics is saying you disagree with that belief and hence kind of seeing a prescriptive element that may or may not be intentional. It may be just a descriptive art. Hence some negative reviews result from prescriptive viewer vs descriptive art, while others might rate it highly as pure art. Am I wrong?

[@LearningaboutMovies]

very well said. In your comment, I would alter the idea that "analysis" is judgment; rather, it may just be noticing or pointing out possibilities. But yes, a lot of negative or positive reviews have to do with reflection of beliefs -- I think this is a near-universal among all critics, pro and amateur, and it might be conscious or unconscious.

[@cheeseandonions9558]

The biggest problems with movie critics is that they can't erase their own personal likability from their reviews. And we all have this confirmation bias where we read the movie reviews by the critics we love, and ignore those who are unknown to us.

[@darthelooi8021]

Very interesting video! I cannot think of anything I under no circumstance wouldn't want in art, though some things are obviously not stuff I'd like to see presented without care (this may just be because I'm young and naive though). I think one of the reasons I don't love Come and See, 12 Angry Men and Star Trek (of the stuff I've seen) is because I feel that they prescribe. They're made with one purpose in mind, to tell us what to think. I want my art to describe reality, but I'll have to think of an argument why.

[@84paratize]

If you just want your art to describe reality, why not only watch the news or highly factual documentaries? I don't see the point of limiting yourself to only descriptive art

[@darthelooi8021]

@@84paratize It’s not about limiting myself but what I prefer. There are works I love which I guess does both. If a work asks questioins, I’d like some of them unanswered. The same question you asked could be asked for art that prescribe too.

[@84paratize]

@@darthelooi8021 I enjoy both. It really depends on the movie and the director

[@darthelooi8021]

@@84paratize maybe I’m just set in my mindset so I see desribe when in reality they presribe. I’ll have to think about this more when watching.

[@TucoRope2Tight]

@@darthelooi8021 I want artists to try to answer some questions and make a case for their views. Just asking questions and leaving it open is too easy. Then it's up to me to grapple with the case I have been presented with, and if I agree or not.

[@ThePurpleLordLeoAnansi]

excellent discussion, your example of an all-white cast not being (generally) acceptable because of its implications is spot on, as a significant consumer of movies and TV, I will not be supporting any (American) property that has an all-white cast, regardless of context. Even in an historical context, if that's the limit of your imagination, I am not interested. American filmmakers do not deserve the benefit of the doubt on the point.

[@mindlander]

I'm glad there are people going the opposite direction of the "go woke, go broke" crowd. You're still racist, but not the crazy kind.

[@ThePurpleLordLeoAnansi]

@@mindlander Lol! Yes, I am the racist one, I’ve been found out! And a ‘woke’ quote … I am in awe of your intellect.

[@mindlander]

@@ThePurpleLordLeoAnansi fyi, sarcasm is for the lazy mind. I'm sure you can think of something better.

[@ThePurpleLordLeoAnansi]

@@mindlander nope 🤡

[@mikomarcello]

Such a shallow POV.