The Act of Choosing: Modern Film Selection and the Loss of Critical Thinking
Choice; it’s a funny thing. The simple act of choosing something to eat can often seem so monumental that pangs of indecision zap your brain and leave you aimlessly wandering the aisles of Tesco holding nothing more than a pot noodle and some yellow-sticker courgettes.
Other times, we wear our choices like a badge of honour; the gravitational pull of certain options is so strong that they seem natural to us and become part of our identities. Think of the mods and rockers of the 60s or the punks of the late 70s - their choice was so crystal clear it became an armour that they used to find comradery and face the world.
From indie Cindys to nu-ravers, new romantics to techno-heads, there is a range of classifications for people based on their choice of music. So, why isn’t this the case when it comes to films? Where are the art-house huns, the cult-classic crew, the marvel mandem or even the romcom rascals? Yes, some people enjoy these genres, they may even choose to watch them regularly, but their dedication to this choice feels less primal.
Cinephiles are warier of labels, and there could be a few reasons for this. One is that deciding to watch a film that takes up the better part of 2 hours is a much heftier time commitment than jamming to a 2-minute 15-second track and hitting skip if you’re not feeling it. There’s more on the line with choosing a film; there’s more at stake. Pinning your identity to any one genre would leave you at the mercy of numerous and often unreliable puppet masters, from screenwriters, directors and cinematographers, to actors, make-up artists, special FX departments and many more. One lousy film element can ruin the experience, meaning the whole exercise is a colossal waste of time.
This element of uncertainty means that how we choose the films we watch becomes far more critical. We weigh up our options, research and watch trailers. Even in the era of streaming, most of us lay some amount of groundwork before investing in watching a film.
Back in the days when your cinematic library was restricted to your local cinemas billing for that evening, your VHS collection or whatever the television providers had decided to broadcast on the four available channels, the act of choosing was probably a lot easier. You’d likely have your research method of choice - TV times - handy or read a review in the local paper, making up your mind sharpish, whether Clint Eastwood’s latest western romp was worth your time.
Nowadays, however, choosing a film is a different beast altogether; I spoke to film-fans between the ages of 18-35 and what they told me about their process of choosing films didn’t surprise me.
By a landslide victory, ‘peer-review’ websites - sites that provide a nominal value or % to a film based on reviews and ratings from site users - is their number one choice. It may seem like an innocuous finding, but personally, I think it speaks volumes about our psyches as young media consumers.
Faced with a mountain of options, we’re becoming more inclined to trust a sole numerical value assigned by people we’ve never met, whose tastes or credentials we know not, over our critical thinking skills or even the opinions of journalistic professionals. Can you blame us? Right now, Netflix alone has a total of 3,781 movies listed; with all those options in our pockets at all times, how the hell are we supposed to make rational decisions? Especially in 2020, the year where most of us have been staring down the barrel of more screen time than we would like to admit due to repeat lockdowns cancelling our social lives.
Variety is the spice of life, but have we over-salted the broth? According to the theory of Choice overload: yes, yes, we have. When we are faced with too many alternatives, the act of choice becomes too complicated for our brains to cope with, leaving us with the niggling feeling that any choice we make is incorrect and that we may be letting better options slip by us. The result being dissatisfaction, lower confidence and higher levels of regret. Which, to be honest, we have enough of on a day-to-day basis without our supposedly ‘relaxing pastimes’ piling on.
Choice fatigue might be playing a big part in how young film buffs are consuming the medium. Weary millennials entrust peer-reviewed percentages as easy guidance rather than trawling through pages of critics’ reviews, trailers, actors’ interviews, directors’ filmographies, etc. It’s not that we’ve become lazy; it’s just that placing a rating on a film makes it so much simpler. Faced with a 10% rating and a 95% rating, you know which you would rather invest your time in from a single glance. It’s a reliable method that allows us to feel more confident in our decisions, but some in the film industry aren’t happy about this trend.
Film studios argue that these aggregation sites are detrimental to the bottom line of films and their success. For example, if a complex film gets a lot of middle-of-the-road reviews, it may deter viewers from giving it a chance at all, and herein lies the problem. When we give something as artistic as a film a rating, and then, trust that rating over anything else, we disband with any of our own critical thinking abilities.
I’m not saying we all should become film critics each time we want to kick-back and watch something on the big screen. But by wholly trusting peer-review websites, we disregard the potential of own interpretation, in order to give weight to an anonymous mob. Choice fatigue has made us forget the joy of discovery and analysis, the journey of each individual film, and the subjectivity with which we should approach each one.
My bottom line here is that there’s a generation of film watchers out there that may never bother to view classics like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas because it has a 51% Rotten Tomatoes rating, and the media degree student in me just can’t be okay with that.
Written by Dominique Daly
Dominique Daly is a Belfast born music-fanatic and stalker of neighbourhood cats. When she's not writing about technology and marketing for her day job as a Content Marketer, she can most likely be found somewhere comfortable drinking wine and moaning about politics.