The fault in our films

For my friends, the process of choosing a movie involves nearly half an hour of deliberation, weighing individual preferences and moods (and the availability of certain titles on Netflix or quasi-reputable streaming sites). We float suggestions as disparate as Silence of the Lambs and Shakespeare in Love, and sometimes the whole endeavor is too fraught with conflict that we end up giving up altogether.

The other night, however, we were all able to settle on Snowpiercer, the premise of which is a train that holds the survivors of a new Ice Age caused by scientists trying to combat global warming and succeeding all too well. The cars are ordered based on class lines, and those in the very back attempt to fight their way to the front after years of oppression and deplorable conditions. A little dark, but it sounded interesting enough to silence calls for Daddy Day Care.

Within the first twenty minutes, the darkness took its toll. Beyond the bleakness of the environment, the scenes of torture, beatings, and families torn apart rendered one of my friends and me incapable of continuing in that moment. Another friend did not fully understand our impulse to change the movie, for she argued that we should finish Snowpiercer and embrace the emotional discomfort of seeing actions that happen every day to people all over the world. Worse things happened, she said, and we should not run from an emotional experience that would likely pay larger dividends in the future from a temporary state of anxiety.

And she’s right, at least with regard to the reality of our world. Much worse has happened, happens, and will happen. It’s important to understand this as we move into our futures and attempt to affect change, and film is one particularly effective medium through which to gain such knowledge. I don’t think, however, that it is the only medium to do so, nor do I think that one must necessarily suffer through two hours of this in the name of a slightly-heightened awareness, particularly when one’s present emotional state would render such lessons useless.

My friend (who also had difficulty watching) and I spent much of this first quarter hour covering our eyes, shrinking back into the couch and asking when the violence would stop. Could anyone really say that we gained a greater understanding by staring at the dark abysses of our palms and hearing only screams? Should we have forced ourselves to watch?

Perhaps.

But maybe not. There’s something to be said in our day and age for not being desensitized to violence and to images of human suffering—so long as one couples this with an acknowledgement of the reality of our world, and not the suppression of such a harsh truth. This, I think, was at the root of my other friend’s argument for why we should continue watching. She worried that we would construct walls in our minds separating the unpleasant from the safe, and we would neglect the former until another movie, another book, another song made it impossible; such a concern is not unfounded. What I just described is something very human.

At the same time, there are other ways to express the terrors that plague individuals every day without showing them directly. In many cases, these alternatives, are more effective by virtue of their ability to tap into the human imagination. The movie we turned on next, in fact, demonstrates this point perfectly.

We ultimately chose to watch Forrest Gump, a film following a man across decades of his life and the ways in which he interacts with United States history and, in some ways, personifies ideals central to America. Implications of physical and sexual abuse, alcoholism, drug addiction, and different forms of bigotry, among other serious topics, run their threads just under the surface, only occasionally explicitly mentioned or shown. This is what makes the movie so powerful. Through the lens of another human’s perspective, you see the struggles and failures of your loved ones, and of humanity as a whole without the impulse to cover your eyes.