Your Taste, Should You Choose to Accept It

Apparently there’s a new Mission: Impossible movie out? Who knew? You’d think they’d have at least put up a poster or something.

I don’t know how it is in the rest of the world, but at least in Los Angeles, the advertising is inescapable. The other day I went to a mall that’s not even attached to a theater, and coming out into the atrium, I was confronted with a positively gigantic LED screen, 25 feet tall at least, showing Tom Cruise’s face squinting out over his domain. It was like being in a modern update of 1984 where a bunch of Hollywood producers had said, “Well of course our main objective is to stay true to Orwell’s original vision but also we think obviously, Big Brother should be more handsome.”

I had plans to see the new movie, but was feeling an odd combination of gastrointestinal distress and extreme lack of interest. It seemed more or less guaranteed to be an entertaining action movie with some stunts that take full advantage of the IMAX screen, but I’ve been unable to work up even the smallest bit of enthusiasm for it.

But heading into the weekend, I felt like I needed to do some prep work to get the full effect. I’ve still only ever seen the first three movies in the series, after all. (Or in other words, I stopped right before they started to get good, by most accounts). But then I saw a recap of the franchise that made me realize I actually had seen at least one of the other ones, but had forgotten everything about them. But then I realized that all the details have blurred together, and while I think I remember seeing a scene of Henry Cavill beating the hell out of somebody in a bathroom, it might’ve been The Man From UNCLE or Casino Royale or maybe it was when he was wailing on me, in one of those dreams I’m not supposed to mention in polite company?

Whatever the case, the Mission: Impossible movies just don’t resonate with me at all, and I’ve been talking a lot of shit about them on social media lately. So much so that I’ve been concerned it comes across as the type of person who is super-quick to volunteer that they have no interest in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Where I’m never quite sure how we’re supposed to react. Congratulations on your sophisticated and refined tastes, I guess?

So it’s important to be clear that whatever it is that makes Mission: Impossible movies pass through my like fiber, it’s solely a matter of preference, and no value judgment is expressed or implied. (Except for the second movie, which is just not good). I love a high-budget, well-made action movie, and I love a summer blockbuster that everybody can enjoy at the same time as a Big Event. I have less than no interest in letting my obnoxious, pretentious movie snob come back to life after I’ve done such a good job of silencing him over the past several years.

Which is something I’ve been very wary of, since I’ve gotten back into Letterboxd. I like their YouTube videos, I like the social media aspect of it, and I especially like the idea of having a movie-watching diary that doesn’t require me to devote a couple of hours to farting out a post on this blog. What I don’t like is that it keeps reminding me of everything I hated about film school and about online film and popular media commentary.

And I start to waste time thinking about stupid stuff I absolutely don’t need to think about, like whether this movie “deserves” three stars, or do I bump it down to two and a half? Do I need to add a review to clarify my rating, even if I don’t have anything particularly insightful to say? Would it be fun to write something nasty about a movie I strongly dislike, instead of just ignoring it?

It’s all in danger of becoming performative instead of participatory. Like not just wanting to engage in interesting conversation about a movie (whether positive or negative), but needing to have your tastes recognized and validated. Where it’s not a celebration, like it should be, but a challenge that you can and most likely will fail at.

For example: choosing the four favorite movies that will go at the top of your Letterboxd profile, which is part of the site’s branding, since they ask celebrities on red carpets to list their four favorites. Mine are shown at the top of this post — The Empire Strikes Back, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Miller’s Crossing, and Rear Window. I mean, obviously.

But I’m gradually getting the impression that the rules for choosing these are more complex than I ever imagined, and I’ve done it wrong. For instance: I’ve just outed myself as basic. You’re supposed to choose something under-appreciated, to demonstrate that you’ve got more eclectic tastes. Ideally, something that is obscure enough that few others will have chosen it, but popular enough to dispel any sense that you specifically chose the most obscure and pretentious movie that you could think of.

“What’s wrong with Empire or Raiders?!” I protest, making even clearer that I’m missing the point. It’s not that people dislike them; it’s that so many people like them that it says nothing to list them as your favorites. You want to pick something that says, “this choice tells you something specifically about me.”

But each of those movies does say something specifically about me, to the point that it almost feels like a victory. For one thing, my memory is absolutely terrible, but I still vividly remember seeing each one for the first time1 and realizing I was seeing something that was unlike anything I’d seen before. For another, each one changed how I think about art and what I value in it. Two of them obviously played a big part in my moving to California. Rear Window was like a light bulb going off2 and changed the way I interpret movies. And Miller’s Crossing carried itself like both an art film and a gangster action movie, suggesting the distinction wasn’t as rigid as I’d always assumed.

And for about as long as those have been my favorite movies, I’ve gone through cycles of being a pretentious snob, to rejecting pretentious snobbery and becoming an arrogant snob instead, to just being kind of a self-righteous contrarian, to trashing stuff if I thought it would be funny, to whatever phase I’m in now. And honestly, it just feels like a victory to realize I just can’t get that concerned about highbrow vs lowbrow, knowing that I’ve seen a lot more blockbusters that resonated with me than “art” films have.

It feels like a victory to grow up feeling like a nerd, seeing all my nerd favorites become enormously successful business to the point that you were a weirdo if you didn’t like them, and then seeing that whole fandom fracture again. It feels like a victory to know that I’ve grown out of my arrogant phase where I scoffed at Stephen Spielberg as being too “corny” or “maudlin.” And it feels like a victory to realize that absolutely none of this matters at all, but I can still find a way to try and turn it into an introspective metaphor for self-discovery and growth or whatever.

But the most valuable reminder, at least for me, is just to remember why we’re fans of stuff in the first place. Ostensibly it’s to celebrate the stuff we love, instead of knocking down the stuff we hate. To discover new details about our favorites, or to discover new favorites. And resist the urge to let out the inner arrogant film critic, and instead just choose to enjoy things and let other people enjoy things.

1
At Phipps Plaza for the Atlanta premiere, at Septum Cinemas in my hometown for a birthday party, at the Tate Center at University of Georgia, and in a cinema studies class at NYU

2
No pun intended; not a flash bulb

1 At Phipps Plaza for the Atlanta premiere, at Septum Cinemas in my hometown for a birthday party, at the Tate Center at University of Georgia, and in a cinema studies class at NYU

2 No pun intended; not a flash bulb