The power of film

I believe that all people are very impressionable. We can very easily be swayed to one side of an argument that we previously dismissed as ludicrous if it is re-presented in a different way. It does not take much for us to back off our strong stance and become more open-minded. Once this happens, we are very vulnerable to great orators and their ideas, regardless of what they are actually saying.

My belief is illustrated perfectly in Fight Club. Tyler manages to slowly build an army of regular men and convince them to go along with Project Mayhem and bomb 10 buildings. If someone had just relayed this story to me verbally, I probably would have been very skeptical. But because it was relayed to me visually on film, I was able to see the process unwind for myself. Fight Club allowed me to experience the unfolding of a transformation that I would have deemed preposterous had I not been able to see it with my own eyes.

This is the central power of film: it allows us to see the world in ways which we would never consider. Filmmakers present us with hypothetical situations and turn them into reality. Take a normal working man with an affinity for IKEA and turn him into an underground bar fighter who wants to create anarchy and completely loses his identity in the process? Check. Take sweet gentile giant suffering from testicular cancer and turn him into a nameless soldier who is willing to die on a mission to destroy a coffee shop? Check. This list could go on indefinitely. Great filmmakers make us think differently after seeing their movie; they permanently change our perception of the world.

As Walter Benjamin suggests at the end of the fourth section of his article “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” film is definitely based on politics versus being based on ritual. There is nothing ritualistic about a movie – there is no tradition behind it, and one screening is not unique from another. Film is also lacking an aura in the way Benjamin defines it – the unique appearance of a distance, however close it may be. We come as physically close to a film as possible without actually being inside it. We see the scenes as the camera sees them; as Duke University film professor Negar Mottahedeh suggests, we become the camera. We hear what it hears and see what it sees. We have no tradition to adhere to when we analyze the film; we fall back on politics, the interrelationships between the people, groups, or organizations in a particular area of life especially insofar as they involve power and influence or conflict.

I have already said that film causes us to think about the world differently than we did before and that we, as people, are very easily influenced when presented with evidence that appears convincing. So by combining the two ideas, it is easy to see the power filmmakers have. I would argue that they are some of the most power people in society today because they hold the means to influence the masses. Benjamin does not give this idea the consideration it merits; he just brushes it aside by saying “We do not deny that in some cases today’s films can also promote revolutionary criticism of social conditions.” I can think of two great recent examples of filmmakers significantly impacting society. The first comes from my favorite documentary, Super Size Me by Morgan Sprulock. Spurlock only ate McDonalds for 30 days and always ordered it super sized if he was asked. The public outcry from the film caused McDonalds to eliminate super sizing from their menu. The second example is from a much more popular documentary from the same year, Fahrenheit 9/11. Michael Moore put Bush under more public pressure than he had faced up to that time. These two filmmakers caused the public to see situations in new light and stirred them enough to force and demand change in their world, all thanks to the power of film.

Films are tools for many things: education, entertainment, but above all, for influence. I enjoy films because they engage me and challenge me. They definitely have to potential to change the way society feels about some part of life today.