With the festive season slowly approaching, you will inevitably find yourself cosying up in front of the TV with your family, in search of a new feel-good film to destress you before having to endure the politically controversial debates happening at the dinner table. A Netflix original or a Hallmark Christmas movie seems to be the only solution to post-finals anxiety, when the one thing you wish to do is turn off your brain. The problem, however, starts if you don’t end up turning it back on.
In an article earlier this year, The Guardian revealed that Netflix insiders are allegedly being told to make their scripts more “second screen friendly”. To tell, not show, in order for the viewers who watch their shows in the background to still be able to grasp the general plot and never click “pause”. This is not a very surprising discovery: a corporation known for continuously raising their subscription prices wants to earn even more money at the cost of the quality of their shows? Colour me shocked! Dumbing down media is indeed concerning, but it is also nothing new.
Take a look at the current state of print media: bestseller lists are overwhelmingly occupied by TikTok recommendations, with Colleen Hoover and Sarah J Maas wielding their swords at the top of the terrifying tower of literary decline. The ever-present trope-ification of novels is reaching unimaginable levels, with book blurbs overcrowded by “enemies to lovers” or “found family” buzz words. This is not to say that reading exactly what you know you will enjoy is wrong per se – after all, books are meant to be enjoyed. But they are also meant to be discussed, and a serious issue arises when there is simply nothing left to talk about.
This age of anti-intellectualism, or the infantilisation of culture as it is often referred to, is not a result of the time we live in. We are not getting dumber by the day, unless we make the conscious choice of doing so. The commodification of literature and the rise of easily digestible media is just another repercussion of capitalist society. Companies will continue to push the “easy” stories, because that is what sells, and to sell is their very nature. Nothing is being shoved down your throat if you have the critical thinking skills to choose what you consume. You’re not a helpless victim of capitalism, you’re simply choosing to have the choice made for you. It is insulting to our intelligence to pretend that we have been set up for failure and have become mindless creatures in need of a constant stream of entertainment.
The truth is, Indie films are still here, they simply aren’t box office hits. A recent Variety article highlights a dissonance between praise and popularity for recent releases that has created a notion of “20 is the new 50” in terms of millions of dollars earned in the opening weeks. This has always been the case with films catered to a more niche audience than the mainstream releases, but the low numbers seem to speak to a very narrow view of what is considered entertainment. For a thing to be enjoyable, it doesn’t necessarily have to be simple. The issue at hand is that people associate “higher end” literature and films with a certain degree of pretentiousness and elitism. The lack of engagement with more intellectually stimulating media is reduced to “let people enjoy things.” While there is a certain misogynistic aspect to all of this – with young women being the primary addressee of most of the criticism – hiding behind this argument is quite silly. Is enjoyment really consuming the same, repackaged story for the hundredth time, knowing exactly how the plot will unfold? Is it not more engaging to read or watch something excitingly fresh, even if it requires a little more thinking? Isn’t that, precisely, the point – the sense of satisfaction finishing a challenging book brings about? Stimulating your brain outside of academia can be fun, while also making you a more well-rounded person.
On the other hand, this kind of thinking seems to be dividing people into two camps, and those who do engage with media outside of the mainstream often base their entire persona around that very fact. I have personally met numerous people who deemed themselves superior to others simply due to their reading choices. And while some part of me aches to agree (can’t take the arts block out of the girl), the extent of this that we have reached is almost absurd. Those valuable pieces of media lose their worth entirely when they become a performance. The emergence of “what I do to be disgustingly over-educated” and the likes creates a show out of erudition. This is the real anti-intellectualism we are facing – a loss of a genuine strive for knowledge for the sake of a perfectly executed image of an intellectual.
I realise that criticising both parties makes me sound like a somewhat patronising contrarian, but that is not my aim. I’m very likely guilty of occasionally participating in both, and so are most. The concluding thought, however, is that we are not doomed. Corporations are not sucking your brain out, you are doing it to yourself. Mindless consumption of media is nothing but a result of the abundance of stimulators we engage with daily. And at the end of the day, you can enjoy the cheesy and the highbrow, but whichever way you lean, don’t forget to branch out a little.
