Independent movies

 

I have always been extremely selective when picking a movie to watch. I think I spend more time reading reviews of a movie more than I spend time actually watching the movie itself because it takes me a great load of effort to pay attention to something for two hours straight, therefore I feel the need to research and make sure that whatever I’m watching is going to be worth my time (not like I’m actually using my time wisely otherwise or anything). But anyway, as much as I highly dislike watching movies, I think that the whole concept of creating a motion picture art piece is beautiful and I myself love creating or participating in a production. Therefore I decided to do a movie-related project for Media Studies Final project: I spent almost two weeks watching several independent films, looking at how these so called  “progressive movies” portray themes like: Age, race, gender and social class, as well as how they portray “love and relationship”.

 

Independant films, or indie films, are movies that are produced outside of big commercial movie studios and are made by independent movie producer. These movies are often low-budget, have distinctive style and are sometimes called “art movies” because of the way they are filmed and their contents. Some examples for “indie movies” are Wristcutters: A love story, Submarine, Amelie, Pulp Fiction, etc. Many people are unfamiliar with the producers, the directors, the actors and even the movie itself – that’s basically indie movies. Indie movies are also often considered to be “countercultural” and they are expected to provide a deeper, fresher and more different view into certain topics. Some might think they are great, some might think they don’t make sense at all.

For my project, I watched: Juno, 500 days of Summer, Perks of being a wallflower, It’s kind of a funny story, and Three colours: Blue. Since these are classic independent films, I was expecting to see “age-race-gender-social class-love” being represented differently from “commercial movies”. But it turns out, these so called “indie movies” are not that distinctive when it comes to those topics.    

Age

Stereotypes on different age groups is still a thing in these movies. Three out of five movies I watched were young adult movies, and the teenagers in these movies are often put into groups: the rebel, the nerd, the jock, etc.

Race

People of colour are deeply underrepresented. All the main characters are white. Even when there is a character that isn’t white, his or her role wouldn’t be that significant at all. People of colour are often used as a background for the white main characters, which is disturbing.

Social class

In these movies, according to how the characters act, the way they live, etc., we could assume that they are either from the upper-middle class or upperclass.

Gender

Even though independent movies are suppose to be more progressive when it comes to things like “gender”, many of them aren’t. Female characters are still the weak, dependent ones whose role is to be loved and protected by men, to be emotional and to wait around for someone to save them instead of saving themselves; while the male characters still have to be the powerful, dominant and independent ones. Thinking about sexism in movies remind me of the Bechdel test. In order to pass this test, a movie must have at least two named female characters, these female characters have to talk to each other at least once and the topic of the conversation must be something besides men. According to those rules, all of the movies I watched for this project failed.

 

Love

My main focus for my final project, however, is something we mentioned in class but didn’t talk about that much: love and how it’s depicted in media.

Even though the way love is represented in these movies is a little more organic than many commercial movies, it is still somewhat unrealistic, setting up some strange expectations for their audience. Love – in movies – is romantic dinner where your partner would show up in front of your door with roses and take you to a fancy restaurant where you both eat under the candle lights. Love – in movies – is running to a building rooftop and kissing in front of the sunset. Love – in movies – is cuddling in front of the bonfire by the beach, contemplating life together. According to movies, love is easy and effortless, love is smooth and dreamy: two people will automatically falls for each other at the same time without anything in the way.

The thing with our mind is that: after a while of being told certain things, no matter how much we want to not believe so, we would eventually ended up believing in whatever we were told. After watching a few love movies, even though we know so well that not everything in media is illustrated correctly, our standard for “love” would naturally be raised. We expect the same things we see on movies to happen to us: we expect amorous dates, we expect glamorous proposals, we expect everything that was scripted, filmed and edited in a studio to happen to us. Media makes us think that every single second in a relationship have to be absolutely exciting. Media makes us think that relationship (or love, in general) is an “out of this world” experience and it leaves out all the not so sexy aspects of love. “We assume others show love the same way we do—and if they don’t, we worry it’s not there.” We raised our expectations for love up so high that when it doesn’t look the same way in reality, we assume that it isn’t there. Maybe that’s why we are way too often disappointed in real life. Nowadays, when many of us are swallowed by the media, we are forced to see “love” through a magnified and beautified lens, and we as a species are not very good at filtering information. We are told to hold on to an unhappy relationship because “it will be worth it in the end”. We are told that relationships are just nights staying up cuddling, talking about how the universe works and how our partner’s eyes look like they’re made of sunbeams. We are told that love is easy and poetic, when in reality, it requires work and effort. We are told so many things that fail when we try to apply them into reality. Maybe that’s why we are disappointed. Don’t get me wrong. I believe all of those amorous activities actually happen in many real love stories. They are part of love, but media makes it seems like they are  love.

Back to all the movies I watched. When the majority of the characters in these supposedly “revolutionary” movies are white upperclassmen, what message are they sending to the audience? Who, in fact, is their audience? What makes a movie “independent” is the fact that it sends out a divergent message and providing a different view on a topic; but when 90% of these “indie movies”, these “art movies” I watched (during this project and also before this project) often conform to whatever we already have in the media, what in fact is the message? Looking at how media shape “love/romance”makes me wonder: If indie movies were supposed to be countercultural, what are these so called “indie movies” communicating to the audience? Are they doing a great job of going against the romanticized version of romance in many movies and reflect truthfully on the real beauty of real relationships? Maybe, maybe not. What about you? What do you think about love? Are you feeling what you’re feeling because you’re feeling it or are you feeling what you’re feeling because others are telling you to?

College

Ever since we started going to school, many of us were told that college is an essential part to success and people make it seems like it’s the only way you can be successful (which, is false, by the way). We were told things like “If you don’t study, you’re not going to get into a good college, which means you can’t get your favorite job, which means you have to settle for one that makes you want to go sit on a cactus and cry every day and then have air for dinner because you’re so broke”. That is true to some levels: You are more likely to get (and keep) a job with a college degree comparing to those who don’t; during college, you often make connections that would benefit you in the long run, etc. Therefore, college is seen as an important place for students to be. But the problem is that: college is, indeed, expensive. This is where the social class inequality kicks in.  

One of the biggest concerns for many students when choosing a college to attend is the tuition part. A lot of colleges, especially well-known and popular private ones, cost a bomb: from $30,000 to $62,000 a year for tuition, and then there’s extra living expenses as well as learning materials, which scares away many students. According to The New York Times, “about two-thirds of bachelor’s degree recipient borrow money to attend college”. Over the course of four years, by the time students graduate, they’d have been about $35,000 in debt. Not a lot of us are willing to spend the rest of our lives paying off thousands and thousands of dollars of student loans. That’s one way social class (or specifically, how much money you or your family make) affects young people: It decides what college you go to. A study finds that students from lower income families often can’t make it into very high colleges, since these colleges cost way too much money and they are often more selective when it comes to offering financial aids. This is a sad reality, not only because it costs so much for a human being to get a good education, but also because of the fact that if your family is not rich or at least well-off, your options are automatically limited: You either settle and learn to love the college that is realistic to your family’s financial status or choose a college that you absolutely love and think is a great fit for you, but ended up being in crippling debt by the time you graduate. And sometimes, if a student couldn’t get financial aid or scholarship, they simply just can’t get a higher education. How depressing is that? Just because you are from a non-upperclass family, you can’t afford to be better than your family have been. Even though a college degree is a good investment, it is also a great financial burden.

This is where the all time philosophy “Work hard and you’ll get there” – the idea that all of us could be “heroes”, the idea that we could be whatever we want if we work hard, the idea that all of us are created equal and the only difference is some of us work and others don’t – come to be proved false. Take something as basic as the college situation, as I mentioned earlier: just because you weren’t born into money sometimes mean that you can’t grow into something greater, the disadvantages/advantages keep being passed on from generations to generations. Unless your family is well-off, if you want to give yourself a higher education, you have to take out loans and face the reality of starting to pay off college tuition right after you get out of college – which is a time where you probably wouldn’t even have a well-paid job and a stable life yet. Social class influences us in so many ways, from things as small as what we wear or where we eat to things as great as our education and our future.

“Do white people know how lucky they are to be white”?

I never thought about or was really aware of “white privilege” until I left my country to go into a white man’s world: the United States. I couldn’t tell if the realization of white privilege was because of coming here or if it only was because I’m a little older now and starting to think about how the world is organized and categorized.

I went to an international school when I was little and had teachers who were white. I grew up in a country where tourism is a strong aspect and there are tourists from countries like the US, Australia, England, etc all the time. All I knew back then was just the fact that they’re Western, they’re pretty cool, and all of us have to speak to them in their language – English – in a land that is ours. I didn’t really know (or mind) about that, about the fact that everytime I talk to a tourist, I have to speak in English and not in Vietnamese, even when they’re in my country.

The same thing goes for almost anywhere to be honest, not even just in Vietnam. I’d go anywhere and if there’s a white person there, we have to speak to them in English, we have to give them forks and knives to use instead of making them use chopsticks, we have to give them ketchup instead of asking them to eat with soy sauce or fish sauce. In the media – be it television, magazines or even books – white is the norm. The majority of characters in the media is white. Over recent years, the lack of diversity in skin colours started to gain notice and social media made efforts to diversify their characters, which is a good thing; however, white is still the most represented colour. Going through a list of tv shows, almost all the characters in any given show are white. The population of African-American is low, even lower for Asian or Hispanic. It seems like going on social media could blind you from all the whiteness that is there. Almost everything is looked through a white lense: in an article by Nehisi Coates (A Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration), he said “…Crime within the black community was primarily seen as a black problem, and became a societal problem mainly when it seemed to threaten the white population.” White privilege is about turning on a TV and seeing millions role models that you have something in common with. It’s about having the world adjust to your needs. Even in the small things like eating utensils. I don’t have that.

Sometimes if you have something so easily or for so long, without even having to try, you might take it for granted and forget that there are people who would kill to have what you’re easily having. Same goes for privileges. I had conversations with my American friends about “being white”, and there are things that they never think about “having”, they just do. In a group, white people don’t have to worry that they are representing their race or their race is representing them – they are looked at as an individual, a part of a race, not the race. Other ethnic groups on the other hand, when we say, or do, anything, we risk being the representor for our whole race. I remember someone said to me “You’re in Precalculus as a sophomore? I mean, you’re Asian so that makes sense.” I really did not know how to respond to that. As a white person, you don’t have to experience people going out of their way, making the extra effort to avoid bumping into you or facing you, especially at night on the street. You don’t have people asking you where are you really from or wondering why you speak English so well. If a crime is committed by a white person, it’s an exception but if it is committed by someone who isn’t white, it’s the norm. It doesn’t matter if you’re born and raised in the United States, doesn’t matter if your family has been in the country for generations; if you’re not white, you automatically receive questions about your origin and you might feel like a foreigner at least a few times, just because of your skin colour – this is particularly true for Asians and Hispanics.  

Because of all these assumptions, all these prejudices, people of colour often feel the need to alter their actions to avoid discrimination, avoid being a walking stereotype. We have to go out of our way to prove the very basic fact that not all people are created equal and no two people are the same, let alone an entire race, which is generally a very large group of human beings. Of course there are stereotypes about white people too, but the thing here is: a lot of white stereotypes are made by white people. Other races do not have the power or just can’t afford to make up stereotypes for themselves. White privilege is being completely oblivious to the fact that you are, in fact, privileged. It’s having the luxury of being unaware of your skin colour, not having to ask yourself when something happens “Is it because of my race?”

If you would like to, it really is not very difficult to look up statistics on unemployment rate by race and ethnicity on the internet. There is a great gap between African-American or Hispanic unemployment rate and that of White. A white man out of prison has the same chance of getting a job as a black man with a clean record (maybe even a better one) – which is obviously messed up. You are born with your race and thus born with the stereotypes. The injustice also shows through many cases of police brutality: To white people, the rule is pretty much “Don’t do anything wrong or illegal and you won’t have to worry about the police.” But that’s not always the case for people with darker skin. Over the past few years, there have been way too many articles on police brutality: studies have shown that in many cities people of colour are more likely to be pulled over while driving for no reason; black people are more likely to be stopped in the street – many have been killed – just because they “look suspicious” – the inequity isn’t said but it is done, and it’s depressing. How awful must it be to be terrified of people who were supposed to make you feel safe? How awful must it be to walk out the street everyday knowing you are going to be treated differently and might even die, just because of something that you were born with – your skin colour? White privilege is receiving the good kind of “special treatment” without even knowing it.
I think it’s important to make it transparent that just because someone is white and is possessing white privilege does not mean that they are not oppressed, that their life is a dreamy trip and an easy path. No, it is not an easy path for anyone. White privilege doesn’t protect people from sexism, from living in a world where money (and social network) is the key to success, from inequality. We all have to work, to struggle, to deal with judgement in some way. The point is, just by being born white, you automatically own some sort of advantage over people who weren’t. There’s nothing anyone can do about it – white privilege is one of those things that is fixed into people’s mentality so deep that they mindlessly believe in it and follow it. People might try to deny it, they might be completely oblivious towards it, they might make fun of it, but at the end of the day, we have to accept the fact that even though it’s subtle and requires close inspection to recognize, white privilege does exist and to a certain extent, it does establish advantages, favoring white people over people of other races. It isn’t over. Racism isn’t over. Why do we live in a world where between two people with the same educational background, of the same social class, one person is more powerful than the other simply because they are white?

The fault in our advertising

The media’s way of being “sexist” is interesting: subtle, yet very intense, and it’s everywhere. Ever since we were little, many of us were taught the whole “blue means boys, pink means girls, cars means boys, dolls means girls” thing. Even though our world nowadays is so much more open about genders, there are still many questionable, unnecessary generalizations around us that, if you think about it, are just ridiculous.

When I think of things that are unnecessarily gendered; clothing, toys, and toiletries are the first things that come to my mind. When I was little, I used to like the color “pink” for absolutely no reason except the fact that it’s considered to be a “girly color”. I didn’t even think of it as an exceptionally beautiful color or anything, I just felt the need to like pink because it’s portrayed as a “girl” color by the media. Television shows, fashion shows, all becomes part of the system. But that was like elementary school time, when my mind was simply “blue is boy, pink is girl, other colors don’t have a gender”. The older I get, the more I think about how strange it is that we have a certain “gender” for certain things in our daily life.

Take a very normal object as an example: body wash. Both men’s and women’s body wash have the same active ingredients. The only differences are the packaging – putting a pastel coloured package for women and black/blue package for men – and the fragrance – something along the line of “vanilla plum cupcake” for women and “cool” or “clean” or “energetic” for men. The fact that something as basic as a bottle of body wash could be gendered is just completely unnecessary and pointless. I actually talked to some of my friends about “Why are we giving genders to basically everything?” and we honestly do not know. Why are we doing that? Why is it not the norm for men to smell like daisies instead of “magnetic”? Why is it not the norm for women to smell like the wilderness instead of “fruity rhythm”? I feel like our society and the media makes up what is “manly” and what is “womanly”. Who was the first person to say that a certain scent/flavor is women’s and not men’s?

What is wrong with “smell like a woman”? What even is “smell like a woman?” What even is “like a man” or “like a woman”?

The marketing world also targets children’s products and it’s terrifying. Below are some images I found of products that were supposed to be for children:

(left to right:  I hate my thighs and I’m super, bath for princesses vs bath for winners, how to be gorgeous vs how to be clever)

When I looked at those images, I was just confused at whatever the producers were thinking. What is the message behind those products? Looking at them, I have a strong feeling that we’re teaching kids at such a young age that if they’re girls, they’re supposed to be the soft, kind, beautiful, insecure “princess” whose job is to wait for a strong, powerful, independent and charming “prince” to come help them while teaching the boys that they have to be that “prince”. We’re teaching girls that they can’t (and shouldn’t) be a strong female character of their own story and that boys always have to be the lead/the main character and it’s “embarrassing” to be surpassed by a girl. I actually read a supposedly “inspirational” quote somewhere ten minutes ago saying, “Study hard so you could find an amazing man instead of a so-so man” and my mind just choked with a chain of “WTF”: not only it’s pressuring boys that they have to be “amazing” (whatever that means) to find a great woman, it’s also telling girls that their education should be for the sake of finding a man. Not for themselves. Not for their own well being. For finding-a-man. If that’s what we’re teaching kids, they’re going to try to fit into those boxes as they grow up and those who don’t would feel irrelevant and left out. Why are we attacking children with stereotypes that many of us are working so hard on to break? Why do we – through tiny, harmless products – tell boys that they have to be strong and tell girls that they have to be weak?

Advertising and the media in general puts a strong emphasis on the assumption that all men are powerful/strong/independent and all women are weak/insecure/dependent, then work really hard to magnify those images. Personally I think that most gendered products are unnecessarily gendered products – I  can’t really see how the act of putting gender on an object benefits anyone besides the companies: on average, women’s products are ⅓ times more expensive than men’s, therefore the heads of those companies are getting more money from changing the colour of a razor from black to pink. The only argument for products genderization that I could think of is that women and men might be different/have different needs, but other than that, I don’t understand what is the real reason behind things like “Pens for Men” or “Special Women Yoghurt” except for profit purpose. I think gender shouldn’t be the reason why a product is more or less suitable for someone. There are many more effective ways to describe products instead of “for women” or “for men”: rather than saying “for women: smaller and softer” or “for men: big, strong and tough”, why can’t companies leave out the “for……” part and let the buyers decide what is better for themselves. Especially nowadays, considering that gender is such a broad and abstract topic, that many of us don’t limit it to only “male-female” anymore and that we are starting to accept/ encourage people to be whoever they are, it is completely unnecessary to put “genders” on basic, simple things like kid’s toys or clothing. We don’t need a pack of gum or a stick of deodorant to remind us to do certain things in order to be something. Putting genders on objects does nothing but (a) stress us that gender is so real, that it’s so important, you’re either this or that, you can’t be a mix, you can’t do this if you’re that, etc, which, is not the case at all; and (b) make those who don’t fit in the narrow categories “male-female” feel like they’re an outsider. I think that companies should focus on satisfying people’s needs when they’re buying products and let them buy whatever they feel like suits them the most, instead of tripping them into buying something just because those companies think it suits the buyer’s gender better.

Media and age

We are all affected by the media whether we want to admit it or not, no matter how big or small the impact is. Media is a great part of so many people’s lives nowadays due to its usefulness in connecting us with the world around us, keeping us updated and entertained. A large percentage of social media users are teenagers/young adults, therefore the media does have a lot of power over people this age. What exactly are the impacts of media on teenagers and how do they have such influences on us?

Media is not the only cause of body image issues, but it is one of the main contributors. Over 80% of Americans watch television daily and many of the audience are adolescent boys or girls. Various studies have associated exposure to unrealistic ideals in media with body image problems and disorders in teenagers. We have been exposed to impossible standards of our own body since a very young age: even in media whose main audience is obviously children, they still visibly highlight the value of attractiveness. I actually took a look back to many children movies and quite a number of them send out the same questionable message: the main good character(s) is/are always, always skinny with a teeny waist, flawless skin, perfect, voluminous, sexy hair, eyes half the size of their head, perfect eyebrows and eyelashes; while the villains are often portrayed as unattractive with oddly over-exaggerated features. This implicitly sends a message to young girls and boys that in order to be loved, to have a “happy ending”, they must be beautiful. Not smart. Not strong. Not funny. Not interesting. Beauty, beauty is all that matters.

Recently, on the internet there’s also a pretty popular article about (an) artist(s) who “beautify” all the Disney villains and turn them into “gorgeous gods/goddesses”. These evil villains were “sexualized” and suddenly became “hot” characters. Even though it’s art and it is highly creative as well as extremely cool and entertaining, the problem with the pictures is that all the characters were twisted into a “mould” and all their exaggerated features were gone and were replaced by some so-called “desirable traits”. Some examples are Hades (from Hercules) and Ursula (from The Little Mermaid). 

Hades’ original funny face with gigantic yellow eyes, dark circles, crooked nose, pointy teeth and a giant ear-to-ear smile was replaced by a younger Hades with more symmetrical and attractive face, mysterious eyes and a magnetic smirk; and the original Ursula with a little large body, mohawk-ish hair (?), double chin, purple skin and colorful makeup was replaced by a much, much skinnier, younger Ursula, with long, voluminous platinum hair, smokey eyes and red lips. Even her beauty mark was gone and her skin was not even purple anymore. These are the kind of things that many media users, including teenagers, look at on a daily basis, which makes them feel like there is something wrong with their body that is not considered likable. In the project above specifically, it seems like all the original characters were replaced by younger versions of them and were beautified and sensualized, not only somehow subtly sent out the message that “youth=beauty&sex”, but they also put in many teenagers’ mind the “I’m not enough if I’m not a specific type, if I don’t look a certain way”, leads to a bunch of young people desperately chasing an “ideal” that is probably not even real.

There are also way too many magazines that aim at teenagers of all genders, with tons of pictures of models with, again, flawless skin, flawless hair, flawless body, which makes us feel like we are personally attacked just by sitting there and reading, forgetting that all those photos were done with an entire group of professional makeup artists and professional photographers.

Media also accentuates many stereotypes about teenagers – either directly or indirectly – and many of them sometimes set pretty questionable examples. There are numerous movies/tv shows where teenagers are divided into groups, or “cliques”: jocks, nerds, rebels, prince charming or the beauty queen; which is ridiculous. The fact that so many popular movies/tv shows for teenagers have this kind of categorization slowly eats into many young people’s mindset and makes them feel like they have to “belong” to a group, or “the group”. Media often portrays the “jocks” and the “pretty kids” as the “popular ones”, while portraying the “nerds” and the “rebels” as the “outcast,” which makes teenagers feel like it’s their responsibility to look a certain way, to act a certain way in order to be “cool”, to be “liked”, to have “friends”, which is sad yet ludicrous. Media also does a pretty good job in making it seem like teenagers either love school to a degree where it’s kind of strange or they hate it so much they’d rather take a one-way trip to Mars than to go to school – which is the case for quite a few television shows. Whenever a teenager is going to school in a TV show, they always look like a granola bar: crumbly and falling apart. Teenagers in media also do an impressive amount of problematic stuff: it seems like they are always sneaking out, smoking in a sketchy parking lot, throwing/going to gigantic parties, or having sex in the bathroom stall with someone they just met at said parties. I mean, some of us might do said activities, but not all of us, yet somehow television shows just make it look like that’s all we do.    

It might seem like I’m just blaming it on the media, that we can’t have nice things because TeenVogue keep posting articles on how to apply lipstick and because Hollywood keeps making movies. No, that is definitely not my point. The media does a sweet job of entertaining us and opening our eyes to possibilities, to interesting things and we could even learn a lot from it. Sometimes the media does exaggerate stuff up a bit too much, sending us questionable lessons, and might give off the wrong vibes, the wrong messages. In a media-saturated world, a world where every place we look is covered in marks of television, of internet, of magazines, it could be incredibly hard to keep a sane mind and to look at things the way they are, not how media make they look like they are. The media affects teenagers in an interesting way and set examples for many of us to follow, therefore it could be dangerous if many of their points are crooked. Teenagers are like the babies of adulthood – they learn from whatever they see: from their friends, from grown-ups, from the media. If media keep adding into stereotypes and setting funny examples/standards, maybe that’s why so many of us try so hard to follow those ideals and accidentally fall into those patterns, maybe that’s why so many of us act like hard-triers, angsty, upset and confused people. Those are some of the impacts that media have on teenagers. The exposure to unrealistically high standards and the pressure of blending in/standing out stressed many of us out and confused us to a point where we feel like it’s a necessity to pretend to be something that we are not, which is kind of really sad.