A recent headline on the Drudge Report asked is “Hollywood FINALLY turning its back on woke?” The link pointed to a Daily Mail article suggesting the new film American Fiction is proof that people have finally tired of the humorless liberal pedantry masquerading as movies. Like memes and gifs, internet speak is formulaic and if not the single greatest contributing factor to society’s devolution it’s at least a good indicator of whether an online conversation with a stranger will be worth having. A particularly odious phrase is “nature is healing,” the kissing cousin to “Faith in humanity restored.” The Daily Mail suggests this is happening as far as “woke” movies go.
For every American Fiction there are still a lot of films that are guaranteed to get a conservative’s hackles up. Media companies like The Daily Wire have monetized outrage, but being outraged by movies no one is forcing people to watch is silly. Why Ben Shapiro, a man now pushing 40, would take podcasting time to denigrate Barbie is beyond me. But this is the state of Conservative Inc. today.
In the meantime, my family and millions of other like-minded people who don’t eat live and breathe politics have gone to the movies all year without giving the so-called culture wars a second thought. 2023 was a highlight for great storytelling as far as academia (or academics) is concerned. In the past few months I saw American Fiction, Dream Scenario, The Holdovers, and In The Court Of The Crimson King. These films are all enjoyable and memorable. Each had their own merits (and weaknesses) but all of them were smart (or maybe brave) enough to ask open-ended questions rather than preach. Politics be damned.
In the Court of The Crimson King is a documentary about the band and its longest serving member, Robert Fripp. His playing is academic and his music is cerebral as much as emotional. The documentary shows the viewer how the yin and yang makes up Fripp’s complexities. A particularly striking scene is when he’s moved to tears upon recalling the last conversation he had with spiritual leader and academic John G. Bennett. The silence stretches uncomfortably for over two minutes. With no accompaniment except raw sound the scene turns grief into art.
Dream Scenario is a film that could be read as a conservative’s critique as it appears to suggest that males of his type are being erased. Viewers can draw their own conclusions. Like Nicolas Cage’s character Paul Matthews, Jeffrey Wright’s character Thelonious “Monk” Ellison in American Fiction is also an academic, at least part-time. And both are writers who haven’t written much of late. While Matthews has watched someone else filch his work, Ellison isn’t doing much of anything but wallowing.
The two films suggest that the “woke” academic environment is having a detrimental effect on the ability to learn and be challenged with ideas one doesn’t like. Because the nature of life’s existence now is being made comfortable, rather than to grow. Matthews gets chastised, not for something he’s done, but something he might do in someone else’s dreams. In the latter, Ellison snaps at a female student (white and with the obligatory dyed teal hair) who feels uncomfortable that the n-word is written on the blackboard. In her small mind, her victimization upon seeing a word in chalk outweighs his actual experience as a black man. It says as much about the privilege of white America as the privilege in which Ellison is born into.
The Holdovers was perhaps the slightest of the bunch but no less enjoyable thanks to Paul Giamatti’s reunion with director Alexander Payne. Although Giamatti the real standout is Da'Vine Joy Randolph, who carries the weight of her soldier son’s death with each deliberately labored move. Giamatti has a gift for playing assholes, and his Paul Hunham is no exception. In this case, Hunham’s an academic failure, who’s threatening to write a book, maybe, some day, but is ultimately a man living in self-deception. Academia manifests itself as an existential prison where he’s condemned to spend the holidays. At least in the end he manages to break free by getting fired.
But as much as the Daily Mail would hope, there are too many layers in these films to be categorized one way or the other. And the movie-going public is better for it.