Banerjee: The moral significance of your $10 movie ticket

As social media begin to target film as its newest spoil of war, movie attendance has become correlated to social activism — but is this a valid form of social engagement and should watching certain films in theaters be an obligation?

Anna Banerjee, Opinion Columnist
August 27, 2018

It doesn’t take long — a few minutes’ glance through Twitter or a brief look at your friends’ Instagram stories, at most — before a trend emerges that attempts to tie “appropriate” social engagement to the most recent movie releases, such as BlacKkKlansman and Sorry to Bother You.

In a time of calamitous social and political upheaval, it comes as no surprise that many people’s first instincts are to turn toward film and other media of escapist fantasy. Art is an important indicator of our current climate, crucially depicting the shifting values and fears that influence our daily lives. Yet, recent trends have turned this escapism into a far more disingenuous method of merely garnering social approval, rather than a method of understanding and analyzing the world.

Watching certain movies and, more importantly, sharing that viewing experience with followers and friends around the world have become a near social imperative for many social-media users. Hyper-visibility, an ever growing political hazard, has left most social-justice work a performative climb between increasingly unachievable benchmarks of relative “wokeness.”

While under a spotlight that demands vocal and active social-justice participation, people have resorted to assuming that there is a definite level of association between the films that one watches and their credibility as activists. It’s difficult to navigate any timeline without coming across posts that seem to assign some sort of moral imperative behind film.

Most recently, movies such as BlacKkKlansman, directed by Spike Lee, and Sorry to Bother You, directed by Boots Riley, have been thrown around as buzzwords attempting to guilt people who may not have seen the films. While I have seen the two aforementioned films — and recognize their importance in the modern landscape as both works of art and valuable cultural landmarks — I fail to see the connection between watching them and performing the adequate duties of a politically conscious individual.    

The mixture of ideology and commodity is another facet of performative activism that has little to do with anything beyond collecting Twitter clout. Instead, pushing expensive tickets upon people who may have to drive or walk quite far to find a theater at which they can watch a multimillion dollar Hollywood project may be a counterproductive method of social change. Activism goes beyond a strong social-media presence: It requires political and cultural action and involvement. If all that was necessary for tangible political change was spending $10 on a movie ticket, the world would be a very different place. But, that’s not how it works, and thus, pushing movies on your Twitter account with 100 or so followers plays a very inactive role in changing global mindsets toward hot-button issues.

Truly supporting the leftist movement to which movies such as BlacKkKlansman and Sorry to Bother You are ascribed doesn’t mean spending your time aggressively supporting and defending centrist works that may or may not be tied to any sense of historicity (especially in the case of the very ahistorical BlacKkKlansman). In the end, supporting local art, taking the time to inform yourself, and attending local political events are much more worthwhile methods of changing the problems you see in the world.