The New Condescension
I was in a café the other evening and the bartender—an attractive woman around 27—and I discussed filmmaking. The place wasn’t busy, we’d started talking, she asked me what I did. I’ve been making a new ultra-low-budget film called Wait For It so I talked about that. She was interested, telling me she’d taken some film courses in school. She asked what it was about. The story’s simple: a terrifying monster is on its way to Paris, and no one knows when it’ll get there or what it’ll do when it arrives. The film’s a recreation of the events leading up to it arrival and the aftermath. It’s an art film in the purest tradition, at least, as pure as I am technically, intellectually and financially capable of making. I told her I’d made the film in a particular way, reversing the normal order of production.
I got on a roll and told her that the film was made as an antidote to what I see, the superhero films, Disney movies, Harry Potter, the TV series, etc. I said that the ideal audience for my film would be composed of people with I.Q.’s of at least 125. I can’t stand the way most films create and sustain false character identities and are emotionally manipulative. Finally, I said that as far as I was concerned, these films were products meant to reaffirm and contain the minds of the public within clearly defined boxes.
Her attitude changed as a cloud of disapproval rolled over her pretty face. She said my attitude was condescending and that she liked the kind of films I was criticizing and that it was a conscious choice on her part, she wasn’t being manipulated. I didn’t know how to respond and didn’t feel like arguing or trying to placate her by backtracking on my position. At this point a friend of mine walked in and so I was saved.
But what she said made me think. I had no desire to insult her, I was just expressing my position. I’m becoming increasingly distanced from what a friend in Baltimore used to call “consensus reality.” I can’t see a film as it’s meant to be seen by the director but rather as propaganda for a reigning ideology. I feel strangely about this because it’s causing me to lose interest in cultural products—whether films, music, or art. I feel more and more like an outsider. But is my attitude condescending?
My conclusion is the exact opposite. I feel it’s the products I described that’re condescending. These works assume that their audience is of a certain type and then play to it, feeding it back to itself. I once read that the definition of kitsch is “one’s face smiling back at itself.” That’s what I find in most films, they’re showing me to myself as they think I imagine myself to be. The same goes for what passes itself off as music or art. I refuse to participate.
The next time I go to that café, if the same waitress is there, I have a response prepared. I don’t know if she’ll find it satisfactory. And at the same time, I’m preparing present Wait For It to an unsuspecting world, hoping that, like a small pebble tossed in a pond, it’ll cause ripples.