Are We Letting Movies Put Ideas In Our Heads?
If we think more actively about the art we consume, we can both limit the how much the bad ideas in art influence us, and increase the power of the good ideas to enhance our lives.
Think of the last movie you watched. Did you like it? What would you say if someone asked why you did or didn’t like it?
In my experience, most people answer this question by pointing either to visual elements of the film, such as CGI effects and locations, or to the acting and casting. Some talk about the story, but most do so either in emotional terms, saying things like “I just enjoyed it,” or “it made me sad”; or on a superficial level, commenting on whether they could follow the story or that they liked a particular twist or payoff.
These are all important aspects of a movie and are all reasonable things to talk about when evaluating one. But none of them gets at the way in which movies affect us most deeply: the ideas they convey. Movies always convey ideas about life, either explicitly through the dialogue and story, and/or implicitly through what elements the writers and production designers choose to include and focus on. This is inherent in any form of art; art necessarily involves the selection of something to portray, and even if the artist does not consciously intend to convey an idea, that selection will still convey elements of the creator’s worldview.
I have several friends who take a particular interest in film, and they are all intelligent people in my estimation. Yet, if I watch a movie with them and try to talk about the ideas in it afterward, I usually get blank, confused responses. They don’t know what to say and they typically go straight back to talking about visual elements and emotional reactions. I don’t think they’re intentionally avoiding thinking about the deeper ideas in movies—it’s more like they don’t know how to identify or unpack them.
This is a common problem in many areas of life: We aren’t taught to identify and think in terms of fundamental ideas, whether in stories or in other subjects such as history. In most state schools, we’re sometimes taught to analyze stories on a technical level, examining, for example, the author’s use of sentence structure, allegory, or meter. But we’re rarely taught to probe their philosophical meaning—and if we are, it’s done in so dull and superficial a way that we’re disincentivized from ever doing it by choice. At my high school, we dedicated a whole term of English class to analyzing how Empire of the Sun characterizes Imperial Japan, which left me with no desire to spend my own time thinking about the moral themes of the book I was reading at home—Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, a story rich with fascinating and multi-layered anti-authoritrian themes.
But the fact is that the movies, TV shows, games, and books that most of us consume every day are packed full of explicit and implicit ideas—ideas that get into our heads and affect our view of reality. For example, our idea of what the police or military behave like may be more influenced by how they’re depicted in movies than by real-life evidence. Or, on a more subtle level, seeing a character we regard as heroic behave a certain way may lead us to regard that behavior as acceptable or moral. If we aren’t empowered to identify and evaluate these ideas, we can end up letting them in without moderation. It’s like eating anything that tastes good regardless of what’s in it.
A good example of this is the Star Wars movies. The original Star Wars trilogy is, on the surface, about two things: the Rebellion’s fight against the Empire, and Luke Skywalker’s journey of realizing his potential. The former is a David and Goliath story about a small group of freedom fighters working to defeat an overwhelmingly powerful military force, and the latter is a coming-of-age story about a dejected and childish farm boy learning self-discipline and accepting responsibility for changing the future of the galaxy. These stories go hand-in-hand—as Luke grows, so does his ability to help the Rebellion, and in turn, he learns from the Rebellion about how and why to fight the Empire.
These stories convey a host of implicit good values. A story about overthrowing an evil empire naturally advocates freedom and demonizes tyranny. Luke’s story emphasizes heroism and self-control as virtues. And his relationships with the other characters (as well as the relationships between them) emphasize the values of friendship and loyalty.
But there are a lot of other implicit and explicit ideas in Star Wars. For example, the Rebellion is shown as an alliance of many different races, whereas the Empire is almost 100% human, which gives it the appearance of being racially selective—even though this is never made explicit on-screen. The Empire was originally modelled on Nazi Germany, so the subtle indication of racism is hardly surprising. This choice has the commendable effect of implicitly associating racism with tyranny and openness to people from other races with freedom. Such things can influence your perception of the story and spill over into your ideas about the outside world, even if you never consciously noticed the choice. As Red Letter Media’s fictional movie reviewer Mr. Plinkett often says, “You didn’t notice it, but your brain did.”
The ideas we’ve discussed so far have all been broadly good, but the problems with Star Wars really begin on the explicit side with the Jedi philosophy espoused by Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda. The closing battle of A New Hope (to use its retconned title) involves Luke letting go of his reason and using his feelings to aim his missiles at the Death Star’s exhaust vents. This only makes sense in the metaphysical context of the Star Wars universe, where the Force links all things together and enables people to project their consciousnesses beyond their bodies. In real life, accepting the idea that we should use our feelings rather than our reason to make decisions is a recipe for disaster. It’s easy for an idea like this to get lodged in our minds if we don’t critically evaluate it. The same applies to Yoda’s claims that the body is just “crude matter” and we are really “luminous beings.” In the metaphysics of the Star Wars universe that may be true, but it’s a destructive idea to accept in real life. Our minds and our bodies are one and the same thing, inextricably tied together and dependent upon each other.
The philosophy of Star Wars gets a lot more complicated in the prequel trilogy. Although that series has a broadly good overall story about the dangers of pursuing power and giving in to the thirst for revenge, it also explicitly conveys a host of bad ideas, such as the idea that the Jedi don’t fall in love and only live to selflessly serve others. This makes the story’s heroes and Star Wars’s embodiment of the “light” essentially valueless, as in order to value anything (including others) you first have to value your own life. In reality, your rational values are vital for motivating you to act virtuously. The trilogy also associates love and ambition (which are both positive, life-serving values) with the Sith and thereby with evil, similar to how the broadly excellent Harry Potter series unfortunately associates ambition with evil by making it a core value of Slytherin house, from which virtually all of the series’ villains come.
Both of the classic Star Wars trilogies are, on the surface, good stories that convey positive values. (Post-Disney Star Wars is an eclectic mix of shows and movies conveying many radically different implicit and explicit philosophies.) However, it is vital to be critical and thoughtful about the ideas in them, and in all the stories we consume. There are some disturbingly successful movies that convey outright destructive ideas from start to finish, such as Knock at the Cabin and Everything Everywhere All At Once. There are other stories, such as Lord of the Rings, that are so densely packed with good ideas that they warrant repeated reviewings to mine them for philosophical value. If we think more actively about the art we consume, we can both limit the how much the bad ideas influence us and increase the power of the good ideas to enhance our lives.