Cinema is supposed to be a simulation of reality, it’s supposed to imitate reality into something entertaining as well as real. Hence the basic tenet of cinema is simple, presenting a world myth with a grain of truth.
Now ladies and gentlemen, are you familiar with the term Übermensch? For those who are good then you don’t need the definition, for those who aren’t, Well it’s a concept that was developed by renowned German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche who said the man was capable of it all.
All the power and the glory. Everything revolves around man, but that’s not the case, vulnerability is an essential component to express emotion, it states that emotions are a part of our lives. Our circumstances reflect upon us, and to me that is what cinema is all about.
I bet many of you have watched The 400 Blows by Francois Truffaut, honestly tell me didn’t you find something similar to Antoine Doinel, that’s because it’s our vulnerability, our ability to fail, and our honesty to be brutal that gives the silver screen a meaningful existence.
The philosophical notion that cinema holds is, what impact does it make once you have watched a Marvel film, when Martin Scorsese said that Marvel is not cinema he was bloody right, why you ask? Even if the world of cinema created and to be created isn’t real, the harmony between hope and despair is always there.
The kid by Charlie Chaplin is a great example, why? Because even though the Tramp was lampooning all along making the audience laugh, on the inside he was tormented, broken and finally shattered.
There’s no novelty in poverty, those who fantasize it are equally guilty. I mean how is Captain America an icon? Does he make any statement, does his character make such an impact that it is undoubtedly insurmountable to ignore and call it a legend.
Iron Man is a playboy, a man who sells weapons, Black Panther says he speaks for all Wakanda and thus all Black people, Black Widow does nothing but support major characters, there are too many of them with no real or major implication to all of them.
Let me make this clear Black Panther isn’t a film about racial inclusion or racial integration, the fact that the Motion pictures academy saw something in this film is terrifying to me as there was nothing so great about Black Panther.
If you want to watch films about race and racial equality and integration watch “In the heat of the Night”, watch I am not your Negro, or A Dry White Season. Understand the difference between the concept, the intricacies of struggle and suffering, and then speak.
Why Marvel isn’t cinema, because it says that there are the good guys and there are the bad guys and the rest is just fine. Everyone else is just helpless. Well that’s really again not true even in the case of comic books, I mean I bet our Gen-Z generation hasn’t really read anything about Flash Gordon or Rorschach from Watchmen or even Tintin.
I bet reflecting on this, I can say if you want to understand how the world of cinema is so beautifully connected to the world of literature then you must understand this from the point of view of Dostoevsky.
What I’m saying is take Crime and Punishment for example. The novel explicitly revolves on a core philosophy, why does somebody exist, an existential question that can be answered only through the experience of gaze, how we look upon ourselves or how we have looked down on everyone else.
Hence cinema follows a similar narrative as well, the gaze is important, how I am looking at it is important as well as my ability to understand and gain something is important.
Look at the film, does it seem like a film to you or does it seem like something that appears to be a film.
So far the concept is that film is supposed to consider the reasons as unreasonable and make a mockery out of logic and reason. Oh and the gender bias which makes it worse.
The gender bias which contributes to the following is terrible I mean look at it. The amount of time Black Widow is treated as a side kick the whole time. The way other women just exist to give the film a form of a feminine appeal to a toxic masculine plot.
Black Panther is a joke, it has nothing nuanced or subtle about it rather it’s loud and useless. There’s nothing called a Post racial society, deal with it, but at the same time the social fabric is not defined by one color.
Superhero films tend to ignore or are incapable of dealing with compelling reality, thus they’ll always be as less connected to the world of realism and more of a money making enterprise as they already are.
