Disclaimer: This conversation may or may not have happened during pre-pandemic times.
I still remember a local actress received some heavy flak after she posted a response about how a highly rated and generally accepted ‘great film’ was boring. In all honesty I don’t mind her perspective at all. Her experience is her experience. That’s her phenomenological review of it even if it does not seem sophisticated nor jargon-laden.
‘Great movies’ do tend to be on the slow and boring side. They use unconventional techniques to push our audiovisual experience which can have an opposite effect to a lot of people, especially those who are not used to it.
“But what does all that have to do with trashy films?” she asked while sipping her just arrived matcha latte, holding the hipsterish oversized cup with both hands to keep it stable.
“I’m getting there, I’m a storyteller you know, need to slowly set things up.”
We are in an establishment that styled itself as a ‘library-café’, but in reality I’ve never been in a library that blasts a playlist consisting of Top 40 songs quite loudly to the point at times it will even disrupt private conversations.
This is also the type of establishment that serves their food on random cutting boards and paddles (?). Not to mention the price. Although I must admit there are a good selection of contemporary literature books here, maybe someone who works here is really a literature enthusiast.
The term ‘trashy films’ can have many meanings. It can be genre films that are pure entertainment and formulaic in nature, to reach as wide as an audience as possible. It can be films that are collectively agreed as ‘so bad that it’s good’. It can be films that are collectively agreed to just being bad without any redeeming points.
It can refer to bad projects that wafts behind-the-scene scandals, corruption, schemes where the movie is made for purposes other than trying to make a movie (like for extending copyright of an I.P. that should be in the public domain, to taking advantage of certain laws to make most profit, and etc.).
It can be genre films one claims to be their ‘guilty pleasure’ which overlaps with the first meaning I gave. It can be films being reviewed and responded hastily as bad (like the situation in the first paragraph) due to not being used to the format and concept.
“So, a movie can be both really good or trash depending on the circle that’s discussing it?”
“Both really good and/or trash. Don’t forget about the ‘so bad that it’s good’ type of films.”
“But do they really count as good movies? I’ve watched Tommy Wiseau’s ‘The Room’ you know, it’s bad.”
“Let me just ask, is your experience of the movie that’s bad, or your intellectualization of the movie that made you to judge it as bad? Don’t tell me you did not literally laugh and roll on the floor by the first 10 minutes of the movie, even if the humour is unintentional?”
“Okay, okay, yes, I’ll admit I did laugh. I did have a good time watching it, laughing all the way to the end. But is that really enough to call it good?”
“Why not? I starkly remember that you did complain once about films being too sterile and technically perfect to the point it fails to illicit your emotional response. Films are getting too formulaic to the point you can guess the ending by the first 10 minutes. At least this movie made you happy, made you laugh, help elevate your mood, even if from an unintended way.”
“Not to mention all that yearly convention and screenings people do for that film. If we want to argue that cinema is a shared public experience, ‘The Room’ definitely fits the bill.”
“True, either intended or not, sometimes an artwork can transform totally after publication without the input of the original artist.”
“Death of the author is it? But, that word, intended. Isn’t that what good art is? To be intentional? Where the intention of the artist and the artwork is one and the same?”
Ah, the all-important auteurial intent. In music there’s a concept of making ‘intentional mistakes’, where the musician will purposefully play the wrong note in sequence, or not articulating the note properly, or even by not tuning the instrument properly so it gives out a detuned/off sound.
The intentional part of it happens when there’s repetition of that mistake in the song, showing that it was not a random flub on the musicians behalf. Doing this is creative, it is thinking outside of the box to create a different listening experience, but is making these unconventional decisions intentionally what makes something artful?
What I’m trying to say in a roundabout way here, is the existence of an unconventional element in an art is what makes it art? What about the conventional part that makes up the rest of the art?
Back to film, one can definitely call Michael Bay an auteur with very specific style and intention, but does that make his movies automatically artistic? “Bayhem” explosions and slow-mo 360 degree camera movement are not really conventional either.
“So you’re proposing ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’? Where everyone can have their own opinion on something without the need for some gross dick-measuring contest of which movies are good and which is bad to just show-off our own subjective, artistic tastes?”
“Well, not the measuring part, but I’m not against open and public discourses. When two different perspectives meets and slowly flirts in a waltzing discourse, then slowly breaking each other’s personal spaces into contact...”
“Wait, wait… is your article safe to be written with all these adult references? It is a site that’s open to public you know.”
“So, back to trashy movies.”
“Now, how can we really tell if a movie is good or bad if it can be quite arbitrary as you suggested?”
“For me, in this post-Warhol world, the old paradigms of kitsch versus avant-garde, high culture versus low culture, entertainment versus didactic, are not really relevant anymore. From a personal perspective, it is enough to ‘categorise’ movies as is it enjoyable to you or not without needing to justify it using academic terminologies and jargons. If you like it, you like it. If you hate it, you hate it. There’s no need to force others to accept your view either way... but it is perfectly fine to share and engage in public discourse to discover other perspectives, other angles that we might not realise or think is important.”
“That's not really satisfying…”
“Yeah, I know, we humans do have a natural setting where we like to create in-group and out-groups based on interest and opinions. We tend to stick with people who agree with us, and not be on good terms with people of opposing views. And winning an argument, even a dumb one against those out-groups can be really gratifying. But in the end, a film is a film. You can choose and decide yourself on whether it is good or not, if that is the right question to ask.”
“So, for you, what is the right question?”
The judging of something as good or bad might already be outdated. My writing teacher once said that there is no good or bad writing, only important or not. Whether that writing reaches the public and tells the story of the people or not. It is about giving voice to the voiceless. He is a writer from the school of ‘art for society’s sake’ that has a long literary tradition in Malaysia. One could adopt this perspective and look at films from this way.
While I do like the perspective of did you enjoy it or not – which is a simple, straightforward idea – but as a ‘film appreciator’ I do have a role within the public discourse to dig deeper and put out a more refined and well-read perspective on movies. At the same time I do not reject another person’s perspective on any movie, even if they call my favourite films boring or bad, whether it's well-articulated or just a one word review, that’s their experience of it.
So, how do I actually experience or appreciate a movie? Is it from the ‘originality’ of narrative standpoint? From technical prowess standpoint? From brave and unconventional decision-making standpoint? From a very specific aesthetic decisions standpoint? From its importance within the public sphere standpoint? From how enjoyable or entertaining it is standpoint? From how it touches my emotions or made me reflect cognitively standpoint?
That’s something I’m still looking for. Maybe it’s everything in context of the movie. Maybe I just choose one and go with it. Maybe there’s something still missing here.
“You’re definitely overthinking it now. You’ll find it one day, maybe you already do but just can’t find the words for it.”
“Yeah, maybe that’s it…” Our conversation paused as the waiter finally brought the Earl Grey tea and crème brûlée I ordered—luckily it was in a proper container and not just splatted on top of a random wood like some of the other foods here. – The Vibes, March 20, 2021
A.R. Shah is a multi-media storyteller exploring the various modes of storytelling. Currently he's part of the artist collective, Projek Rabak, to explore deeper into arts and humanity.
