For this blog post, meant to pertain to gender and social media, I did what I usually do to prepare for a blog post for this class: I look at my list of all-time favorite films to recall how each one handles certain topics, in this case, the power of social media. After going through my personal list, I realized how weirdly limited social media is used as its own character in films nowadays. The most well-known film, to the average person, that involves social media is commonly David Fincher’s “The Social Network.” But I googled “movies involving social media” and found some interesting results.
Two films, that I have watched, in which social media is portrayed under a negative light, showing the harm it can cause, include “The Circle” (2017) starring Tom Hanks and Emma Watson, which is a play on the business of Google and its privacy policies, and “Unfriended” (2014), which pertains to public scrutiny (of a female high-schooler) over social media and takes place on a laptop screen as the audience’s point of view.
Two films, that I have watched, in which social media is portrayed under a negative light, that are also very similar in filmmaking style, are Henry Alex Rubin’s “Disconnect” (2012) and Jason Reitman’s “Men, Women & Children” (2014).
The only difference between these two films, from my perspective, is that Rubin’s film is a bit darker and more serious in a cringing kind of way (towards young and old men and women), while Reitman’s take on this topic seems a bit more wholesome, optimistic and well-rounded in storytelling (with the use of what’s literally in the title). But still, both of these films are still very much dark in tone with the incorporation of the potential harmful effects that social media can put upon humankind.
Three films, that take it a step further with its use of social media as a way of promoting activism and doing good, are “Searching” (2018) starring John Cho (which also takes place on a laptop screen like “Unfriended”), which is about a father using social media to find a missing person: his high-school-aged daughter, “Hard Candy” (2005) starring Elliot Page and Patrick Wilson, which pertains to exposing and outing a sexual deviant (in this case, in a Chris Hansen kind of way, using a man nearing age 40 sexually preying upon on a girl under the age of 18), and Bo Burnham’s coming-of-age feature directorial debut “Eighth Grade” (2018), which is based around the idea of how social media hurts and hinders today’s youth from a bullying standpoint, with the use of a shy girl who’s about to graduate high school.
An excellent and clear manifestation of how useful and positive social media can be, in this case in a film, is shown in Jon Favreau’s 2014 feel-good dramedy “Chef.” Favreau brilliantly conveys Marwick’s terms of “public recognition” and “fan maintenance” in his film (Marwick). If you’ve seen this film, then you know what I mean. Favreau plays a male-identified, boomer celebrity chef who has a public meltdown when badgering at a stubborn, male-identified, boomer food critic who negatively reviewed his food, a recording of the meltdown goes viral on Twitter, Favreau’s on-screen Gen Z son helps him create a Twitter account, and throughout the film, tweets, and social media engagement in general, are used brilliantly as their own characters to move the film’s story along in a positive manner, counter to what was seen earlier in the film.
“Chef” is a prime example of modern storytelling in motion pictures.
Cited Sources
Marwick, A. (2018). To See and Be Seen. In Gender, Race, and Class in Media: A Critical Reader (5th ed., pp. 525–533). essay, SAGE.
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