I is for Incel?

A couple years ago I wrote a post about how The Shawshank Redemption was the #1 movie on IMDB, and how that made me self-conscious about my own affection for it. I may not have used these exact words at the time I wrote the post (I could go back and read it I guess), but what I meant to say at the time was that Shawshank was the equivalent of an arthouse movie for comic book nerds. Or maybe not so much an arthouse movie, since the people I am broadly generalizing about would have no use for the arthouse in this broad generalization I’m making. But instead, maybe it was a movie they knew counted as a “good movie” that didn’t have men in capes in it. Even comic book nerds being broadly generalized about know that they can’t only like movies with men in capes.

But now I’m wondering if my preconceived notions about IMDB users has a darker edge than I originally thought.

If you haven’t heard, Joker crossed into the top ten movies of all time on IMDB over the weekend. It must have been a brief incursion only, as maybe more people saw and rated the movie to bring its average score down a bit, perhaps even as a reaction to the news that it had reached that height. But it’s still knocking on the door of that chart’s hallowed top ten at #11, with an average user rating of 8.8/10.

I’m not sure how IMDB does its calculations, but I’d guess there’s a greater likelihood of a film nudging into the top ten based on an initial burst of enthusiasm, one that is typically tempered over time by a more measured approach to ranking. Or, in other words, the movie starts getting seen by the people who are not inclined to love it, and they rank it accordingly. If Joker is anywhere near this ranking two years from now, I will be very surprised.

But for it to even make it near or close to the top ten at any point in its existence means that it has to be a pretty acclaimed movie, right?

Er, no, actually.

I learned about it reaching this peak before I saw it on Saturday afternoon, and when I didn’t like it so much (that opinion may get even more negative the more I sit with it), I figured it must be yet another “me problem.” As with films like the recent Ad Astra (don’t get me started), I felt like I must have seen a very different movie than the vast majority of people.

Actually, many people – or many critics, anyway – saw the same movie I did.

Joker has a fairly lethargic 59 on Metacritic. That breaks down to 32 positive reviews, 15 mixed reviews and 11 negative reviews. So more positive than negative – hence the 59 – but only six more positive reviews than those characterized as mixed or negative combined. And even with some perfect scores of 100 mixed in there, it looks like the Venice Film Festival was more the anomaly than what we should expect from other awards bodies as the year goes on.

IMDB is a different story. On IMDB, Joker would have an 88, using approximately the same scale as Metacritic.

So that begs the question: Why is IMDB’s user base so different from the user base of critics?

I’ve suggested what I think it might be in the provocative subject I’ve used for this post. Is this, indeed, the Incel Movie Data Base?

For you to follow me on this one, we have to make what I acknowledge are a couple stretches in our logic. First we have to say that comic book nerds are disproportionately represented among IMDB’s users, which may not be the case. There’s reason to suggest it may be, though. Even 11 years after its release, another film featuring the Joker, The Dark Knight, is still #4 on IMDB, behind only Shawshank and the first two Godfathers. Two Lord of the Rings movies appearing in the top 12 bolsters the notion that people steeped in nerd culture are heavily represented.

Then we have to make the assumption that some significant percentage of the people who like Joker, like it because they feel like it is a call to violence for incels. Incels, of course, being short for “involuntary celibates,” who are considered to be a group of people prone to shooting up a school or shopping mall because the girl they like doesn’t like them. Of course, not everyone who’s unlucky with the ladies is going to shoot up a mall, but people who characterize themselves as incels are probably a lot more likely to do so. That it incites us to violence is not the only or probably not even the primary reason a person would like Joker, but to say it is no factor at all is probably not correct either, and to say the targets of this incitement are not incels is to overlook some of the ways the film is coded.

Then you have to say that there is a meaningful crossover between people who think of themselves as comic book nerds and people who think of themselves as incels. There would be some, of course, but as with anything, it’s more of a “few bad apples” scenario.

If you do go with me on all this, though, my query about the Incel Movie Data Base makes a little more sense.

Of course, as someone who doesn’t like Joker and thinks it puts bad things into the world, I’m going to question the perspective of a person who does – or their willingness to overlook some of its more problematic elements. But it could be very rational, non-violent thinkers who find the film’s filmmaking or acting first rate (they can be), or instead see a criticism of fatcats like Donald Trump. That’s in there too, which makes the messaging of this film ambiguous to say the least. Although I like it when a film can be interpreted differently by different people, in this case it feels sort of dangerous. It feels like another way it's difficult to grasp an "absolute truth" in this day and age.

But it's not a bully like Donald Trump who gets a gun and kills a bunch of people, his comments about shooting someone on Fifth Avenue notwithstanding. It's the victim of that bully. 

As I wade further and further into this post I realize I am not going to end with a totally coherent thought that I can fully defend. I suppose it takes a piece of art with some value to spin a critical thinker in circles, so they can never fully articulate their thoughts, and have to go back to just trusting the feeling they get from the art.

So Joker is that kind of art: provocative, conversation starting. Art like that should always exist.

But if Joker is engendering passionate fans, it hardly seems likely that they are most passionate about Joaquin Phoenix’s acting, or how Todd Phillips sets up a camera. It seems likely that the passion is coming from the film’s core ideas. And I feel like the uprising of the Joker is more a glorification of the loners who always felt that they were misunderstood, who might think about going to get a gun, than a criticism intended for people who feel forgotten and left behind by the rich. That second idea is put forward on a narrative level, but I don’t think it goes any deeper than that.

Not as deep as the accumulation of hate and disgust felt by mentally ill victims who see no other solution than to rise up and kill everybody.

That's not my reductive view of people with mental illness. It's the movie's. 

Incels, your hero scares me, and your apparent quantity scares me even more.

And I really hope I’m getting all this wrong.

The uncool favorite

The Shawshank Redemption is a problematic movie for me, and I imagine for many others as well.

It's gone through a rather strange evolution, from underdog at the time of its release (a clearly second-fiddle best picture nominee after Forrest Gump and Pulp Fiction) to modern classic that regularly appears at or near the top of IMDB's top 250 (it's currently #1, actually). This evolution is credited to its regular appearance in the rotation of cable networks like TNT, where it has gotten the opportunity to ingratiate itself to viewers who are wiling away a lazy Sunday afternoon. 

So why should a person be ashamed of saying they love a movie that ranks #1 on some kind of theoretically reputable movie list?

Because more than any other movie, it seems like the movie that identifies you as a "new-school cinephile."

See, the same people who made The Shawshank Redemption #1 on IMDB are the people who have elevated such films as The Dark Knight and The Avengers through the rankings. Their latest project appears to be Interstellar, which is all the way up at #22 on IMDB. That's a pretty high ranking for a movie that was actively disliked by a significant percentage of the people who saw it.

So if new-school cinephiles like sci-fi and comic book movies so much, shouldn't Guardians of the Galaxy be #1 on IMDB? Or one of the aforementioned titles?

No, because even those guys know that although they may love those movies, those movies are not strictly speaking "reputable" movies. Those movies are not "serious" movies about "real" issues. 

When looking for such a movie, they go Shawshank.

"Real" cinephiles don't really talk about Shawshank much, because on some level they probably recognize that it is a really, really good movie. However, because of its popularity, they distrust it in a similar way to how they (more rightly) distrust the aforementioned Forrest Gump. They think the mere fact of its popularity means there is something objectionable about it. Any movie chosen to be #1 in a democratic system must be inferior, because Joe Blow does not know how to properly assess the quality of a movie.

I sort of agree with this thinking. In general, I would hope that my favorite movie of the year was not also the movie that made the most money at the box office. I pride myself on not being a snob, but you have to be at least somewhat snobbish or else you aren't going to display that kind of selectivity that inspires you to seek out hidden gems. You want a movie to speak to you in a way that is not just the most surface-level interpretation that can be attained by just anybody. If everybody loves a movie, there must be something too obvious about it by half. 

So that finally brings us to my Saturday afternoon viewing of The Shawshank Redemption, my first viewing of it since I started keeping track of repeat viewings back in 2006. I'd say I'd seen it three or four times all the way through before that, and countless bits here and there on TV. 

I haven't seen it yet in the era in which it has become such an unqualified beloved hit, in which it is actively troublesome for people who imagine themselves to be discriminating consumers of cinema.

It was with this sense of wariness that I threw it in the DVD player. I was kind of scared of both possible outcomes. I was scared of loving it, because it would align me with all those less-discriminating viewers who have elevated it to the top of the IMDB chart. But I was also scared of not loving it, because that would mean I have continued to champion something that really isn't as good as it's cracked up to be. It's still #25 on my Flickchart, though that's down from a high of around #18 or #19.

Well, I still loved it. In fact, I was surprised to find myself overwhelmed by emotion at a finale that I knew all too well. 

The experience of watching it was like getting back in touch with an old friend. I knew its rhythms, and I fell right back into them. I didn't need to watch every moment of it with undivided attentiveness, which I sensed, allowing me to select it as the movie to watch while disassembling my computer. (I'd gotten a disc stuck in there the night before.) I think this is why it became such a hit on TNT -- a lot of people watched it in the background of their lives as it played in their living rooms while they were doing other things. 

And is there something wrong with that? No, no there isn't. I love a movie that reveals a little bit more about itself on every new viewing, where visual easter eggs are hidden that can only be detected through multiple viewings. I love discovering unexpected themes running through films, and how the creative camera or editing choices highlight those themes. I love films that challenge and frustrate. But I also love a straightforward movie that just does what it does exceptionally well. The Shawshank Redemption is such a movie.

If that makes me uncool to "real" cinephiles, then I'm uncool.

Hey, Lester Bangs said it was okay.