What If I Enjoy Critical Analysis and Being a Hater? Why I Am Now Wary of the Word ‘Fun’.

BY DANIELLE MOMOH

Fun. Seems like a simple enough word. It looks di erent for each person you’ll ever meet. Even the most jaded college student with a trenta of cold brew in their hands and a look of hell in their eyes saw, felt and understood fun on tawdry weekends in their past. When it comes to movies, TV shows, or any sort of media, most people see ‘fun’ as a positive descriptor. It’s not a word that’s loaded with any pitfalls or hidden meanings at least not usually. So why is it that when I do my daily doom scroll on my favorite internet hellscape twitter anytime I glimpse the word fun, I instinctively flinch? I half shut my eyes, bracing for the impact of what is sure to be the worst opinion I have ever seen in my life. Why is it that seeing the phrase “let people have fun!!!” or its even more dangerous and tired accomplice “let people enjoy things,” incites a terrible rage within me? Because, like most initially innocent things, the internet has taken ‘fun’ a step too far. They assign ‘fun’ to pieces of media that anyone might have slated, using it as a cure all for any mediocre to genuinely shoddy piece of media that has caught social media’s attention for five minutes. And I for one am sick of it.

Before getting into the twisted psyche of the faceless twitter users that peddle this phrase up and down an already ravaged timeline, it’s important to know thine enemy. When it comes to the types of media that are pointed to as an example of ‘fun,’ there are always repeat o enders. These are the types of movies or TV shows that people seem most eager to point to and scream “turn o your brain!”

First on the lineup are Marvel movies. The MCU has dealt the film industry and film culture an intelligence blow, the repercussions of which cannot be overstated. But their harshest impact has been on people’s ability to discern, or more accurately, people’s desire to discern a good quality movie from a bad quality one. Every single time a new MCU film or one of their quasi-important TV shows releases, half of the world rushes to proclaim it as another momentous entry into a world that is stu ed full of momentous entries already. They convince themselves that a lazy addition to an already bloated cinematic universe is not only groundbreaking, but the epitome of fun. Aliens, infinity stones, billionaires playing dress-up, actual gods; no matter how poorly these are packaged, it is more important that we see 34 post-credits scenes that set up their next random miniseries. Marvel has convinced so many people that this is what a good time at the movies is. I’m sure there was a time that the MCU was interesting, thought out, perhaps even good. But that time has long passed, while its staunch supporters still number in the millions. With plot lines that make little to no sense, jokes that consistently fall flat, and directing that well… have you seen Spiderman: No Way Home? Despite all this, the slightest critique of a scene’s lighting or costuming or blocking, earns you a reply section that looks like a war zone.

The onus is not all on the MCU though. No, the issue is more pervasive than a superhero brand. Many forms of media get this treatment just for the simple fact that they are popular and liked by many people. Some big-budget movies get a blind-to-all-flaws treatment, bypassing a quality check by way of sheer cash inserted into the project. A very recent example is Top Gun Maverick. To be fair, I have not seen the film and frankly I have absolutely no plan to. But, watching the pushback to people calling out the film’s intense US military propaganda made my head hurt. Fans of Maverick rushed to the internet to gush about Tom Cruise single handedly bringing back movies, with explosions and shirtless beach scenes galore. The swoop of the government sanctioned killer pilots was lauded as the most exhilarating thing put to screen in a long time, and that those complaining about the propaganda should just relax and have fun.

Has ‘fun’ gone so far as to cancel out the fact that the US military has committed so many atrocities that one would need libraries full of books to properly document them all? The film received millions of dollars of equipment from the Department of Defense and the original 1986 Top Gun even accepted script changes from the department. Calling out the military propaganda in these movies isn’t detailed analysis: it’s common sense. Unfortunately, this situation is not unique to movies about fighter pilots. Media that uncritically pushes moral reprehensibility is frequently shoved in the “it’s not that serious” box, attempting to seal up any further critique of that person’s current favorite movie or tv show. Calling out how disconnected the Marvel franchise seems ever since Iron Man famously snapped his fingers can earn one a dogpile of “don’t take it so seriously!”. Attempting to defend it by saying it doesn’t matter isn’t a defense at all. Rather, it reveals more about the person that says it than the piece of media that they’re trying to save.

The word “fun” is not just thrown around in a conscious e ort to upset the pretentious art lovers (me) of the world—no matter how much it may feel like that. What reasons could they possibly have? For one, no one wants to feel stupid just because they enjoyed a show with less than an 80% on rotten tomatoes. If avoiding this means having to downplay the seri- ousness of having great art, perhaps it’s not surprising that so many people push for enjoyment over quality. After all, what you like does say a lot about you. People who genuinely love Harry Styles’ acting are not exactly who I’d want to be friends with, and honestly if you said to me with a straight face that you thought Thor: Love and Thunder was the best movie of 2022, I’d maybe avoid you for the rest of my life. This is not to say I cannot empathize with the fear of being called stupid on the internet just because you like a certain Netflix TV show. I just dont think rallying against the concept of good things is the best way to avoid this.

Perhaps I have hit on the feeling of avoidance and guilt, but in the wrong avenue. When they pull out the phrase “let people enjoy things” the way I would pull out an especially handy swiss army knife, it could be to fight o the impending quandary within themselves for enjoying something with i y ethics. Just as frequently as bad quality movies are defended, ones with problems beyond odd lighting choices are as well. There must be a lingering feeling of wrongness when one defends Sam Levinson’s 456th nude scene in Euphoria of a girl who is canonically a minor. Telling everyone (and thereby yourself) that nothing on screen is serious allows one to avoid thinking about why you don’t have a problem with something. This is a more egregious reason, and one that is even harder to bring up online. How do you tell someone they are trying to avoid self-reflection because of their opinion on the latest Netflix mini-series? But no possible justification frightens me more than the simple possibility that people don’t care about good art, or even worse, they don’t see any of the media they consume as art in the first place. Is it that people who are constantly championing “fun” don’t care about the quality of what they enjoy because they see film as, essentially, the same as a redbull ad? That, unlike the other two reasons, keeps me up at night.

Okay, full confession: I have used the word fun before. That’s because in spite of all I could say, it is true: some movies are fun. Take Sucker Punch, aka Zach Synder’s attempt at girl power. It’s a film that’s so obsessed with almost upskirt shots of girls who are burlesque dancers/mental institution patients it forgets to have a single non 2-D character. Despite this, (and the fact that without slow motion the movie is about 15 minutes long) I have a great time watching Sucker Punch. To use the dreaded word again, it’s fun. But the fact that I enjoy watching pretty girls wield swords doesn’t make me want to seriously defend the movie’s quality. I frequently joke that Sucker Punch is so misogynistic it swings round to being feminist, but I don’t actually mean that. My fear is that people on social media do. The obvious rebuttal is that no one on Twitter is ever being serious but the e ects of this laissez-faire attitude towards art has shown up in more places than my cursed timeline.

Marvel is partly able to get away with their increasingly low quality films because of this “who cares” mindset. This downward spiral isn’t just a bloated and overly comfortable franchise losing its already weak footing, it’s an issue a ecting real people’s jobs. According to an anonymous Vulture report, The MCU has become a no-go for many VFX artists. The cinematic universe’s increasingly poor special e ects stems from their disrespect of the people who create what is (at this point) 90% of what you see on screen. It frequently accepts low starting bids from visual-e ects houses, leading to severe understa ng on large projects. Several artists attest to not being given enough time to work on projects, and being forced to make major changes mere weeks before a release date. To make matters even worse, it is not uncommon for a visual-e ects house to be blacklisted from all future Marvel work if these impossible demands are not met.

Despite this, when this news broke and there was urging for VFX artists to unionize, several people still didn’t see the problem. So what if they’re overworked? Who cares how movies look?

It’s not like they’re an audiovisual art form or anything. When people cry and state that all art should be fun, that it shouldn’t be taken so seriously, they’re also saying all the work and hopes that people put into even a single frame of a given film doesn’t matter. Truly caring about art and caring about people aren’t two separate things. You can’t have one without the other.

What’s especially odd to me is the idea that without shutting o your ability to think critically, it is impossible to watch and read or consume any art happily. This is blatantly not true. There is quality fun to be had and it frankly makes me sad that people seem allergic to it. Pretending that a movie has to be surface level to incite any sort of pleasure is not only false, but an insult to one’s intelligence. Om Shanti Om is not only one of the most fun musicals I have ever watched in my life, but it’s also a deeply clever one. It centers around Om, a struggling D-list actor. He is killed as a result of a deeply suspicious film-set fire, and is reincarnated as a nepotism baby. After realizing that his past self’s death was not an accident, he sets out to seek justice for himself and his great love who perished in the same fire. The film strikes a balance between making fun of the industry it’s in and expressing a deep love for it. Its commentary on ego, nepotism, and celebrity culture is so layered, with references to the Bollywood industry simultaneously flying over my head and springing up in my mind fully realized. And it has a full ten minutes where Shah Rukh Khan is shirtless and soaking wet. I do not have to shut o my brain to enjoy something so obviously great.

As someone whose college major involves analyzing media, I can understand wanting to give yourself a break from the hard stu . I know not everyone watches The Witch or First Reformed to unwind, but that’s not what the use of ‘fun’ is about. It actively discourages thinking about any media that you come across, which is not only dangerous but literally impossible. Analysis is not just pausing frame by frame and writing down the significance of the light’s angle on cobblestone. I hate to break it to the anti-thought crowd, but even thinking someone looks nice in a show is a form of analysis. You call into question the makeup being used, the way the person is lit on set, the very acting that contributes to the idea of “looking nice.” That’s not to touch on one’s own notions of what nice looks like, or what the word nice means generally and specifically for them. In a way, deciding not to “think critically” about a piece of media is the harshest critique of all.

Honestly, I think the real reason “sometimes I don’t want to think about what anything means” and all tweets similar to it get so much support is because there is a notion that analysis takes away enjoyment. They think criticizing things takes all the joy away from something, but consider this: analysis is a joy in itself. In fact, I would say it’s one of the keenest joys I’ve ever known. Taking something apart, seeing its insides, why it works, how it works, why it doesn’t and then putting it all together again is akin to magic for me. Turning something around, attempting to view it from a di erent perspective is my way of appreciating art, of showing that I care enough to look deeper. When I rant about the pacing of a prequel series or gush about the use of color in a French

Following the release of Mac Demarco’s 2019 album, Here Comes the Cowboy, critics responded with overwhelmingly lukewarm reviews. A far cry from his critically-acclaimed debut project, Salad Days, the “Chamber of Reflection” singer delivered a disappointing performance throughout the album’s 13-track run.

Pitchfork reviewer Sam Hockley-Smith said, regarding the album: “It sounds nice, but for a lot of its runtime, it also sounds like DeMarco is exhausted, like he’s ready to move on and try something new but is trapped in a creative holding pattern.” With Demarco the poster child for the Indie genre at the peak of his popularity, it seems as though he has reached artistic stagnation.

This is not an isolated phenomenon. Lorde’s Solar Power, Weezer’s Black Album, Rex Orange County’s Who Cares?, and Ed Sheeran’s (Equal) are a few of the recent projects that have been released to mixed reviews. It seems as though Indie music exists as a paradox, running contrary to other mainstream categories.

Indie fans tend to ‘gatekeep’ artists, hoping to obscure them from the public eye, fearing that mainstream success will undermine the sound of their favorite mid 2000’s experimental shoegaze albums. This behavior comes from the fear that popularity will ruin the quality of this music. We’ve all seen or heard some form of “X artist is really underground, you probably don’t know them;” though it is a bit exaggerated, the sentiment behind this joke indeed rings true among the Indie community.

Fans hide their favorite artists to maintain the intimate, homegrown atmosphere within their respective spaces. As a small artist, the interaction and engagement with fans is much higher than those that have ‘made it big.’ Thus, the niche communities pushing quasi-religious worship between Indie fans and artists leads the desire to preserve some form of covert mystique.

The essence of the Indie genre lies in the ‘independent,’ nature of the music and the artists behind them. Independence, in this context, refers to a complete severance between the music produced and any form of commerciality.

The metric indicative of “Success” for an Indie artist, therefore, does not lie in fame, fortune, and international fandom. It rather lies in the dedication and esteem of their listeners. This is where Indie music diverges from the mainstream; Indie music, and the surrounding community, prioritizes the preservation of musical integrity quality over quantity.

The above-listed albums are only a few examples of the consequences of mainstream appeal. Though this is not a new concept, this issue requires further exploration. Are popularity and music quality inversely related?