The People vs. Letterboxd
On May December and quippy Letterboxd reviews
I joined Letterboxd this year. Finally. It’s not as if I was resisting for some specific reason, but I already possess more than enough avenues to share my opinions about films (like this newsletter!) so I never bothered. That is until I realized people use the site for quick, pithy jokes about movies as well as for detailed, critical reviews. In a way, Letterboxd feels like the early days of Twitter when you could see stupid jokes alongside serious discussion threads in your feed. Before it was populated with regurgitated memes, stolen tweets, and “who was the real villain in The Devil Wears Prada.” To answer the latter question, the villain will be me, when I murder everyone who tweets that annoying fucking question in 2024.
But lest you think Letterboxd is all fun and games, the site has routinely come under critique this year from users who think about films seriously. People who think about films like the most annoying person in your MFA whose favorite films are The French Connection and Requiem for a Dream. You see, jokes on Letterboxd are frowned upon by serious film connoisseurs! And reviewers who are popular on the site for their quippy one-line reviews are ruining the sanctity of Letterboxd. It’s giving jealousy as well as girl, some people have war in their countries. That’s just the way the world (and social media, which is the world, haven’t you heard?) works.
Critics of one-line reviews especially hate it when the films have “serious themes.” Films like Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, which deals with the genocide of Native Americans. Or Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla, which deals with Elvis Presley’s grooming of an underage Priscilla Wagner. Those are off-limits. Keep your jokes for Lyle Lyle Crocodile! This week, when Todd Haynes’ May December dropped on Netflix, the Letterboxd warriors took up arms again. The film also deals with grooming, as it is loosely based on the very public ‘90s Mary Kay Letourneau tabloid scandal. Letoruneau groomed, seduced, and raped her 12 year-old student Vii Fualaau and gave birth to his child while awaiting sentencing. She served three months and was barred from contacting Fualaau for life, only to be found in her car with him upon release. She gave birth to their second child in prison and married him upon release. They divorced in 2019, one year before she died.
It's impossible not to notice the parallels between the Letourneau case and May December, which stars Natalie Portman as an actress visiting Savannah to research a role in a film based on the life of Gracie Atherton-Yoo (Julianne Moore), who raped Joe Yoo (Charles Melton) when he was 13 years-old and they both worked at the same local pet store. The film’s subject matter has prompted some Letterboxd users to decry comedic reviews of May December and other similar films because it’s somehow… disrespectful.
The alternative, I suppose, is pointing out that yes, this film is about grooming and the real-life case is very gross and harrowing. Scan social media and you will find reviews and posts that state exactly that, without any critical analysis of Haynes’ film. At some point, social media turned the consumption of films and art into a form of activism. But acknowleding that the film is about grooming is merely a cursory understanding of the text in May December. It ignores the script’s wit (from screenwriter Samy Burch, sister of my friend and musician Molly Burch), how it engages in elements of camp to disorient the audience, how it interrogates our POV of tabloid melodrama. And it becomes a way to police how people respond to art.
That too many people have grown to consume and respond to films in such an overly virtuous, sanitized way is not shocking. In lieu of tangible ways to enact change in Hollywood as an audience member, our minds often contort the content we consume to fit our own personal politics. When people say they want less sex scenes in films, citing some actors who have said filming the scenes have made them uncomfortable in the past (pre-intimacy coordinators) and claiming that sex scenes aren’t “necessary” for most films, it’s not rooted in reality. It’s rooted an attempt to mold art into a palatable viewing experience for you. But when an artist puts their work into the world, it exists as it is. You can critique it, of course. But you cannot change the artist’s intent and mold it into the piece of art that you wish it were. You can do that by making your own film, but using Twitter fingers and Letterboxd reviews to silence other people’s reactions to the films isn’t fair or healthy. And it also reduces film criticism to term paper.
Also the movie is fucking funny. So is Killers of the Flower Moon. So is Priscilla (not to me, but to some people). So if people want to respond with a joke on Letterboxd, an app, they are merely engaging with it as art. Can art be a form of activism? Sure. Does all art need to be a form of activism? No. Artists should be allowed to use dark subjects to create stories that reveal something about the human experience (or merely their own), but that’s all an artist is required to do. A film shouldn’t be required to teach you anything. It should do nothing more than strike up a strong enough emotion in you to want to learn something yourself. One of Haynes’ film heroes is Douglas Sirk, whose 1955 film All That Heaven Allows inspired Haynes’ 2002 film Far From Heaven. On the subject of making films, Sirk said this in a 1979 interview with the BBC: “The moment you start preaching in a film, the moment you want to teach your audience, you’re making a bad film.”
These days, too many people want to their films to be textbooks and everyone who consumes them to be dutiful students. But films are so much more fun when they inspire you to use your own imagination. And sometimes, that imagination might be an absurd one-line review on Letterboxd.
“Marty said stop dating outside your race!!” – My 4-star review of Killers of the Flower Moon.
Letterboxd one liners must be protected at all costs
I Stan the one line review on Letterboxd probably the only reason I didn’t delete it within a few days.