The Audience Problem and the Film-as-Art Ideology

Last night’s Sipat Film School’s roundtable on Piracy has turned into something else on the sidelines. Discussion over the classroom chat has turned towards the relatively old debate between “mainstream vs indie” and how it is the audience’s fault that more “relevant” films are not being appreciated. 

For long that I’ve been around cinephilia, or even within film circles, this has been the standard remark. That x audience prefers y movies which results to z movie title not being  given the “appreciation it deserves.” This will eventually end with a suggestion of “film literacy”: that people ought to be taught what films they should see and how they should appreciate it. The underlying and unsaid assumption here is that (1) that the “people” (often termed as the “masses”) do not know what they are looking at and that (2) they do not know how to appreciate films. 

Much of these remarks came from those who consider Film as Art. 

The consideration of film as art is what made this barrier between the audience and the film product with due bias towards the latter. It’s an ideology that breeds this remystification of film as something to unpack because it has “so much to say” or it is “saying something significant.” On the other end of film-as-art ideology, is this very formalistic thought which seeks to fore-front the “novelty” of a particular work which “the audience might not be ready” for. These are the “positive” reasons for the perceived necessity of film literacy. Much as condescension towards the audience is being avoided with this suggestion, it still ends up with the same blame towards the audience.

But if you try to sum these up in the core of the matter, what really is the issue here is not the audience’s incapacity to appreciate, but rather, the lack of popular response to particular film products the film-as-art ideology prefers. There is no film illiteracy problem, but a popularization problem.

Let’s take the film-as-art discussion above and turn it on its head. If a film really has something to say, that is very important and very pressing, should it be the responsibility of the audience to seek the particular film for a particular message that it might say? If a film is deemed significant, should not the task of popularization be taken at hand first by the producers? After all, they have something important to say. 

There was a remark at Sipat Film School’s roundtable that “Filipinos are scared of something new” that is why some films are being sat out. Again, to turn this discussion around, what is this “novelty” exactly? Aside from my remark from the former paragraph above — the task of popularization — would it be that it isn’t the audience that is not ready? But rather, it is the filmmakers, the producers, who are not prepared for the film audiences? Despite their general knowledge of what general film audiences prefer, a chunk of “independent” films are still done in ways which do not answer to these preferences. What could be the case? Might be a technical challenge, or just clear contempt towards the population. 

From what I observe, followers of the film-as-art ideology do not take popularization quite seriously. They are enamoured so much of the so-called “power” of cinema that it sees everything outside it is a nuisance towards its fulfillment. Including audiences of popular cinema. The contempt is so clear that a genre for them is coined: arthouse. 

The film-as-art ideology’s campaign for Film Literacy is geared towards shifting the appreciation towards the ideology’s preferred arthouse genre. It’s as if arthouse has the monopoly for social relevance and aesthetic novelty. It’s the film-as-art ideology’s, especially filmmaker-ideologues, plea to watch their film without them making an effort towards popularization. Education is an easy mechanism for this: blame the “illiterate” if they do not understand you or even look at your work.

This issue of popularization is something I’ve covered over a series of responses to Lou Baharom’s (of Cinephilia PH) tweet: “that some audiences will only check out a foreign film if it’s popular. leaving the smaller, lesser known films prolly more deserving of a look to be left behind.” We can see here the value that Baharom is holding, but this kind of misses the loop hole in his own remark. In the first place, cinema is a popular medium to which film-as-art ideology tends to miss: that a film’s significance depends a lot on its capacity to become popular. Of course “lesser-known films” will be lesser known, otherwise they will be popular.

My successive remarks there from someone who’s not on twitter anymore outlined my take on popularization: what is “popular” is being laid out structurally. The process of popularization starts with film distribution: the wider the distribution network, the greater the potential of a film’s popularization. Distribution networks in film have their own set of criteria about what to distribute or not: much of more “popular” “foreign language” titles get widely distributed so not much of the virtue of a film’s actual creative quality but also of its producers and distributors’ lobbying power.

The thing about Philippine Independent Cinema is that local film distribution is less of its concern. And this is valid considering the economic hurdles one must surpass before a film gets distributed to local theaters: from permits to booking. Film festivals outside the Philippines, especially the bigger ones, tend to help independent works land their distribution deals. Unfortunately, the film festivals here in the Philippines do not function in the same way. Much as they help produce films with great potential, local film festivals do not seem to concern themselves too towards lobbying for distribution. There is very little that I heard of films from film festivals getting local distribution because it caught an eye of a distributor. Then again, there’s a lot of bureaucratic bullshit going on with the distribution business that filmmakers tend not to deal with. 

If we take these into consideration, the popularization problem is self-contained. The audience has nothing to do with what gets “popularized”, and yet, they are being blamed in film discourse. Especially when considering Philippine cinema, there’s very little effort from the side of film producers to popularize their own products. If there is an effort, this effort is much self-contained too, as in the case of Star Cinema promoting its films solely through their TV networks. Much of these have more to do with self-containment also: bureaucratic capitalism ought to have them exported to international film festivals and arthouse markets and contain them there. This is the classic export-orientation of Philippine economy being committed to film products. Of course this comes with a naivete (and contempt towards the masses) that they will get “appreciated” more on those platforms. But very few success stories of international distribution arrive. 

What in the end does this say about Philippine Cinema at large? The so-called audience problem that the film-as-art ideology would want to remedy with “film literacy” is a false generalization that reflects an insecurity that comes from a lack of an actual film industry. Since the so-called Philippine Film Industry has little to no actual economic backbone and formal industrial institution, its failures are being blamed towards a more comfortable “enemy” because it is abstract that it may or may not be true.

As it stands, there are these two that are in the imaginary battlefield of the film-as-art ideologues: them, and the “illiterate” film audience. That is, these ideologues are products of their preferred film literacy and that the general film audience are illiterate of what they know. This condescending attitude is reflected also by filmmakers who think that no one is ready for their work, or that their work is too important that people should take pains just to see it. The bigger question for me on this is: where does this arrogance come from? Why are they so eager to put it all to an audience who do not even care for their existence and just want to see films to have fun? 

The film-as-art ideology seems to take a lot from its bourgeois source. Especially in a semifeudal country, its attitude towards the masses is the same contemptuous attitude that feudal lords express towards the peasantry. We do not need to put up with this just to have our fun. 

2 responses to “The Audience Problem and the Film-as-Art Ideology”

  1. THE PHILIPPINE INDIE FILM MINDSET IS SUMMED UP BY BRILLANTE MENDOZA WHEN HE SAID, AFTER HIS DEAL WITH THE CANNED FILMFEST IN ‘KINATAY’2009.HE HE BRAGGED: “KAHIT ISA LANG ANG MANOOD NG PELIKULA KO, GAGAWA PA RIN AKO HANGGANG MAGING HANDA NA SILANG PANOORIN ANG GAWA KO.” (EVEN IF ONLY ONE WATCHED MY FILM,I WOULD STILL KEEP ON MAKING FILMS UNTIL PEOPLE ARE READY FOR THEM.)

    HOW PROPHETIC!STUPID,BUT PROPHETIC. ONLY A FEW, VERY FEW, SEE HIS FILMS, AFTER ALMOST TWO DECADES OF MAKING SO-CALLED ARTHOUSE INDIES, A TWISTED WAY OF MAKING MOVIES.

    ONLY MENDOZA MAKES MONEY IN THE PROCESS. HOW? THE FRENCH DIDIER COSTET OF
    SWIFT PRODUCTIONS WOULD KNOW.

    MELVIN MANGADA (HE FUNDED ‘THY WOMB’ IN 2012,TO THE TUNE OF PH10 MILLION) WOULD KNOW.

    JERROLD TAROG, RALSTON JOVER, JAY ALTAREJOS & SOME OF HIS PRODUCTION PEOPLE WOULD KNOW.

    I KNOW,TOO. Aum… 🙏😎🌿🕺🏆🤸‍♂️

    1. it was an arrogant claim tho. He has not seen it that probably, he is the one who is not ready for the Filipino Audience. Like all of them indies.

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