🎞️ #278 - Do we need a canon?

"I can't believe you haven't seen (x)!"

In Scriptnotes episode 713, Danya Jimenez & Hannah McMechan talked briefly with John about how one element of film school is how it forces you to watch a lot of things you wouldn't necessarily seek out on your own.

At the start of a semester you see the syllabus with its list of Films We Will Be Watching curated by a professor outlining some chunk of cinematic history. Some things are guaranteed to be on it, along with the teacher's internal biases (like if they love Ingmar Bergman, Westerns, and Musicals in equal measure).

But if we're looking for a crash course to take on our own, or want a good list to start the new year off with, how do we put one together?

Joe Karaganis starts with data from the Open Syllabus movie lab to see what films were assigned in the last 20 years at universities, leading to a conversation about what patterns we can see in which films get chosen (and what has staying power).

Ciara Maloney believes there are reasons to have a canon, but not without the space to discuss why things belong there:

Roughly a century ago, I saw a post on Tumblr that said something along the lines of, “people say you have to watch The Godfather because it’s a great film, but so is The Cheetah Girls and it passes the Bechdel test.” It’s burned into my brain, because that’s what “watch whatever you want! The canon isn’t real!” means in practice: someone denying themselves The Godfather because there are no real measures of a film’s quality, besides its most superficial politics. To paraphrase John Cassavetes, there is no high and low art, but there are good movies and bad movies. And, reader, The Cheetah Girls is not a good movie.

Implicit in the Godfather vs Cheetah Girls example is the particularly weird gender dynamics of the canon debate. Legitimate criticisms of the maleness of pretty much every canon are based in basic justice – i.e. that sexist bias plays a role in the exclusion of great art made by women, which also means cutting yourself off from the value and insight of different artistic perspectives. But a mutated version of this criticism argues that women readers and audiences are excluded, because, uh, we can only relate to stuff made by other women, I guess. It sounds silly when stated so baldly, but I had arguments in Shakespeare classes in college about whether women could relate to or connect to Hamlet, because Hamlet is a man. Me, a woman, saying that I relate to Hamlet (because he’s just a sad screwed-up kid) is for some reason never the silver bullet you’d think.

Lillian Crawford considers how history and identity play a role in judging what goes into a canon:

Sometimes we convince ourselves films are masterpieces because the canon says they are. But read the 1975 essay ​‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ by Laura Mulvey or bell hooks’ 1992 essay ​‘The Oppositional Gaze’ and you’ll realise that feeling poorly represented by a film is a valid criterion to dislike it. Trouble is, because the canon was mostly curated by straight white cis men, the criterion for success is their representation and no one else’s.

Morgan Ward takes a slightly different angle on collecting a canon, focusing on specific scenes or shots instead of entire films. What are those indelible moments that never fade from memory long after the screen fades to black?

And what about Inneresting? What kind of suggestions do we have for people looking to dig deeper or find something off the algorithmic path?

An Inneresting Syllabus for Film Studies 236

Intro to Visual Storytelling

No rankings. No must-sees. No unquestioned greats.

None of this kind of behavior:

It's not trying to be comprehensive, but a tasting menu. And a good tasting menu shouldn't try to feed you more than you can eat in a single sitting.

A good canon should be a conversation starter, not an endpoint. If you see something missing that you believe belongs here, hit reply! We may revisit this list in the future with your feedback.

Week 1 - We have to start somewhere

• Bride of Frankenstein
• It Happened One Night
• The Rules of the Game
• Stagecoach
• The Wizard of Oz

Weeks 2 & 3 - Make 'em Laugh

• The Philadelphia Story
• The Apartment
• The Producers (1967)
• Ferris Bueller's Day Off
• Groundhog Day
• A League of Their Own
• Little Miss Sunshine
• Seeking a Friend for the End of the World
• Palm Springs

Weeks 4 & 5 - Impossible, Improbable, and Fast

• Mary Poppins
• Star Wars
• The French Connection
• Raiders of the Lost Ark
• Do the Right Thing
• Aliens
• Jurassic Park
• Children of Men
• 28 Days Later...
• The Matrix
• The Bourne Identity
• Inception
• John Wick

Weeks 6 & 7 - "Wuv. Twoo wuv..."

• Casablanca
• All That Heaven Allows
• Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
• The Hours and Times
• A Woman Under the Influence
• The Princess Bride
• Before Sunrise
• Blue (Three Colors Trilogy)
• When Harry Met Sally...
• Ordinary People
• In the Mood for Love
• Her
• Ex Machina
• Only Lovers Left Alive

Week 8 - Unreliable Narrators & Subjective Storytelling

• Citizen Kane
• Vertigo
• Lawrence of Arabia
• Taxi Driver
• Velvet Goldmine
• The Sweet Hereafter
• Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
• Memento
• Mulholland Dr.
• Adaptation
• Arrival
• Gone Girl
• Everything Everywhere All At Once
• I Saw the TV Glow

Week 9 - "Do you like scary movies?"

• Strangers on a Train
• Night of the Living Dead
• Targets
• Alien
• Jaws
• The Exorcist
• The Shining
• The Thing
• Se7en
• The Sixth Sense
• Scream
• Shaun of the Dead
• Get Out
• Nightcrawler
• Pearl
• Hereditary
• Sinners
• The Substance
• NOPE

Week 10 - What was I made for?

• Double Indemnity
• Sunset Blvd.
• The Graduate
• Rocky
• The Breakfast Club
• Dead Poets Society
• Heathers
• The Shawshank Redemption
• Toy Story
• The Truman Show
• Gattaca
• Catch Me if You Can
• Moon
• Blade Runner/Blade Runner 2049
• Little Women (2019)
• Looper
• Barbie
• CODA
• The Menu

Week 11 - Frontiers, Myths, and Legends

• The Maltese Falcon
• High Noon
• The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
• Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
• Bonnie and Clyde
• The Godfather
• The Right Stuff
• Unforgiven
• Apollo 13
• No Country for Old Men
• Gladiator
• There Will Be Blood
• Brokeback Mountain
• Hell or High Water
• Gravity
• The Social Network/Steve Jobs

Again, this is not a comprehensive list. I encourage anyone with a title to add to send in a reply!

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See you next year!

Inneresting is taking a break over the holidays, but will return in the new year.

And please, if you're able, don't forget about New Year's Day and its traditions of cracking open a new planner or journal, and putting your tech in Do Not Disturb mode.

And that’s what’s inneresting this week!

Inneresting is edited by Chris Csont, with contributions from readers like you and the entire Quote-Unquote team. 

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