Be gone, 'Gone with the Wind.' My film students now school me, in genres like Japanese anime and Nollywood.
Joseph Clark is a lecturer in film studies in the School for the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University. His book, News Parade: The American Newsreel and the Mediation of the Public Sphere, 1927-1946 will be published next year by the University of Minnesota Press.
Gone with the Wind isn't just a sweeping epic featuring lavish sets and moving dialogue — it is an artful piece of racist propaganda that sentimentalizes the Civil War and nostalgically evokes the days of slavery.
If you are not tired of this game by now, you can add cinema to the litany of things millennials are supposedly ruining.
The New York Post reported last year that "millennials don't really care about classic movies." According to market research cited in the article, less than half of millennials have seen films like Gone with the Wind and The Sound of Music, only 28 per cent have seen Casablanca and 16 per cent have watched Once Upon a Time in the West.
The idea that millennials don't care about classic cinema misses the point in several ways.
First of all, the term "classic" as defined by these studies is under dramatic reconsideration by many, including film historians and critics. Gone with the Wind isn't just a sweeping epic featuring lavish sets and moving dialogue — it is an artful piece of racist propaganda that sentimentalizes the Civil War and nostalgically evokes the days of slavery. While it remains a significant film, it definitely isn't one that should attract uncomplicated affection and appreciation. The same can be said for much of so-called classic cinema.
The reason younger people haven't seen much of the film canon isn't because they appreciate cinema history less than previous generations. First, they don't watch TV. The fact that films like Gone with the Wind and The Sound of Music are engrained in the minds of gen-Xers and baby boomers has little to do with their quality. It's because on Boxing Day there was nothing else that the entire family could agree on.
Now that family viewing has been altered by the proliferation of laptops, tablets and smart phones — not to mention YouTube, Netflix and other streaming services — we simply don't have a monoculture that designates a select few films as deserving of being "classics." Thank god for that!
Streaming platforms like Netflix, with their constant new releases and algorithmic recommendations, run the risk of burying film history under a deluge of contemporary movies. But for those who care to look past the front page, online platforms are proving to be wonderful places to discover more eclectic cinema history.
Netflix features both the Pioneers: First Women Filmmakers and Pioneers of African-American Cinema. These recently released collections from U.S. distributor Kino Lorber feature restored and newly discovered works by mostly forgotten filmmakers. With treasures from the silent and early sound era, these collections are adding a much richer understanding of what "classic" cinema looks like and who made it.
Online communities are also turning young people on to film history in exciting new ways. Movies Silently is a Twitter account dedicated to the films of the 1910s and 1920s that uses gifs and pithy reviews to shed light on many lesser-known gems of the silent era. Podcasts like You Must Remember This are dedicated to "exploring the secret and forgotten histories" of Hollywood's first century.
The Internet makes it easier to go beyond the so-called classics to discover a more diverse world of film history. But it isn't only a matter of access. Young people have a much broader idea of what is worth remembering from film history.
If my students are anything to judge by, the new generation of cinephiles are already far more open when it comes to their cinematic loves — and just as passionate. While most students in my classes haven't seen Gone with the Wind, there is likely to be someone who has taken a deep dive into Japanese anime, Korean horror, 1950s Latin American film noir or 1990s Nollywood. I am constantly amazed (and sometimes schooled) by students who know far more than me about film cultures and genres outside the canon and my own research fields.
I read with some interest of the new Film Studies series at Vancouver's Vancity Theatre that "pairs film experts with cinema classics, aiming to expand and enrich the audience's understanding of movies." The evening presentations include a screening of the film and an illustrated lecture by a film critic, teacher or industry professional.
Millennials aren't ruining cinema, but they might well be ruining the old cinephilia. And that's fine by me.