Art is cool and taking art seriously is cool, this post is just anti-intellectualism of which we certainly don't need any more
this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2026
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I don't think what theyre talking about is anti-intetellectual at all. They're talking about the commodification of "taste." They're talking about the affectation of being intellectual about film, as opposed to the genuine affection for the art of film.
I saw a meme once that really resonated with me about this, it went something like this -
Person who's seen 100 films: 2001 a Space Odyssey is the greatest film, it opened my eyes to what film can be etc.
Person who's seen 1000 films: you really need to get on this Ghost Rider Spirit of Vengence.
The idea isn't that people shouldn't watch film seriously and enjoy it seriously. Art deserves that, and its fun to engage with art that way, as you said. But the performitive "taking art seriously" is not people opening themselves up and embracing art or building their own taste or ideas about it as a medium. They're cutting themselves off by believing that there's "correct" films to watch and "correct" opinions to have about them.
My proper non-bit thoughts on this are that the same thing is happening to movie fans as it is with video game fans desperately clammering and overcompensating to be considered one of the big boys of art (though to a lesser degree). Film is an art form but terms like "cinephile" are just ridiculous, when did you last hear an avid reader call themself a "literatophile" or a lover of paintings all themselves a "paintophile"?
The increasing approach to the enjoyment of art as if it's an identity, combined with all these checklists of the most important films to see "to be a cinephile" has led us to a point where there's a million people who've seen almost all the (easier) films on the list and have a familiarity with the single most popular film of an art movement / genre and might not even know the names of more than a couple of its bedfellows, it's a symptom of trying to fill out letterboxd lists and get the green completion bar rather than organically engaging with the number 1 film because of name recognition, then checking out a load of other films by director and their contemporaries.
I was being a bit hyperbolic with my example of a film to watch, but i was mainly referring to like all the corbucci films that arent quite django or the great silence but are still a blast like navajo joe, specialists, or hellraisers - they're like perfect examples of good, well made films that are really enjoyable but barely anybody watches them bcs they're not the absolute peak of their genre. The point is to learn to engage with art for the reason of loving art (even if its not the absolute peak of human creation), not for conferring the label of "high brow art appreciator" to the viewer.
Bibliophile is what book lovers call themselves. I’m not sure about painting, but it’s probably also something in Latin or Greek.
What repulses me is that these social identity things are actually intrinsic to our psychology and are pretty much what healthy humans do naturally, but while the impulse is natural, the mechanics and focal points around which groups form is, I think, mostly inorganic and the product of marketing and consumer culture.
Not to just boil it down to a low brow critique of the "consoomer" but it feels like I'm seeing people being exploited for their money but are paying with their minds and sense of self and belonging.
Mind you, this pursuit of social identity is, in my opinion, orthogonal to a genuine pursuit of a love of art. Possibly antithetical. So this consumption of media commodities (encouraged by capitalism and exploiting the social identity drive) is actually wearing the skin and appropriating the symbols of art appreciation, but it's a obviously not the authentic thing.
Ehh, sometimes candy does not hold up to review
Wow. I actually agree.
We can have both. Art should be varied. Have like the serious high brow films and b movie slop
I'd hate for all media to be the same
see my other comment under this post
Oh! Thanks. I getcha now
big heap of talk from "battleship pokemon" 
im getting nerd sniped smh
Oh, you're a cinephile? Name four video rental places that you're not allowed within 500 feet of
My hobby is finding likely bad or upsetting movies and downloading them. Then I go read reviews to confirm that I have found something "bad" and then I try to enjoy the movie to prove that I'm a better cinephile than the critic.
Lotta unfinished movies on my server. :(
Give me $600,000 and I'll make the best Mid-Western film ever
Blood Bath On Badger Boulevard
White Guy Karate, Shootouts, squibs
You've bongled your last flake 
^any^ ^ya'll^ ^see^ ^that^ ^draw?!^
average 14 year olds first doom wad
W...what?
Edgy names, wads are custom maps for DOOM
Oh wow. Not what the word 'wad' evokes in my mind
it's because the files for mapsets were called .wad files, apparently it originally stood for "where's all the data?"
Well if it was .cum it would be a lot harder to explain
Completely Unnecssary Mess
Glad i read the thing about doom maps before this...
Reminds me of those breadtube videos explaining why Shrek is a Communist masterpiece in six parts, each one uploaded months apart and being 8 hours long
I feel like that style of video started as a tongue in cheek joke that was designed to educate and inform while being entertaining. But some people probably just thought it was like "Breadtube game theory" or something and started making content like that without any self-awareness.
"Breadtube game theory"
as in they thought that style of video is the "correct formula for success" ?
Yeah, they saw a formula to imitate without understanding, where you talk at length about nothing at all and then connect nonexistent dots about nothing, but take it all extremely seriously and act like it is "media analysis."
If you do this but make it sufficiently funny, it's actually good, as proven by Brian David Gilbert in his Unraveled series
personally I wouldn't refer to myself by any word ending in "-phile"
found the cinephobe
doing serious deep dive reviews of some real trash-garbage schlock is a fantastic bit though
The word cynic, cyanide and cinephile has the same root, few will admit this.
not trying to say watching good films is bad, just trying to neg "cinephiles" btw 🙏
Watching Atman and disassociating is the real auteurs experience.
Actchually don't you know it takes serious talent and dedication to sit down and stare at a screen for four hours 
no
Finally someone else that thinks David Lynch is overrated
This is all true but I think the Prince Charles is also going that route at the moment for profit consolidation in the face of the possibility their lease gets revoked and turned into flats. They're trying to prove to the 'line go up' crowd that they're deserve their spot in the million dollar tourist zone.
Have you tried The Nickel yet? Lot of good old stuff like you're talking about goes through there.
as of almost a year ago iirc the PCC was classified as a protected building so it can't be demolished, at this point this is just the new norm for them to keep the new audience they've drawn in from all the publicity they got from the campaign + now being a registered "asset of community value", but yeah ill check out the nickel, thanks for the recommendation
Wow that long ago now
Time fucking flies
100% agree. Coming up with a word that amounts to "I consoom X artform" is ridiculous. It pushes discussions of the artform away from the people who actually produces the art, whether direct production as in the artists or indirect production in the sense of the workers who make it possible for the artists to even produce the art (for film, this would be the stuntpeople, workers in charge of creating the set, makeup people, catering staff, and so on). Instead, the light is shined upon various bickering gatekeeping consoomers.
I dunno I enjoy adding the phile suffix to everything, I enjoy plants therefore I am a clorophile
Agreed. I have a few friends like these who stick their noses up at almost everything.
I fully understand wanting to analyse a movie and forming a slightly more sophisticated opinion on it.
But at some point:
-Do they realise the amount of work that goes into these things? Most movies that aren’t ai slop are a small miracle on their own if you take every single element into account.
-“they should have…” stfu, they didn’t because it’s their movie. And more often than not these kind of throw away lines they imagine being better probably have passed the writing table multiple times. And they probably didn’t make it for good reason. There’s logistics, copyrights, flow of the story, screen time,… you name it.
-“they really shouldn’t have cast so n so.” It’s not just matching a face to a character. They gotta be able to bring it naturally and convincingly, be available, be willing,…
-You gotta wonder if people actually let themselves enjoy a movie in that mindset?
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In Sweden they'd call this bio-erasure, smdh cinephobia is rampant