Movies as a Shared Experience: Using Films to Discuss Social Issues

One of the things people say to movie reviewers over and over again is "It's just a movie." I admit that sometimes when people talk about movies, I have the same feeling. After some reflection, I realized why people use movies to talk about so many different social issues. Movies, just like art, books and music, are experiences we can have together, even if we are physically apart. It is only our personal filters that make each movie resonate or fall flat in each one of us. We can all go and see the same movie and each have a different reaction. This shared experience is essentially the crux of why we talk about movies to try to figure out social issues.

The most recent example of cinema highlighting differences and examining emotions on what would seem like unrelated but exceptionally important topics is the movie "300." Many people saw "300" as a strictly historical piece, beautifully shot and having no other purpose than to give the viewer an opportunity to escape the world for a couple of hours. The antithesis of the escapist opinion are the people who felt the movie was racist propaganda. The themes of the movie being Greece (white, westerners) fighting the Persians (dark skinned, middle easterners) as free men against a tyrant, should resonate with people who have been told they are fighting Middle Eastern oppressors as freedom fighters and liberators. The only difference between these two experiences is the filters they walk into the movie having. The "300" experience opened the door for dialogue on racism, validity of war, the idea of liberation, racial portrayals, and the ideas of freedom.