Today we have a guest post from Ruy Diaz! Thank you Ruy!
Every film influences in the way of propaganda. I don’t say every film advances a hidden agenda or a slanted worldview, though too many do so. Such propagandistic films betray their biases; slanted documentaries like Fahrenheit 9/11, or moralistic tales like The Day After Tomorrow serve ideological red meat to the vegetarian masses. What I claim is that every film, by their very nature, portray reality from a distorted point of view. This affects the way we perceive the world.
Filmmakers are not at fault. Blame, to the extent the word applies, rests with the nature of film and a quirk of human nature.
Snap Decision-Making
We make most of our decisions at the speed of thought. This snap decision making usually serves us well. Most of our decisions are either too trivial to warrant reflection (such as deciding on a flavor or ice cream), or else demand immediate action (such as driving in traffic). To make those quick decisions we use mental shortcuts, called heuristics, that nevertheless often lead us astray. One of them is the availability heuristic.
The availability heuristic is the process of judging the likelihood of events by how easily we can recall instances of said events. To observe the availability heuristic in action, please answer the following question: Which occupation is more dangerous, police officer or logger?
Even if you know the correct answer—logging is deadly—I’d wager your first instinct was to think police officer was the more dangerous occupation. That’s because police officer deaths often make the news, while logger deaths are footnotes. Your mind recalled police officer deaths easily and used them as a proxy for the relative deadliness of the occupation. That’s an instance where using the availability heuristic leads you to a mistake in your snap decision-making.
Crucially, the examples we use are just those we recall with ease, no matter the source. They do not have to come from the real world; they may also come from fiction, and often do. We are a story-telling species, and we incorporate fictional stories into our mental makeup. And our most powerful stories often come from film.
The Power of Stories in Film
The reader may be experiencing a bit of skepticism. The link between film and our mental makeup sounds far-fetched. To attempt to convince you, allow me to illustrate with two examples from the American experience.
First, quickly answer the following: which region of colonial America burned witches? As I type the question I cannot help but think of New England in the late 17th century. I recall a scene from the movie The Crucible in which a brave elderly man refuses to bear false witness under torture and dies by crushing. The powerful story plays from memory, even though I asked a tricky question. Because every single region in colonial America burned witches. In truth, far more witches died at the hands of mobs in Quaker-dominated Pennsylvania than died in New England of all causes. But mobs murdering marginal people in the Pennsylvania countryside don’t make it to historical films. The dramatic trial in New England does.
Staying in colonial America, please answer: which region of 17th-century America oppressed women the worst? If you are like me, you immediately think of New England again, as depicted in the film The Scarlet Letter. I recall actress Demi Moore, looking dignified and impossibly attractive in Puritan dress, suffering for the man she loves. I’m tempted to condemn Puritan justice as hopelessly anti-woman, even though I know from historians that New England justice showed no sentencing bias against women, while the other regions of colonial Americans failed this test.
As I end this post, custom demands that, having identified a problem, I offer a solution. If only it could be so. I only offer awareness. Snap-thinking is part of our psychological makeup, and we need it to function in our lives. Trying to do without it would be futile in any case, because we cannot help ourselves.
