Existential Scrolling

Wading Through Organic Slop for Gemstones

Sara Fang; The Michigan Daily

Modern life is flooded with digital quicksand. Every app has been redesigned for the endless scroll. If you have eyeballs and twenty-four hours, you’re a valuable financial commodity. You’re a golden goose. We’re truly only limited to the amount of time we have in a day; hence lightspeeds, data centers, aggregates. If we can’t make the day longer, then we can make the seconds in the day as short as possible. It’s called the “attention economy” for a reason, dig?

This is why I spend hours every morning digging around Youtube, Prime, HBOMax, Tubi, PlutoTV…uhhhhhh…back to Youtube, back to Prime, Disney+, Hulu, Paramount+¹, back to Prime, back to HBO, back to Disney+²... until Bones comes home and we usually stay on Youtube (where she mercifully controls the remote); til we decide it’s time for a horror movie, then it’s back to Tubi. After the flick, it’s back to Youtube until Bonesy’s bedtime… then I go upstairs and the entire fucking thing starts over around 10pm til I pass out at 2am watching The Simpsons every. Single. Night.

You may think I turn my brain off during this extremely irritating, elongated process because, well, it sounds stupid. Very stupid. So very stupid. This endless scrolling ends up charging my brain, which unfortunately elongates the process further. The neverending remote-click philosophical fugue state, stoned hypnosis of the existential scroll.

First comes the dark.

There’s simply too much. Too many movies. Too many shows. Too many videos. Too much content. Too many platforms. Too many fandoms. Too many IPs. Too many indie flicks. Too many cookie-cutter genre pieces. Too many dreams. Too many ideas. Too many approaches. Too many reasons for making a movie and exponentially more reasons to watch.

The sheer scale of the content trough is beyond overwhelming; intimidating even more so. If I were to drop my film on any of these platforms, how is it any different than adding a drop of water to the Pacific or Indian Oceans? It’s a visual representation of the impossibility of it all; sailing across the Atlantic with two sturdy oars and no sail.

Wading Through Slop

While the term “slop” has been rightfully co-opted by A.I Generative “Entertainment,” I do extend the umbrella term to honest-to-goodness organic and traditional independent film. Yes, even the best of us can create slop. Have I seen this formula a million times? Have I seen this shot a million times? Have I heard this line a million times? Have I watched this movie with different actors over and over and over again? Am I just watching this director try making a film like that director? We Spinal Tap fans clearly understand “There’s a fine line between clever and stupid.”

Is slop bad? I don’t know, it’s kinda moot at this point. Slop is slop is slop.

I like to joke that Bones and I have seen so many “found footage haunted house” movies the whole formula plays like Commedia Dell’arte. The Director is always the headstrong fool. The DP is a stuck-up dick. The AD is the intuitive type-A woman who’s killed before she can reveal horrors to the group. The Final Girl is often an innocent PA who’s just cutting her teeth– or a lovely lead actress with this production as her first big break. The Sound Guy is always killed first.

The movie’s actual filmmakers (as opposed to the actors portraying the filmmakers on frame) found an abandoned old <INSERT DECAYING INSTITUTIONAL BUILDING> wrecked with mold, littered with trash and papers, and rusty equipment. They picked a few weekends and had the actors choose their own costumes. There may be a script… I bet most likely there’s a kinda “plot-thru”-- paragraphs explaining the characters and actions with the actors improvising much of the dialogue. And lots of off-screen deaths.

I know I’ve seen about fifty of these films and it’s clear Bonesy has seen a hundred more. Some of these movies are objectively better than others. Most of them have around a 4/10 rating anywhere online. We like watching them whether they’re good or bad, but we can still recognize slop when we see it. Slop appears to be one of the main ingredients of digital quicksand. We desperately search for good movies through the slough as if we’re hopping on tiny, distant gemstones across a toxic green river of sludge.

Gem Formation

How many times have I scrolled, clicked, watched, (repeat) and asked myself the exact same question: “What does this filmmaker expect to happen?” What are they trying to achieve with this film? Is every film supposed to be a predecessor for the filmmaker’s next? Do they just wanna one-n-done it? If every single one of these filmmakers were to succeed beyond their wildest dreams, what would the landscape even look like? I genuinely don’t know. “Nobody knows anything,” Reb Goldman famously wrote.

Soon, I’ll have placed myself at the center of my meditation. No longer observing the filmmakers around me, but rather myself as a filmmaker. At the eye of this tumultuous tempest of thought is one very simple question: Why? To add to the metaphor– this storm is right over the Phillipe-forked sludge river. Why movies? Why now? … Why still?

My creative obsession eventually turns into overworked thought. Why make movies now? Why not focus my attention elsewhere? Why not novels? Television series? Comedy shorts? Youtube videos? Twitch streams? Literally anything seemingly more relevant than cinema? How did this happen? How are so many people still so interested in a medium that feels so antiquated, overcooked, and oddly off the mark?

Why does it have to be the feature motion picture for me? It HAS to be features. Am I paying off a promise I made to my younger self? Sure, that’s a small fraction of it– but all of these questions force me to reckon with the Almighty Why.

Too many questions. Too much pressure. Too much heat. In the simplest, most glib explanation possible– we know gemstones are formed through pressure and heat. These thought processes (read: psychotic spirals) lead us in the direction of the Almighty Why. Through pressure and heat, we turn our flowing ideas into the earth’s true treasure. Not just superficial muck that sorta looks like something precious but crumbles instantly in your hand, leaving wet skidmarks and a sewagey smell… fuckin’ slop.

Treasures Against the Sun

Our treasured artforms tell stories. Often times we choose an artform or medium because it’s the only way to express the Sublime³. To express The Real. The pulsing vein of truth through expression. Picasso’s Guernica COULD have been a novel, but it’s a 27’ oil painting. Every filmed, staged, or reimagined version of Shakespeare or Shelley will always only be a version of Shakespeare and Shelley– the sublime found in their words on the page.

I often think about how Ween’s music doesn’t work particularly well in movies⁴ because they’re so illustrative, thematic, funny, and filled with personality– it ultimately doesn’t need the visual component (though they have some fun music videos, natch). It’s kind of a hat on a hat.

All this to say: why feature motion pictures? Because the story can only be told as a feature motion picture.

If your script could be a poem– if your script could be a novel– if your script could be a serialized article, a facebook post, a stage musical, a youtube video, a symphony, a short story, an improv sketch– then let it be so. Movies are for cinema now. We make movies because the story has to be a movie. If it’s not a motion picture THIS story simply cannot be told to its fullest potential.

It’s not about “what will make me money.” It’s not about “Oh, I think people might enjoy this.” Or “Hollywood might buy this.” Or “This may get into a festival.” Or “Netflix might fuck with this.” Or even “Tubi, Prime, and PlutoTV will totally add this.” This is about: I have an astonishingly personal story within myself. I need to share it with the world through the art of cinema– that’s the only way this story can be told.

These are our gems. Our treasures to hold against the light. Motion pictures worthy of our artistic merit. Cinema finally worthy of us. Hollywood will keep force-feeding worldwide audiences slop in corporate beige megaplexes; that’s their cross to bear. Not ours. NonDependent attitudes, micro-budget production, with alternative distribution, and experimental exhibition will revive the art of cinema in a way never experienced before.

The last time the world of motion pictures was this exciting, two French brothers filmed a steam engine pull into a station.

1. Before cancelling (re: Colbert/ Bari Weiss; I miss my Star Trek and South Park).

2. Where I scroll for 70 minutes before landing on The Simpsons. Every. Single. Day.

3. Real philosophy-heads know I’m using this term improperly; this is a very current, present exploration for me.

4. On the whole, mind you— I know Ocean Man fuckin’ DESTROYS The SpongeBob Movie end credits.