Institutional taste shapes a conformist film culture.
The American Film Institute (AFI) and the publicity team of former president Barack Obama are the closest things we have to an Orwellian Ministry of Movies. Their annual, corresponding lists proclaiming the year’s best films share a similar czarist function: Each pronouncement comes from persons whose actions can be defined as “appointed by government to advise on and coordinate policy in a particular field.” They both hold on to their past status in the government — though AFI, now privately funded, mentors inconsequential filmmakers, and Obama, officially out of office, yet hovers near Beltway power from his Kalorama compound in D.C.
This year, the two ministries again present undeniably politicized lists. Their recommendations, always released just before the Academy Award nominations, forgo ideas about “entertainment” and instead instruct how to think about movies in terms of political efficacy.
The AFI pretends to acknowledge craftsmanship and undefined “excellence,” while Obama’s team bestows approval from on high — continuing its premeditated Medal of Freedom mission.
Although some 2022 films were clearly Better-Than others, it was largely a dismal year for popular media, particularly for cinema that now intermixes and competes with woke, commercially oriented TV and digital streaming.
At first, the AFI seems the least doctrinaire; its alphabetical order suggests objectivity. But it’s an overwhelmingly mediocre list, led by Avatar: The Way of Water and Elvis (moneymakers that appease the hoi polloi).
But then the AFI descends to the decidedly politicized Nope, She Said, and Women Talking. These box-office flops apparently met the AFI’s particular NGO criteria. (Expect an illegal-immigrant-invasion movie to make next year’s list.) Each film takes a biased perspective on race and gender in particular institutions: respectively, Hollywood (Nope); journalism (She Said); and religion (Women Talking). Only the former was satirical; the latter two praised radical leftist aggression. In this way, the AFI normalizes Hollywood’s unilateral indifference to diverse opinion. By this evidence, the AFI doesn’t encourage filmmakers who hold conservative views.
Skipping over those particular 2022 diatribes, Team O’s list always has a hipster slant, tying American progressivism to class-based sophistication and globalist interests. That explains why Top Gun: Maverick appeared on both lists. Call it a show of bipartisan nationalism, but it exposes Tom Cruise’s weak, vague ambivalence about military readiness to fight undesignated enemies — conservatives were suckered, liberals spot its harmlessness and play along. Remember that catering to across-the-aisle soft spots always endeared Obama to his opponents.
Cronyism topped the Obama list, with Spielberg’s The Fabelmans, recognizing class and dysfunctional family kinship. Team Obama addressed feminism, with Tár and Women Talking. Michelle herself was saluted through the competitive Afro-misandrist fantasy The Woman King and the New Age agnosticism of Everything Everywhere All at Once. (AFI also favored that anti-Christian jamboree.)
The AFI gave honorable mention to one non-American film, the U.K.’s atrocious Banshees of Inisherin, to prove that the institute is cosmopolitan. God forbid that an American institution, or former president, would, instead, praise a great foreign film such as Marx Can Wait.
It’s not only fair to read these lists for their political stances. It’s also essential that we understand the constant propagandistic persuasion that has taken the fun out of film culture.
You have to be masochistically naïve to believe that Obama himself actually sought out all the films on his list (including rarefied items such as Emily the Criminal and After Yang). The cultural-commissar ruse manipulates the tradition of the ten-best lists, usually repeating the same handful of publicist-promoted films. It excludes movies that satisfy our individual cultural needs, such as Terence Davies’s Benediction, Mark Wahlberg’s Father Stu, Michael Bay’s Ambulance, Walter Hill’s Dead for a Dollar, and Marco Bellocchio’s Marx Can Wait. Publicist-driven lists are like lobbyist-sponsored bills: They are the edicts our movie ministers use to drive conformity and sustain the political status quo.