When the podcast ended, I also slacked on writing any reviews on the Words On Flicks blog. Though there were still marvelous films being produced and released, I felt that I couldn't keep up with everything. I started to feel that I was one small voice in a maelstrom of bigger, louder voices of film analysis and film criticism, one tiny blip if old-fashioned radio talk in a world of tech bells and whistles, and few people were listening. This was partly due to the fact that I have never been a tech wizard and am certainly not the best at promoting myself.
Then 2020 began. We had aleady begun a reckoning in the cultural and political landscape as our maniac president was impeached but avoided conviction. Basketball hero Kobe Bryant was killed. Then by summer we rallied around #BlackLivesMatter, watching in horror as agaim and again, innocent people of color were killed for no reason. The coronavirus pandemic swooped in with a vengeance in March, shutting down large swaths of the country and beginning to fill hospital wards and, terrifyingly, funeral parlors. The West Coast was consumed by raging wildfires. A major explosion that could have been avoided tore through Beirut, killing hundreds and exposing Lebanon's faulty infrastructure. Hurricanes and tornadoes tore up oarts of the country. In the meantime, Covid 19 raged on, with officials ordering us to stay home and stay distanced, keeping us from our loved ones, limiting plans for socializing and travel, altering our work or taking it away altogether, forcing us to educate and entertain children who would have been in school, and challenging us to contemplate the fact that a random lapse in caution could lead to a death: ours or that of someone close to us. That is A LOT.
So I felt a bit burnt out and uninspired. In the midst of all of this, I wondered, do we still care about movies? Other than being mindless entertainment to divert us from these horrors, inconveniences, and conundrums, are movies important enough to continue to enjoy and discuss? These were my thoughts as I let 2020 slip by with no blog posts and the podcast buried.
Now it's 2021. Things are not much better; though we have elected a new president and the first female vice president of color, I would venture to say that the climate is not much changed otherwise. We're still mostly homebound. Our president is being impeached AGAIN. We just saw our Capitol mobbed and ransacked.
However, movies are still happening. Movies continue to be produced and enjoyed. Good movies! Now as ever before, movies are our comfort food, whether we watch them for the first time or for the hundredth time. Movies carry subtle and not so subtle messages, about our humanity, our resilience, our values, our dreams. Filmed stories influence our thinking, provide share experience, contain clues about how we behave and how we should or should not behave. They educate us about corners of history we didn't previously know (though often from a biased point of view); the propose previously unimagined scenarios and challenge our thinking about them. And yes, they divert and entertain us when the real world gets touch to cope with. That's a good thing, a hopeful thing. We can still enjoy them. And in doing so, we support new films and therefore support the people and the industry who make them.
So I have decided that this year, I am reviving Words On Flicks and I hope you will come along on the journey to share your thoughts, ideas, and opinions. The Words On Flicks podcast will launch in its second iteration sometime next month. I'll keep you posted.
