Since I started using Letterboxd (four years ago), an unconscious tendency I developed when watching films is that, throughout the film, I’ll think about what Letterboxd rating I’m going to give it. If the start of the film starts really well and feels unique and perfectly attuned to my sensibilities, then I might think, This could be a five or four-and-a-half star film. But, as the film progresses, if I judge certain things negatively – the acting, the plot, the execution of key ideas and themes – then I’ll adjust my rating: I was wrong, this deserves four stars at best.
I don’t like this tendency. It detracts my attention from the film. And this subtly dilutes the film-watching experience, making me prioritise a rating system over actual aesthetic elements. Of course, my internal rating is often based on these aesthetic elements, but still, the very fact that I’m thinking about my potential Letterboxd rating while watching the film is an unnecessary distraction.
The philosopher of art Matthew Strohl addresses these pitfalls of Letterboxd, which may encourage us to gamify film-watching experiences, in his latest book, Difficult to Watch: How to Fall in Love with Difficult Movies. (It’s an excellent read, and I highly recommend it to any cinephiles out there who want to give ‘difficult’ films – which we initially judge to be simply boring, pretentious, or shocking – a second look. It also motivated me to finally get around to watching Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, which is often – and unfairly – called a ‘boring’ film. The aim of the book was to provide precisely this kind of motivation – to watch films we keep putting off, because we might feel they’ll be too long, tedious, or bleak.)
Strohl writes, “The downsides of Letterboxd are what one should expect from any social media app: it’s prone to gamify aspects of our lives we’d rather not gamify”. He brings attention to the philosopher C. Thi Nguyen, who has written much about gamification and the phenomenon of ‘value capture’. The latter occurs when we have a system for measuring a set of values – for instance, ratings for films – and this measurement system “simplifies and distorts what you really care about,” as Strohl puts it. In other words, as a Letterboxd user, I can fall into the trap of caring more about how I rate films – so much so that thoughts about this interrupt my viewing experience – over what the ratings are meant to represent. Strohl writes, with respect to Letterboxd:
[I]t’s easy to start treating the stats as ends in themselves, which can lead people to change their viewing strategies to boost their score. Speaking for myself, I’d rather not turn my cinephilia into a numbers game. “Increasing my score on Letterboxd” is a terrible reason to watch a movie, and “I’m almost at 1,000!” is a terrible reason to stay up late powering down one more film that I’m not in a good condition to appreciate. That being said, if it were December 31 and I were at 999 for the year, you better damn well believe that I would squeeze one more in, even if I didn’t feel like watching a movie. Value capture is real.
I can relate to this tendency a lot. At the start of this year, I wanted to see if I could achieve the goal of watching a film a day. But to what end? Did I really want to watch a film a day because that’s how many films I think are worth watching a year? Strohl argues that to enrich our aesthetic lives through film, we often need to create intentions, plans, and projects that work against our immediate inclinations. I might not feel like watching a particular film one day, if it’s a difficult film, but if I’ve already intended to and set aside the time and space to do so, this will encourage me to watch that film, and thus the aesthetic dimension of my life will be improved. Strohl compares this approach to ‘cinematic diet’ like following a healthy diet: we avoid giving in to immediate impulses (e.g. I feel like eating a whole pack of donuts) for the sake of a greater good (i.e. overall health and well-being).
On the one hand, I can see the intention to watch a film a day through this lens: there are so many films I want to see, which I know would likely be emotionally stirring, interesting, and thought-provoking, but without the right intentions and habits in place, I may keep putting them off. Truth be told, the aim to watch a film a day doesn’t necessarily guarantee a balanced cinematic diet, as I can (and often do) opt for films that are ‘easier’ to watch. Nevertheless, I would say this strategy still makes a better cinematic diet more likely; indeed, in the past year, I’ve watched many films that have long sat on my to-watch list. Trying to increase my appetite for films has also encouraged me to take an interest in what people I follow are watching and enjoying, which has helped me to discover many more aesthetically novel and rich films (including experimental shorts), which have felt aligned with my aesthetic sensibility. Moreover, I feel naturally inclined to watch a film in the evening – varying in length depending on what time the film would finish – and so a film a day doesn’t (typically) feel forced.
On the other hand, I recognise the pitfall of gamification and value capture in the ‘film a day’ goal. (Side note: it looks like I won’t achieve the goal at this rate, although I’d be close!). It was during the COVID-19 lockdowns when I got much more into film – when I started watching them frequently. This newfound cinephilia added a lot of value to my life. But through the influence of Letterboxd, I felt that film watching was becoming like a game, with a competitive feeling to it. There was something rewarding about logging lots of films, which others could see, as if that enhanced my cinephile status. (I don’t think cinephilia should be judged by quantity of films watched, and I agree with Strohl that productive cinephilia is always collaborative and based on community spirit, not competition and status-seeking.)
The focus on logging films is a form of value capture. Logging films and leaving ratings and reviews should enhance aesthetic appreciation, rather than be seen as ends in themselves or a means to gain something non-aesthetic, such as a sense of self-satisfaction or superiority. Sometimes, if I don’t feel like watching a film or don’t have much time left in the evening, I’ll watch a short (or even better, a few in a row), as this is an easy way to reach my film-watching goal. But I might not be fully engaged, which kind of defeats the purpose of watching it in the first place (especially since the shorts are often experimental films and require attention to bring out their aesthetic value; otherwise, they just feel like strange visuals).
This is a pretty negative and pessimistic angle on how Letterboxd affects how we watch films; Strohl underscores that the social media site/app can benefit our aesthetic lives as well – if we choose to write reviews, that is. Documenting our thoughts when we finish a film – even in a very succinct way – enhances the viewing experience: it better consolidates the film into our memory, and it encourages us to be reflective and better discover our aesthetic sensibility (what we do and don’t like about films). Leaving reviews can also help us remember what state of mind we were in when we watched the film: film-watching experiences, after all, don’t occur in a vacuum; they are shaped by our current mood, life history, opinions, personality, other films we’ve seen, and so on and so forth. (I rarely leave reviews on Letterboxd, but I’d definitely like to get into the habit of sharing initial thoughts when the film is over; otherwise, as Strohl says, it’s “at risk of evaporating into the ether.”)
However, Strohl acknowledges, too, how the option of leaving reviews is prone to gamification and value capture:
Most (but not all) of the users with the highest number of followers have seen relatively few films and are in the gutter in terms of how helpful their commentary is. Pull up the most popular review for just about any well-known titles and the odds are good that it will be something utterly useless like the word “MASTERPIECE” with a bunch of flame emoji or “Yes, Jeanne Dielman is boring, but guess what, it’s boring on purpose!” Like any social media app, Letterboxd does not tend to reward careful reflection and searching insight with a high score. The most reliable way to get a lot of likes is to briefly gush about something popular or tear down something that a lot of people enjoy hating.
Because Letterboxd allows you to amass (or offers the potential to amass) likes and follows, there’s a risk that we write reviews in such a way that has likes and follows in mind. When this happens, our film-watching experience is often negatively affected, as we opt for lazy or useless feedback over the kind of review that would enrich the film we’ve just seen. Strohl, therefore, urges us to resist the opportunities for gamification presented by Letterboxd (and other social media sites, like Twitter/X) and strive to use it in ways that enhance film-watching experiences. Fortunately, Letterboxd is also a repository of useful film criticism (from both professional critics and everyday cinephiles), and by following accounts that offer such criticism, we can improve our present and future cinematic experiences.
