What Do You Mean You’ve Never Seen Blade Runner?

One of the most oft repeated phrases at me as a media teacher is ‘what do you mean you’ve never seen (insert name of movie here)?!’ which is often then followed up by ‘How are you a media teacher??’ Funnily enough there was no required viewing list before being allowed in the classroom but it’s an interesting idea, nonetheless. The list of expected films is long, and you might even be shocked as to what is on my ‘haven’t watched’ list; Star Wars and The Matrix are those which come up most often, Diary of A Wimpy Kid which I think is more of a generational thing than an educational thing, ditto Coraline. I also haven’t seen majority of the Marvel films, which feels like more of a choice in self-preservation than anything else.

In fact, just a week ago, a student was telling me that my Letterboxd makes it look like I haven’t seen anything in two years, which is simply not true, but I felt like I needed to update it. So, past weekend I decided to start making my way through films I really want to watch but haven’t seen. As someone who would consider myself a fan of both Martin Scorsese and Robert DeNiro (is that basic? I don’t know) I started The King of Comedy, a movie I was reminded of by a frustrated student who said they found the initial Joker movie too similar and much preferred the second, Joker: Folie a Deux. Controversial. Anyway, I was very proud of myself for watching something new and not putting on an old episode of Shetland, but I found myself very, very bored. So bored in fact, I fast forwarded through the final hour and didn’t even bother to understand what was going on.

When I did log on to Letterboxd to log the fact that I watched something and to rate it two and a half stars, I saw that all these people who had saw it had given it four or five stars. People whose opinion I respect. From this I was filled with self-doubt, did I not understand it? Movies are cultural capital – being able to say you’ve seen something someone else has seen, and even better if its obscure. I must say I’m trading cultural capital with teenagers all day which is a very fine line to walk – you don’t want to speak like they do, but understand the lexicon and in some instances, you don’t want to watch the same things as them, at the same time, but be able to answer in the affirmative when they ask you if you have in fact seen something.

Watching films is something I long to do far more often. I never regret it afterwards but have the common issue of being able to watch four episodes of something yet not commit to a film. Films are romantic, they provide aesthetic stills and profound quotes on Pinterest. They allow you to be absorbed in a dark room, behaving yourself and not checking your phone.

I often feel I don’t indulge or engage with movies because it’s opening up a whole other part of myself. I adore TV, and some shows have gutted me completely (both in a good and bad way) but to sit and totally give yourself in to a movie? It feels like something else.

The title of today’s piece is from Star Treatment by Arctic Monkeys. And I haven’t seen Blade Runner so I’m going to do that now.