Film vs. Movie: What's Good?

Today in my literature class, we had the inevitable "what is literature" debate. Though I am quite liberal on my definition of literature, mostly because I think scholars are much too elitist for their own good, I wondered what other people thought about literature and how many people truly believed that the canon should only be made up of terribly complex works that seem inaccessible to many people.


To get the point, this isn't a blog about books after all, these ideas were mulling around in my brain when I came across this blog post:  Steven Soderbergh's Movie List.  Soderbergh is a major Hollywood movie director. An Oscar winner. Many times we forget that movie directors are kind of important people in the film industry. This guy directed Erin Brockovich, Ocean's Eleven, and Traffic, to name a few.



Soderbergh




Essentially, Soderbergh wrote down every piece of media he consumed in a year. If you take a look, his movie list is quite extensive and pretty all-encompassing. Looking at his list, I got to thinking: what constitutes a film? What's the consensus on the film vs. movie debate?


It seems to me that the literature debate stems from those who believe that works of literature have a social/political function: they're meant to change the world in some way. Seems palatable, right?  If you're writing, why not evoke social upheaval, right?  The other side of the coin involves those that snub the social context and want literary works to be somehow a technically complex exhibit of the human experience.  And then there are some who believe both to be true.


Does the same go with movies? Are there standards that the industry has? Standards other than dollars and cents?  I mean, this respected director watched Academy Award nominated films like The Social Network and Inception, but also watched Salt and Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. There aren't really any romantic comedies, so maybe that was a snub there, or maybe Soderbergh just doesn't like chick flicks since he doesn't make them and he's a guy.


I feel as though The Social Network was a movie that really depicts our time, my generation and how social networking is changing the way we operate.  It's not changing the world; it's just a reflection of it, so I suppose you could label it as complex. It seems to me that the films doing work in the world are documentaries, but maybe I'm not reading into the films I watch enough.


This could be the case, since right now I'm using movies as an escape, turning off my analysis-minded brain and just relaxing.


I'm sure there are movie snobs, just as there are music and literature snobs. I've met some before. But I'm still wondering what constitutes a film? The person who made it? The venue it's shown in?


Dear readers, do you have any thoughts on this?


P.S. If you didn't read the actual post I'm responding to, you should at least jump over and check out his list of movies. It's pretty extensive and it's got some good ones that I've seen this past year as well. The Fighter, Inception, The Social Network, In Cold Blood, Se7en. Check it out!