Film Club or Fight Club?

Film Club or Fight Club?

Power is a familiar concept to us, but how exactly do we define power? The nature of power is relational (Kuttainen, 2017). We experience forms of power in our everyday lives, through our contact with educational institutions, workplaces, our social groups and even our home environments. Social networks are spaces in which power can influence the way we connect with each other, as highlighted by Allen (2003) who argues that power is deeply embedded in our everyday social interaction.

Social networks are places where modalities of power, such as domination and seduction (Allen, 2003) can be observed. For this blog, I will be researching the relation of power between users on Letterboxd, a social network for people who love film. From professional critics to the insomniac twenty year old searching for a way to justify the amount of films they binge per week, Letterboxd is a place that enables people to create a diary, write reviews and interact with other uses. Although social media is a virtual space, it is evident that some people have louder voices than others – and perhaps dominate them with their opinions.  After all, the tagline for David Fincher’s film The Social Network (2010) is “you don’t get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies” for that very reason. 

 

Image 1: Never get into an argument (Lingvistov, 2017)

Over the course of my week long observation on Letterboxd, I noticed an obvious trend in the popular users on the site accumulating power through gaining thousands of followers from posting cheeky one line “reviews” gaining thousands of likes, whereas an academically constructed review may scrape it’s way to the double digits.  Of course, the jokes make the front page, and these users gain status amongst the community – however, they are not always entirely welcomed.  Some users feel they are experiencing disempowerment amongst what is supposed to be a friendly community. This is not to say that we should all quit social media and retire into the woods, shunned from the modern world in a kumbaya in the style of Viggo Mortensen and his children in Captain Fantastic (2016).  Social media is not entirely a negative space. In fact, we can easily become seduced by knowledge we acquire from observing others online just as easily as being seduced by the acquisition of power in gaining thousands of followers.

Our expressions of power can become a fascinating thing to explore. For some, power can be through their professional experience whereas for others it can be that instant gratification of a well-received joke.  As previously mentioned, social networks are spaces in which power is deeply embedded through our interactions. It may be as simple as publishing the best joke immediately shot down by others, or sparking an intelligent thread of discussion with like-minded people. Wherever the virtual space may be, there are power dynamics at play.

Reference List

Allen, J. (2003). Lost geographies of power. Malden, MA: Blackwell.

Kuttainen, V. (2017). BA1002: Our space: Networks, narratives and the making of place, lecture 2: Power. [PowerPoint slides]. Retrieved from http://learnjcu.edu.au

Lingvistov. (2017). Never get into an argument with someone who types faster than you. [Image]. Retrieved from https://cdn.geckoandfly.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/facebook-social-media-internet-smartphone-quotes18.jpg#.WY1ruhEM1YQ.link

Newport, C. (2016). Quit social media. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3E7hkPZ-HTk