Moving Forward - 2021 At A Glance

2020 certainly wasn’t the year that any of us expected. And, maybe it’s the collective trauma of that speaking, but I’m wary of having any kind of goal, idea, challenge, segment, etc for my future. However, I am a goal setter by nature. It’s something that I had instilled in me as an athlete, student, and even working on myself in therapy. So naturally, I am compelled to create them during the end of one year and the beginning of another as a way to set up my foreseeable future and hit the reset button on the things that have been in my way mentally. I don’t know if that’s the healthiest thing, but it has worked in my favor so far. Given that I have gathered more eyes on this blog/account and also more confidence in my voice, I have decided to take this all up a notch; rather than a specific number of readers or followers I want to focus more on goals of consistency and quality engagement, as well as a rich and diverse range of topics and films.

In terms of this hobby blog/Instagram/podcast(ish) that means wrapping up some content and replacing it with others. Now, I don’t want to abandon everything that I have been doing. For example, in October I began an Instagram-only series called Trashy Tuesday Review where every Tuesday (or Wednesday if I forget) I review one of those trashy thrillers circa the 80s/90s. I love doing those, and people seem to enjoy them, so they are staying. Probably forever. I’ll also be picking my mid-budget magic series back up (80s teen movies post is still happening!) and continuing to be actively joining Instagram film events when I can. One other thing that I did on Letterboxd this year, and failed at, was an Around the World in 80 Movies Challenge. I didn’t get 80 foreign country’s (for me that means non-US) films or even half that. That said, though, I’m not going to start over. Instead, I’m going to go out of my way to try and wrap what I have left into this blog. Ideally, I would like to review one every week or two in full length here, but I’m not going to set any kind of concrete schedule on that since some of these films can be A LOT and also hard to find for most people. I do want to heighten my engagement levels and have robust conversations with the people who follow my work, so I feel like accessibility is really important.

So what is radically changing? Well, for starters the Decades Project will be officially completed on December 31st. This means that a regular (arduous) project that did have a definitive end should be replaced with another regular (also arduous) project that can have a definitive end. For this, I am going to be introducing a new series called Hollywood History. I’ve talked about it on Instagram a bit, but basically, the vision for this series is to cover, in four weekly installments, one aspect of Hollywood History per month. January is going to be the Hays Code, which I think is fundamental in understanding a lot of negative tropes, events, and even people in the film industry. So to launch the project there will be one post a week surrounding just the Hays Code and its implementation. Every month will have its own theme, and it is honestly the series that I am most excited to research and publish.

This actually leads me into my second new series, and although I’m slightly less excited for this one (I still am though) I want to treat it with more importance. I’ve observed a lot of troubling behavior/posts/attitudes on the Instagram Film community (also Letterboxd. ALSO I hear Film Twitter can be like this but I don’t actively use mine so I can’t say). Typically it is a great place to spend my free virtual time, and I have met so many nice friends there, yet the toxic and problematic treatment of women (both cinephile creators and professionals within the film industry) has kind of stuck with me over the last several months. From seemingly benign assumptions of my gender (I’m a woman if you didn’t know by now) to outright harassment tied to said gender (both questioning my film choices/opinions on that basis and saying gross things), I’ve kind of been wondering why film can be so hostile to women. Yesterday I saw a three-part post that was especially demeaning to several Hollywood actresses and I kind of started to form this idea of film messaging, and gender, and sexuality, and how I wanted to make a solid post about it all. But the more that I really thought about it and tried to write it I realized that this is a larger conversation that truly deserves a thorough, historical deep dive. While it ties into the idea of Hollywood history, certainly with the Hays Code, I want to do this as a larger and independent project. Every 1-2 weeks I’ll add a post to it ranging from essay deep dives to hot takes to actual film reviews, all deconstructing exactly how women’s bodies have been shown (and often commodified) within the cinematic realm. While I do know that there is probably a rich history of men’s sexuality on film that can be just as interesting, I want to focus on women because we tend to bear the brunt of objectification. This has an array of harmful consequences such as shorter careers for women, a higher lack of empathy towards women, fewer women working, sexual harassment and assault, and a lack of women storytellers (and their stories) reaching the mainstream. This Sexuality on Film series will be a big one and I hope to create something that makes even a small difference in a sea of sometimes overwhelming misogyny.

There are other small things I plan on doing in addition to these three large-scale projects. Here I would like to try and post new release reviews more often since that’s an area I really fell short on in 2020. I also plan to continue generating niche Top 5 or 10 Lists too, which is something readers tend to enjoy. For Instagram, I’ve made a resolution to take my confidence a step further and get more personal. I’d like to talk to the camera, share stuff with my actual voice, and maybe even go over some of the sentimental parts of my very tiny physical media collection. I think taking on a more interactive style in that account will create a more meaningful type of engagement and since I have had such a blast this year meeting so many new people I am very excited to continue creating film content in my little slice of the internet.

Thank you all for following me during this strange and stressful 2020, and let’s all work to make 2021 the best that it can be. :)