on muting the noise

I recently watched a strange film called "All About Lily Chou-Chou", and enjoyed it for its quirks, uniqueness, and disturbing imagery that naturally accompanies a movie I consider "strange". I watched this film by going in blind, often one of my favorite ways to watch a movie.

Essentially, to "go in blind" means you forgo reading reviews before the movie/book/album is experienced. This is often recommended online for mind-bending movies and other out-there media alike. But, I feel this should be the default tactic employed when we view art.

I often find myself reading movie reviews before watching in order to see if the movie is "worth my time". It would be just TERRIBLE to throw away two hours of my life on something I didn't like, right? I consume these reviews as if the calculated average speaks for the experience I, as an individual, would have. Of course, it's absurd to think that reviews will align with our tastes unanimously, but that is the implicit assumption when we read others' thoughts before we've even pressed play.

I've found that this pre-reviewing practice irreparably taints the viewing (or listening) experience; If the reviews are highly-positive, I go in with inflated expectations, which can create an overly-monumental let down if, say, a movie doesn't align with my preconceived notion of what a 95% on Rotten Tomatoes ought to be. Likewise, mixed or negative reviews will make me more critical during the viewing, or perhaps turn me off of consuming the work all together.

In this sense, I'm glad I went into "All About Lily Chou-Chou" blind, and usually am, because the reviews were mixed at best (as is so often the case with experimental works; it is a naturally polarizing sphere). After viewing the film, liking it, THEN reading the mixed reviews, I'm more likely to dismiss them as "missing the point" instead of retroactively changing my feelings.

And I think that's for the best. Mass reviews, ratings, and comments can incidentally create a dominant perspective that quietly discourages original thinking and views counter to the "top of the bell curve".

Perhaps the mass-spread of opinions (now possible in our digital culture) is leading to the death of creative thinking; as the most popular online voices continue to grow, millions of others are pushed further aside. It seems that the internet is very zero-sum in it's diversity of thought: a small handful of people or companies control the majority of web traffic and widely spread art.

It's not that all perspectives outside our own are bad; Online reviews can help prevent scams, Google can lead you to the door of your next favorite sidewalk cafe, and our friends are natural word-of-mouth spreaders of great movies, TV shows, and albums. However, I think in a modern world, where millions of ratings are instantly accessible, it's ever more important to form at least a piece of your self independent of the scourge of exterior voices.

Not continuously letting the social rivers guide your flow is a worthwhile pursuit. Mute the noise, at least often enough to not forget the timbre of silence.