Why are there so few good films about social… | Little White Lies

Why are there so few good films about social media?

08 Mar 2023

Words by Evelyn Burke

Distorted image of 3 young women, one holding a mobile phone, against a glitchy, colourful background.
Distorted image of 3 young women, one holding a mobile phone, against a glitchy, colourful background.
Despite being a huge part of our every day lives, it feels as though very few film­mak­ers have been able to grap­ple with tech in a mean­ing­ful way. Is form or con­tent the issue?

For most of us, the omnipres­ence of social media is a fun­da­men­tal part of dai­ly life. We often debate whether its ubiq­ui­ty is a net good or bad, but gen­er­al­iza­tions become dif­fi­cult when there are as many ways to inter­act with social media as there are peo­ple with iPhones.

Film has long proven to be a medi­um unique­ly adept at cap­tur­ing the nuances of lived expe­ri­ence. Over the past decade, many film­mak­ers have leaned into the chal­lenges of por­tray­ing the range of ways peo­ple are affect­ed by con­tem­po­rary issues like cli­mate change, state vio­lence and sex­u­al pol­i­tics, with­out rely­ing on buzz­words and gen­er­al­iza­tions. So why is it that so few films deal explic­it­ly with the sub­ject of social media – and most of the ones that do feel like cheesy PSAs from a high health class?

The issue begins in the archi­tec­ture of sto­ry­telling. You only have to take one screen­writ­ing course (or read one screen­writ­ing how-to arti­cle online) to encounter a sup­pos­ed­ly cru­cial note: raise the stakes. Bore­dom is the ulti­mate crime in a film, and push­ing the mechan­ics of a sto­ry to their high­est log­i­cal extremes is sto­ry­telling man­na to keep the audi­ence invest­ed and on the edge of their seats. The prob­lem is, when the theme is social media, this means push­ing the sto­ry into areas of the inter­net that the aver­age user nev­er experiences.

In Quinn Shepard’s 2022 film Not Okay, Dan­ni Sanders – a young woman des­per­ate to be liked – con­structs an elab­o­rate web of lies to con­vince the world she was present dur­ing a ter­ror­ist attack in France, when she was actu­al­ly safe in her New York apart­ment. While Sanders com­mits fraud on a mas­sive scale in pur­suit of social clout at the expense of her friends and fam­i­ly, she’s actu­al­ly pret­ty tame for the anti-hero of a social media film.

Ingrid Thor­burn, of Matt Spicer’s Ingrid Goes West, takes it fur­ther as a young woman obsessed with the per­fect life of her favorite social media influ­encer. Ingrid, played with ter­ri­fy­ing, unhinged bril­liance by Aubrey Plaza, is dri­ven to stalk­ing, black­mail and vio­lence when the fake life she longs for slips out of reach.

When the range of social media expe­ri­ences on film runs from decep­tive influ­encers to men­tal­ly ill mur­der­ers, it fails to engage with the more com­mon – and I would argue more inter­est­ing – expe­ri­ence of the aver­age user. Audi­ence mem­bers are able to dis­tance them­selves from the worst parts of the inter­net, instead of con­sid­er­ing uncom­fort­able ques­tions about their own behav­ior online. Even when these films hedge mod­er­ate cri­tiques at the tox­ic engage­ment equals val­ue” creed at the core of social media they end up plac­ing more blame at the feet of half-crazed mil­len­ni­al and Gen Z women rather than the busi­ness ide­ol­o­gy and algo­rithms of Sil­i­con Val­ley that are tru­ly at fault.

To move away from sen­sa­tion­al­ism and didac­tics, film­mak­ers must focus on the online expe­ri­ence of the every­day user. Those who are most­ly post­ing into the void, occa­sion­al­ly brush­ing against the extremes of online life but not liv­ing in them. Bo Burnham’s 2018 film Eighth Grade sets a prece­dent for this way for­ward in films about social media. The film fol­lows Kay­la, a 13-year-old doing her best to nav­i­gate – or maybe just sur­vive – her last sear­ing­ly awk­ward week of mid­dle school. Set apart by its heart­felt com­pas­sion for its pro­tag­o­nist, Eighth Grade illus­trates just how pro­found the anx­i­eties and humil­i­a­tions of con­struct­ing one’s iden­ti­ty – both face to face and online – can be for the aver­age inter­net user.

Two people, a woman with long, blonde hair and a man with short, dark hair, standing together outdoors wearing casual jackets.

As more films neces­si­tate major plot points and infor­ma­tion to be shared through online com­mu­ni­ca­tion, film­mak­ers have had to get cre­ative in devel­op­ing a prac­ti­cal visu­al lan­guage to por­tray the expe­ri­ence of using social media. Scrolling through Insta­gram or Twit­ter eas­i­ly runs the emo­tion­al gaunt­let from ela­tion to out­rage and yet there’s few things duller onscreen than an actor sit­ting dead-eyed and hunched over a phone.

Through­out the twen­ty-tens, the most pop­u­lar strat­e­gy for show­ing tex­ting on screen was for text mes­sage bub­bles to appear in the cor­ner of the screen for audi­ences to read. Although this style is inof­fen­sive enough in rom-coms and teen flicks it can become dis­tract­ing in movies with a seri­ous or grit­ti­ly real­is­tic tone. Anoth­er solu­tion is to for­go the dig­i­tal aspect alto­geth­er and rep­re­sent online com­mu­ni­ca­tion in an IRL space. For exam­ple in the recent Hulu series The Girl from Plainville exten­sive online con­ver­sa­tions that are cru­cial to char­ac­ter devel­op­ment are rep­re­sent­ed with actors inter­act­ing in a semi-imag­ined phys­i­cal space and speak­ing their text mes­sages as dialogue.

How­ev­er, air lift­ing text con­ver­sa­tions into the phys­i­cal world fails to explore the inter­est­ing and impor­tant ways that online com­mu­ni­ca­tion is fun­da­men­tal­ly dif­fer­ent from talk­ing in per­son. A more mean­ing­ful por­tray­al must grap­ple with social media’s role as a medi­a­tor between the dig­i­tal and ana­log world while exist­ing in a space between them all its own.

The 2021 film Zola suc­cess­ful­ly avoids the com­mon pit­falls of social media films by thought­ful­ly reimag­in­ing their tired visu­al clich­es. Based on the viral twit­ter thread post­ed by Detroit wait­ress, Azi­ah Zola” King and direct­ed by Janiz­ca Bra­vo, the film empha­sizes the dis­par­i­ty between posed pho­tos and the unpre­dictabil­i­ty of the real world with a clever use of angles and cam­era move­ment. She also takes full advan­tage of the cin­e­mat­ic sound­scape, incor­po­rat­ing the dings and bells of phone noti­fi­ca­tions into a grace­ful and emo­tive sound­track. Zola is invari­ably cre­ative about weav­ing the pres­ence of social media into the character’s real world in a way that feels engag­ing and authen­tic to the nuances of their lived experience.

Fur­ther­more, most films explor­ing themes about social media remain firm­ly cen­tered on young white women. This focus speaks to per­ceived notions of who the vic­tims and vic­tors of the web are; such notions are not only sim­plis­tic but stale. The more we learn about the inter­net and its long term effects, the more dif­fi­cult it is to make sweep­ing gen­er­al­iza­tions. It is a cru­cial moment for artists to take stock and engage with inter­est and speci­fici­ty in a mul­ti­tude of online expe­ri­ences. Zola is an out­lier here as well in that the film attempts to engage with how the plea­sures and pres­sures of life online vary based on race, gen­der, class and count­less oth­er factors.

Some of the fail­ure to suc­cess­ful­ly por­tray social media on screen reflects film­mak­ers’ reluc­tance to be self-crit­i­cal. As much as film­mak­ers may want to dis­tance cin­e­ma from its cringy cousin – online con­tent – it’s impos­si­ble to deny that the two are linked. Sexy stars, mem­o­rable music, allur­ing light­ing, a healthy dash of behind the scenes gos­sip – maybe it’s just too close to home. Sal­va­tion in part must lie in thought­ful­ness about shared sins. It’s easy to cri­tique social media’s con­stant bid and end­less tricks to attract and hold audi­ence atten­tion, but hard­er to admit that they’re play­ing from Hollywood’s rulebook.

You might like

Accessibility Settings

Text

Applies the Open Dyslexic font, designed to improve readability for individuals with dyslexia.

Applies a more readable font throughout the website, improving readability.

Underlines links throughout the website, making them easier to distinguish.

Adjusts the font size for improved readability.

Visuals

Reduces animations and disables autoplaying videos across the website, reducing distractions and improving focus.

Reduces the colour saturation throughout the website to create a more soothing visual experience.

Increases the contrast of elements on the website, making text and interface elements easier to distinguish.