My Cousin Mona Lisa

I watched an episode of ‘The Studio’, an Apple TV+ show about a Hollywood movie studio. In it, movie mogul Matt and his doctor girlfriend get into a disagreement about how film is as important as medicine, with Matt saying “what is on the wall of the patient rooms? A screen! … you heal life but we make life worth living.” Obviously, this is a bald faced lie. Medicine is unquestionably more important, and we know this. But it got me thinking about why we love the screen so much and why Screenscope Blog even exists. Why do we place such high value on the screen?

I am running the risk of sounding like a pretentious somebody but I think that film and TV is a time capsule and a mouthpiece. The screen is a mirror of culture, what is permissible, what has happened and what could be. The creativity allows the makers to even predict the future, comment on the present or possibly rewrite the past. 

I watched a movie called ‘Wag the Dog’ (1997) about a political spin doctor. To distract America from their president getting into a sex scandal, they fabricate a fake war in Albania, using media diversions to dampen the scandal. One month after the film’s release, the Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky scandal broke, which was followed by a media frenzy when Clinton launched military strikes in Iraq in 1998. I’m not claiming Clinton bombed Iraq solely as a distraction, but the parallels are hard to ignore, right? What are the odds? This goes beyond the cliché actor line: “In a time like this, more than ever, we need this film” but this is actually foreshadowing real world events. Do you remember the 2016 US presidential election with an arrogant, big-money, inflammatory, conservative candidate? I’m not talking about Trump, I mean Hollis Doyle from ‘Scandal’. Doyle’s brashness predated Trump’s rise, yet they are eerily similar in action and aesthetic.

Shonda Rhimes, ‘Scandal’ writer, said:

 “We did have some moments where I would run back to the writers’ room and I would say, ‘Hey there’s some dialogue that we need to cross out because it kind of already happened.”

Bellamy Young, a ‘Scandal’ actress stated: 

“We’d shoot stuff with Gregg Henry, and the next day something exactly like it only crazier would happen in the election between Trump and Hillary.”

Part of what makes a show or film powerful is when they catch the cultural undercurrents and reflect that in their work – shows like ‘The Simpsons’ have been doing this for a while. Movies like ‘Her’ (2013) explored the rise of parasocial relationships with AI and now we’re asking Chat what we should have for breakfast. Film theorist Siegfried Kracauer spoke about how film can reveal our unconscious desires. He highlighted how German movies from the early 20th century caught onto an undercurrent of distrust in democracy that Hitler later took advantage of in his reign. Movies helped stir a cultural atmosphere that made authoritarian ideas feel familiar – even acceptable. In doing so, they played a part in shaping a political climate that would later have world-changing consequences.

There’s a saying that goes: “Art creates a lens — and once it exists, people begin to live in ways that reflect what they’ve seen through that lens.” When you catch the undercurrent, or open up a desire, the screen bleeds into reality. 

I used to run around the playground in primary school pretending that I was cantering on a horse from ‘The Saddle Club’ or I would ball my hand into a fist to make something burn like Rikki did in ‘H2O: Just Add Water’. There is nothing wrong with childlike imagination at all, but it highlights how much lenses can change reality. I really believed that Starlight (my horse), was taking me (a Mako mermaid) to my classroom because I wanted a horse and I wanted to control temperature with my mind. Even now, I catch myself looking for the fourth wall camera to ask, “Are you guys getting all of this?”, because the revolution needs to be televised but all of this to say, the screen bleeds into reality, whether that is predicting it or changing our perception of it. As we grow older, it can manifest in subtler ways – a cliché line here, a hair tuck behind the ear there. Whether we like it or not, the world is our stage because the screen is personal and political.

The screen is in hospital rooms because it’s informative, it’s escapism, it’s entertaining, it’s a mirror, it’s a dream enabler and a predictor. I am so intrigued to see what visionary filmmakers think will happen next. The screen gives us ideas and gives creators a platform to project new ones, that can actually be made tangible, for better or worse. While it definitely does not compare in importance to medicine, the screen is a multipurpose tool for culture that is still active today. It may not save lives in the literal sense, but the screen still shapes how we live them.