It's The Metaphor, Stupid! The "Mainstreamed Indie Film"

Welcome, class. Today we're going to talk about a very specific yet widely known type of movie: the "Mainstreamed Indie Film" (or MIF, if you will.)  



The formula goes something like this: A scruffy, ugly, socially awkward dude is having a mid-life or quarter-life crisis. He has no job or has a soul-sucking job, and doesn't know how to get one (or get a new one.) He has no girlfriend or has a bitchy, needy girlfriend, and doesn't know how to get one (or get a new one.)  He has an oddball best friend/brother that is an asshole but cares a lot about him. He is carrying some deep dark guilt and trauma inside him-- he was the neglected middle child, he beat up smaller kids in school, his father never spent time with him, he kicked a puppy once.  He is living a non-life. He is depressed. 



One day, he has a "meet-cute" with a girl. She is "different"-- she wears jeans with a skirt, has scraggly hair, is flighty and flaky in a way that appeals to his repressed sense of humor. Appearance-wise, she is light years out of his league, but through his socially-awkward-but-sweet-doofus routine, he wins her over and they have a series of quirky date-like outings, such prancing about in a fountain, riding a moped, playing crummy guitar or dancing stupidly, browsing through hipster clothing racks, rare bookstores, and vintage record shops. She makes him want to live again-- life is great! 


You know what I'm talking about-- movies that take the mundane shit of everyday loser life and make it seem deep and meaningful-- without requiring too much brain power from the viewer. Garden State is arguably the worst offender-- remember Zach Braff yelling into the "infinite abyss?" 

"When you're feeling pissed / Just scream into an abyss / You'll be free / From society"

Countless other films have followed the same pattern-- trying to be "different," "alternative," and "hip," they come off seeming shallow, obvious, and predictable. Movies like Greenberg, 50/50, Cyrus, Garden State, Cedar Rapids, Stranger Than Fiction, Larry Crane,  Dan In Real Life, Lars and the Real Girl, and Jeff Who Lives At Home (which is now playing at our theater and what spawned this rant in the first place.) 

We're sitting in the bathtub. Doesn't it makes us seem so endearingly quirky?

Mainstreamed Indie Film is something that might have once been an art film, but through the U.S.'s capitalist, consumer-driven culture, it has been watered down, softened, and sweetened into a story that appeals to general audiences-- it has been "mainstreamed." The MIF genre emerged in the late 1990s, mainly because that's when digital media started to become accessible and affordable to the general public. Thanks to the phenomenon of media-sharing websites like YouTube, any asshole with half a brain can make a movie and get it out there with little or no money. 



"Oh shit!" major studios like Twentieth Century Fox and Universal yelled. "If anybody can make a movie for free, we'll be out of business in a year!" So they immediately proceeded to create new "indie" divisions of their studios (Fox Searchlight and Focus Features, respectively.) "Look at us!" they bragged. "We're alternative and independent and niche-based, too! We'll pick up your weird offbeat flick and market it and distribute it so even people who don't normally watch indie films will go see it!" 


Who could say no to that, right?  And so the MIF was born. People who "don't normally watch those kinds of movies" were led to believe that they were watching a unique and unprecedented film-- mainly because it made them feel happy and justifies their self-satisfied  existence. "Oh, that guy's just like me! He's a pathetic, obese underachiever, but through a series of random encounters with quirky strangers, a cute, quirky girl, and a folksy soundtrack, he discovers that life can great!" 

"What an adorable, scruffy little hipster!"

I'm not saying ALL Mainstreamed Indie Films are bad. Some are really great-- Sideways, Up In The Air, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Before Sunrise... Who could resist the musical charms of Once?  And who could ever forget that feel-good "freaky" finale in Little Miss Sunshine?  But I think what made these movies so great was that they didn't TRY so hard to be "indie." They weren't overly self-important or arrogant in their presentation. They didn't hit us over the head with the point in every goddamn frame ("See? See?! We're doing big closeup of the main character's face as he's running! See, he's running toward his destiny! Get it, huh, get it? It's a metaphor! A METAPHOR, dumbshit!") 



Don't get me wrong-- sometimes I do want to watch a quirky flick about some guy who finds meaning through making connections with others.  Sometimes a little dose of sentimentality is good for the soul. But if that's all we watch, that's what we start to think LIFE is supposed to be like. Films also need to challenges us, to make us a little uncomfortable, a little unsettled, even a little angry or indignant. Film is like any other form of art-- a highly visual statement that has the power to change the way people see the world. Schindler's List, American History X, Citizen Kane, The Silence Of The Lambs, Taxi Driver, Pulp Fiction, Fargo, The Sixth Sense, Brokeback Mountain... Think how much influence those films had on our imaginations, our understanding of the world. 


Art film doesn't care what people think of it. It is fearless and unapologetic, even if it's not entirely sure what it's doing. It is simultaneously beautiful and gritty, subtle and bold, restrained and passionate. Art film is to Mainstreamed Indie Film as Bob Dylan is to The Wallflowers-- they're related by blood, but they aren't of the same caliber.