The Forest Behind the Trees
Why you can never find the right film to watch - and why it's not your fault
“Door de bomen het bos niet meer zien” is a Dutch expression that roughly translates to “no longer seeing the forest due to all those trees blocking your vision”. The general idea is that sometimes, when presented with too many options, you lose sight of the big picture, which in turn can negatively affect your perception of the individual options that make up that picture. And that is exactly the problem my boyfriend and I recently found ourselves facing for the umpteenth time, scrolling through several streaming services in a desperate attempt to find a mildly enjoyable film to watch before going to bed. Realistically low standards, clearly, yet we still spent so much time looking for a film that the evening was getting too short to facilitate 1,5 hours of entertainment. And thus we stayed in our tv-show comfort zone. “Man,” I remember saying, “all that choice leaves me little choice”.
The amount of formulaic films seems to grow exponentially, at the cost of the less mainstream genres — especially those uniquely executed diamonds I love so much. Even a big director like the late David Lynch could not count on Netflix’s financial support in 2024 for his film Snootworld, as it “would not draw big enough crowds”. Hollywood’s objective is obvious: attract as many people as possible per film, in order to make the most money.
How the film industry creates such a standardised taste, was already predicted last century by German philosopher and sociologist Theodor Adorno; through, amongst other things, advertisements — think of explicit advertisements, but also sponsored influencers and unavoidable algorithms — demand no longer determines supply, but the other way around: supply determines demand! People take potluck, which is why modern day Hollywood almost always serves the same dish with a slightly different dressing; artistic expression no longer matters, only the safest financial investments get to form the media landscape — “if the formula ain’t broke, why fix it?”
You would hope that, with cookies stealing your data to ensure a “personalised experience”, streaming service algorithms at least live up to that promise by recommending films you’d personally enjoy. That has yet to happen to me. Try scrolling through a few of these providers, and you’ll notice that they tend to recommend many of the same films under various categories. If you want to watch a film (or show) that deviates from this fabricated standard, you’ll have to already know it by name, because even if the database has it, they will not offer it to you on a silver platter. The search function is your best friend… assuming that you know what you’re looking for.
In this way, the modern viewer experiences the paradox of more choice than ever, but still little opportunity to choose. And I’m getting sick of missing the forest behind the trees.
Picture from Vecteezy with a free license. Attribution: <a href=”https://nl.vecteezy.com/gratis-fotos/film">Film Stockfoto's door Vecteezy</a>