Have you ever wanted to read the most elementary first year film course communicated to you by a man with no personality - in comics form, drawn in a bland, lifeless style? Then Filmish is for you!
Edward Ross is here to tell you the bleeding obvious about movies. Did you know that editing and what the camera focuses on in a film can manipulate the audience’s feelings towards a character?? Did you know locations can have meaning and tell us about their inhabitants?? Or that when a film world looks fake, it can take us out of the movie?! Or that most films don’t portray time realistically?!! Or that film can portray things like technophobia and that muhwhahahahowironic that an art form based around technology could do a thing like that?!1
Who is this drivel for? The information being presented is too basic for actual films fans because they’d already know all of this really obvious stuff, which means it would only suit someone totally ignorant of cinema - except that someone is probably that way because they don’t care for it, in which case they wouldn’t want to read a comic about this stuff anyway!
Ross’ ponderous narrative utilises the same constant quoting of source material that you see in dull uni coursework which makes for an utterly horrible read. More repulsively, Ross seems to be a tiresomely cartoon liberal, tut-tut-ing about the “patriarchal gaze” and how women have been objectified in film for years. He even says Disney is dangerous because their older movies have racial and gender stereotypes in them - failing to mention that this was at a time when these racial and gender stereotypes were everywhere, not just in Disney movies - but because Disney’s movies have endured across generations, they could affect children today. Insert Mrs Lovejoy gif about thinking of the children. Sigh…
He goes on in this tedious fashion, telling us that ideology can be promoted in films - another revelation! - which is ironic because, since this book came out in 2015, Disney has gone some way to enforcing an ideology I think Ross would approve of (gender-swapping popular male characters, pandering to mentally-ill Karens, etc.) and it’s why their company is currently in the toilet, having successfully tanked the biggest brands in media like Marvel, Pixar and Star Wars, with their obnoxious far-left orthodoxy.
Which isn’t to say conservative perspectives are better or the way to go, but that when you focus on ideology over quality storytelling in entertainment films, then you lose your audience. Which is what happened to Disney - and is continuing to happen to them, until (if) they decide to abandon activism and return to non-partisan entertainment, which is what appealed to people about Disney to begin with.
Filmish isn’t for anyone. Not for people who like comics, or people who like comics about movies, or people who like movies and want to read about them in comics form. Edward Ross monotonously sucks the life out of some great films in talking about them to draw one unremarkable conclusion after another like the bore he almost certainly is. Filmish isn’t shitish, it’s just shit.
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