What Compels Me to Explore Entertainment

How an experiment turned into a passion and a tool of connection

Paramount Pictures

The first time I wrote an article about film, it was more to see if I could than anything else. Until a couple of years ago, putting together opinion pieces was about the only time I felt comfortable as a writer. It’s the terrain that seemed to share the most in common with the sort of essays I wrote in middle school and all the way through college. Opening, body, conclusion.

As early as ninth-grade, I knew that I loved writing, but didn’t have a clue how to begin without a prompt. I’d stare at a blank page. But when directed to write a piece about how Westernization changed the course of Russian history, or asked who were a few of the most important figures of the Civil Rights Movement, I’d launch into linguistic motion and get lost in my words in a way that was unrelatable to most of my peers.

I’d have an unusual amount of fun figuring out how to incorporate quotes into a piece to best prove my thesis. How they could be most seamlessly integrated in a paragraph. How they could convey the greatest rhetorical value.

I learned to cherish the way that apparent synonyms would hold slightly different weights when used in different contexts. How a single sentence with a lone message could be communicated in a hundred different tones, and through a woelessly infinite number of avenues.

But without that prompting at the top of a page, I had an embarrassing tendency to let entire months go by without writing. Beginning to wrangle my disjointed ideas and assemble them into full-fledged pieces has been a process. To look back now at those earliest stories, I can’t typically say that I’m proud. But in many ways, I’m still impressed that those tenuous strands of thought ever managed to culminate in completed articles — however flawed and error-freckled.

What I remember most from each of those times that I completed an essay or diatribe in those early days was being repeatedly shocked how my keyboard gave way to something coherent at all. Something that felt complete.

Writing about film for the first time was a revelation as much as it was an experiment. It was a response to the question, “Am I able to write about my favorite movies?”

The one I started with was Interstellar. Admittedly, the final results weren’t terrific by my standards today. But the answer that emerged by the time I’d finished my final edit was an unequivocal “Yes, I can cover film.”

Yet for those first few reviews, it still didn’t dawn on me what exactly this new genre I’d forayed into could be. More than reviewing and ranking movies or trying to put together some score out of ten for each, I started analyzing them and discussing their cultural impact.

I realized that entertainment could offer springboards to leap into everything from politics and AI to the coping with pandemics, the aftermath of suicide, the value of life, the pitfalls of religion, and the chaos of our endlessly spinning world.

It’s not every show and movie that lends itself to deeper interpretations or explorations of such heavy themes. Sometimes, writing about entertainment serves a raw and escapist appeal for me. Sometimes, comparing and contrasting different horror films and the way terror has evolved throughout the decades reminds me that the life I’m living could always be more doll-haunted, zombie-ridden, or poltergeist-plagued.

If nothing else, the movies I’ve watched, or games I’ve played — or songs, albums, and artists I’ve listened to — are reasons to keep writing. There’s not always a new take that I feel I can offer on politics and social issues. Yet never has there been a single moment in my writing career when I’ve been without a piece of media to appreciate.

It’s not every day I find the energy to clatter away at my computer (although it is a healthy majority of them). But there’s not a waking hour that goes by where I can’t conjure up some song or movie that’s shaped me in a way that’s worth putting into words.

Not everything I’ve ever covered has struck a chord. Avatar: The Way of the Water was a reason to write what rank to date as some of my most shamelessly stupid satires, “Avatanic (Titavatar?)” and “Avatanic II: Way Too Much Water.”

But almost invariably, the favorite films for me to write about have been those ones that speak to me at a more profound level. Those shows and films that feel like they exhibit the greatest understanding of the frenetic world in which we’re living. Don’t Look Up gave me an opportunity to talk about humanity as a whole and our strange relationship with the perils we’re facing. 3 Body Problem provided a launching pad to explore where we are as a species as well as the possibility of extraterrestrials and dimensions beyond our own.

There are times when movies tap into a cultural zeitgeist. And there are times when films and social issues are so inextricably attached that there’s no discussing one without the other.

There’s no analysis of Her or Ex-Machina that’s complete today without a conversation about just how close we’ve grown to the dystopian realities that these movies depicted. Nor was it possible to watch Civil War without reflecting on the state of our politics as a nation.

I can’t watch It’s a Wonderful Life without thinking about the people I’ve lost to spiraling bouts of depression, and of the fourth-grade teacher who was kind enough to introduce that film to our class. Who was thoughtful enough to sit with us and make sure that we understood the weighty message at the movie’s core. That we grasped how much we each mattered, despite how much we might sometimes doubt it in life’s worst moments.

Exploring entertainment has been one of my most interesting adventures since I began treating this creative career as my life. It’s given me countless new ideas, as well as a reason to put thoughts I already had onto paper. It’s been a cause to dive headfirst into the changing world around me and all of the issues that affect us.

At the very least, writing about media is a way to keep growing, changing, and challenging myself. But at its best, it helps me to think more meaningfully about the issues that matter most. It helps me to feel more connected to others, to who I am, and to those thoughts that tug at the fiber of my being. Moreover, it gives me a reason to voice them.