The Long Take: My Moviebob Problem and Ours
Why Film Robert is film criticism's Robin DiAngelo.
I had a convo with a mutual on Twitter asking who would be the film criticism equivalent to Ibram X Kendi and Robin DiAngelo. For those who don’t know, Ibram X Kendi and Robin DiAngelo are critical race theory gurus whose ideas and their respective books How To Be An Anti-Racist and White Fragility made them authoritative voices in how America should really think about race. Adding to the significance of their contributions is DiAngelo appearing on Jimmy Fallon, while Kendi received a ten million-dollar donation from Jack Dorsey. To summarize what they believe, DiAngelo defines “white fragility” as a defense mechanism from white Americans and is what systemic racism is owed to, while Kendi believes it is not enough to be individually against the notion of racism, you have to confront it actively, as it has poisoned every facet of daily life. One of his grand solutions is to include an anti-racist amendment in the Constitution.
It is interesting that with both authors breaking through in the wake of The Great American Awokening, DiAngelo gets more criticism than Kendi. Whether or not her lily-white pigments contributed as a factor, those who were scathingly critical of her were not exclusively of the rightist-bent; legacy outlets like The New Yorker and socialist-friendly ones like Jacobin and The Bellows had their strong pushback of her crusade to redefine racism that is friendly to corporate boardrooms that are bringing needless diversity training exercises.
So when I asked my mutual who would be film criticism’s parallel to Kendi and DiAngelo, it’s because I think pop culture commentary is not immune to the attitudes being espoused. The one person we conclude that could resemble either was Bob Chipman. Otherwise known as Moviebob, Chipman was a critic for The Escapist, a news website where he makes videos about movies and video games. Combining the energy of Kendi and the shrillness of DiAngelo, no one likes the Moviebob. While it’s obvious conservatives and anyone livid about social justice orthodoxies would hate him, people from the Left are made uncomfortable by his presence, that even Lindsay Ellis, a so-called ‘colleague’ he thought was his friend, doesn’t want anything to do with him. He voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and has been vocal about why he would not vouch for Bernie Sanders, especially when it’s more fashionable to do so in 2020. You can certainly imagine what his mentions would look like.
Moviebob is notorious for his ubermenschian Twitter feed, which reads like the bizarro gamer version of Kevin D Williamson or a progressive Ayn Rand on bath salts. His infamous tweets often portray him bickering about the concept of the “white working class”, and why they act as an obstacle to his dreams (he includes women and minorities as part of his team). It hits its peak when he whined about the troglodytes stealing his “earned future” to prolong their worthless existence. That future? Being in a spaceship with talking robots. Who’s getting in the way? The guys in the Midwest complaining about migrants terking der jerbs.
Much has been made about his delusions on social media, but not much about how he approaches movies. That’s because the classist bigotries and sci-fi fantasies are also seen in his reviews, with moments lamenting about his openness to be violent towards those he deemed as “bullies” or “rednecks”. For instance, Bob praised the church massacre of Kingsman: The Secret Service, in part because he admits enjoyment out of the Westboro patrons getting their slaughtered comeuppance (there’s a lot to be said about the movie’s politics, but I’m more or less surprised that the man would agree with this particular angle, which later got blurted out as “That’s not nice Bob”). It would be one of his last videos with The Escapist, as he left in 2015* and went about his business without the backing of the site. (It’s worth noting that briefly, his rant about the Adam Sandler video game movie Pixels went viral, that it scored him an interview in The New Yorker) His whine about wanting to be on a Starfleet was uttered explicitly in his review of The Martian. Rather than weighing in with the form and conflict that could give you an indication of quality, it boils down to “this movie is awesome because everyone is doing their job and I agree with its message.”
What is left unappreciated is Bob’s gap in knowledge about the medium shows when he messily argued that the auteur theory should be abandoned because it was unfair to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. As much as I have my fair share of reservations with the concept (see Pauline Kael’s Circles and Squares essay, which some of Moviebob’s points does share semblance to), his arguments fall apart because it isn’t just that Marvel is the worst example he used to push back against the idea. He falls into the trap of accepting the theory by claiming that other directors have not deserved the same beloved treatment as Quentin Tarantino. His point being:
That’s probably the biggest sin of keeping the myth of Auteur Theory alive too long: we’ve developed a cinephile culture that dramatically overvalues “visionaries” whose recurring, immediately-recognizable visual and thematic fixations effectively drown-out the discussion of what are at their core spotty, unwieldly filmographies at best (looking at you, Tim Burton, Kevin Smith, Robert Rodriguez). Meanwhile, “mere” craftsmen (think Joe Johnston, John McTiernan, Anton Fuqua or even pre-“rediscovery” Kathryn Bigelow) who consistently turn out overall superior work are denied a seat at the Cool Kids table because… well, they don’t re-use the same character-actors, color palettes and costume-design fetishes and don’t get into public shouting matches over studio notes - how can their films be worth talking about?
While it’s easy to mock Bob and his DiAngeloisms, it is a symptom of how film critics recently approach the movies, not the cause. They simply can’t be spectators in their area. They have to be active in others as well, mainly in politics. They can’t spend most of their time in press screenings and typing on their laptops on how they feel about David Fincher’s new movie. They urge for something to be done so that gutless polemics that shamelessly ride progressive trends are rewarded with attention. Bob’s champagne socialism is no different from that of David Ehrlich, who once claimed that for mass shootings to stop, JJ Abrams needs to delay the Star Wars sequels. The Moviebob who gripes about Ricky Gervais’s monologue at the Golden Globes being reactionary is the same as the likes of Slate bemoaning it because conservatives enjoyed it.
It’s easy to think that Moviebob is a hateful source of pomposity and he’s far from it. He’s a tragic character who thinks the mainstream nerd lore he consumes is a substitute for his intellect. Bob resembles Kendi in style because their ferocity is so tribalistic, it’s easy to be alienated by the lack of decency demonstrated. Yet he’s close to Robin DiAngelo in substance since he blames a monolith of folks for his shortcomings while standing athwart a four-digit monthly income for whatever contributes to his work. The next time that bloc loses their job, be it a pandemic or the shifting nature of work, they’ll never forgive him for the future he already claimed.
*This is not the first time it happened. Just recently, as of writing this, he was laid off again.