Do we consume films or do films consume us?

Think “Social Dilemma,” but with films.

A Netflix documentary, “Social Dilemma” is an intriguing watch about how a handful of engineers affect, determine, and even dictate our lives?

But, think for a minute of films.

The way we look, dress, eat, fall in love, wish to be at work, travel is in some form an emulation of a scene or a sequence that we watched and has stayed with us for a long time.

For a long time, our self-worth was reliant on looking like an actor/ actress. Our self-esteem ruined; we wished to be flawless, to have porcelain skin, to fit the three numbers that haunted all young girls’ childhoods “36-24-and I can’t even finish the sentence.”

Background music. Synchronized sequences. Big Love. Grand Gestures. ”Happily Ever After.”

Of lies that television has taught us about “real” love, these things fare at the top of my list. And yet, how many times have you seen your bracelet getting caught in a random woman’s dupatta, and if you have, have you followed her silently, waited for her innocent surprise, and then fallen in love?

In reality, this level of creepiness would be put to an immediate stop by any practical woman.

And this is just the beginning.

In “Social Dilemma,” we see the progression of the film dive into the manipulation techniques used by social media companies to addict their users as well as the psychology that is leveraged to achieve this end. Now, here are a few examples that I think would feature if ever a film titled “Dilemmas caused by unbridled expectations from watching films” were made. A complete makeover, following which people that were heretofore exceptionally mean to the protagonist fall in love with them. Boy meets girl, fights every possible relative while she stands shyly to a side, carries her home (sometimes literally), and they live happily ever after. 

Maybe, films are best thought of as an escape. If we were to take them literally, they would either consume us; or we would be conned, confused, and consumed.