Critical Enjoyment

I'm passionate about cinema, and said cinema tends to be produced by Warner Bros., Universal, Sony, MGM, Disney, StudioCanal, Fox, Studio Ghibli, Film4, DreamWorks, or countless other smaller production companies. But you can still have issues with films and their producers while enjoying them. For example, most of these studios (with the exception of Studio Ghibli) are often criticised for their representation of gender and race. There are plenty of films I love that have these issues in their production, from the lack of female agency in The Weinstein Company's Django Unchained, to the dimorphic character design in Disney's Brave, to the white purity in Decla-Bioscop's Die Nibelungen.

These films are simultaneously worthy of criticism and worthy of praise, and while their producers are mainly concerned about whether they make money - so that they can produce more films and thrive as businesses - they're also the same people responsible for our enjoyment. It can feel like a dichotomy to some, but our personal relationship to production companies has to be more neutral than that. A producer may bring out a dozen films you hate, but if you ever chose to boycott them you'd miss out on a dozen other films of theirs that you would love. You can have opinions against a company in general, but it doesn't mean you can't love some of their products.

To move away from film production, which is the only business I know well, the same approach can apply to various other corporations, although certainly not all (i.e. as a vegetarian, I'm never going to like KFC). The Lego Group, for example, was recently announced as the biggest toy company in the world. The toy industry is a bit like the film industry - indeed, there are many marketing crossovers - and with that comes the fact that each company has its good and bad elements. Lego may be a childhood bias for me, and a toy that's inspired thousands of creative minds, technology designers, and architects... but, still, it has its big problems. Gender-related, race-related, even oil-related. Again we can be critical of the company itself, but also feel perfectly happy to buy their toys, enjoy their theme parks, and play their videogames. You can criticise and enjoy something at the same time; it's not a contradiction.