Filming

In graduate school, I went through a period when I thought I had wanted to start a social media channel to try and gain a following. I was just curious about the platform, and I was trying to seek something creative to pursue amid obtaining my PhD. I didn’t really have a plan or anything, and I did purchase a used microphone and a camera, which, in retrospect, set me back quite a bit of money—maybe it was the bipolar doing its thing, I don’t know.

Yet, it is peculiar that if you want to gain a following online, whether it is on Instagram or even LinkedIn that the easiest way to go about it is to film. There was always just something about filming that rubbed me the wrong way. First, there’s just a lot of focus on physical appearance and the initial presentation of the person being filmed. I had recently come upon a video of why British actors generally tend to be much less physically attractive than American actors and the reason is that, in America, there’s a huge emphasis placed on how a person looks at the expense of evaluating their talents. I believe this is because of economic reasons. In America, for better or for worse, appearance matters. In the UK, actors grind away for years in the lesser known theatrical circuit before they are given a chance on the screen. That’s not the case in America: actors are typically picked for their pretty face and then given an acting coach.

Perhaps this is why I’ve never quite aspired to be an actor or to film ever. I just never filmed after leaving medicine or during medicine even though there are plenty of health influencers out there and it’s actually quite common for medical students and college students nowadays to dabble in social media by filming: there’s even a major on it now at some universities, if you would believe it. Yet, the act of filming and becoming an influencer on social media—the memes, the silly filters, and the interviews—it all just has this air of ridiculousness to me and a style that doesn’t match my taste. I’ve written about why I’m not aspiring to be an influencer in a previous post so I won’t dive into this topic any deeper, but I think there’s something about the current American film industry’s focus on appearance, rather than talent, that sort of speaks to a profound sad truth about contemporary American society.