On March 18, nearly 1,200 students, faculty and community members filled the stands of the Mini-Dome to hear writer/filmmaker Spike Lee speak.
But how many of those attending took the time to go to the on-campus screenings?
How many attempted to participate in the roundtable discussions of Lee’s “She’s Gotta Have It,” “Do the Right Thing” or “School Daze”?
Oh, I’d say around 25, at the maximum.
Every semester organizations like the Diversity Committee, Black Affairs, The Rainbow Alliance, Volunteer ETSU and the Office of Multicultural Affairs sponsor campus screenings of independently produced or rare films that deal with minority and social justice issues.
Perhaps, somewhat optimistically, these organizations assumed that with growing numbers of minorities on ETSU campus and other concerned allies of minorities, there would be an interested built-in audience for these films.
But with so few students attending these events, the kinds of films that are meant to be taken in, discussed and debated by an intellectually and culturally diverse audience largely preach to their own choirs.
But here’s the thing.
Filmmakers, despite what the general public might think, don’t make films to simply preach to the choir.
Filmmakers like Deepa Mehta, Spike Lee and Atom Egoyan or documentarians like Michael Moore (however controversial he may be), Sharmeen Obaid or Errol Morris all chose the medium of film to highlight social injustice because of film’s unique power.
In a society that largely prizes image over substance, the activist filmmaker seeks to combine the two, crafting moving images that emboss themselves into the consciences of their audiences.
But they can’t, of course, practice their special brand of cinematic art without an audience. The intended discourse of social justice can’t occur without voices additional to their own.
ETSU has proven to be a largely Michael Bay/Judd Apatow crowd, eschewing the world of headier, socially-conscious films for the CGI melodrama of “Transformers” or the veiled sexism of “Knocked Up.”
While crowds of students were flocking to the Friday night Buctainment-sponsored Cheap Date movie, a slate of diverse and powerful films were shown to dwindling numbers of students.
Films like the forcefully moving documentary on the African AIDS epidemic, “A Closer Walk,” or the underground docudrama on the plight of homosexuals during the Holocaust, “Bent” – both worth your time and Blockbuster rental – went largely unseen on campus.
Issues of the global AIDS epidemic and the discrimination of homosexuals went largely undiscussed, expect by those who were already attempting to fight these injustices.
This kind of apathy towards social justice discourse does two things.
First, when an audience wrongly labels a movie as a “special interest” film for a particular minority and then stays home because of it, they limit the intellectual and moral discussion the filmmaker wanted to spark with her/his work.
Second, failure to support the independent screenings on campus simply makes them harder and harder to fund the next semester on a campus that needs as much cultural diversity as it can get.
Next year there will continue to be screenings of smaller, socially important films on campus.
The films need an audience and that audience should include you, no matter your sex, sexual preference, race, or political stripe.
And before you go, shed the notion that films are first and foremost about entertainment.
If you can’t wrap your head around that, I’m sure Michael Bay’s latest will have already coursed its way through the summer theaters to a Cheap Date movie near you.

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