The Weekly Discourse: Night Of The Gatekeeper

In yet more proof that modern-day Twitter is just Tumblr from five years ago, "Gatekeeping" returned to the discourse week.

"Gatekeeping," for those not terminally online, is the practice of saying people who like something you like aren't "true fans" because they haven't met an undefined list of imagined prerequisites to be allowed into the fandom. The term pops up whenever some piece of geek-adjacent media—say, a Star Wars movie or a punk rock album—gets released and, to put it bluntly, girls get into it.

"Gatekeeping" entered the pop culture lexicon alongside feminist reexaminations of pop culture fandom. A commonly cited example of gatekeeping is "Oh, you like (x band)? Name three of their albums." That comment has often been quoted by girls wearing, say, Nirvana shirts who get interrogated by men who want to know if they really like their favorite group or are just using the shirt as a fashion statement. In general, it's a scummy practice: few would disagree that people should be able to like what they like without having to jump through non-existent hoops to prove it to the "most hardcore" members of any given fandom. However, that doesn't mean the pearl-clutching around the practice can't also be a little funny.

Like many pop-feminist terms that have come to the forefront of discourse in recent years like "gaslighting, "toxic masculinity", etc., "gatekeeping" has often been misused by pseudo-intellectuals who want to inflate their point of view by using big words, even if it doesn't actually apply to the argument they're trying to make. One of the most tiring examples of this in recent memory came from Marvel fans who argued that director Martin Scorsese, one of the most acclaimed film directors of all time, was "gatekeeping" cinema because he expressed his distaste for Marvel movies. Scorsese returned to the top of Twitter's trending topics this week after again pointing out his displeasure with the current state of cinema and yet again drawing the ire of Marvel fans eager to see him as a cantankerous old boomer.

Also this week, an anime fan took the bold stance that gatekeeping is good, actually, and a woman gatekept (checks notes) being fat, because "losing weight is fatphobia." Let's do this!

Mean Streets

Martin Scorsese, director of Goodfellas, The Aviator, The Departed and what feels like hundreds of other cinema-defining classics, has in the past few years become the focal point in a culture war between people who like Marvel movies and people who like all other movies after he compared Marvel movies to theme parks and went so far as to brand them "not cinema." Scorsese's point was that the films, which Disney has been churning out with high frequency, are more a marketing tactic than an artistic endeavor. This angered Marvel fans, who notoriously can take their fandom too far, and they and Scorsese defenders have been trading barbs ever since.

Scorsese discourse returned to the timeline this week after the director made another comment, this time arguing that the art of filmmaking is being devalued when movies are referred to as "content."

In his essay published in Harper's Magazine, Scorsese argues that streaming services have undermined truly great cinema by treating their audiences like consumers and all films as "content." He writes:

In the movie business, which is now the mass visual entertainment business, the emphasis is always on the word ‘business,’ and value is always determined by the amount of money to be made from any given property -- in that sense, everything from ‘Sunrise’ to ‘La Strada’ to ‘2001’ is now pretty much wrung dry and ready for the ‘Art Film’ swim lane on a streaming platform. Those of us who know the cinema and its history have to share our love and our knowledge with as many people as possible. And we have to make it crystal clear to the current legal owners of these films that they amount to much, much more than mere property to be exploited and then locked away. They are among the greatest treasures of our culture, and they must be treated accordingly.”

Film fans rallied around Scorsese's point. Something has been lost in the "content-ification" of all of cinema history, as the streaming business model works to eradicate the humanity of both the filmmaker and the viewer by treating both as data. However, when Scorsese's nuanced thesis hit Twitter and was consensed to a mere 240 characters, misinterpretation abound and old wounds from the Marvel war were reopened.

This is clearly a battle where no side is going to win. The rise of streaming services isn't going to slow down, particularly amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, and the intangible positives of the old cinema model are likely going to be swept away by time. Scorsese isn't wrong when he says streaming devalues art by assigning it algorithmic value, but that isn't going to change any time soon. What also won't change soon is everyone being annoying about it.

Gatekeeping Is Good, Actually

A less-nuanced and much more amusing "gatekeeping" discussion from last week came after Twitter user @BlackDGamer1 went full heel and completely endorsed gatekeeping anime.

For a lover of hot takes, this absolutely rules. Not for its message, but for the unabashed, full-steam-ahead charge into the unpopular opinion. Here, @BlackDGamer1 targets one of the touchiest fandoms and unintentionally trolls the crap out of them, listing an astounding 12 anime and saying if you only like them, you're not a real fan. This is clearly bananas and such a ridiculous hill to die on, but the guy planted his flag anyway. It's like watching a masterful Chris Jericho promo.

Naturally, this led to a wave of anime fans absolutely demolishing him in his replies and quote-tweets. The term "gatekeeping" trended on Twitter entirely because of this tweet.

Much respect to @BlackDGamer1, because even though his take is dumb as toast, he embraced the backlash and stuck to his guns, however wrongheaded they may be, and lived as the embodiment of this meme:

Losing Weight Is Fatphobia (???)

Finally, we come to this very challenging hot take from user @H_L_MA, who has staked the position that "losing weight is fatphobia."

This one is extremely difficult to parse. It appears to be claiming that wanting to lose weight is in itself a "fatphobic" trait for large people to have. It was frankly a bewildering take and Twitter users expressed their difficulty with it in its thousands of quote-tweets.

The user went on to explain that the world is fatphobic and wanting to conform to its body standards is in itself contributing to the problem.

This makes a bit more sense, but by this point, the damage had already been done. By embracing an argumentative attitude from the jump and leading with her hot-take thesis, @H_L_MA had already turned readers against her. It reads like she's implying that other "fat" people would claim that a fellow fat person losing weight would go against the "cause" of the Fat Acceptance Movement, which seems counterintuitive and mean-spirited, as though she was gatekeeping being fat. However, after her thread of arguing about the proper ways one should engage with their own bodies, she ended on a positive note, advising, "Stop commenting on people's bodies."

The Weekly Discourse is a look at some of the spiciest hot takes on Twitter from the past week that may not have generated memes but were definitely bonkers.