I'M 30 AND I LIKE WHAT I LIKE

scattered thoughts on freeing myself from my mind prison

Even just three years ago I was regularly lying on my Letterboxd. This sounds stupid to type out—who cares about what I’m doing on Letterboxd, who cares about what anyone is doing on Letterboxd—but I do have a point. I would watch films recommended to me by my boyfriend at the time, classics recommended by friends and peers, and give them star ratings higher than what I really felt after watching them. For example: The first time I saw The Red Shoes, I just wasn’t that into it for whatever reason¹; too “theater-y” for me, maybe? I don’t really remember at this point, yet I remember giving it four stars. I wasn’t into it, but I felt needlessly pressured by public opinion and feared being scrutinized by my peers for giving a venerated classic lower than, like, a 3.5. I didn’t even necessarily think that The Red Shoes was a bad film, or lower than 3.5 star rating at all. It just wasn’t really for me. I believed there was no good way to articulate that within the confines of a Letterboxd review, so I just gave it four stars and called it a day.

Sometime shortly after this, I made the decision to do away with star ratings in my Letterboxd usage altogether—I wrote about this topic at length on here back in 2023. Whatever the reasons were that I offered in that overlong essay, this decision was primarily born out of plain, old-fashioned insecurity: fear of judgment from my peers, self-consciousness about my taste, but also the idea that the Letterboxd star ratings were too harsh, too definitive, for the complicated feelings I often experienced after watching a film and…well…didn’t want to be judged for. Sometimes I’ll watch a movie that I don’t think is bad but, as with The Red Shoes, it’s just not for me. It feels weird to give a film like that a definitively low or middling rating that only signifies to observers that I thought it was “bad” when that’s not necessarily the case. Maybe this is still an annoying thing to say; maybe it’s still pussy-footing the honest truth. But I think it is true. I can appreciate something artistically while not personally liking it, right? Is that illegal?

But I’ve never been one to elaborate further about a film in the text box of a social media app beyond a single word or a brief quip—much to the chagrin of many other Letterboxd users, I’m sure². So all one would otherwise see on my Letterboxd is that I gave something like Contempt or Jules and Jim a middling star rating³ and not much more. All of this plagued me (I know) until I decided to stop rating films altogether beyond a “heart” or lack thereof. Worries about numbers would surge through my head during a viewing, distracting me as I fixated on where my rating would fall throughout the course of the film and how I’d be perceived for it. The heart/no heart swap both made the experience of watching films less internally torturous while also shielding me from criticism by people who are either eager to see my opinions or eager to judge me for them. The appraisal of my peers has always terrified me, as someone who has a historically low opinion of themselves. If I don’t give a heart to Millennium Mambo, you have no idea whether I disliked the movie or thought it was fine, or a secret third thing.

I had a realization the other day which is this: I like what I like. This actually came after another, related realization a few days prior to this realization, a epiphany born from my brief, upstate sojourn, which is that I am who I am—you know, like Popeye says. I think human beings are capable of change at any age, but I also believe that at a certain point, in certain ways, we stop growing. Parts of our personalities become immutable; we plant roots that can’t be replaced. There are things that become set in stone no matter how far we stretch our limits, no matter how far out of our comfort zone we are pushed. For example: I’m never gonna move to a city where I don’t already have friends and connections; I’m never gonna be the kind of person who can comfortably live with a roommate who isn’t a romantic partner; I’m never gonna like talking to people I have nothing in common with, and I’m not going to pretend to like it either. I’m never gonna like exercising. I’m never gonna own a dog. I’m never gonna go to a party alone where I only know the host. These are things that I have a hard time believing will ever change about me, and I’m comfortable with that. I’m not threatened or made insecure by people who feel differently about how to live their own lives. I know who I am in this respect.

I used to talk about how I was eager to get older just so that people would finally respect me for my taste; that with age would come an ingrained assumption that I know what I’m doing, that I’m worthy of esteem. As I ingratiated myself further into film criticism spaces in my mid-twenties, my increased curiosity and expanded cinema worldview did nothing to sway my core tastes, which became even more of a personal sore point for me. My taste—which favors maximalist pop art; big emotions, gaudy designs, tastelessness—wasn’t really getting “better” through the broadened diversity of films I was consuming. Still, perhaps with age and wisdom, the people on Twitter whose approval I so desperately coveted would eventually see me as intelligent and erudite, regardless of what films I liked or disliked.

And then, recently, it hit me: It doesn’t matter. It just doesn’t matter. I literally don’t care. This will seem obvious to many of you, I’m sure, maybe even more ridiculous that it took three decades of life to finally internalize. But about seven months after turning 30, I have reached this tidbit of enlightenment on my perpetual journey towards self-actualization that I suspect I will not fully complete until I’m past 40. I do the work, I’m not incurious. I read and I watch and I seek things out that I might not like, and often don’t. And you know what? At the end of the day, I like what I like. It’s ironic that instead of acquiring that sought-after respect from people who have no bearing on my life beyond being aware of my presence online, I have instead acquired disinterest in caring about earning respect for something as useless as one’s taste in film.

I’m still a very self-conscious person—though I don’t make that anyone’s problem but my own. I frequently question my judgment and my intelligence, I hate the way that I look without makeup on; I assume the worst from strangers when they meet me. But I think my taste in film is something that I have finally, officially moved past, as I once did with music back in high school when I realized one day that I could just stop listening to metalcore and start listening to Taylor Swift. Admittedly, however, music is a little different—music doesn’t personally matter as much to me anymore. Unlike film, which I’ve devoted a not insignificant portion of my adult life to and explore vast swathes of, I subsequently feel pressured to contend with people and conversations I may struggle to contribute to. But is that because I really can’t, or because I’m scared to? With music, I feel no pressure from anyone or anything. I stumble upon new songs and artists and I start listening to them, regardless of what people might think of me, regardless of if it’s “cringe” or “based.” I often express my opinions freely and don’t fear retribution. It’s freeing and comes with no baggage. I hardly ever think about optics beyond my personal, unadulterated enjoyment.

I’m not promoting any “let people enjoy things” rhetoric. Nobody and no one’s taste is above criticism, as much as I’ve hypocritically tried to evade it of myself. And I’m not professing a gleeful disinterest in challenging or esoteric art, because that’s not the case here either. I frequently enjoy whatever you want to designate as “challenging, esoteric art,” or at least challenging to people like my parents and offline friends, and the teenagers on TikTok who have trouble watching shit like The Godfather. There’s a difference between taste and ignorance. People should always challenge themselves, should always be open to art and media that extends beyond their bubble. But I’ve come to understand that I should also be kind to myself in the same breath that I talk about challenging myself. There’s no need to punish myself for earnestly contending with a movie and not liking it, and there’s no need to lie about it either. In the spectrum of things to care about right now, this doesn’t even crack the list. What matters is that I seek out art that interests me, that I’m eager to learn, that I’m happy to try new things and open to whatever comes from it. It is sobering to finally understand, at 30, that I never needed to earn anyone’s else’s respect with age other than my own.

If you see me log a film on Letterboxd without a heart, you can feel free to assume I disliked it, even if I didn’t. Do whatever you want, actually. You can think whatever you want about me. It doesn’t matter. I’m going to be dead someday, and so will you. Isn’t that great?

1. Sometimes I do think viewings, such as this one, are hindered by not watching them in a theater, which is part of why I don’t watch certain films at home anymore.

2. I get paid to actually review films elsewhere, why would I waste my time for free, she says, writing on Substack for free

3. I actually openly detest Jules and Jim. I’m not shy about that one.