Other Top Ten Lists.
Every time a year ends we try to tie a bow around what that year meant to us. We do this through top ten lists, editorials, retrospectives, lists of dead celebrities, timelines, and even the assigning of personalities to the year we just lived through. This year, the dominant narrative seems to be that 2016 is a killer, a sociopath, a ruthless tyrant. It's easy to feel like a victim of the worst of times.
We must remember that 2016 is only what it is--a number on a calendar. Every year has peaks and valleys, and demonizing 2016 only has the effect of dispelling responsibility. 2016 didn't do this to us; glacial cultural forces did this to us. Social movements that have their roots going back decades, even centuries. Some of them are obvious, while some lurk beneath the surface.
Art helps us realize how we got to where we are today, and how we might get to where we want to go in the future. Films like Green Room, Moonlight, and Arrival can teach us how to fight, how to live, and how to come together. Sometimes they feel incredible, prescient, like they predicted the climate in which they would be released. That's the job of a powerful artist: to see the roots.
