6A — Friday, October 27, 2017
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

XL RECORDINGS
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The great unifier — or 
divider: Facebook in ‘17

I was 13 when I first made 

my Facebook account. I was so 
young I had to say that I was 19 
just so I could make an account. 
But my little white lie quickly 
paid off. Scrolling through 
my 
sister’s 
and 
brother’s 

Facebooks, I was mesmerized 
by the social network’s vivid, 
true-blue aesthetic and the 
concept of a “wall” for my 
friends to use. I felt like I’d just 
discovered fire.

At the time, Facebook was 

largely 
reserved 
for 
high-

schoolers and college students, 
so you can understand my 
excitement 
in 
joining 
this 

exclusive club. Simply having 
a Facebook made me believe 
I was ten times cooler than 
I’d ever been. I immediately 
devoted 
the 
rest 
of 
that 

cloudless August afternoon to 
designing my profile. Surely, I 
thought, everyone would want 
to know about my love of the 
Boston Red Sox, or how skilled 
of a Halo 3 player I was. After 
all, wasn’t that what Facebook 
was for — to share your 
personal life online?

While Facebook continues 

to satisfy this overarching goal 
today, the social network has 
shifted its focus to become 
much more than a platform 
to present oneself. Facebook 
has become a marketplace. 
Facebook has become a rolodex. 
Facebook has become a news 
source. And it’s done it all right 
before our eyes.

One of Facebook’s latest and 

most interesting features is its 
marketplace. 
Introduced 
in 

October of 2016, the Facebook 
Marketplace allows the social 
network’s users to buy and 
sell items with other users in 
their immediate area, similar 
to popular apps like OfferUp and 
letgo. The introduction of this 
secondary market provides an 
outlet for users to sell or acquire 
items for which they otherwise 
wouldn’t receive any sort of 
compensation, and it’s one of 
the social network’s strongest 
new additions.

Beyond 
its 
official 

marketplace, 
Facebook 

has a number of unofficial 
marketplaces 
among 
its 

user 
groups. 
Every 
week, 

my Facebook feed is flooded 
with 
friends, 
or 
friends 

of friends, posting in the 
“University of Michigan Class 
of 2019” Facebook group to sell 
anything from concert tickets 
to coffee tables. At least among 
my friends, this is where the 
real business of buying and 
selling is done, since users on 
these informal marketplaces 
often 
have 
mutual 
friends 

with other members of the 
group. Not only does this make 
buying and selling safer, but 
it also makes it more personal 
because both users understand 
that they’re transacting with a 
real person that their friends 
likely know.

Personally, I’ve found these 

unofficial marketplaces to be 
excellent — only last week I 
sold one of my football tickets 
to a friend’s sorority sister 
in just a few hours and our 
conversation ended up as a 
debate over how much we 

liked the Yeezy clothing line. 
However, it’s also important 
to recognize that Facebook 
isn’t the most ideal site for 
users (see: 2016 presidential 
election), so the social network 
may ultimately have to modify 
its market features to avoid the 
fate of Craigslist, which has 
developed a seedy reputation 
due 
to 
“Craigslist 
Killer” 

Philip Markoff.

Along 
with 
assuming 

the role of a local market, 
Facebook 
has 
become 
an 

online rolodex. With more 
than 2 billion active users each 
month, it seems like everyone 
has a Facebook account. It’s 
rare today to search a person’s 
name on Facebook and come 
up empty — from children 
to 
great 
grandparents, 

every demographic is using 
Facebook. While other social 
networking sites like Twitter 
and Instagram boast similarly 
massive user bases, they don’t 
come close to matching the 
ubiquity of Facebook accounts.

To me, the fact that I can 

find nearly everyone I know 
on Facebook is incredible. It 
means that I can meet a person 
and immediately connect with 
them on the social network. 
I can even message them, 
or anyone for that matter — 
a feature which, critically, 
Twitter and Instagram lack 
— on these sites only already-
connected users can directly 
communicate 
with 
each 

other. This is one of the least-
discussed, yet most beneficial, 
aspects of Facebook. When 
my friend’s phone died and 
we became separated at a 
concert this past month, I 
relied on Facebook to message 
my friend’s friend to find 
them. Without Facebook, I 
would have had no means of 
communicating with either of 
them.

The other piece of Facebook’s 

rolodex involves all of the 
pictures, ideas and personal 
information it maintains for 
each user. While users may 
post some of their pictures, 
for example, on Instagram, 
they typically post all of them 
on Facebook, which has made 
the site into a repository 
for personal data. Although 
having to go to just one site to 
find all of a person’s digital life 
is convenient, I have serious 
misgivings about the misuse 
of this personal information. 
As we saw during the now-
infamous 
2016 
presidential 

election, 
Facebook’s 
troves 

of data can be exploited by 
shady 
entities 
to 
further 

their nefarious goals. Using 
Facebook’s data, these firms 
develop marketing strategies 
that play up to users’ fears or 
desires and manipulate those 
sentiments.

Along 
with 
transforming 

into 
a 
digital 
rolodex, 

Facebook has become a news 
source for its users. Through 
its 
“Trending” 
section 

on each user’s news feed, 
Facebook 
presents 
relevant 

news 
headlines, 
complete 

with links to full stories on 
news platforms. Due to its 
prominent placement at the top 
right of each user’s news feed, 
it’s difficult for users to avoid 
reading 
Facebook-generated 

taglines for news stories. This 

location is a clear attempt by 
Facebook to promote its brand 
of news among its users and 
convince them to drop more 
traditional news sites in favor 
of 
Facebook’s 
aggregated 

stories.

Frankly, 
this 
section 
of 

the social network is highly 
concerning to me. Having such 
a mysterious and omnipotent 
corporation such as Facebook 
controlling 
news 
headlines 

that are seen by billions of users 
is downright terrifying to me. 
I hate returning to the same 
example, but, as we saw during 
the 2016 presidential election, 
the language and placement 
of news headlines can have a 
substantial impact on users’ 
interpretation of the news 
and their level of trust of the 
media. Considering Facebook 
has such low barriers to entry 
for its advertisers, who’s to 
say that that lack of a strong 
verification process doesn’t 
carry over to its news sources? 
My fears appear especially 
apt given that Facebook has 
been 
“slow 
to 
cooperate” 

with ongoing Congressional 
investigations 
into 
Russian 

efforts to influence the 2016 
election.

Similar to its marketplace, 

Facebook has a more unofficial 
version of its news section, 
which comes in the form 
of users’ news stories and 
articles. Using a “share” tool, 
users can post news stories to 
each of their friends’ individual 
news feeds. While the intent 
of this feature is obvious — 
to promote users’ stories to 
their friends — it is seldom 
used purely for this purpose. 
Rather than simply inform, 
these “shared” stories, in my 
experience, 
usually 
create 

heated debates among users. As 
I’ve observed, users, especially 
recently, often promote biased 
or partisan news sources with 
headlines 
corresponding 
to 

their 
ideology. 
The 
result 

is news feeds clogged with 
controversial 
(even 
fake) 

news stories containing tense 
comment sections that can 
quickly 
become 
incredibly 

aggressive.

While not as troubling as 

Facebook’s aggregated news, 
these “shared” news stories 
remain somewhat distressing. 
Users only “share” the stories 
that 
truly 
resonate 
with 

them, and this endorsement 
frequently 
divides 
users 
on 

critical issues. Personally, my news 
feed is often inundated with news 
stories “shared” by my friends 
about President Trump, which 
regularly 
leads 
to 
aggressive 

debates and, sometimes, even 
derogatory comments and hateful 
allegations. While this is partially 
a result of the hyperpolarized 
political climate prevailing lately, 
Facebook is enabling many of 
these tense arguments by allowing 
users to parade the news stories 
they support on other users’ 
digital spaces.

As concerning as Facebook’s 

news platform is, I don’t see the 
$500 billion corporation scaling 
back any of these new features 
anytime soon. That’s why it’s 
on us, now, to overcome these 
challenges, to preach civility 
over conflict and to not allow a 
social network to divide us as a 
nation, and as humans.

CONNOR GRADY

Daily Arts Writer

NEW MEDIA NOTEBOOK

The 
important 
form 
of 

documentary 
today 
never 

airs in theaters. We view it 
in grainy windows on social 
media, on shady video sites 
that 
don’t 
regulate 
their 

content. Sometimes, we see 
edited versions on the evening 
news, or sandwiched between 
paragraphs on our favorite 
news site.

The 
footage 
that 
has 

exposed the deadly use of 
police violence against Black 
men in the United States is a 
phenomenon of immeasurable 
sociopolitical import, and our 
culture has yet to correct itself 
even an inch in combatting the 
evils that this documentary 
has brought to forefront of 
discourse.

I 
have 
been 
drastically 

disappointed 
by 
recent 

attempts by mainstream art 
to capture the horror of these 
videos. 
Kathryn 
Bigelow’s 

controversial 
“Detroit” 
is 

the latest in this string of 
disappointments, a work of 
historical fiction that attempts 
to 
retroactively 
document 

a 
past 
injustice, 
one 
that 

happened before smartphones 
could have shone their light on 
it. It failed because it played the 
events as a traditional thriller. 
“Detroit” ’s inoffensive but banal 
formal structure betrayed the 
gravity of the horrific racial 
murders that made up its 
subject. Real violence became 
pop movie violence.

I 
became 
even 
more 

disappointed 
by 
“Detroit” 

when I realized that decades 
earlier, Bigelow had already 
tackled this subject with a 
narrative film, and not only 
was this film astoundingly 
more successful in capturing 

the 
horror 
of 
documented 

police violence, but it also made 
key predictions about the role 
of technology in uncovering 
injustice that were terrifyingly 
prescient. 
“Strange 
Days,” 

Kathryn 
Bigelow’s 
1995 

secret 
neo-noir 
cyberpunk 

masterpiece, not only does 
this, but offers a message of 
hope and change in the face 
of the crushing hegemony of 
neoliberal white supremacy.

Initially, 
“Strange 
Days” 

seems like a forgettable but 
good pastiche of noir genre 
elements in a cyberpunk future. 
You’ve got your noir antihero: 
A 
disgraced, 
slimy 
former 

detective who hangs onto his 
principles by a thread (Ralph 
Fiennes, “The Grand Budapest 
Hotel”), 
his 
trusty, 
badass 

partner who grounds the film 
in morality (Angela Bassett, 
“American Horror Story”) a 
mysterious macguffin, a sex 
worker caught in a deadly bit 
of trouble, a femme fatale and 
of course, thugs who protect 
the interests of their evil 
employers 
with 
violence. 

Where 
“Strange 
Days” 

becomes 
something 
more 

than “Chinatown but in the 
future, man” is when the secret 
our antihero stumbles on is 
a recording of an execution-
style murder of a Black activist 
by the LAPD. Bigelow made 
the film in the aftermath of 
Rodney King, the white-hot 
rage of racial injustice becomes 
imbued as the driving force of 
the plot.

Bigelow’s first stroke of 

genius was in recognizing and 
portraying the fundamental 
flaws in our society that lead 
to racial violence and injustice. 
The world of “Strange Days” is 
a very near future that’s only 
slightly more grimy, alienated 
and violent than reality. Her 
extraordinary 
set 
designers 

and artists painted the perfect 
geohell, a Verhoevian late-
capitalist Los Angeles where 
desperate masses clash with a 
fascist police force as capital-
owning aristocrats cavort in 
skyscrapers. 
The 
key 
here 

is that the inequality is only 
slightly exaggerated, unlike 
in films like “Elysium” when 
the 
class 
metaphor 
is 
so 

cartoonish and over-the-top 
that the connection to reality 
is lost. I suppose “Strange 
Days” shares some formal DNA 
with “Blade Runner,” another 
sci-fi neo-noir where themes 
of exploitation and slavery 
are 
central, 
but 
“Strange 

Days” fearlessly confronts the 
issue of racial social justice 
where the “Blade Runner” 
films pull punches. Where 
“Blade Runner” attempts to 
ground the audience’s pathos 
for injustice in applying the 
consequences 
of 
slavery 

and violence to exclusively 
White 
characters, 
“Strange 

Days” directly confronts the 
repressive violence against the 
Black working class.

Bigelow’s 
second 
stroke 

of genius was her casting 
of the two main characters. 
Casting the brilliant Ralph 
Fiennes, whose star-making 
roles the previous two years 
in “Schindler’s List” (as a 
Nazi) and “Quiz Show” (as 
a 
charismatic, 
handsome 

Protestant groomed to replace 
an 
unphotogenic 
Jew 
on 

television) established him as 
a symbol of clean-cut WASPs 
in positions of immense power. 
It is deliciously subversive 
for Bigelow to cast him as a 
self-serving white guy who 
changes when he discovers the 
horrific injustices perpetuated 
against minorities in America. 
Angela Bassett’s casting, hot 
off of Spike Lee’s “Malcolm 
X,” was equally brilliant, as 
her character is not merely a 
strong and fierce badass, but a 
powerful, sympathetic moral 
voice that goes beyond acting 
as Fiennes’s sidekick and acts 
as the catalyst for enacting 
racial justice.

And finally, like all great 

sci-fi filmmakers, Bigelow uses 
ideas about future technology 
to make moral statements 
about society. The “wire,” a 
Google Glass-like device that 
allows a user to record their 
experiences or to experience 
the 
lives 
of 
others, 
is 

worryingly predictive of body 
cam footage and the ubiquity 
of smartphone cameras. Just 
as Spielberg made an argument 
for due process and against 
prior restraint with the crime-
predicting 
technology 
in 

“Minority Report,” Bigelow 
treatises on the role of social 
technology in the future of 
both crime and justice. 

While 
“Strange 
Days” 

remains an extremely dark 
dystopian film throughout its 
runtime, one of the things I 
liked best about the film is that 
it offers a glimmer of hope and 
justice at the end. The central 
fantasy of this movie is that the 
people at the height of power 
in our society saw the tapes of 
police brutality and acted to 
change it. If that fantasy is ever 
to become a reality, we need 
more fearless, experimental art 
like this.

JACOB RICH
Daily Arts Writer

Digging up ‘Strange Days,’ 
a socially-aware neo-noir

FROM THE VAULT

