Is Chapman scrolling with the punches or making movies matter?
Graphic by Easton Clark, Photo Editor
Imagine a Chapman student. Are you thinking of a movie buff? Somebody who can’t go a week without heading to the theater? Do they have an AMC Theatres membership? They must be artsy and snobby and part of the mini-Hollywood of Chapman, right?
Now imagine that student not going to the movies for months on end. You must be saying, “that’s impossible!” Thanks to Dodge College of Film and Media Arts, Chapman gets a reputation as a university that’s all about films. If you are seen cracking open a book or watching a YouTube video, no matter your major, surely you’ll be ridiculed!
Well, you’d be wrong to hold those assumptions. Gigi OliverSmith, a junior creative producing major, hasn’t made a trip to the theaters since mid-summer. And for students across the campus, entertainment interests are highly varied.
Some like to melt their minds while scrolling through social media for hours. Others actually read, believe it or not. And then, of course, there are a few film geeks out there — but we won’t start with them.
We walked around Chapman’s campus, from the piazza all the way to the Folino Theater, to conduct a very serious survey: we wanted to find out where students get the majority of their entertainment from. This study consisted of being annoying, interrupting people’s day and asking a series of questions about reels, posts and movies. All in the name of science, of course.
One of the first people we spoke to immediately blew our fragile minds. Chiara Harrington, a sophomore business management major, uttered a never-before-heard phrase.
“I don’t think I have a favorite movie,” she said.
Harrington would rather spend her free time watching gaming videos and vlogs on YouTube. The variety offered keeps her coming back to the original video-sharing platform.
It was the same for her friend Natalie Price, a freshman business marketing major.
Day-in-the-life videos are her flavor, saying that they help motivate her to be productive. But is that just a hyper-focused business student take? Maxing out efficiency for the hours in a day, with no time for dilly-dallying? Price even said she tries to stay off TikTok because it’s time-sucking and hurts her brain
When we spoke with Matthew Wade, a graduate student who is pursuing his masters in business administration, he had a different outlook on entertainment. He has a very busy day-to-day, but that doesn’t mean he can’t sneak a little “How I Met Your Mother” rewatch in on his lunch break.
“(It’s) easy, just 20 minutes on,” he said. “You can just get it done and (it’s) not a big commitment.”
Otherwise, Wade is watching football on Sundays like so many others. But again, this is just the business perspective. The students we surveyed were not TV or movie crazy. But how about a student of the arts?
Enter Isabella Rodriguez, a junior art history major who primarily uses social media to stay informed about current events. She follows Greenpeace for environmental news and Impact for broader cultural stories. She’s a loyal reader of the New York Times daily newsletter. Even with her more mindful approach to roaming her feed, she tries not to go on social media too much to begin with.
Addie Kuehner, a junior health science major, has social media habits that are considerably more extreme. She said her feed often caters to her academics, doling out information about attending physician assistant school. She confessed that her longest uninterrupted scroll went for nearly three hours in a post-exams daze.
“I hadn't been up to date. And my sister always sends me, like, 100-plus (TikToks),” she said. “So then that becomes my feed. I'm gonna blame her for that.”
Kuehner was also in the midst of a “cozy” return to Stars Hollow with a rewatch of “Gilmore Girls” on Netflix, the first time she’s watched the show since high school.
On the other hand, Curren Vallejo, a junior communication studies major, finds solace in gaming content, both on YouTube and Twitch. He’s been watching Markiplier for nearly a decade. Even so, he too scrolls TikTok, clocking similar hours to Kuehner.
“Jeez, I was really on for that long without even realizing?” Vallejo said upon discovering he’d scrolled for two and a half hours.
About two to three hours seemed to be the norm for most students we talked to. Everybody enjoys — if you can even use that word — a good rotting session from time to time.
Tamara Garcia, a junior film and media studies major, finds it difficult to fit in recreational movie viewing alongside the viewings required by her classes. But she does find the time for TikTok.
“It's so bad. I love Tiktok. It's terrible. I know it's terrible, but I do love it and Instagram,” she said. “Oh god. Like, if I have a bad week, I can be on there for hours… it's terrible.”
And as for the other movie buffs (and snobs) that comprise Chapman’s film school, the ones we talked to were binging television, not crossing classics off their watchlist. Both film-oriented majors we talked to favored HBO Max as their streaming service of choice.
OliverSmith, who’s also a somewhat avid reader, explained why she chooses HBO Max — where she watches “The Last of Us” and “Sex and the City” — over social media platforms.
“Compared to social media or reels, even though your ‘For You’ page is curated for you, you're not as in control of what you're consuming,” she said. “And sometimes it can get really negative or just like stuff that I don't enjoy. Whereas, if I'm on a streaming platform, I'm picking exactly what I want to watch, and I know what to expect, and it just feels more structured and like something I enjoy. It's (the) power of choice, (the) agency in it.”
Surveying our findings, it’s quite clear that really no film or novel can quite measure up to the endorphin rush that an endless stream of 30-second content can provide. We are united by our inability to rise above what’s promised with a single swipe of our finger. Even so, we discovered the range of what people seek from the promise of their own feeds: news, career guidance, the motivation to ensure productivity and more.
No one is spared from the enduring allure of the scroll. But if any Chapman students have the attention span to read, say, an entire one-thousand-word article, then there may still be hope for how we consume our entertainment.