Last night I watched Snatched, a comedy starring Amy Schumer
who plays Emily who is a “self-obsessed 30 something year old”. Throughout the
film, Emily is going through negative life experiences, such as a breakup, but
this does not affect her ability to pose in selfies as if she is “leading her
best life”. In fact, even in one selfie, she employs a ring light, something
which was once confined to professional photographers and gradually filtered
down to YouTube and social media influencers and then to generic selfie takers
in the form of smartphone attachments. Throughout the movie she engages in two
conversations with two characters who question her use of social media. The
first is James who is wining and dining Emily in order to trap her into being
kidnapped by a South American gang. James is talking about all the places he
has been around the world which impresses Emily; Emily replies with something
along the lines of “wow, your Instagram must be amazing” to which James
replies, “I’m not on anything like that”. It could be seen that the writers’
juxtaposition of Emily and James worked in a way to highlight Emily’s social
media consumption which could be seen as a microcosm for today’s social media
users. The second conversation is with her mother: Emily states that she has to
show people “how much of a good time she is having” so that people can
compliment her on her life in the comments section. Emily’s mum says that she
needs to just live her life.
Watching this film, for me, has come at a time where I am
more sceptical about my consumption of social media. Especially during this sun
and heat that England is currently experiencing in which more of my Instagram
feed is people I follow swimming in Spanish looking [yet English] seas,
swimming pools, beer garden drinks and bikini selfies. It’s not that I feel
jealous looking at these, it’s that I feel I should also be posting about how
great my life is in the sun. There are sociological discussions surrounding
individuals on social media being both consumers and producers of media. I can
see this in my thoughts, through consuming other posts, I want to produce
similar posts to show how great my life is. Snatched shows how the pressure to
show one’s best life on social media even during something as life threatening
as being kidnapped in South America.
Indeed, there has been transparency surrounding this on Instagram with
the hashtag #doitforthegram being used over the past few years. Posters
transparently detail that what they posted was not candid but, rather, to show
their Instagram feed within a certain light. Often, these are referred to as
#plandids. I recently took a month-long break from social media to decide how I
would deal with this pressure, but as of yet, I am still unsure.
