When I was a teenager, I desperately wanted to silence everyone who mockingly asked me about the point of watching movies. I wanted a convincing answer that would clear me of the crime of wasting my time on pointless trivialities. But I couldn’t do it. All I had was the enjoyment that was the entire purpose of that “wasted” time. I even hid my interest in cinema out of a sense of shame, trying to avoid a stigma I didn’t know how to refute.
But I thought to myself back then: even if I couldn’t justify my carelessness, I felt that every creative work I consumed was making me a better person.
I didn’t have the ability to answer their sarcastic questions, nor could I explain why I considered the world of cinema a place that always made me better than I was before. It wasn’t until later that I realized the question about the “usefulness” of cinema is, at its core, a question about the meaning of culture itself.
How is a Conversation About Cinema a Conversation About Culture?
Four years ago, I heard the Kuwaiti writer Buthaina Al-Essa describe culture as a huge house with many rooms. In one room, we find cinema; in another, the novel; in a third, music; in a fourth, theater; and in the rest, all other forms of creative work. Language, however, is not one of these rooms. Instead, it is the light that illuminates the entire house, because it is the tool we use to shape and transmit everything cultural.
This description made me realize that culture is not just a collection of facts that one memorizes to show off. It is a blend of concepts produced by those who came before us. It is not something static, but a comprehensive climate in which we live. It begins with ideas and beliefs and ends with the simplest details of our lives: what we wear, how we speak, how we think and act. Are we as capable of analyzing, connecting, critiquing, and expressing ourselves as we are of eating and drinking?
For this reason, and from this point forward, we will talk about cinema as a vital part of the concept of culture.
How Does Cinema Create a Cultured Individual?
Most would agree that films are one of the most important cultural outputs of humanity. This means they are a direct product of our collective mind, values, and imagination. Cinema records historical and social moments not from the perspective of a historian, but from that of an ordinary person. This is why historians can study societies through their films, because they preserve a visual and emotional memory of the times, expressing how people then saw themselves and the world around them. But have any of us ever considered the real impact of cinema on the formation of the individual?
A person who engages with cultural products like cinema is not just influenced by the content; their entire cognitive and emotional structure is rewired.
Every viewing adds a new layer to a person’s consciousness, making them see the world from multiple, different angles. They come to understand that truth is not absolute but relative. From here, the capacity for critical thinking is born. They no longer see things just as they are presented, but as they could be. Because every film is a new perceptual experience, the viewer learns to see details and hidden cues. Over time, their mind is trained to read reality the way it reads a cinematic scene—with analysis and connection.
Furthermore, watching different cultures fosters an ability to understand and empathize with the “other,” even if one cannot adopt their views. Art trains the mind to connect unexpected things, and with time, a faculty for creativity develops, one that sees the hidden relationships between different ideas. Eventually, the person becomes capable of creating and expressing these connections themselves.
Most importantly, they may, over time, acquire an intense desire to express all the images, ideas, feelings, and arts that have accumulated in their mind. This desire grows until it turns into small attempts, then real experiments, until they discover they have begun to translate themselves into their own work. They start to create something new in the house of culture. At that stage, they transform from a consumer into a producer.
What Happens to an Individual Who Ignores the Value of Cultural Outputs (Like Cinema), Seeing Them as an Unnecessary Luxury?
They become an uncultured individual! Before you object to that description, let’s imagine a person who lacks the faculty for critical and creative thinking, the ability to connect, plan, analyze, and express themselves. What is left of this person? Nothing.
These faculties are what create a cultured individual. When we talk about culture here, we don’t mean the information one possesses from studying dry sciences, but the skills that enable a person to understand and change reality. Culture is the climate that nurtures all our practices, the framework within which a society’s values, behaviors, and worldview are formed. It determines how we understand work and authority, how we view women and the law, and how we build the concepts of good and evil within our collective consciousness.
Therefore, an uncultured individual is not just someone uninterested in the arts; they are an element that threatens the cohesion of society, because they lack the awareness that organizes their behavior within the human and social fabric.
Looking at it practically, when the cinemas in Libya were turned into drab warehouses and all cultural expression was exiled on the grounds that it was a luxury the people didn’t need, the fabric of society began to actually collapse. The absence of cultural expression doesn’t just produce an artistic void; it creates an individual who is internally fragile, dry in their behavior, and lacking the tools for thought and expression. When consciousness is deprived of culture, it weakens. Societies transform into entities that are quick to anger, poor in imagination, and incapable of dialogue. This is precisely the state of our Libyan society today.
For this reason, we can say with confidence: an uncultured individual is a ticking time bomb that destroys the fabric of society.
So, How Does Cinema Contribute to the Survival of Society?
We have agreed that cinema is one of the most important cultural outputs, that culture is the nurturing climate for all our practices, and that our problems are always, first and foremost, cultural problems. To solve them, we will need a cultured individual who holds important tools in their hands: the ability to analyze, connect, and plan; to think critically and creatively.
When we face a problem in an institution, we might think it is technical or administrative, when in reality it is a cultural problem. For example, when an employee sees their job as a worthless burden, the issue is not with their ability but with their culture of work. When states impose stifling censorship on thought and shut down cinemas and all artistic venues, the issue is not legal but a culture of control. Culture is what creates our way of understanding the world. Unless it changes, the same mistakes will be repeated, no matter how many people or laws we change.
When we realize that every crisis in society is, at its core, a crisis of culture, we understand that the remedy is not found in laws or dry speeches, but in the formation of the cultured individual. And that individual is not made through theoretical lectures, but through continuous exposure to cultural outputs. This means: they must read, they must watch, they must listen, and they must taste art.
Every interaction with a creative work is indirect training in critical and creative thinking, in analysis and connection, in sensing beauty and meaning. Only then do societies begin to transform from chaos to consciousness, from consumption to production, and from randomness to creativity. Because culture, quite simply, is what restores humanity into humans.
