I was watching Steven Soderbergh’s Side Effects (2013) and with the first sighting of Channing Tatum, I had a sudden desire to watch Roofman (2025) in which he stars. Not in the sense that I wanted to turn off Side Effects and immediately put on Roofman but more that it suddenly felt I should make sure this is the next film I watch. From past experience I know this feeling is a reliable indicator that I will genuinely enjoy watching Roofman if I watch it soon. I will be engaged with it. I will be open to becoming immersed in it. In real sense I desire the film.
What I found curious about this is that I made no effort to see Roofman at the cinema. It was trailed so widely that I noted it at the time, but it seemed a fairly unremarkable crime comedy film. From the reviews I suspect it’s an unusually good, though by no means remarkable, instance of a genre that I’m not particularly drawn to. If I didn’t desire Roofman previously then why do I suddenly want to watch it now?
I’m really not sure, but I think this phenomenology of cultural desire is extremely interesting. It’s a quotidian feature of a media saturated lifeworld yet I don’t recall ever coming across a direct attempt to theorise it (obviously loads of theorists touch on this indirectly). As with most things these days, my instinct is to come at it with a mix of Lacan and Bollas e.g. how the signifier of Channing Tatum quilted together a chain of associations which presented me with Roofman (a film I had literally not thought about since it was trailed at the cinema) while suddenly imbuing the film with a potent sense of watchability.
Mark Carrigan 