Video essays are a very popular form of entertainment these days. Video essayists can draw anywhere from hundreds to millions of viewers on YouTube whenever they release a new video where they knowledgeably and humorously discuss media, culture, history, social issues, or loads of other topics.
Great video essayists craft well-made videos that inform, entertain, and get watchers to think more deeply about the themes of a piece of media, the discourse surrounding a hot-button social issue, or just something interesting or unusual about the world. Here are three great video essays by three different essayists who craft compelling narratives and provide interesting analyses of a movie, a theme park, and a documentary, respectively.
Great Video Essay #1: Yeelen by Kyle Kallgren
In his 2013 video Yeelen, art film analyst Kyle Kallgren reviews the acclaimed but fairly obscure 1987 Malian film Yeelen. Directed by the Malian filmmaker Souleymane Cissé, the film tells the story of a young man, Nianankoro, who’s given a quest by his uncle to defeat his tyrannical father Soma, a man who’s misusing his divinely-granted powers to try to conquer the land and kill Nianankoro. As Nianankoro travels across Mali, he meets members of different Malian peoples such as the Bambara and Dogon, and develops his own powers until he’s ready to confront his father to save the country.
Kallgren praises the film for its richly drawn characters, archetypal yet compelling story, and its insights into Malian customs and beliefs. He notes how Cissé created the film to not only comment on contemporary issues in Mali but also as a nation-building exercise. Yeelen serves as sort of an origin story for modern Mali since Nianankoro shows influences from three of Mali’s major ethnic groups (the Bambara, the Fulani, and the Dogon) and indirectly ends up becoming the direct ancestor of modern-day Mali’s peoples.
Kallgren takes Yeelen‘s nationalist elements and uses them to reflect more broadly on nationalist art. Using examples from different countries, he shows that art is created to define what its nation and people should ideally be, and also defines what people aren’t included in that definition. No matter how well-meaning a piece of nationalist art is, it can’t possibly represent every group that lives in that nation, and people excluded from the dominant national narrative can face devastating consequences if they aren’t valued equally. The video powerfully critiques what it means to be seen as belonging to or not belonging to a nation.
Great Video Essay #2: Evermore: The Theme Park That Wasn’t by Jenny Nicholson
In her 2022 video Evermore: The Theme Park That Wasn’t, theme park enthusiast Jenny Nicholson examines the rise and fall of Evermore, which operated in Pleasant Grove, Utah, from 2018 to 2024. Evermore was designed to be a fantasy adventure theme park that provided interactive theatrical experiences for guests; compared to its creator’s original vision, however, the park turned out to be a big disappointment in practice.
When she describes visiting the park and participating in its roleplaying experiences, Nicholson demonstrates the huge contrast between the park’s marketing and reality. She lays out the factors that hampered the park’s quality: baffling business decisions like buying real tombstones for the park’s crypt set piece, questionable park management like leaving unfinished, potentially dangerous areas easily accessible by guests, and ineffective efforts to ensure performers’ safety. At the same time, she shows empathy for the park workers and visitors who tried their best to make Evermore live up to what was promised.
You might balk at a video essay that runs almost 4 hours, but rest assured that Nicholson makes every minute count. She has a real passion for theme parks, a razor-sharp wit, and a knack for effective storytelling that will keep you hooked. She can make topics that you couldn’t imagine caring any less about the most interesting things in the world.
Great Video Essay #3: About That Idris Elba Gold Documentary by Dan Olson
In his 2024 video About That Idris Elba Gold Documentary, YouTube documentarian Dan Olson breaks down the documentary Gold: A Journey with Idris Elba. Released by the World Gold Council and narrated by British actor Idris Elba, the film follows Elba as he travels around the world to learn about the production and use of gold. Though promoted as a documentary about the history and cultural impact of gold, the film is really a feature-length ad entirely focused on attracting wealthy viewers to invest in gold.
Documentary filmmakers showing or avoiding certain topics or evidence to support a preferred narrative is nothing new, but Olson excellently shows just how terrible the World Gold Council is at telling the real story behind gold. Since they need to present gold in an appealing way to attract investors, the filmmakers only briefly touch on gold mining and gold’s historical use to avoid showing it as anything other than an impossibly perfect miracle product. They deliberately ignore or downplay the negative consequences of gold mining, such as colonial abuses, worker exploitation, and environmental damage, to suit their narrative.
Olson shows how at every step, the filmmakers avoided discussing any interesting facts about gold. Instead, they just created a film to fleece investors into buying a commodity that only has value due to organizations like the World Gold Council pushing it. By showing the Council’s inability and unwillingness to create a worthwhile documentary, Olson actually creates an interesting documentary about gold. He discusses gold’s chemical properties, its cultural uses, the economic, political, and environmental damage gold mining has caused, and efforts to restore ecosystems damaged by the toxic byproducts of excessive gold mining.
Final Thoughts
Kyle Kallgren, Jenny Nicholson, and Dan Olson all created great videos that had compelling narratives and included good research into and analysis of their chosen subjects. They not only broke down what made their subjects effective or disappointing but also used their subjects to discuss and draw broader conclusions about nation-building, corporate incompetence, and narrative art.
If you’re looking for something interesting to watch in your downtime or listen to in the background, you can’t go wrong with these videos. You’ll learn a lot and have a great time while you’re at it.
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