Bertolt Brecht once said that art can be a mirror or a hammer; with this in mind, should we say that cinema reflects society or actively reshapes it? This lecture will also examine how film’s capacity for critique is always counterbalanced by its tendency toward escapism. And the medium’s ability to represent the world around us, what some would call its inherent realism, may now see itself called into question as the age of digitization transforms all the reproductive media, film among them.