theconversation.com: “One must have a heart of stone not to read about the death of little Nell without laughing” was Oscar Wilde’s notorious response to the emotional onslaught of Charles Dickens’s 1841 novel, The Old Curiosity Shop. Having watched two films in two weeks about the death of a child, it offers a clue as to why I cried in only one.
4 comments:
I think at the heart of this article is that people don’t like being told what to do or how to feel. I can’t count the number of times I've been watching a movie, and the score starts to swell and I roll my eyes at the sense that the story just showed its hand a little too much, and now I know exactly what it wants from me. What makes a good story is an artist's ability to guide you toward an emotion without telling you what that exactly is. There's been a big problem in modern media where it seems like directors and show runners no longer trust the audience to be able to figure anything out for themselves, which has the unintended consequence of creating a terrible and emotionless void of a show. I think as story tellers we need to start trusting the audience to be able to have feelings without them being shoved down their throats.
This article really resonated with me because it puts words to something I’ve felt but never fully articulated. There’s a big difference between being invited to feel something and being pushed into it. When a film is clearly trying very hard to make me cry, through swelling music or prolonged shots of grief, I often find myself emotionally pulling back instead of leaning in. It starts to feel performative, like the emotion is doing the work for me rather than letting me to get there on my own. I found the idea of refusing to show everything especially interesting, because it forces the viewer to bear witness and sit with discomfort rather than being guided toward a specific reaction. The other point I found interesting is about how showing someone trying not to cry can be more devastating than showing them break down. I agree, those restrained moments are almost always the ones that affect me the most.
I am someone who always loves a good tragedy and personally writes a lot of them. One of my favorite things to do as an artist and writer is to gain a rise or a reaction out of the audience. However, it needs to be done right. You can’t tell the audience how they’re supposed to feel. People don’t enjoy that and will be less inclined to feel that way if you tell them they're supposed to feel that way. You really have to ease them into it. You have to carefully weave those bonds and connections with the story so when you pull on one of them, emotion rises, perhaps without the audience member even knowing why or noticing they formed that connection. That is what a good artist and writer knows how to do. I am not a person who cries easily or gets emotional easily with a lot of modern media. May that be influenced by the fact that I create a lot of emotional media myself? Yes. May it be because I’m desensitized since I grew up with media that elicited these strong emotional reactions from me very often? Maybe. But despite my own personal biases, I find that a lot of media nowadays too often directly tells you how to feel rather than easing you into it and coaxing those emotions without telling you, and that's why I think I don’t react as strongly to a lot of media right now. However, there’s modern media that still manages to pull visceral emotional reactions out of me, and it's because it's made me form those connections unknowingly, so that they do have access to pulling on my heartstrings.
Good art reflects the truth, and I think that’s something that every audience intrinsically understands even if they can’t put words to it. The reason we are averse to productions that we feel are “tearjerkers” or are deliberately trying to make their audience cry is because we don’t feel like that emotionallity is deserved. We cry at art because we are moved to do so, not because we are told, and the presumption that we, as artistic directors, should try to inspire sorrow is therefore flawed. We should instead try to present the truth of the art in such a way as to evoke as much empathy and connection with the audience as possible, which, if done well, has a much better chance of moving a viewer to tears. I don’t cry watching Ragtime because I’m told to, but because in the presentation of that show’s ideas and themes I am struck by the tragedy of life in America. I think that truth inspires all emotion, and we should work to harness the truth to our purposes in the work we do, rather than seeking out emotionality for its own sake.
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