When I'm going to see a movie, I enjoy a good drama. They push some satisfying buttons in us. As with anything that has ever been considered artistic for any length of time (dramas go waaaaay back...), there has spawned a legion of cheap renditions that have become uncomfortably popular.
There was a time when one popular breed of these cheap renditions were called "soap operas". Nowadays, the main audience for soap operas are mainly senior citizens, due to habit and [importantly] to relative expectations and values. To many younger people, they appear silly today. Of course, our way of categorizing things is askew because we "chunk" the data that enters our minds (essentially, we find patterns in it that then trigger a grouped/pre-built recognition and response). If our recognition were not askew, we would see that they had become a moving target because our societal values and expectations have changed. Today, any number of evening television "dramas" appeal to the lowest common denominator through the same mechanism that made soap operas popular years ago. The fact that a soap opera viewed today is not identical to one of these "dramas" is not the point - the point is that their respective relationships to us, in each of their heydays, was/is the same.
They exaggerate people's actions and proclivities. They reduce people's thoughts and actions to simple and associative processes. People are "good" or "bad" for no reason than because they are "good" or "bad". Personality aspects that real people have disappear completely (usually if you can't define a necessary "arc" to the aspect, or a purpose to the storyline, a person will not have the aspect).
Sometimes it makes me laugh. People actually act quite peculiarly, if our yardstick is real human behavior. For instance, witness someone who "seeks revenge" (superhero style, of course) in these shows, and when they do, it is noble and powerful and right. They are ethically compelled to set things right. Uh, yeah.
In real life, when people seek revenge, it is unbearably disturbing to watch, as they first squirm and shrink from fear and belittlement, and then slowly (and in private), they twist their sexual drive into feelings of aggression and hunger which they extinguish in acts of violence, sometimes against the target of revenge and sometimes against an inanimate object nearby. Sometimes, too, their target simply becomes themselves. This is known as masochism. Ironically, television mostly gets masochism right, at least in theory, although the TV ratio of masochists to human beings is approximately 1,000,000 times greater than in the real world. However, I suppose this sort of predisposition is necessary. I don't want to watch television shows about people living empty, banal lives any more than anyone else.
There was a time when one popular breed of these cheap renditions were called "soap operas". Nowadays, the main audience for soap operas are mainly senior citizens, due to habit and [importantly] to relative expectations and values. To many younger people, they appear silly today. Of course, our way of categorizing things is askew because we "chunk" the data that enters our minds (essentially, we find patterns in it that then trigger a grouped/pre-built recognition and response). If our recognition were not askew, we would see that they had become a moving target because our societal values and expectations have changed. Today, any number of evening television "dramas" appeal to the lowest common denominator through the same mechanism that made soap operas popular years ago. The fact that a soap opera viewed today is not identical to one of these "dramas" is not the point - the point is that their respective relationships to us, in each of their heydays, was/is the same.
They exaggerate people's actions and proclivities. They reduce people's thoughts and actions to simple and associative processes. People are "good" or "bad" for no reason than because they are "good" or "bad". Personality aspects that real people have disappear completely (usually if you can't define a necessary "arc" to the aspect, or a purpose to the storyline, a person will not have the aspect).
Sometimes it makes me laugh. People actually act quite peculiarly, if our yardstick is real human behavior. For instance, witness someone who "seeks revenge" (superhero style, of course) in these shows, and when they do, it is noble and powerful and right. They are ethically compelled to set things right. Uh, yeah.
In real life, when people seek revenge, it is unbearably disturbing to watch, as they first squirm and shrink from fear and belittlement, and then slowly (and in private), they twist their sexual drive into feelings of aggression and hunger which they extinguish in acts of violence, sometimes against the target of revenge and sometimes against an inanimate object nearby. Sometimes, too, their target simply becomes themselves. This is known as masochism. Ironically, television mostly gets masochism right, at least in theory, although the TV ratio of masochists to human beings is approximately 1,000,000 times greater than in the real world. However, I suppose this sort of predisposition is necessary. I don't want to watch television shows about people living empty, banal lives any more than anyone else.
On the other hand, I also don't want to watch David Duchovney play a "good guy" who just happens to be addicted to sex and gets into alternately hilarious and adventuresome situations (you know, like having sex with an underage girl) and relies on his wits and heart of gold to escape. Or a woman who decides that selling marijuana is a regrettable but necessary way to pay to raise her kids so that they don't have to move out of their ridiculous yuppie surroundings (heaven forbid; a lower standard of living is like a public execution), and oh my, falls further and further into this unfortunate world. It is telling that these sort of plot outlines could underpin some of the most terrifying and cautionary domestic warning tales in years if the outcomes were traced to their conclusions through processes akin to the real world.
Not that anyone would watch them.
And yes, I am concerned about the answer to one question: how much time do I spend complaining?
Not that anyone would watch them.
And yes, I am concerned about the answer to one question: how much time do I spend complaining?
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