Emotional Overkill in Entertainment
Is media overusing emotional rollercoasters to the point that it dulls our true emotions? I believe so.
As more and more entertainment focuses on providing quick and easy emotional pulls, we tend to see an increase of fans seeking the next emotiona thrill and less time sitting and pondering on deeper themes and true emotional connection to our content.
Films and other media tend to have a high focus on pulling on emotional strings. They always have, that is why we seek them. But recently, this need to create emotional reactions has sped up. We transition from one feeling to another after another with no time to reflect on why it is that we were even moved to feel that certain way beyond a superficial level. There seems to be no pace and tone with media any more. It is as though we have become obsessed with invoking as many feelings as we can into one piece without allowing ourselves to even truly process what it is that we are feeling. What happened to thought provoking content that left us stunned and got the wheels turning in our brains? Instead we are so obsessed with being emotionally jerked around to the point where we want to jump right in to the next available escape. And that has what it has become. An escape from what makes us fundamentally human. We want to feel something without actually wanting to face our feelings.
Our entertainment industry has turned from self reflective art into spoon feeding us what it is they want us to feel. Not what it is we take away from the content. No longer does media allow us to connect the dots, they insist on drawing the lines. Which leads me to wonder if our emotions are even our own any more. How can we be spoon fed what it is that we absorb and then spend little to no time actually feeling that emotion? The current entertainment industry and its fans are that it has become very feeling focused and less and less devotion has been given to creating any room for the audience to actually hold on to any one emotion for longer than five minuets. We seek a thrill and don't sit on the thought provoking aspects of our entertainment .
For instance, films like Inception get made fun of for invoking deeper thought, meanwhile modern entertainment chews our own food for thought for us. Entertainment has started treating the audience as though it is stupid. No longer allowing us to string together a plot and come to our own conclusions about many aspects of the piece of entertainment. It has gotten to the point that even our own feelings are also being given to us instead of us having genuine feelings.
When we are moved by something, why do we run to seek the next high instead of dwelling and sitting on what it is that made us feel what it is we feel? Has escapism become so standard in our day to day lives that we so very much crave handing over our very humanity?
