film and the engineering of emotions

while tv and movies have only existed for the last century, I find myself constantly having to explain why I don’t watch them, as if it were some sort of sin, or as if it goes against human nature. I’ve written plenty of film studies papers. I’ve actively contemplated the ways in which they help us understand ourselves. but why does our culture worship these media forms? my best friend asked me to write about my dislike, because it’s apparently unprecedented in the millennial generation- no one gets it.

to be concise,

what I don’t like about watching tv or sitting in front of a movie is that it is passive. it is engineered not necessarily to make you think in a certain way, but to make you feel a certain way. as a person who thrives on being in control of my own emotions, I don’t necessarily enjoy being absorbed by a character’s problems and feelings, especially if they’re not good feelings. i don’t sense the productivity in doing so, in dealing with frivolous sadness or despair or worry- frivolous, because, these dealings reach beyond my immediate control.

the personal dimension to my disposition is centered on the fact that I can't tolerate my own negative emotions…and a movie immerses me in things I try not to think about, reminds me of emotions and events and relationships I long to forget. it projects my feelings before me, even tries to organize them for me, and makes me sit through the entire duration. while others might find it an escape, I find it the opposite. an introspective trap.

produced via editing and omitting, film by nature attempts to organize, to contain, encounters and life events that are inherently and overwhelmingly abstract. it cuts events that often take a lifetime to unfold into segments that confer upon the event a particular, one-dimensional or linear reading when no such thing exists, to the extent that viewers fit themselves into manmade categories and conventions in order to connect with what they see on screen. it takes me out of the position of creator and dictates the way I see my own life; it prescribes my social and personal experience. I find that a bit scary.

in the end, why would I want to be troubled with a drama so lifelike, yet artificial, when there are plenty of conundrums of consequence and meaning to be sorted out right around us? with film, we have degraded the value and excitement and unpredictability of the world itself…

art, on the other hand… art evokes the imagination, it is only what you make it. it is more hospitable to my own, deeply ingrained defense mechanism, that is, to create the world I walk in, without which I wouldn’t be as positive or as successful as I am today. unlike film, art allows me to move on, instead of lingering in a dimension in which I do not have the power to make change.

you probably don’t agree, but I’m cool with that. I’m used to it by now.

Fragonard, The Swing, 1766

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
~George Bernard Shaw

related article: http://www.mtlblog.com/2014/01/this-is-your-brain-on-netflix/

today’s featured artist: antonio mora