A post in which I ponder societal sadness

I’ve been thinking a lot this week about the pervasiveness of sadness in our society; movies in particular. I post comments on the Mountain Xpress website in the movie section every now and again, and have gotten into a bit of a debate about this with Ken Hanke, their movie reviewer. He is no doubt far better educated about film than I am, but is an ardent defender of the sad movie.

Basically, he seems to feel that sad movies are the ones sad people want to see – I wouldn’t know, I don’t go to the movies when I’m sad. He has also espoused the belief that sad movies seem to in some way help people to deal with their own feelings of sadness. It’s actually pretty natural for me to know how to deal with my own sadness, so that doesn’t work as an explanation for me, with the possible exception of psychopaths who need to be shown how to behave.

At particular we are debating the virtues of The Hours, widely lauded as a work of art, and nominee for nine Academy Awards. It was also one of the most depressing movies I have ever seen. It wallowed in the abounding misery that every character was living in, and culminated in the lovingly detailed suicide of Virginia Woolf. I don’t understand how this is entertainment. I can’t understand why anyone would want to spend two hours watching someone else’s descent into mental illness and suicide. To me it’s like slowing down to take a really good long look at a bad car accident, but apparently this viewpoint makes me simple-minded.

It’s not that I deplore all sad movies. There are even some tragedies that I enjoy. But I need a little distance. The distance of black and white, or a stylized death, as in Dark Victory. Or the distance of remote history and stylization, as in Cleopatra with Elizabeth Taylor. Or the distance of hyperbole, as in Female Trouble. Somehow, the immediacy of The Hours is what my problem is. It’s voyeuristic. It’s like reading some mental patient’s diary.

So I’ve been trying to understand this love of misery as entertainment. I don’t think we can have such a large vein of schadenfreude in this country, or at least I hope we don’t. What I see, and have been argued down on, is a coarsening of culture. Apparently we now need to see a person cut off their own foot, or put rocks in their pockets and walk in to a river to drown in order to feel anything. I don’t want to go to the movies and have PTSD later. But apparently these things don’t bother other people.

So when I go to the movies I am usually given a choice between the moronic and the morose. They’re either movies that were made for 14 year old boys, or movies you need therapy after, as a rule. No points for pointing out that Twilight was written for 14 year old girls. (And apparently many homosexuals, but I digress.) There was a time when the movies were about escaping reality, and I guess that’s what I miss. Now apparently if you’re a serious director, your task is to hold a magnifying glass up to reality. Find the grittiest and grimmest subject matter you can find, and see if you can make it still grimmer.

I’m pondering what this says about the world today. It seems to be all or nothing in so many things. And in yet another way, I don’t seem to fit in anymore. I’m thinking a lot about a quote from George Carlin “Doesn’t anyone just take a walk anymore?”

I asked an English professor in Columbia once why all 'literature' was so sad. He said he wouldn't describe it as sad, but that people don't change unless they face adversity. Books about happy people aren't transformative, and thus usually not literature. I don't know about most folks, but I face a bellyfull of adversity every day. I don't need it in my off hours. But maybe that just makes me simple, and unwilling to improve myself.

With so much sadness in the world, I just can’t see standing in line to pay money to stuff myself with still more.