There is too much trauma on TV and it is killing all the joy

India Today

3 days ago

A few weeks ago, a friend suggested that I watch Dope Thief on Apple TV+. Like everyone else, I too enjoy a good movie or TV series that can be classified as a thriller. It is usually good entertainment in the evening, and more so when, after a day in the office, you are not in the mood to ponder over love and life in a Woody Allen movie. So, last week I fired up Dope Thief. The first episode went well enough. The second one wilted a little. The third was down in the dumps. And by the fourth one, I found the Dope Thief crashing and shattering into thousands of little pieces all over my TV screen.advertisementInterestingly, this was a well-received show among critics. Usually, I tend to vibe well with stuff that has lots of red on Rotten Tomatoes. But of late, I am also finding many of these highly-rated shows unwatchable. Dope Thief is one. Wheel of Time season 3 is another recent one. I loved Bad Sisters season 1 but couldn't watch season 2 beyond three episodes. Zero Day, despite Robert De Niro, was terrible. Adolescence, a darling of critics and a topic of conversation on a dinner table, was barely tolerable for me. Even superhero and gaming stuff — The Penguin, The Daredevil Returns, and The Last of Us — was missing a verve and felt sluggish in the thrills it offered.The Penguin Lessons and The Friend, two movies with a big tender heart in their centre, too turned out to be somewhat less wholesome for me. There are many examples. This made me ponder: either there is something wrong with how I am approaching these movies and TV shows, or there is something subtly broken with the entertainment we are getting nowadays on our TVs.advertisement
I don't have an answer yet as to which is which and what is what. But I have a hunch. I am finding this stuff on TV unbearable because there is too much trauma in it. By that, I don't mean to say that watching them is traumatic — although something like The Eternaut can give most people a chill. I mean, there is too much trauma in the plot, and often this trauma comes to the screen in flashbacks that not only break the narrative flow but also try to explain the world and everything else in a therapy-speak that is heavy-handed. Actually, it is as if they are shoving the narrative down our throats.Dope Thief, for example, does it with these quick and very short — less than a minute — trauma bursts that take over the vision and thoughts of Ray Driscoll, its lead character. It is the same in almost everything that is coming to screens nowadays. The plot is driven by some trauma or other, the characters act or don't act in rational or irrational manner because — you guessed it — this trauma or that. What happened 15 years ago to a character is the thread that runs through their life-story now. What happened to them yesterday takes over the thoughts of the lead characters today. They move through the plot dazed and compelled, without any human agency that can make them accountable for their own life.advertisementEverything is explained. And trauma is used to explain it all. Increasingly, watching a TV series or a movie is akin to tuning into a psychoanalysis lecture. It is like watching Sigmund Freud unravel each character in all their ugliness. It gives no joy. If the character gulped a glass full of whisky, it is probably because they are nursing a trauma from yesterday. If they are mean to their neighbour's cat, they are mean because of some childhood trauma, and this trauma is laid bare by the show for its viewers.Most movies and TV series nowadays, in one way or another, have plots driven by the past. It is as if the world has stopped living in the present collectively. That is infuriating because it means we are always watching things 'explained' instead of things 'unfolding.' At least, that is the impression I get. Explanation makes things banal, it strips the moments and acts of their mystery. This is the reason why Samuel Beckett, in a thinly veiled attack at viewers, wrote in his play Endgame: 'Ah, the creatures, the creatures, everything has to be explained to them.'advertisementExplanations make the narrative flat, which is what I find in most popular TV shows and movies. They are flat without layers, and the overuse of trauma strips them of irony, absurdity and satire. The effect, I believe, is the opposite of what they want to achieve. With all the explaining and use of trauma as a torch, they hope to reveal reality. Instead, by robbing plots and their characters of mystery, absurdity and irony, the TV shows and movies nowadays make them unreal and plasticky.It was different earlier. Why can't a character be evil because that is the way they are? Or why can't they be supremely kind because that is how they are? Why does it have to be explained? Some of the great characters I remember from movies and TV shows leave an impression because they exist without any explanations. Chigurh from No Country For Old Man is a great villain, and brilliantly psychotic, because he is what he is. No trauma required. Just a toss of a coin is sufficient for him. Amelie, yes that French girl, is made of light because she is what she is. Again, no trauma required.advertisementBut TV shows and movies of late have become unnecessarily heavy and weighty. They have become too ponderous, even in genres where they don't need to be. That is probably the reason why even Marvel stuff has lost its floaty and fun aspect. That is a pity. Because weight is an ingredient that spoils anything that is art.Italo Calvino warned against this weight in his essays for the future. In his essays in 1985 - later published as Six Memos For The Next Millennium - he talked about weight. In an essay titled Lightness, Calvino argued against making art heavy. His idea was that the best art is light and has a quality that makes it effervescent. He wrote that after accumulating all the experience as a writer, his 'method has (now) entailed, more often than not, the subtraction of weight.' He gave a lot of credence to weight in the beginning, he wrote. But now he had realised that it was the lightness that we all should chase. I feel that somewhere in the last ten years, movies and TV shows have increasingly lost this quality of being light. They have become too heavy and that is because of all the trauma they pack nowadays.(Javed Anwer is Technology Editor, India Today Group Digital. Latent Space is a weekly column on tech, world, and everything in between. The name comes from the science of AI and to reflect it, Latent Space functions in the same way: by simplifying the world of tech and giving it a context)(Views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author)Must Watch