It’s Oscar movie season, and so many people I know are catching up on the Oscar nominees for BEST PICTURE. And several people have mentioned to me, either after seeing one of these movies, or as an excuse not to see one of these movies (or not go to movies like them), that these kinds are movies are “Too Depressing.” (I also hear this about books all the time, or, to more specific, books that aren’t THE DA VINCI CODE…)
Now, what do people actually mean by “Too Depressing”? Do they mean that after seeing the movie, they literally became clinically depressed, locking themselves in a room, weeping uncontrollably and rocking back and forth, not communicating with friends and family, eventually seeking psychiatric help? I don’t think so. When people say “depressing”, what they really mean is “serious“, and when they say “serious” what they really mean is “It made me think about things that are unfair or unjust or sad or complex and difficult“. With the “too depressing” comment usually comes the amusing “I get enough of this stuff in real life!”.
But do these people really get enough of this stuff in real life? For instance – are my friends and acquaintances members of Mossad, who deal on a day-to-day basis with existential meaning issues when trying to “defeat” terrorism, as in MUNICH? Are they cowboys with inarticulate longings that have a difficult time understanding and controlling in a hostile world? Are they dealing with issues of race and injustice in our mostly white, cubicle-led corporate environment? Once again, I think not.
Instead, I would conjecture that these Oscar movies, and other “serious” movies and books, provoke thought, both good and bad, about happy and sad things, simple and complex, deeply felt religious conviction and Godlessness. And such thought raises issues of cognitive dissonance – how can things be this way? What is my part in things being this? Have I done something to cause this? Shouldn’t I be doing something to stop it? And this cognitive dissonance provokes guilt, and sadness, which, I suppose, if you decide not to do anything about it, and realize you are, by not acting, actually contributing to these problems, would be “depressing”.
Now I’m not saying these movies are all that great, or that the “serious” books that I read are necessarily all that much better than THE DA VINCI CODE. And I’m not saying I don’t like “light” entertainment (as a matter of fact, I thought THE WEDDING CRASHERS and THE 40 YEAR OLD VIRGIN were two of the better movies of last year). However, if you stop trying to think about things, and you stop trying to learn new things or look at things in a different way, and you don’t include these things in your life–well, what the heck kind of life do you have? Aren’t you just amusing yourself to death? Now that’s depressing!
