Emotional Incontinence

Found a very insightful Substack article the other day. I recommend giving it a read (the following quotes don't do it justice).

https://faustina.substack.com/p/stoics-schlubs-and-emotional-incontinence?r=ilsfw

Some interesting notions are put forward. Our tendency to mock unregulated, strong emotional reactions is the groundwork:

And of course the author touches on media-reality feedback:

He goes on to cover just how much permission people think is required to express certain emotions, or how 'schlubs' as he calls them hide behind layers of non-serious pretence.

Whether you think it's a calamitous social progression or timeless behaviour patterns always seen in a number of people, there is definitely some unique insight here that could help with building characters.

 

The author seems to mostly be talking about film and what he describes as our age of muted emotion, with emotional minimalism taking over film, because "emoting is cringe."

It's an interesting theory, and certainly one I've never thought about. But it is true, if we look at the two examples he gave - Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and Planet of the Apes - they showcase emotion we're not likely to see in movies today.

Here's the "I will not yield" clip from Mr. Smith Goes to Washington:




Now, as far as writing is concerned, well, there's a lot of things that go into a good piece of writing, and imo deep emotion is one of the most important things. But with writing it is different, we rely on the image we produce rather than over-the-top vocabulary, deep emotion can be subtly created ... and I am wondering - if you had to write that scene from Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, how would you do it?

 

He uses the presence of emotional mutism in film to illustrate its increasing dominance in the human condition. We feed reality into film, it gets abbreviated, stylized, then viewed and integrated back into the human condition in a subtle way.

So, yes the examples are from film, but their meaning expands to all of us. I figure it's an interesting way of characterizing struggle with a particular emotion, that the character also has to struggle with an implicit drive to act like a modern actor about it.

Great question. I think today it would most commonly it would be written like this, per the article:

Where if the character's expression is emotionally overt, then the work has to wink at the reader, hang the lampshades as defense from an entirely unspoken (well, unarticulated) criticism. This whole scene is strange, though, because it really does seem like an actor acting like he's an actor: processed cheese. Maybe there's context I'm missing.

As far as subtlety goes, it's much easier to present in writing as you say. But a strong image doesn't have to be exclusive with respect to a strong emotionally reaction.

 

All that said, I think another implicit thing here is that subtlety is more entertaining, which explains its increasing presence in entertainment and why we opt for it in writing.

 

that is interesting. I don't watch a wide enough range of movies to evaluate the argument very well, but I think the piece would have been stronger if he had confined his analysis to a certain genre or style of film-making. The stuff he cites leaves me a little skeptical about his point vis-vis modern culture in its entirety: New Amsterdam is a TV medical drama (not surprising to see a rather matter-of-fact, expositional approach to that kind of show) and Spoiler Alert is apparently a rom-com or something--in a comedic context, it's typical to see emotion presented in a not-completely-serious way. These are plot-oriented works.

I mean, there is unironically presented emotion in modern films, especially on the independent side. I've seen it.

I think the Mr. Smith Goes to Washington counterexample is interesting, but I don't see the tone of that scene as different in terms of its emotionality, but in terms of its innocence. That movie couldn't be made today because we are incapable of grasping politics and civic engagement in the way that Americans did in the 30s. We can't make political speeches emotional in the civic sense because we are so cynical today, but it would be possible to make a film just as emotional about police brutality.

Here are two emotional scenes from A24 films--I know, equally limited sample size.







But on the other hand, there is an inability to maintain emotional tension without winking at the audience in a lot of popular media.

 

I've noticed something closely related to this, if not identical. I think they share the same reason, and I can at least blunderingly articulate it.

Look at concert audiences captured on film from the 60's and 70's, and compare them with concert audiences from the late 90's and forward. Ok, I'll do like all the cool kids are doing and post some videos:





Not as much crowd footage as I was hoping for. But it's more than just the audiences, it's also the performers and the music. Everything has changed. Looking at those 60's and 70's audiences you see melllow laid back people being authentic. But by the late 90's people in the audience seem to want to be part of the peformance. They've lost that innocence and that authenticity and replaced it with some sense of permanent performance. I wonder if part of the reason is because there were video cameras everywhere, and soon to be smartphones in everyone's pockets, allowing anyone around you to record you and upload it to youtube in minutes. Ok, that capability really came a bit later. But in the 90's there were movies like Reality Bites and Sex, Lies and Videotape, in both of which young people essentially try to live their lives, or a significant portion of them, on video, while also recording the people around them, as if it's all a documentary and they're all stars. By that point there were small highly portable video cameras and many people had them. I lived through this change, I'm a mellowed-out 60s/70s dude at heart, living in a world of cell phone addicts, many of whom like to record everybody and everything around them. We all are aware that anybody anywhere could be recording us, and it could go on the internet and live forever. I think the ones who grew up in this kind of world develop a persona for it. That laid back innocence has been replaced with cynicism and sarcasm to a large extent.

I'm sure there are other contributing factors as well. The movies and music have also become more hard-bitten, cynical and sarcastic, and we've been learning by stages that our world isn't as friendly or decent as we used to think it was. We've largely lost trust in government and corporations, seeing the kind of shenannigans they tend to get involved in over and over. I think it all contributes.

 

I forgot to mention this, but I've also noticed that people today seem unable to portray people from the 60's and 70's in movies, because they can't bring themselves to be open and trusting enough. They're a lot less willing to be seen making mistakes, so they armor themselves with cynicism and sarcasm and a hard-bitten attitude.

And if you're not armored up, I think you'll allow yourself to show some emotions, unless you learn that the people around you will make fun of you or shame you for it (as people today will).

 

This raises that age-old question: Does art imitate life, or does life imitate art?

Aristotle and Plato answered by saying art imitates life. But Oscar Wilde wrote in The Decay of Lying: Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life.

I think your quote more closely agrees with the ancient Greeks, and I tend to agree. At least, art reflects social trends and then amplifies them.

With the "Get My Husband a Bed" clip - I believed his emotion at the hospital desk - it was really and believable to me - then the reveal which seems to poke fun at emoting.

 

Very interesting juxtaposition. Thanks for sharing. First thing I have to say - the music by Santana was amazing.

What was striking was the emotion in the musicians' faces - in both videos. But it wasn't the same emotion. Santana seemed to be celebrating, and Limp Bizkit seemed angry. Maybe this is a reflection of the songs. Even the titles reflect this: Soul Sacrifice vs. Break Stuff. And the audience responds to the message of the music. Back to the old question: Life imitating art or art imitating life?

 

Yeah, the music itself had changed drastically in between. I'd say it was punk rock that brought in the angriness, and it attached itself to popular music of certain types ever since. At the beginning of the Limp Bizkit song he made fun of In Synch. Of course that angriness didn't infect their music, it was mainly just in the post-punk/rap-influenced music of the period, like Rage Against The Machine and The Beastie Boys. That kind of anger and aggression really didn't exist in music a few decades earlier. I suppose its precursor was in a certian protest form of folk music. It's the disaffected youth thing. The Beatles picked up an early version of it from Dylan, most apparent in Helter Skelter.

I don't think it's entirely that simple. My first thought is culture affects them both, and they both feed into the culture. But there may be other factors too. I think a lot of it has to do with the increasing radicalism coming from universities throughout that time period and our continued falling away from tradition. Music like that would never have happened in the 20's, 30's, or 40's. I guess some of the frenetic energy and anger was developing in bop and bebop of the 50's, with John Coltrane etc. It's become increasingly accepted by the culture until it was practically mainstream in the 90's.

 

More to the point of the thread though, I think sarcasm is a major factor in the reduction of emotion. At least of positive emotion or any kind of emotional openness. People like Fred Durst (singer of Limp Bizkit) just drip with it. And it seems to be majorly on the rise in our society. I've encountered people who seem addicted to sarcasm. It allows them to be contemptuous all the time, and it always allows a way out without losing your cool factor. Example, if you say something sarcastic and somebody tries to pin you down, you have 2 easy options—"Oh, you thought I was being serious?", or "Oh, you thought I was joking?" Both without losing any of the contempt that passes itself off as coolness. It's an emotional armoring and it seems to spread like a virus. Once a group has been infected with it, anybody who's emotionally open and vulnerable becomes an easy target.

Sarcastic attitudes are rampant on certain websites like 4Chan and Reddit, and in online trolls everywhere. The anonymity of the internet seems to breed it.

 

The movie Lost Boys seems to use vampirism as a stand-in symbol for not only sarcasm but a whole range of attitudes associated with it. More specifically the lost boys represent the missing children in Los Angeles who end up addicted and homeless and take on that nasty anti-social street attitude:



At the beginning of the movie Michael is a pretty nice kid, but for a while he gets tangled up with these guys and starts to get infected with their vampirism and their nasty complex of attitudes. He becomes disrespectful toward his mom and dangerous to his family. By the end (spoiler alert) he becomes normal again and loses the 'tude.

 

I wanted to share this film clip because on this thread we’ve touched on comedy being used to minimalize emotion. This film slaps a happy face on abject sorrow.

It is the trailer for The Man Who Laughs, a silent film from 1928 considered a classic. The film (which Roger Ebert called “one of the final treasures of German silent Expressionism.") is about a man named Gwynplaine who has a freak-like grin permanently fixed on his face that masks deep anguish. The film is considered a horror film – and the horror is the grin.

Takes “emoting is cringe” to a whole different level.

As a side-note, the character of Gwynplaine is considered the inspiration for DC Comics’ the Joker.

 

This is an interesting thread. A good chunk of my formative years were in the 90s, where cynicism ruled after the end of The Me Decade. Here's my video contribution:



I hadn't thought of it before now, but maybe that's why my own writing seems to lack emotion. I haven't noticed that myself, but it's been mentioned by others in some of my workshop posts. I'm not consciously concerned about writing cringey emotional stuff; I seem to naturally focus on plot instead. And in my reading, I wouldn't say I'm focusing on emotional impact most of the time.

This made me think of another option that I read about way back in my university days. Foucault and the concept of the "hyperreal." People observing art that's based on real life, believing that it's representing real life (but it's not, really), and then changing their own behaviours to reflect those depicted in the art. For example, the audiences watching a show like Friends (not exactly art, but you get my point) might think, "oh, that's how 20-somethings interact with their peers and the world. I better act like them in my own interactions."

 

It comes down to personal preferences, and our influences. But I don't think it's a choice between cringiness and all-plot. There's always room to reveal what the character feels, and that can only deepen the story.
Having said that, whatever you're doing is working. I enjoy your stories very much.

We really can't underestimate the influence of the messages we receive, but it seems the major influencer these days, especially for young people, is social media.

 

How long have you been actively writing? I think you said it was only for a few years? I don't want to try to pin it down, I just don't remember what you said about it. My thinking is that maybe now you're concentrating on plot and not into all the feeling stuff. Plus you're mostly writing very short stories, and those can be much more plot-based. I mean, short stories certainly can be loaded with emotion, but it isn't necessary. It probably isn't necessary in novels either (some authors get away with basically none), but they do allow for it a lot more, and you need something deeper to pull people in. Then again, you might just be one of those writers like Asimov or Arthur Clarke who aren't so concerned with all that mushy feeling stuff.

 

Here’s an example where the overt passion of the written word is greater than their translation to film. The passage is Heathcliff’s “prayer” at the deathbed of Catherine. Sir Laurence Olivier’s muted interpretation of them proves less is more. No exclamation points in his delivery, but we feel him. It’s easy to see why Olivier won the Academy Award for this performance.

The passage from Wuthering Heights:

“Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living. You said I killed you–haunt me then. The murdered do haunt their murderers. I believe–I know that ghosts have wandered the earth. Be with me always–take any form–drive me mad. Only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! It is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!”

Delivered by Olivier:

 

Funny, I had started a response to this thread yesterday, changed my mind and the draft ghost has now disappeared. In it, I referenced an interview I'd read with Sir Laurence talking about his move from stage to screen. I recall him describing how the director kept demanding less and less until, eventually, he was told he had nailed it. His comment was he considered he was doing nothing and it was explained that the camera magnifies every gesture, minimal was the only way.

The early days of movies had a greater concentration of actors coming from the stage, vaudeville in particular. Plus, Jimmy Stewart could flip pancakes with that tremble in his voice when he got going. It was still the time of John Wayne and Clark Gable, neither renowned for demonstrative emoting.

The stuff about social media can't be refuted, certainly any time I've dipped in I quickly ran out again.

I do think there's a bit of revisionism overall going on, at least from my observations. I can't speak for the 40's, 50's or 60's but imagine emotional displays were fairly discouraged. What I do remember from my early years was a whole lot of oppressive repression, a rigid definition of what would be permitted or tolerated. I find all that much more open today than it was, people are generally far more expressive with regard to emotion. That includes misrepresenting talking about emotion with expressing emotion, but there is absolutely more freedom to express emotion currently than how I remember this place as a younger man.

 

Yes, the power of his bedside prayer (above) comes from his facial expression, combined with a tone of determination rather than bellowing, and of course the words themselves are powerful - they almost speak for themselves

 

Yeah, the pendulum seems to swing back and forth, and what's happening in the media isn't necessarily what's happening in the streets. Young people today in general do seem to emote quite a bit (some of them), but then that's probably mostly because many of them are activists, feelings above facts and all that. Most of that is fake emotion though, used for theatrics. Trends don't always affect an entire society, but segments of it, and there are macro trends and micro trends. And individuals who don't fit the trends.

My generation and several before me were raised to take life in stride and deal with it, but then we were still close to those hard times that make strong men. Now we seem to have gone through the easy times that make soft men, and heading back into hard times.

 

That's right, less than 3 years. Two novels and couple dozen short stories and poems. I do have a romantic subplot in one of the books, one that ends in devastating fashion, so I guess it's not all stoicism.

This is why Discovery sucks. Having a bipolar senior officer who can curl up in a ball and start sobbing at the drop of a hat is not exactly inspirational. The third and final season of Picard is good, though. Real good.

It's very ironic, that. Emoting is cringe, yet outrage is normalized.

 

So you're in your early playing around phase. You probably have a lot of learning to do and experience to develop, and there's no telling what your stories will look like in a few years. I wrote stories in much the same vein when I was young, focusing on cool sci-fi ideas and not at all on human emotion or anything. I think it's a stage in development, and as you learn the mechanics of writing and gain confidence in them, you can begin to work on the deeper aspects. But of course it probably works differently for all of us.

I cringe when people misuse the term like this, but I understand, most people have no idea what stoicism really is and just believe in the cliched ideas so prevalent in the media. Ironic that this conversation has come around to Star Trek—it's always been my go-to example of the misunderstanding of stoicism. The Vulcans were supposed to represent it, but they had absolutely no emotions, which is not how it works. And the whole gimmick of the show was that Spock was half Vulcan, and embarrassed by his human half, so he pretended not to have any emotions, and yet the best moments were always when he reacted emotionally, then lifted the famous eyebrow and said "That would not be logical," followed by the collective sitcom chuckle in the closing moments of the episode.