To feel we need drama
Few days ago, a news channel was surveying the survivors of a natural disaster where an old widow was in search of her son, whose elder brother was killed in riots last year. It was a real story of extreme pain but I was wondering why it couldn’t bring tears in my eyes.
I compared it with a movie seen, a very smart hired gun, and the central character of the movie, hero you can say –since in our movies hero means the most shown good-looking male character. So the professional killer was breathing his last breaths in front of the heroine who was delivering the usual state of the art, mind-blowing and heart-crushing dialogs just before the “Climax”.
Surprisingly the later incident brought a bunch of tears, oops. Isn’t it surprising? To better understand the scenario, I ignored whatever I saw and I listened, and just compared the stories without cosmetics. At one side a poor hand-to-mouth mother who brought up her children after years of ………….. sacrifices –my poor vocabulary couldn’t find a proper superlative adjective to fill the blank. She lost her son, not a son but two. Is there any comparison between the feelings, the pain, the loss, the regret. No comparison with a girl who is going to loose her lover, the lover, who rationally –if not emotionally– deserves that due to his sinful –even if glamorous– life. The lover who might be attracted and affected by her appearance not her soul. But why it felt more regretful than the former story?
What I did, I searched the interview (video) on the news website and played with a tragic background music. Yep it seemed to be a little tragic. Then a I read the whole story of the widow. Since then I was a little bit associated, it felt a little more touchy. I am not a graphic designer other wise I could remove the roughness, the result of years of dealing with circumstances. Neither I was a script writer who could tell her that what kind of mind blowing dialogged she should deliver to express her pain. Seems she didn’t have few drops of glycerin in her house to wet her eyes which perhaps went dry after releasing enough H2O since she lost her son. In addition, with her poor messy getup she wasn’t complying with the definition of a noble lady, we have. During my childhood, I were used to feel fear from people with such getups. This kind ugly, messy and smelling people are aliens to us, how can we feel sympathy for them.
I concluded that since our subconscious age we are used to associate happiness and regret with a background music. We are familiar with neat and clean charming expressionist people as good guys and at the other hand, some poor ugly faces as bad guys.
well said.