The best show, movie, book or song is the one that makes us feel something, the one that makes us form a connection with the story and the characters. Although we'd all like our worlds to be picture perfect, our favorite forms of entertainment are rarely the ones that depict our dream lives. As consumers of entertainment, we eat up drama and tragedy. We love to cry with characters and the feeling of our hearts racing as the danger builds is exhilarating. Why do we, as readers, viewers, and listeners, prefer heartbreak over a nicely tied ending?
Watching a sad movie is an emotional outlet. Crying at a devastating, but thankfully fictional, loss is a way for people to express bottled up emotion. When we watch something that hits home inside us we immediately relate and empathize, a key component to a compelling story. When a viewer feels in touch with characters they are transported inside the story. Although the story might seem emotionally heavy, to experience the life of someone else can be a relief from your own world.
Still, it seems counterproductive to try and escape the struggles of your own life through the struggles of fictional characters. Logic would suggest that watching something happy and heartwarming would be more fulfilling. However, the shows with the highest ratings are the reality tv shows that broadcast the misfortune of others, and the dramas like "Grey's Anatomy" that reduce you to a sobbing mess every episode. Creators of entertainment feed us happy parts, of course, but it seems to be a rule of thumb in drama, that if something is going well, it is doomed to go bad. It's just more fun that way.
This is not a new phenomenon. Hundreds of years ago in Rome gladiators fought to the death in the Colosseum for the entertainment of onlookers, and this was real, vivid drama. Across time we've always rejoiced in the pain of others. Maybe drama allows us an emotional release, or maybe we just find entertainment in ingesting suffering that doesn't pertain to our own lives.
When we watch a sad movie in bed, and our faces are dripping in tears we always wonder, "Why? Why am I doing this to myself?" A better psychologist could answer this question, but I think we relish in the opportunity to experience something outside our perimeters of normalcy. Although we may struggle with our own lives, it's our life, boring, monotonous and predictable.
As humans, we are constantly seeking stories, and stories aren't worth telling without a little excitement. Stories connect us and allow us a shared experience outside our regular constraints of daily life. We seek them out to feel something, and the reality of what they are depicting sometimes goes over our heads. Picture perfect endings don't quite stimulate the same escape, so we eat up and endorse drama until it's our own lives out there on everyone's screens, for everyone to see.
