Voyeurism is pleasure through peeking in on others’ private moments. Some would call that perverted… but everyone does it all the time. Movies. Reality TV. It’s all voyeurism; a camera serves exactly as the voyeurist’s insert, and they watch in intimate detail everything that goes on in the character’s life. The reason it’s thought of as okay is because, well, it isn’t real. But are you certain? And if it’s not real, do you want to spend time on it?
Art imitates life, life imitates art, an old debate. But I’ll just take the connection away instead of choosing a side. There’s clearly a connection between art and life. So whatever you consume leaves some imprint on you. I mean, that’s why people consume it, for it may enhance life. But it can also distort. People are misled into expecting things that just ain’t so. It causes despair.
It ain’t so much the things that people don’t know that makes trouble in this world, as it is the things that people know that ain’t so.
— Mark Twain
Now I can’t watch any movie, any depiction of real life without a seering self-awareness that leaves me disgusted. Some of my favourite scenes now leave a bitter taste, because I realized absolutely every part of it is not real. I know that sounds absurd. Of course you vaguely know it’s not real. But I mean really comprehend it. That it’s only in the director’s mind. You could have the most elegant monologue and it just only exists in the director’s mind. There’s something sad about that. You’re peeking unabashedly at someone else’s interworkings, on full display for… profit predominantly. It’s a one way conversation, almost giving an impression that is what all your connections will forever be.
So, with all of that as background, I wanted to investigate my current hypocritical state of mind. I don’t find as much disgust with cartoons, animation, drawings. And I suppose it’s because the medium is divorced from reality. They’re cartoons. It’s a character, not an actor fulfilling a character, and you’re ‘reminded’ every second as you watch it. Despite this reasoning, I’m deluding myself. There’s still the same loneliness. One still can mistake it for reality. How many crestfallen princesses has Disney made? Through all of the years there’s a subconscious build up of unrealistic expectations. So I recede further from real life and let others’ imaginations lead me, paint my world for me, make my own conclusions with their carefully constructed fake scenarios. Isn’t that a form of death? It comes with amnesia too! It’s scary to think how long I’ve been just watching stuff, cartoon or not. I’ve been ensnared for so long. And my takeaway is that, although it uplifted me and made the world slightly colorful, the transaction of time wasn’t necessarily all that great. Cartoons certainly feel life-affirming, but nothing is quite as life-affirming as giving it your best each day on things you care about. In short, it was mostly a time sink, a break from life.
Real life is hard. We keep looking for substitutes because we think the real thing is too hard, but I would say that’s all the more reason to figure it out. So if whatever I’m reading or watching does not add anything else beyond escapism, I’ll have to tap out. Although the boundaries I ought to draw are still rather vague, I feel like this is the right direction. It’s a first step. It sucks when your own flippant feelings betray your better senses. I suppose it reveals you haven’t comprehended the situation fully, even though you thought you did. What you know just ain’t so.