Well, I thought that I’d ramble about sensibilities and emotional tone today. This was something I ended up thinking about on a sleep-deprived day in mid-January when I was aimlessly watching Youtube. It was the cheerful, eccentric type of tiredness and I found myself watching all of these wonderful videos about igloos, optical illusions, hand-made holograms, stereoscopic 3D and a compendium of other fascinating, wondrous and/or eccentric things.
I was just getting into the swing of this, the sort of joyously whimsical mood where I casually used words like “compendium” without a second thought… when instinct suddenly took over and I found myself switching to watching more depressing videos. Short documentaries about the First World War (reminiscent of Pat Barker’s 1991 novel “Regeneration”), art commentary videos (do happy art commentary videos even exist?) and stuff like that.
Naturally, I spent a while trying to work out why this had happened. Why I instinctively switched to watching depressing videos. Was it just British culture? Was it some old thing from my teenage years where I associated “depressing” with qualities like “serious”, “mature”, “intelligent” etc…? Was it because depressing content is more popular on the platform, leading the algorithm to recommend more of it? Was it because I was too overwhelmed by the joyous mood and needed to tone it down a bit?
Was it a form of emotional catharsis? Was it because I saw the depressing videos as “more real” or something? Was it simple negativity bias? Was it because virtually every novel I read when I was younger had to be at least slightly “dark and edgy” for me to even be interested in reading it? Was it because I felt happy enough that I actually had the spare emotional “energy” to handle more emphatically depressing media and was naturally curious about it?
I asked a lot of these questions and didn’t really find any immediate answers, but it made me think about my own sensibilities. Then, a bit later, I stumbled across a video with an emotional tone which seemed to have the perfect balance between “light” and “darkness”. It was an “OutsideXtra” videogame stream on Youtube (Which, due to technical problems/malfunctions with the original stream, now seems to be set to “private”) where two joyous presenters played one of the new game modes added to the dystopian sci-fi horror game “The Last Of Us – Part II” (2020). A contrast between amusing commentary/reactions and grimly brutal post-apocalyptic battles to the death.
And, more generally, I remembered that all of my favourite media has this sort of balance to it. Whether it is films – like the original “Suspiria” (1977) and “Blade Runner” (1982) – which contrast beautiful visuals with grim stories. Whether it is melodic heavy metal music and pop-punk music, contrasting beautiful melodies or cheerful upbeat guitars with cynical lyrics. Whether it is action-packed shooter videogames with cartoonish “retro-style” graphics or “medium-strength” horror videogames. Whether it is comedy-horror movies. I could go on, but most of my favourite media sort of has to contain both “light” and “darkness”.
Even most of the art that I make often does this on a visual level too, with lots of “dark psychedelia“, chiaroscuro lighting and stuff like that. If a character in one of my paintings is cheerful, then there is usually heavy rain, dark skies, dystopian cyberpunk mega-cities, creepy old mansions etc… in the background. This is the sort of art that just feels… satisfying… to make, it’s the sort of art that I like looking at after I’ve made it. The sort of art that I think is cool or interesting.
Still, this made me think about emotional tone and balance. It’s possible that everyone has their own preferred emotional tone for the things that they watch, read, play, listen to etc…. and part of finding meaning in life is learning what this is. Because it is probably subtly different for everyone. One person’s “This is annoyingly cheerful and saccharine!” is another person’s “normal”, and vice versa. One person’s “Too depressing!” is another person’s “Balanced emotional tone”.
Taking the time to study your emotional reactions to the things you look at and to work out what the right emotional tone for you is can drastically improve the media you look at. It pushes you to actively look for things that you enjoy, rather than just passively consuming whatever the mainstream hurls in your direction – which, in my experience, usually goes too far in one direction or the other, whether this is obnoxiously cheerful advertising (or “influencing”) or ultra-depressing news broadcasts, popular “drama” programs etc…
So, yes, pay attention to your emotional reactions and they will help you to learn what sorts of media that you actually enjoy the most. What your favourite type of emotional tone is.
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Anyway, I hope that this was interesting 🙂
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