What Your Feelings Are Trying to Tell You
Even this photo has me reaching for a tissue. Damn you, Hanks.
I recently watched a trailer for the film adaptation of Jonathan Safran Foer’s novel Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close. Maybe it’s because Tom Hanks is clearly getting so much older, maybe it’s the U2 song, or 9/11, or the insane intensity of the little boys acting, but within 2mins I found myself crying. Like, the ugly cry where you look over your shoulder to make sure neighbors can’t see you through the window. It was embarrassing.
(fun sidenote: the boy was discovered on teenage Jeopardy!)
Despite my deep love for Everything is Illuminated, and my excitement upon hearing Foer was coming out with another novel, I never picked up Extremely Loud. I would see its shiny-hand cover, feel myself walk toward it, then just keep walking. Friends read it, teachers read it, but I avoided it.
I think because I knew it was about post-9/11 life. And because the child narrator (though I’m not sure if he is) seemed to have Asperger characteristics.
All these factors added up to a story I just didn’t feel like reading. I already have way too many opinions and feelings toward these topics.
After watching the trailer I asked a fellow writer friend if she’d read the book. She said yes. I asked if she liked it. She said no, not in particular. When I asked why she answered, “It felt emotionally manipulative.”
BAM.
Right there. That was exactly why I’d avoided reading it in the first place, but hadn’t realized it. It’d been on my “read me next” list for years and years, but I kept finding excuses not to read it. And this is why.
I could sense I was about to be manipulated. And you know what? I already have enough emotions. I’m a poet, for Christ’s sake.
I can immediately think of movies I felt manipulated by. Pay it Forward, Radio, and even though I love them, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape & Forrest Gump. The trailers for Dolphin’s Tale & Chimpanzee also reduced me to tears. Fuckin’ animals. My parents love telling strangers about the time I became so hysterical over Homeward Bound, while on a plane, that people came up from the back of the aircraft to see if everything was okay. I still remember an older woman offering me gum. Seriously? Gum? Has anyone ever tried chewing gum while convulsively crying at 36000 feet ?
If these movies were men I was dating, I’d be on the phone with my girlfriends crying, “He’s playing games with my emotions!”
But I have a really difficult time coming up with any books I felt emotionally manipulated me. Is this because I’m a notorious quitter? If I’m not feeling a book by page 30, I cut and run. Maybe there were subconscious red flags coming up of possible manipulation, so I shut the book.
Or maybe I’m okay being manipulated a bit in a book. Because I’m given more time to absorb and process and there isn’t a dramatic soundtrack to heighten my already frayed emotions?
Someday I may read Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close and decide for myself, but for now I know I’m not watching that trailer again and until further notice I’m avoiding any and all trailers containing animals. That includes you, Miss Piggy.
This book has also been sitting on my shelf, unread, for a long time.
I wrestle with this, admittedly. If something plays havoc with our emotions in a positive way, it’s manipulative. If it goes in instead and does something dark, it’s okay. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve avoided most of the same works you’re describing, deriding them as “schmaltz,” but I’m not always sure that I should. I dunno what that is, especially considering that I go into most of my own writing wanting to hit people right in their emotions, as I’m sure you do, being a poet. Where is that line, and how do we toe it?
Good point, Seth. I mean, all art is emotionally manipulative to some degree. It’s just when we’re being jerked around too much by the artist that it begins to feel invasive.
Spot-on. If there’s an animal in a trailer, that thing is always 100% dead by the end of the movie. If there’s a little kid in a trailer, that thing’s parent/guardian/pet-which-is-also-his-only-friend is guaranteed dead.
But you’re right, I too am way more likely to sit through an emotionally manipulative movie than a book. Probably because a book’s more of a commitment and like you, I’ve got no problem with the cut & run. But a movie, eh, I can put up with 90 minutes of almost anything.
I love this Cathie. For me, part of the “emotional manipulation” of trailers comes from the music. Or maybe it’s like emotional reinforcement? Like it’s ok that I’m crying because the music says it’s ok.
And Seth, as a writer, I think of the line as the difference between trying to capture and convey what the poem is feeling versus what you want the reader to feel. Because if you focus too much on the later then the reader can spot the manipulation. But that’s a poety answer, I know.
I think of so much of the music in movies as providing emotional cues–which is absolutely infuriating to me. It always cheapens the work. It always announces that the filmmaker thinks I’m stupid.
Blame Wagner. His Leitmotiv shit is the direct forebearer of the DUN_DUN_DUN=BAD GUY school of movie music. That stuff drives me nuts too.
For some reason I can accept music (since soundtracks can be so so beautiful) moreso than laughtracks.
You watch a show with a laughtrack now and it feels 1) Ancient 2) Obnoxious as hell & 3)Offensive since they assume you need to be cued to laugh.
I was completely in awe of how the music in 127 hours worked. It was really really impressive, and suited the scenes to a T. I didn’t really feel any extra manipulation, since that kind of movie you go in knowing you’ll probably feel manipulated, so I recommended to friends solely on how well the music fit the scenes. I do agree about the animals in movies, and children, and something guaranteed to happen to them. We had to leave Where the Red Fern grows because I couldn’t handle it when I was little. I still haven’t seen it or read the book… animals!