Abstract
In this collected volume we argue that films and television series are a privileged means for taking The Pulse of Our Times, because they reveal the shifts in our emotional preferences, conventions, and ‘emotional regimes’. Films allow us to discern what is time honored about emotions and what is historically contingent. By their thematic choices, their preferences for specific genres and their decisions about editing and actors, films convey information about tastes and preoccupations at a given period in time. In this respect the shift in genres from the comedies of the 1950s–1970s to the crime fiction of the 2000s, and the movies on zombies, wars, and snipers are telling. The emotional climate shifted from utopian to dystopian scenarios, from forward looking to disillusioned views, from self-enjoying, happy, and youthful comedies to ‘breaking bad’, and struggle for survival. There is a remarkable discrepancy between the factual living conditions of people, which improved since the 1950s, and the general dystopia portrayed in fiction. While movies on the vacation topic from the 1960s to the 1980s depicted a world that people desired and could aspire to, the ever more realistic and violent crime fiction, which is favored in the 2000s, depicts part of the reality that people cannot escape. The hyper-realistic crime fiction serials cater to the need to spice up reality. For instance, The Wire is said to be addictive, ‘absorbing’, ‘challenging and gratifying’ (Williams, 2011: 208). This fiction provides an outlet or a safety valve for all those negative emotions that daily life generates and that are banned from being expressed (Ross, 2014).
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© 2015 Claudia Wassmann
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Wassmann, C. (2015). A Tentative Conclusion: The Pulse of Our Times. In: Wassmann, C. (eds) Therapy and Emotions in Film and Television. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137546821_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137546821_10
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