Audiences in Pain

How Do You Cope Amidst The Threat of Heartbreak?

There’s the idea of suspending our disbelief in that we go with whatever the media presents to us; genre hybridisations, character’s surviving whatever it is they normally wouldn’t, timelines and storylines that don’t always go in the way that we would want them to.

Sometimes as an audience member we become aware that we are helpless witnesses to developments that we can do nothing about. This may be in a fictional TV series - a character dies, leaves, gets with someone we don’t want them to or perhaps the series just goes bad or maybe this is real life stuff; we don’t like the direction their music is going in or the kind of roles they’re taking. Maybe we can’t get over the football player they’re dating and what the hell is going on with his fringe.

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Last week I watched Bridget Jones Mad About the Boy. I’d been told it was sad and I watched it and cried (and cried). As an audience member I enjoyed the somewhat silly storyline that saw us go along with Bridget and ride the waves of parenthood, friendship, and dating. As a self-contained movie it was fine – as a movie which saw to remedy audience’s hearts after the loss of Mark Darcy, it outdid itself in some parts but not in others.

Recently my psychologist said to me, ruptures happen but its meaningful and genuine repair that’s important. We don’t usually go with car metaphors, but I trust her so go with it we did. When applied to this context, we can say that the audiences’ hearts were broken. The sequel focused on the authentic rebuilding of Bridget going back to work, it saw her lean on her friends and be there for her children, but way too much time was given to Roxster (wtf) instead of someone who was worthy of Bridget and our screen time, Mr Walliker. This isn’t a commentary on Bridget being able to have fun with a hot young guy, but rather an analysis on what we are shown as the audience, because in this context, our priorities are chosen for us and if majority of the film is Bridget and Roxster, then that’s what seen as important, and the director isn’t giving as much time to authentically fix the rupture caused previously.

We have spoken about fan culture many a time and a core part of this is a fan’s sense of ownership. I don’t believe a director should make decisions at the whimsy of fans, likewise, create music to appease; there’s a reason they do what we do and we do other stuff (unless you’re a film director or musician, hello). Sometimes, a rupture could be the reason that a fan is no longer a fan; an album didn’t resonate in the way we wanted it to, or the latest season just feels like too much work. This may lead to them falling out of love with an entire body of work or just never playing that album.

One of the biggest ruptures in my media life was the ending of Philip Pullman’s The His Dark Materials trilogy. I had never known heartbreak like this before and it haunts me to this day. Pullman however, decided to create another series which is both a prequel and a sequel to this body of work. The final book isn’t out yet (sidenote: I just googled it and it finally has a release date, the self-control to not put 100 exclamation points right now), but the characters involved in the situation that caused my initial devastation are about to meet. As an audience member do I want them to meet and pick up where they left off? Or do I acknowledge that the reason for the heartbreak was for more important for the greater good of the story and now it feels like old wounds are being opened again?

I think it’s good that the media breaks our hearts. Even though it can really, really hurt.

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If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading! This idea still feels somewhat wobbly, so I hope I have done it justice. To wrap up, I thought I would share some media, not mentioned above, that really broke my heart and it was up to me to do the repair.

• - Past Lives

• - All of Us Strangers

• - My Oxford Year by Julia Whelan

• - The Best of Everything by Richard Yates

• - Anything by The Killers after Sam’s Town

• - The Tortured Poets Department by Taylor Swift

• - Harry Potter by she who shall not be named

What media broke yours?