On growing out of 'edgy' entertainment

I don’t really care about “really dark” TV shows or “screwed up” movies anymore.

They're supposed to rattle me or provoke me, but they don’t. They just bore me. I’m completely uninterested.

It’s almost as if these stories are created by people who have never really reflected on the deeper nature of life and tragedy.

In my 20s, I went through the typical phase of thinking shows and movies that “pushed the limit” were interesting, or at least might be worth watching. I don’t remember when exactly I grew out of that phase, but I can say confidently I am completely out of it at this point. I really just do not care about dark, screwed up, edgy, boundary-pushing television or movies anymore.

Method to the madness?

Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t one of these people who are decidedly into shows or movies that push it as far as one can take it. But I wasn’t against it, either.

I thought there may be a reason why shows need to push you, shock you, or disgust you. That something more interesting was going on. That by brutalizing your eyes and sensibilities, they were preparing you for some kind of deeper truth or revelation that can only be understood in that kind of presentation.

Even if it seems confusing at first, there is a logic to the thing. Just wait. The story can only be told in this form, and you cannot extract the meaning without the brutalization. I was open to that theory of it all.

I’ve been trying to figure out why exactly I stopped being interested in this kind of thing. I can’t really pinpoint a year it happened. I can’t really figure out an exact reason, either.

Aging out

For a while, I thought it was because I became a parent. It would make sense. You are thinking about your kids all the time, so you end up transposing stories and all of that onto your thoughts about them, and it forces your tastes to change. You don’t really want to watch this garbage anymore.

I thought that could be it, but upon further reflection, I don’t think it is.

I think it happened as I aged.

Aging doesn’t happen in a linear fashion. Yes, our official age according to the United States government and every other legal entity on earth changes according to a universally recognized system of days, weeks, months, and years. And yes, it is all linear. But that’s not the kind of aging I am talking about.

I am talking about growing older, becoming more mature. It’s more than just a number. We go years without aging very much, and then, suddenly, we age a bunch over a few months. Something happens — sometimes something good, but more often than not it’s something bad — we are pulled through the ringer, and when we come out on the other side, it feels like we are different people in a bunch of ways we can’t really put our finger on. We aged.

After aging just a little, experiencing some things that weren’t exactly great, getting beat up a little bit here and there, and coming to realize that life is more fragile than I previously thought, I kind of stopped being so enthralled with the pointlessly vulgar and masochistically depressing television shows that seem to be everywhere.

Taste trumps trickery

My disinterest in this style of media isn’t just due to sentimentalism — though it would be just fine if it were — it’s about taste.

As I mentioned earlier, I originally thought there was a method to the madness and that the brutalization was necessary for the message, or question, of the art to be communicated. But the truth is, most of it’s not really art. It’s not really that thoughtful, either.

But it appears to be thoughtful mostly because it’s really easy to mass produce an endless stream of brooding and unsettling video imagery today. It’s a trick, basically.

Low brightness, strong contrast, minimal dialogue, strings scraping long chords every few minutes. Everything in Aeolian mode. Nihilistic characters who are disturbed, selfish, psychopathic, and generally unlikable. Pointlessly shocking details that convey a “really dark” sensibility with no resolution. You can crank that out over and over again and people eat it up.

It’s all so obvious and heavy-handed. It’s so predictable and boring. The drive toward crudity isn’t a necessary part of uncovering richer insights into the human experience. It’s just a pointless, desensitized form of slop that rots one’s brain and taste.

Blunt and obvious

It’s almost as if these stories are created by people who have never really reflected on the deeper nature of life and tragedy. Or maybe they haven’t ever developed any kind of nuanced emotional sensibility, so the only way they have to portray “feeling” is in the most blunt and obvious way imaginable.

I think that gets to the bottom of it. Having aged just a little bit has shown me some things about myself and life that are more sensitive and too delicate to portray, or exist in concert with, such grotesque storytelling.

Encountering such blunt, needlessly provocative eye-poking just grates on me at this point. It doesn’t shock me. It doesn’t provoke me. It doesn’t do anything they want it to do.

It just irritates me. Bores me. It feels like listening to a crappy garage band after hearing a string quartet play Mozart.