This week, I read some articles about people faking happiness. This is something we all do, presumably, maybe not to the extent of crisis, but we often bare our teeth and make ourselves uncomfortable in hopes of seeming well-adjusted or successful. Supposedly, our age of realism and materialism should make things easier. We see things as they are. We accept our problems and deal with them. But that isn’t really the issue anymore.
In fact, maybe our problems are what give us troubles. It seems like many people try to make themselves miserable. It is this misery that gives them some sense of completion and identity.
We all have skeletons in the closet, but in our age, it seems like the more, the better. The idea is that the more tragic, pathetic and dramatic we become, the deeper and “more real” we are. Strange.
One of my favorite quotes from High Fidelity (a book as well as a movie) goes something like this: “Am I sad because I listen to pop music, or do I listen to pop music because I’m sad?” (Very loosely quoted.)
The arts-music, movies and television-heavily support the drama queen lifestyle. Every song on the radio is about someone who broke someone else’s heart. Television shows capitalize on sarcasm and relationships gone badly. People ruthlessly cut each other down and dramatize situations.
Even the people on reality television shows are overly theatrical and selfishly motivated. In order to get attention, they make themselves cry on national television, and Bam-MTV has made another million dollars by placing people from opposing stereotypes in a loft apartment and turning on the cameras. But we watch hours and hours of these types of shows. It’s no small wonder that we act like little tragedians and perpetuate misery in our relationships and so forth. We keep hoping that one day all of our pain is going to lead us to the ultimate breathtaking experience, whatever that is.
It works on television, and television-unreal as it is-has to be somewhat reflective of real life, doesn’t it? It seems that if we have problems, then we will be better able to accept a rescue-someone who can take us away from our horrid world and into the arms of love and life and fairytale nastiness. Or maybe we don’t want to be saved, but rather, we want to do the saving, so we find weirdoes that have problems and make them our own personal mission project(s).
The problem with this is that some knight (or knightess) in fashionable clothing doesn’t save us. We end up isolating and crippling ourselves with real problems-addictions, neuroses, depression-that started out as experiments to see how much attention we could get.
I’m not saying that everyone who is depressed, neurotic or whatever made themselves that way. I think there are a lot of people who have issues that they don’t perpetuate for the sake of art or fulfillment. Rather, they’re actively working upon improving their lives and overcoming their problems.
I just get sick of seeing it happen in real life. I get sick of accepting bad situations when I could speak up for myself and change them-or better yet, when I could remove myself from them altogether.
We seem to derive a sick pleasure from painful situations. I don’t know if that’s because something in those places seems salvageable-if we feel a real connection to the people that hurt us, or if the money’s too good in the job, or what.
I would think that this was just my problem if I didn’t know so many people that are currently stuck in weird, bad situations. We stay in them, though, because they’re familiar.
We think they may change one day, we think we’ll get our Real World reunion with people to ask questions and commentate, and provide closure for us. But the reality shows obviously lie, and the closure is just a word made up by somebody somewhere who has a Ph.D. and a corner office, and all we have to show for it is a headache from sitting too close to the television.
Joy Murphy is a senior English major.