Strumming my pain

Strumming my pain with his fingers
Singing my life with his words

Do you ever recognise yourself in another's story, a character in a book or in a movie? Do you read or hear their words, connect with the situation and have past thoughts and emotions flood back in? Are you connected, engaged and feel your life intertwined so fantasy and reality are one?

Perhaps sometimes you connect with the hero or maybe the villain but I find it interesting how we see ourselves mirrored in a creation of an imagination, normally by someone we have not met and does not know us. aren't we individuals?

We are a lot more alike than we are different and the overlaps can be seen as many people 'write what they know' and apparently, we know a lot of the same experiences. Much of television and cinema attempts to content the characters at an emotional level with us to draw us into the plot and make us feel.

In general, the aim is to manipulate us into supporting the protagonist, the hero, the victims. This is because most of us want to be the good and aspire to play the hero, if only in imagination. The antagonist however is the evil oppressor, the cruel and cold and most do not want to associate themselves with that role.

In recent decades this gap has been closing with the introduction of the anti-hero, the flawed good guy who is damaged, suffering and luckless yet still manages to fight life's failures to do the right thing, stand up for justice and protect those weaker. Is this done to manipulate us further, interact with us at a deeper level?

Perhaps this middle-ground character is more reminiscent of how we see ourselves, it makes us feel okay to be broken, to not always meet the expectations we and the world have placed like a yoke upon our necks. It gives us the space to accept our flaws, relax our ideals and still be okay. It closes the gap between good and evil and in so doing, appeals to a larger audience.

Is this just another manipulation to get more people engaged, more eyes glued to screens, more subscriptions to a streaming service? By making the characters more relatable, rather than make the do-no-wrong Superman or the do-no-good Darth Vader, it means there is more wiggle room for the audience to identify with some part while, ignoring another in the same character. 'Hear what they want to hear' so to speak.

How does this play out in the minds of the audience? Do they notice the shift in positioning, the introduction of the flaws, the blending of traits to make nearly anyone connect with them? Perhaps not.

Have a read of the text below:

You have a great need for other people to like and admire you. You have a tendency to be critical of yourself. You have a great deal of unused capacity which you have not turned to your advantage. While you have some personality weaknesses, you are generally able to compensate for them. Your sexual adjustment has presented problems for you. Disciplined and self-controlled outside, you tend to be worrisome and insecure inside. At times you have serious doubts as to whether you have made the right decision or done the right thing. You prefer a certain amount of change and variety and become dissatisfied when hemmed in by restrictions and limitations. You pride yourself as an independent thinker and do not accept others’ statements without satisfactory proof. You have found it unwise to be too frank in revealing yourself to others. At times you are extroverted, affable, sociable, while at other times you are introverted, wary, reserved. Some of your aspirations tend to be pretty unrealistic. Security is one of your major goals in life.

How accurately did this describe you? Well, many might recognise this as the text by Bertram R. Forer which was given to students as a personality test in the mid twentieth century. When asked how accurately it described them, the average score was 4.2 out of 5. The same test was given to everyone yet everyone identified with around 80% of it. How individual are we again?

The reason is that it contains aspirations and negatives that are vague enough that we want to fill in the gaps, we want to identify and feel connected to it. What we do is fill in the blur with what we know about ourselves, we do the work of the fortune teller. It gives us the space to emphasis the positives and downplay the negatives. Could this be similar thing with a flawed hero, are we victims of the Forer effect?

I see this as quite likely and I think that with all of the research done by behavioural psychologists and economists, the writers and producers have learned how to manipulate and nudge us very well indeed. Even when we know we are being manipulated, it is impossible to know to what depth as that is the art of manipulation, to make it feel like we understand the trick.

We live in a world of the attention economy where everyone wants a little bit more of us, a little more engagement, time on site, an extra click, a few minutes scrolling here and there and the best way to get this is to target our emotions. Make us feel like we are missing out if we don't act now, buy now, or in the case of a television show, watch now.

Each time we enter we think it is by choice, not design yet time and time again, we are pulled into the jaws of a flytrap that adds very little value to our lives but in that moment, is of utmost importance. There are many ways to be deceived but the artful deception makes us feel engaged.

Are you buying?

Taraz
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