Don’t tell me what to think
I’ve been having a weird experience lately. I find that whenever I watch a modern show or movie, I get yelled at by the writer about what type of thinking is good or bad.
Take the 2024 remake of Salem’s Lot. I have been reading a lot of Stephen King so I thought I would check it out. A few minutes into the movie, a young women in a real estate office is treated poorly by her boss. He snaps his fingers at her, telling her to put on a fresh pot of coffee.
“I’ve trained her to make it just right”, he says, winking at the protagonist. The film grinds to a halt, and the screenwriter ducks out from behind the screen.
“Hey!” he yells in my face. “Sexism is wrong!”
“I know,” I say impatiently. “But I was watching something just now, do you mind?”
He reluctantly disappears behind the screen, and lets the film continue.
About two minutes later, in a school yard, a young black kid is performing a feat of escapism. Apropos of nothing, a bully strides over and absolutely decks him in the face.
“Welcome to the Lot, dillweed”, says the bully. “Fuckin’ goof!”
He tries to tackle the kid, but the kid cleverly dodges him and pins the bully’s arm behind his back. The music swells triumphantly as the bully screams in pain. And again, the film grinds to a halt.
“HEY!” screams the screenwriter, emerging from behind the screen, spittle flying from his rabid mouth. “Racism and bullying are BAD!”
“Yes, I’m aware!” I reply, wiping my face. “But could you just let me watch the movie?”
He retreats again, glaring at me with disgust. I made it about five more minutes before I turned it off.
Out of curiosity, I decided to watch the first few minutes of the 1979 miniseries just to compare, and I ended up watching the entire 3 hours. It was such a breath of fresh air to watch a story without being constantly lectured by the writer. The characters felt like real people making their own choices, and I was allowed to draw my own conclusions about their actions rather than having conclusions hammered into my skull.
So why do modern movies prefer to tell us what to think instead of telling us stories? Is it because writers think we're too stupid, distracted, or morally repugnant to come to our own conclusions?
Well, yes. I think that’s at least part of the problem. But I think something almost worse is happening. I believe that the idea of story as something that can touch our hearts and minds is being lost. The idea that narrative can inspire us, cause us to think and dream, shape our beliefs is fading to the background. Stories show us examples of heroes who face impossible odds and still fight and love so pure it makes us cry. But when stories become “content”, created as additional menu options on a streaming service, existing to provide background noise as we stare at our phones, the most that they can aspire to be are platforms for the “right” message. They no longer help us form our own judgments, but scream in our faces what we should think. And I'm sick of it.
Great stories haunt us. They slip past our defenses and make us fall for them. My favourite stories have never told me what to think. Instead, they’ve introduced me to people I come to care about who are facing choices I hope I'll never have to make. The writers of these stories trust me to come away changed, not because I was lectured at but because I felt something. That is an ancient, magical, alchemical power, and that’s what I’m trying to tap into.