I am a very positive person. I try to be. Always see the brighter side of things, stay happy life is short. Yada yada yada. But everyone has a dark side or a side that they want to suppress or want to change or improve or avoid and that side does sneak out once in a while and it is natural. I was completely aware of mine and so as one of the fixes I never watched movies or series that were emotionally disturbing or the ones that made me cry. Because I have news and documentaries for dose of reality, I do not want my movies and series shoving it down my throat when I watch them for entertainment and thrill. (Heads up – not bashing Mindhunter but beware of spoilers)
There is that difference between movies and series. A 2 hour movie takes you into a different world for a short span. Doesn’t matter if it is fantasy, reality, fiction or drama. A series grows on you. You live with the character you most connect to. You live with them, grow with them, fall with them and evolve into their world for that period of time. A series lingers in your mind more than you think it would. Personally, I avoid disturbing or very dark reality based stories and also try to avoid detailed reviews before I watch something so that the element of surprise exists when I watch anything. That is how I started watching Mindhunter (thinking it was a cop based reality story and also it had very good reviews). And it is good. Absolutely no complains about the series, the cast, the story line, the direction or anything else. It is the content that bothered me. Most of us want to be a good person, be the person who brings a change to the society, be that person who helps someone in need and always so much more. I have always wanted to be a special agent in my alternate reality, even a superhero sometimes (which superhero discussion alone should be a separate article on its own!). So that is how I connected to the story from the starting. Two FBI agents trying to help people and make a change. I evolved with Holden Ford and Bill Trench. I saw myself in their shoes. I interviewed criminals with them, I played back the interview to see how I could have done it differently, what do I infer from what they said. Maybe it was the narrative’s dominance to portray the world around Ford that made me connect to him more than Trench or maybe it was the something else I don’t know but I unconsciously evolved with Ford.
Trench was different. Different from Ford. He was able to vent the negativity and frustration out of his system to his wife. He understood what the job was doing to him and the creators put it beautifully how he broke down and rose again from that. I understood his side of the story but I continued watching the series and I could never break myself from the things happening and so the heaviness I was seeing kept wearing me down. At the end of few episodes I could feel it in me. I could literally experience the darkness of the crimes and the people committing them grow in Ford and me. It was disturbing. By the end of it, seeing Ford break down I could feel my world falling apart. I could not eat or sleep properly that night. I vented out to my brother and friends (thinking it would help) but no (trying to vent now not even sure if it is helping me). I grew more miserable. It was wrong. It was all wrong.
I did watch news every day, I am connected to the real world and know what is happening around me. I have read about worse things than the crimes shown in Mindhunter but have never been so disturbed. The reason this series disturbed me was the detailing and the actual emotional side of things. Why we do what we do. I have always known us as the most intelligent species. We have done unbelievable things through the period of time. We could be so much more and yet… we let power, greed, lust rule us. Control us. Turn us into monsters. We as humans are collectively destroying our own existence on this planet. Even animals treat their species in a better way. Way better than how we treat each other – so much hostility. All boils down to why we do what we do. I am not going to talk about philosophy of it, the psychology of it or why we do it. There are tons of books that do it. I just want to be that hopeful person again that felt the world could be a better place to live in. If I tried to be a better human being that would spread to the people with me and so on. We are so much more than animals and monsters. All we need is that one second pause to think is it worth it to have so much negativity? Is it worth hurting someone else for our pleasures? Is it really worth it to blame someone else for our doings?
Take everything as a learning, promise yourself to be better, brush it off, broaden your sight, have a new positive perspective and have a fresh start. That is all we need. And we have already made the world a better place to live in.
I can either go on whining or quit being a baby and do something about it. Would I watch Mindhunter season 2? I might. Would I be so affected by it? I might be. Would I break down because of it? Probably not. Everyone brings out the dark side differently and I surely have found my way of coping with it 🙂 And who said writing doesn’t help 🙂
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