“Why so serious?” – The Dark Knight, Christopher and Jonathon Nolan 

Why so cynical? Cynicism is truth. Cynicism is real. Scene: The cynical character confronts an optimistic, positive one. The positive character has no reply. Why does he just sit there and take it? The underlying truth is finally coming out, and the positive character just can’t handle it. We favor the cynical character, because, “He’s just being real with us.” He’s gritty, she’s so dark, and the cynical are no longer afraid to speak truth to power. The truth is that your precious, little world is awful, your neighbor is trash, and you’re probably no better. Cynicism is alarming, scary, hilarious, and so insidious.

“Harmful but enticing: seductive.” – Merriam-Webster.com’s definition of insidious.

Why so insidious? Want to write a best-seller? Bring the pain (muderporn). We readers crave a taste, a dose, and a heaping forkful of the worst elements of the worst moments of another’s life. We don’t want it too familiar, of course, yet we enjoy watching it from a distance. We may not bring it up in polite company, but if someone else does, we join in, and it’s difficult for us to hide the excitement in our voice. 

Why so violent? Violent narratives require a generous portion of brutality, but the most successful writers define it by clever and intelligent means. Undefined brutality is fine if we’re writing a mob narrative, or a historical recount of the Ku Klux Klan or Nazi, Germany, because they come backloaded with such a brutally violent history, but if we’re going to write about serial killers, we need to employ some level of poetry, symbolism, or some other form of intellect in their acts for it suggests the killer (and their writer) is surprisingly intellectual. In the cat-and-mouse game with the police, writers use law enforcement officials to define the serial killer’s intellect. “He’s obviously incredibly intelligent,” they will say at the outset, and at some point, in the chase, they say, “He’s too smart to fall for that.” If the writer can combine the killer’s savage sense of brutality with some ode to Geoffrey Chaucer, Dante Alighieri, Shakespeare, and/or Biblical references, it illustrates a shocking intellect that will lead to best-sellers, ratings, and clickbait. 

I’ve created fictional characters with whom I developed a mostly platonic relationship, and the answer to the question of what I was going to do with them didn’t involve whether or not they were going to commit violence, but how much? 

“We might develop a crush on non-violent stories,” I said to explain this predilection, “but if we’re going to fall head-over-heels in love, there has to be some violence involved, or at least the threat thereof.” 

Why so awful? We want to read/watch about awful people doing awful things to one another, with a dash of humor thrown in to further define, or even slightly contradict, their awfulness. At some point in the timeline, the awful writers began adding clever humor to add an element of the casual and the common place to their violence, and we loved it. If it’s not love we experience, it’s some complicated adherent. We’ll repeat a clever and humorous line with a chuckle. We might even knowingly invite such seductive characters into our home. We’ve all seen movies of enraged violent people, and it just doesn’t connect the way the calm, clever killers do. Look at our favorite performances, most of them involve actors portraying the most awful characters imaginable with a little bit of flair. The message to writers is clear: if you want gain, bring the pain, and it doesn’t hurt to add a little levity to their refrain. 

Why so artistic? Does art reflect society, or does society reflect art? Is society as evil as artists of modernity want us to believe, or do we interpret their attempts as beautiful works of art? Those who aren’t afraid to expose us to the truth of what’s going on in their neighborhood receive special accolades. Their exposes might be dark and negative but that’s their truth. Is it truth, or is it an embellishment intended to generate sales? I can see you, with your fingers poised above your keyboard, ready to defend your favorite book, movie, or TV show. Your reply will include something regarding how I can’t understand the plight of someone who might not experience the comfortable lifestyle I do. I’m not saying you’re wrong, but would you be so defensive if we were discussing a positive, uplifting narrative? “There’s nothing wrong with light-hearted fare, of course,” you might say, “but there’s no question that gritty, dark, and cynical are definitely more artistic.”

Why do repetitive? We love violence in our art, and we identify with cynicism as truth, but what is that truth? As we work our way through controversial, provocative portrayals of the truth, we often hear, see, and learn the same reportage, fictional and otherwise, over and over. How many times do we have to hear, watch, and read the same cynical exposés on the same institutions before we accept their portrayals as truth? How many otherwise beloved and trusted institutions in our society are the most corrupt in these narratives? There’s the member of the civil service, the man of religion, or military man you thought you could trust who turns out the most corrupt among them in our controversial and cutting edge stories. This trope is almost as repetitive as the all families are dysfunctional trope. We all understand that an author needs to introduce conflict, be it external or internal, but these tropes are repeated so often that most of us can pick out the good guys and bad guys in an ensemble narrative before the actors have read one word of the script. Through sales, we’ve encouraged storytellers to evolve to nothing but hardcore, unapologetic cynicism to appeals to our worldview. 

Why so dark, angry, and hopeless? To paraphrase a line from Cool Hand Luke, “That’s the way he wants it,” and we want it dark, cynical, negative, hateful, and violent. Most of us have no violent tendencies. We never have, and we never will. Yet, we won’t read a book, watch a movie, TV show, or play a video game that doesn’t involve at least some hint of violence? What does that say about us? If we are of a stable mind that isn’t easily influenced, I don’t think it says much, but is it human nature to think that the ultimate, or final, truth about human nature is that it’s awful, nasty, and we’re all headed for dark, gritty truth?

Why no happy endings? It wasn’t too long ago that the market demanded a happy ending, no manner how dark and gritty a fictional piece was. We enjoyed watching awful people doing awful things to each other, but we all knew that some over-the-top, big, sloppy happy ending was coming. We knew the movie would end with someone drinking an exotic, adult beverage with a tiny umbrella in it, in front of an impossibly white, sandy beach? Everyone knew that somehow, someway, it would all end happy for the players involved. It became a long-running joke. Those who concern themselves with such things say that there wasn’t one particular movie that brought an end to this, but a series of thematically complex narratives of the late 60’s early 70’s that challenged the whole idea of the necessity of happy endings in movies. If this is true, it was a long, insidious arc that led us to demand that our stories end in despair for the purpose of being true, while illuminating us about the despair around the world. When we watch happy endings now, they seem so anticlimactic that movie makers have responded by leaving one last hint that the bad guy/monster might might still be alive somewhere.  

“If you want a happy ending go Disney or some other manufacturer of dreams, cause you ain’t gonna find it here.”

I come at this from an advantageous position, because I led a sheltered life until I was about fifteen. I received a lot of grief for believing that most of humanity was good, and I still do, but when I was young and impressionable, my worldview encountered a special brand of the-world-is-junk, and a dose of everyone is a piece of junk. “You shouldn’t trust anyone outside your home,” they instructed me, “and you should probably be skeptical of them.” The contrast to everything I knew and believed couldn’t have been more shocking if it was delivered with defibrillator paddles. I initially considered their skeptical cynicism a romantic notion, and I was angry that my authority figures shielded me from the truth for so long. The more I learned this outlook, the more I embraced it, acclimated to it, and I accepted it as truth. The repetition was such that I knew if I didn’t adjust and assimilate, I would be nothing more than a naïveté who would eventually meet my demise as a result of some proverbial pack of wolves who would take advantage of it. As with all constant and repetitive messaging, it eventually reached a tipping point for me. Looking back, I probably needed that dose of cynicism to round out my wide-eyed optimism, but when the “theys” in my inner-circle continued pouring gasoline on this fire, I realized that, like uplifting positivism, there’s a point of diminishing returns of too much cynicism too. “Just because it’s awful, negative, and cynical doesn’t always mean it’s true,” I began telling my “theys” after I hit that tipping point. I don’t know if that revelation proved as shocking to them as their revelations did me, but they couldn’t come up with anything to counter it. 

When we seek the truth, we often get bounced around a bit, until we eventually find it nestled somewhere in the in-between. Are we more cynical or optimistic, or are we somewhere in-between, and what’s in the in-between? 

As the new saying goes, “If you ever want to know where you stand are as a culture, look to the major marketing firms.” They pour millions into researching human nature and the zeitgeist for the purpose of appealing to us in their marketing campaigns? When they create advertisements for their clients do they seek a truth, or something we generally perceive to be true? Marketing departments don’t necessarily seek to tell us the truth, but their extensive studies find a truth that we consider true enough to move products, and they have obviously reached the conclusion that our outlook is pretty bleak. They understand that times are tough, but their client is here to help. If we just purchase their new and improved product, we’ll find our days and nights bigger, brighter, and more productive, because we’ll have more time to do what we always wanted to do. They pay attention to our intricacies, and they’re saying that we have a negative, cynical and all hope is lost mentality. It’s The Beatles, “It’s getting better all the time. It couldn’t get much worse.” It’s Dickens’ “It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.” It’s the in-between.

I haven’t poured tons of money into extensive research on humanity, but I think we could all use a healthy dose of something else, and it doesn’t have to be uplifting. It can’t be, because uplifting is cringe, but it could be something different. It could be something dotted with refreshing honesty without being overly cynical. It can also be something other than the college thesis paper, or dissertations, writers insert into every song we hear, and every TV show and movie we watch. When I watch these over-the-top insertions, I can’t help but think, “Hows about we just go for entertainment, so we can forget the serious, deep, and the meaningful for just a moment?”