Escapism Through Film

     Chapter 2 of "America On Film" touches on the subject of Hollywood providing escapism for their audiences during WWII. While people obviously don't go to theaters nowadays to escape World War II, they most certainly go (even if not intending to) in order to escape several other things.

            Going to the movies often consists of a couple friends deciding they want to go see the latest blockbuster to be released at their local theater. A simple enough desire. But try to think of a time when you went to see a movie that now, looking back, was really well made and enthralling. How often were you thinking about your life and your problems while watching that film? Probably not much. You were drawn into the story and characters so deeply, and pulled out of yourself so completely, that things that very well may have been weighing heavily on your mind took a back seat to what the director wanted you to think and feel in that moment. This doesn't just happen as individuals however. As with WWII, entire groupings people can go to see a film as a form of escapism from an event on a much grander scale. When the recent tsunami devastated Japan, a film came out around the same time called Battle: Los Angeles. Did people not go to the film because it depicted large scale destruction and chaos? Nope. If anything, more people went as a way of escaping the terrifyingly real tragedy, replacing it with CGI death and destruction that could easily be written off as, "oh, it's just a movie." Is this right? Who's to say? But regardless of whether it was right or not, it's what people did. They used glamorized, computer generated devastation as a way of escaping the painful facts of reality. 

            People watch films to lose themselves within the world the director has created. They want to feel what the characters feel and react accordingly. Outside of the theater, you aren't guaranteed a happy ending. You aren't told how to feel or when to feel it, and you don't have that same sense of community you have in a movie theater. There's a certain feeling of togetherness that occurs when you're watching a film with a few dozen other people. You are all experiencing essentially the same thing for the duration of the movie. When you're going through your everyday life, you have plenty of things to think about and worry about and it's a relief, honestly, to have other people thinking and worrying about the same thing, even for a relatively short period of time. Sitting down in a theater is like stepping outside of the world and its issues for just a little while in order to escape into a place where you don't have any worries or say in what goes on. Sure, you may "feel" for the characters and "worry" for the characters, but it's not to the same extent as real life and real situations.

            

           With the war going on and the economy in the toilet and any number of other troublesome issues happening in the world today, it's no surprise that a lot of people have a lot to think about. But we all still love movies. We all love to sit down and lose ourselves in the perfectly paced stories and dramatic performances. It's easy to do. It doesn't take much effort on our part and we like it that way. Escapism through film is alive and well, and while we might not always know it or acknowledge it, we experience it and enjoy it all the time.