Late Night Musings about Movies, Games, etc. and Empathy

My husband and I have watched several movies we have gotten for Christmas over the last year. They have ranged from Scooby-doo cartoons, to The Last Voyage of the Demeter, Wonka, and Deadpool and Wolverine. Our latest adventure was the new Twisters movie.

We have some different tastes in movies – He enjoys the Purge and Saw movies among others, whereas I don't like them due to violence and bloodshed in disturbing and realistic sort of settings. My tastes changed over the years – I used to watch Hellraiser and make bets with friends from high school who would get grossed out first drinking Welch's grape juice.

Cue Deadpool and Wolverine – to which my husband pointed out had probably more blood than any of the Saw or Purge movies according to him and I laughed a large chunk of the way through it. What was so different about it that I reacted like that? Maybe it was the stress I was under, but I actually think it was because I knew it was fantasy as Deadpool had been transported through time and space several times by then and the bad guys were shooting lasers at him. (Hubby couldn't understand my reaction, which surprised even me a bit and has teasingly said I he should make me watch those movies.)

Finally we watched Twisters where I had more “normal me” reaction. I've seen the first one many times, the first time when I was in high school, and parts were a bit scary back then, but I didn't cry (much). In the new one, I was saddened at the start. Then in a scene partway through while characters were taking cover as a tornado strikes a rodeo and people get sucked into the vortex, I found myself talking to my hubby about how people are just scared, the panic and freeze, and don't know what to do, and then I was sobbing uncontrollably.

He paused the movie and said, “Oh no, I think this movie is a little too realistic for you,” and we had to take a half hour break or so for me to calm down.

Afterwards, I found myself wondering why I could laugh at the blood in Deadpool and Wolverine where I find it disturbing in other movies, and indeed, didn't even need to see much to break down watching Twisters. I've even felt some of this empathy with Interview with the Vampire, and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Well, in the first one, as I stated before I was well aware that it was an entirely fantasy fictional world where the bad guys are two-dimensional at best with sci-fi/magical weapons and I saw them that way. In Twisters, the people in question were also two-dimensional at best, but they were represented as normal people – people who could be your neighbors, friends, family.

 I know I have an exceptional sense/gift of empathy I've had since I was a small child. When I was younger, my friend's family took me to an Easter play/re-enactment at their church of the events of the crucifixion and Resurrection. At the end of the play, as others erupted in joy, I was bawling in my seat, thinking of the pain Christ went through at the end of his life. When questioned by my friend's family as to why I was crying, that I should be overjoyed, I stated this to them. They were bewildered and didn't invite me back to anything like that.

Finally, I think I figured out what was different between the movies. Although the characters in Twisters who die in the storms are nothing more than throwaway actors/actresses for the shock of the plot, my mind started spiraling into creating identities and backstories for whom those “people” might have been. I've only seen two Purge movies (partway at least) and just ads for the Saw movies, but I realized I did the same thing.

I am a writer with strong emphatic tendencies – it's why I didn't go into social work as I first planned. I could never separate myself enough from my clients to be helpful. I try to set walls/boundaries so not to be overwhelmed with other's emotions, but occasionally a movie (or book, or even a video game – Breath of the Wild I'm looking at you) strikes just the right way, and well, I react like this. Real or fictional, I tend to unintentionally “feel” their emotions. I believe this helps me create stronger more realistic characters in my books, but I am sometimes caught unawares by characters whom the creators/writers never intended to have meaning for the viewer, or by my own creation.

Is it normal? Probably not. Is it who I am? Yes. For better or worse.