Media Holds Up a Mirror of Myself

Have you ever seen a TV show, movie, or heard a song that left you utterly speechless and reflecting about your entire life for months? Chances are this has happened to you sometime in your life if you regularly use media sources as I do. About two weeks ago, I found myself wandering through my Apple TV apps, trying to find an acceptable show to watch before falling asleep. I bumped into the show Modern Love, which is the new installment in the Amazon Prime catalog. It is an anthology series based on the New York Times famous column known by the same name. The series tries to capture the diverse forms which love can take. 

The first episode, “When the Doorman Is Your Main Man,” made me cry my heart out. At the time, I was not sure of the reason for my cry. In fact, I was not even expecting that cry. I simply decided to watch the show because I wanted to chill and relax. After crying, a thought was haunting me. I had decided to watch this new series because I wanted to take my mind off some of my daily life stress. However, that same episode that I thought was going to calm me down not only made me go through catharsis but made me reflect on what was going on in my life. I think we often let ourselves cry when watching tv shows, movies or listening to songs but we don’t really often ask ourselves the question of why? Why am I crying when exposed to this source of media? Or in an otherwise joyous note, why does this show make me happy? What is this trying to tell me about myself? Truth is, it is normal for this not to be your first reaction. It can be heavy to think about ourselves sometimes, and that is okay. However, after crying for about 15 minutes, in my head, it narrowed down to these hypotheses: Are media sources the precise mirrors we need to help us understand ourselves? If media is our form of escapism, then how come we sometimes find in it what we did not even know we had to find? 

I am deeply intrigued by the human mind and the clinical aspect of psychology. I’ve grown myself for several reasons in an environment in which it has become okay to ask for help from a therapist, and along those lines, I’ve done my fair research on psychology theories as well. I am a firm believer that we have to take advantage of the tools we have around to understand ourselves. It stands to reason that the media around me should help mi with that self-understanding. In psychology, the famous psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan talks about “The Mirror Theory.” According to Lacan, we construct our identity by reflecting it onto others. This point means that the relationships we have with others are reflections or projections of aspects of our personality that we do or don’t like. We are constantly projecting parts of ourselves. So, how does this connect with tv shows or movies? 

Psychoanalytic film theorists such as Christian Metz and Jean-Louis Baudry took the Lacanian theory and applied it to cinema spectators. Through this analogy, the film screen serves as the mirror through which the spectators can identify themselves. Their theory talks about how the spectator behaves as an omnipotent ego figure who feels this way based on the illusion of watching every detail on the screen. However, the spectator is disregarding their own avoidance of being seen. The ego engages itself in a defense mechanism in which it defends itself against unconscious impulses and instincts. This can happen when we attribute, through this psychological projection, both negative and positive qualities of our lives to the characters we see on screen in avoidance of dealing with these qualities, issues, problems, or whatever you want to call them ourselves. This illusion illustrates what I consider to be media as a form of escapism. I can say for myself that I use TV shows, movies, or music to escape from the everyday stress of my daily life. It is common to use media as escapism and it is a common way to deal with life. In fact, I feel that media is one of the healthiest ways to escape. It is interesting to explore how that form of escapism can hold a mirror up to our lives and help us expand on what we’re dealing with.

Media surrounds us all day, every day, whether we like it or not, or whether we surround ourselves with it on purpose or not. When we watch a show, we can become so hooked or invested in it that the characters on the show may become part of our daily lives. We become hooked because we see ourselves in them. After all, media sources’ duty has become representing our daily lives; thus, it makes sense that we see ourselves reflected on these shows. So, what do these media sources tell us about our lives? In my case, I was having a difficult month, and I needed that good cry to realize that I needed to fix certain aspects of my personal life. However, one does not have to be going necessarily through something hard to appreciate media as a mirror. We all go through stuff every day, and that shapes the way we see our world. 

One can talk about this same phenomenon when talking about the film, Joker. After watching the film, Joker, a lot of people felt heavy. Ann Hornaday from The Washington Post describes it as “A grim, shallow, distractingly, derivative homage.” The film depicted the real issues and layers of mental health in such an exaggerated and raw way that it had a disturbing effect on cinematic spectators. It is amazing to think that one film can affect so many peoples’ lives in so many different ways. This opens the debate to the universal essence of media. This does not happen necessarily because we, as an audience, relate to the character because of similar sociopathic tendencies. This effect happens because, as humans, we take experiences and interpret them based on our reality. It is interesting to consider that everyone finds different triggers to their feelings when watching a movie; thus, that tells us more about ourselves than what the actual movie is attempting to project or deliver. 

Another great example would be the movie Rocketman. Elton John’s biopic film reviews the fantastical tale of his anything but ordinary life. Honest to my true experience, Rocketman made me think I had no tears left to cry and I watched it around five times. To this day, I still watch it every time I feel I deserve a good cry to move on with my day. Rocketman tells the story of how nothing can ever overcompensate the lack of love one may experience through childhood. Rocketman made me realize that one of our most valuable traits as human beings is our ability to empathize with others. So, this just leaves me with the conclusion that we should and can take advantage of our everyday surroundings, either media or not, to find great truths about ourselves and our community.