If you didn't get my PM about this, I wanted to thank you for posting that thing about "cool hopelessness" a ways back. That's something I grapple with myself and that post made me feel a lot better. Ever hear that story about the little girl who saves the starfish, a passing adult tells her the life of one starfish doesn't matter, and she tells him where to stick it? Why is it trendier to be the man than the girl these days?
Sorry for not getting back to you sooner! I’m very glad you like my content, and I do feel bad I haven’t posted much lately. It’s been hard to have enough energy, social or otherwise, to do pretty much anything. I'm afraid I haven't heard that story before but I can get the jist of it. XD I can't say I'm an expert, but I do feel like there's quite a few sources behind the trend of "deep," angsty, bitter narratives nowadays.For one thing, a lot of the young up-and-coming writers, directors, et cetera, were growing up during the 1990s, a decade with a good deal of political turmoil and punctuated by things like the grunge era, and a background hum of "the world could end in a few years and we're all going to die." Disaffected teenagers, bitter about their parents decisions and feeling like they have very little control over their lives often grow up into bitter, angry adults, and thus produce bitter, angry media. Which ties into the nostalgic resurgance of many IPs from the 80's and 90's, many of which end up feeling very tonally different from the shows or movies these people watched as kids. For example, the big budget Transformers films which, as a whole, seem to have a bitter, cynical perspective of the entire cast (with the possible exception of making the military look good.) Or the remakes of horror classics like Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street or Halloween, where the protagonists are rude and argumentative or just plain unlikable, surrounded by casts of one note characters who don't really exist as people in the context of the story and are just there to be cannon fodder whose deaths have no impact because they aren't written as human beings. (There are of course remakes or nostalgic-themed media that DON'T wallow in bitterness, like the recent remake of It or Stranger things, but those bring their own baggage with them more often than not.)
In my experience, that cynical attitude also tends to come with people trying to be extremely Grown Up, usually when they aren't really. I've seen a great many people over the years, male and female, especially during their teenage years, try very hard to prove just how mature they are by showing off all the gritty, dark stories they like. They see optimism and hope as being something immature, something only aimed at kids, and they make fun of people who still like it after a certain age. That prickly, angry exterior is designed as a protection against being judged by their peers, and more often than not if you were to dig a bit, you'd find a sad, scared kid underneath. And honestly I was a pretty prickly teenager myself who didn't want to admit to people that she liked things that were "just for kids," but over time I've learned just how freeing it can be to put on a silly, self-indulgant movie or tv show and enjoy myself (and tell that inner critic to shut the heck up for once. XD) To use one of my favorite C. S. Lewis quotes:
“When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty, I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”
I also think those attitudes tend to be reflections of the way the world is overall. We're so much more connected these days, and news is literally only a few key presses or mouse clicks away. Or, in some cases like on Tumblr or Facebook, just a brief scroll down, whether you wanted to see it or not. So we end up being flooded by wave after wave of depressing stories, political worries, doom and gloom predictions and sometimes outright lies. Its tiring, to say the least, and because the fear sells so much better, we see precious little uplifting stories to balance out the depressing ones. As a result, our media begins to reflect this as well. When the writers are scared and surrounded by depressing things, it's easy to work that into a story.
I'm sure these aren't the only explanations, and perhaps not even the best ones. But overall I can't help feeling like keeping up a bitter, cynical world view is more tiring and self-destructive than it's worth.
