I am of the firm belief that us human beings have completely lost our hearts. Everything now is minimal and impersonal — from beige and blocky houses to everyone wearing the same clothes, so often in black and white. Everything seems to show a lack of emotion and a lack of effort, like we have become afraid to show any part of our unique personalities in any physical way. I hate it, and I don’t understand. There is never enough color for me, from clothes to wall colors, never enough personality in a room, from photos to tchotchkes.
I think this drastic loss of emotion is exceptionally noticeable in the world of film and art. When I tell people that my favorite film is La La Land, I always get the same response: “But it’s sad!” Right, because life isn’t always happy, and art reflects life. La La Land is in some ways about as far from our present world as possible, filled with color and emotion and distinct personalities, but it’s also incredibly relatable because it shows such a range of real feelings. When did we become so afraid of emotion? The sad ending of La La Land (sorry if that’s a spoiler) is perhaps the part I love the most. In this blur of reality, school and stress and extracurriculars, we forget to stop and actually feel.
I love La La Land because it’s emotional, and it makes me think — about the people who affect your journey through life, the different paths we could choose and how important it is to dream big, even if people tell you those dreams are foolish. La La Land is full of actual life reflections, love that is beautiful but not lasting, dreams that are almost given up on, people whose lives take them in inevitably different directions. I will often watch La La Land when I feel sad, when the idea of watching something happy doesn’t align with how real life presently feels. Sometimes I watch it when I wish our world was similarly filled with song and dance and bright colors. Because of how much I find La La Land relevant in different moments, I’ve seen the movie so many times that I can recite every word, hum every note and sing every song; watching that opening sequence is like flipping open the cover of a well-loved novel, like saying hello to an old friend. In contrast, when I ask other people their favorite movies, they are almost always something lighthearted, funny and something people have only seen once. Are we really so afraid of feeling anything that we can’t even let ourselves deeply love a movie or enjoy something that goes beyond surface level?
I have personally been completely shocked by the lack of importance given to emotional films in my own generation. The majority of college students I’ve spoken to have not seen The Sound of Music, which is completely unfathomable to me. The Sound of Music is simply a part of human culture, a beautiful and classic film filled with unparalleled music and joy. While the invasion of the Nazis is a critical point in the film, it is by no means the focus, which is rare for most films dealing with any topic of war. The Sound of Music is primarily about the importance of encouraging joy and having confidence in our unique personalities and beliefs; the somber undertones of the film serve only to show how incredibly important these themes are.
The Sound of Music teaches an incredibly important lesson: how lucky we are to have freedom of speech and press. We are allowed to hold any opinion we like, we can passionately disagree with our government, write what we want in our newspapers and march if we feel like marching. We can practice our religions and wave our flags and be proud of our identities. And in a world that is beginning to look increasingly like pre-1940s Austria, a world grasping at the last clutches of happy normalcy as hate seeps in through the cracks, we must hold this dearer than ever. We must cling to emotion, show our personalities loudly and proudly without conforming to whatever view might be more popular and remember the importance of all feelings. We should feel sad when we read the news, we should embrace different emotions. We cannot always walk through the world completely numb. But most importantly, we must remember joy, and we must remember to wear our hearts on our sleeves loudly and proudly. I simply cannot stand the idea of a world devoid of the hearts and feelings of every single person presently dreaming in it.
Jenna Ledley is a sophomore in the College of Arts and Sciences. She can be reached at [email protected].