A book has never made me cry, or even gotten' me emotional...

[kylio27]

It can be intellectually involving, and obviously very compelling in regards to its story and characters. Though, reading a book has never made me emotionally connect to it...I don't know why. I guess the words on the page just can't get that out of me. Even if I attempt to imagine the story in my head, it's not very effective.

I can however, dream about something I read, and almost make it into like a film in my head where it could possibly get me to cry(or make me emotional to some degree). I don't really think this is the work of the text though, but just my own thinking , because I dream and think about things all the time in my life that get me emotional, but it's just spontaneous.

Any thoughts?

[Charles Darnay]

It's a good point of discussion I think.

My initial reactions are along the lines of: "maybe you read to fast and don't properly absorb the words," or "maybe your imagination is tainted by visual media" - but none of these are necessarily the case. I think that people are affected differently by different media.

When it comes to reading I think that because you do not have the visual stimulant that can automatically trigger emotion (squeamish at the sight of blood, or tearful if someone is crying &c.), the emotional responses lie in finding yourself in the story.

Case and point. I was reading David Copperfield at a time when I should not have been. I was going through a lot, and my life was rather depressing, and so I began to make a connection with Dickens' unfortunate hero, and cried certain moments. At another time, I may not have. The emotional responses were elicited by personal connections. Visual stimulants tend to override the need for personal connections to elicit emotional responses.

And then there is sentimentality done right. Sentimentality escapes the mind and touches the heart - at least this is the theory. If you read "good" sentimental literature and not trash you may find that you have an emotional response that you do not get in more intellectualized literature.

For example, in Richardson's Clarissa (SPOILER ALERT) - after having her life torn apart and being raped, Clarissa ends up in a kind stranger's home where she gets really sick. She writes her final letter (the novel is told in letters) on top of her own coffin. It is one of the most moving scenes in any book I have read. I did not have a personal connection with Clarissa herself, but the way the novel is set up, does enough to create an emotional response.

So, no, there is nothing wrong with you if you don't cry over novels - you are not any worse (or better) a reader for it. It just....is.

[kylio27]

Thanks for understanding. Many have told me that I am simply "reading wrong", whatever the hell that means...

I actually would consider myself to be a "visual person". Perhaps I have been "tainted by visual media", but I don't think it is my imagination(or lack thereof) that is the problem. It's just that when I read a novel, the form of literature(the description and such) sort of restricts me from connecting to it...

For instance; seeing a person cry, the sadness in their eyes, it is ultimately more emotionally affecting than just reading about it.

But that's just me...

[Charles Darnay]

It makes sense. There are a few things that writers, regardless of how talented they are, cannot reproduce. Crying is one of them.

[Gilliatt Gurgle]

Charles touched on what I believe is the key driver to emotional reaction, that being something you read that conjurs up thoughts of a similar personal experience in your life. Being older, I have experienced quite a few of life's curves balls both tragic and pleasant and therefore I tend have more emotional pauses, as I prgoress through a book.

[Svidrigailov]

The more unsubtle the attempt to elicit my sympathies, the more likely I am to well up, but usually even the most transparent appeals to my sentiment only blur my vision and don't draw tears. Cinema's most derisory efforts can shake me like a limp marionette, bringing me to the brink of lachrymose outpourings, but a book will have an utterly different impact, like the disquiet induced in me by the death in The Violent Bear it Away. Up on the screen, that passage could have been dramatised into a sequence fit to reduce me to wet-eyed anguish, but on the page it caused a momentary sense of acute despair before I dragged my eyes away from the fiction and remembered myself. But even though I find books usually engage more profound, ambivalent feelings than an inconsequential instance of vicarious crying, they can be just as successful at mounting calculated emotional climaxes, such as the heart-warming denouement in The Story of Forgetting. That I don't encounter such cases frequently could be more down to the kind of novels I occupy myself with, rather than an illustration of the differing effects observed in film and literature; but I do think there's something in what a poster suggested above, namely that visual stimulation can be more immediately potent when it comes to calling on your empathy and triggering sentimental responses.

[Alexander III]

I think Charles brought up good points. The cinema appeals to our visual sense which is far more typed to our emotions - that is why reading about the dying kids in Africa or seeing images of them on the television; the latter is always used as it makes a stronger impression upon everyone.

So yes literature begins at a disadvantage to cinema in this regard. But literature or specifically the novel or the epic has an equally strong if not greater advantage of the cinema, to wit; Length. For instance it took me a month to read War and Peace last summer. And In one month I became so immersed in the characters and the settings and they were so humanly portrayed by Tolstoy, that I felt I knew each and every character intimately, They were just as real to me as my intimacies in real life. And when a certain protagonist of the Novel died, I cried like an infant. Because I had come to know him so well, that it affected me just as much as a real person in real life whom I admired and loved, as if they had just died.

And herein lies a certain genius in the best novelists. They were able, through solely the use of the ineffectual and vulgar thing we call words; too portray such characters that are beyond-human, in that they are humans but humans which we relate and understand and love and so they become intimate and true to us. And soon we suffer their pains just as we would our own.

[Helga]

My first reaction to this thread was just 'What how can that be' but when I think about it I do understand what you mean.I think another part is different things have emotional effects on us. Reading 'The Collector' by Fowles years ago after being told it was about a horrible man and a victim I saw a love story.

Dickens is one to bring emotional responses I think. Maybe this is something we do more as kids, I at least was more emotional then. I read Black beauty after loosing a family member and I remember how upset I got at certain parts and was reminded of my life (it's easy to see yourself in animal form as a kid I think).

dreams often bring up things that have been 'going on' underneath, and can bring more emotions than a book.

[dark desire]

I actually would consider myself to be a "visual person". Perhaps I have been "tainted by visual media"


Try not watching anything on visual media strictly for three months. It might be interesting to notice change!


I think Charles brought up good points. The cinema appeals to our visual sense which is far more typed to our emotions - that is why reading about the dying kids in Africa or seeing images of them on the television; the latter is always used as it makes a stronger impression upon everyone.

I'd like to disagree here. Actors' emotions do not arouse any emotion in me. Someone crying on screen has never made me cry. I cry when a character goes through a struggle or something sad happens.

May be I have watched too much of sentimental teary stuff in cinema. In India they make a lot of it. :P But still, I 'd like you to elaborate a little here - "visual sense is far more typed to our emotions". How?

Images do affect in a stronger way momentarily but then my mind comes hard with the impression that images are easy to create and are instruments of propaganda much more than writings are.

I agree with your length idea with literature. To add to it, a reader can choose different speeds to read as well, which is not possible in cinema, or even music for that matter.

[kelby_lake]

I also agree about length. With long novels, one has to make quite a commitment and you inevitably do get drawn into the world of the characters. With a film, we do not spend as long with the characters. We watch the film, cry/feel emotional, and it's done.

As for literature not provoking emotions in you, if you demand something to provoke emotion in you, it simply won't. There's loads of people who never cry when watching films, even when they are surrounded by other people crying.

[kiki1982]

Charles and Alexander are spot on. It is down to your own makeup but also down to the author. Most authors do not succeed.

I'll have to continue with Clarissa. I am taking a rest to gain some more interest again. It moves too slowly for me, but I am still determined to read it.

One of those moments that made me cry was Jean Valjean's last scene in Les Misérables. That was sad, man, and as you have followed him for about 1,500 pages, it becomes even sadder.

Oh, what happened to Porthos in the musketeer trilogy was also tear-inducing, also what happened afterwards (I won't say any more). But you have spent a whole 2,000 pages with those characters. Knowing that you are reading the last book in itself is something that will make you sad.

I can count the novels that actually made me emotional on one or two hands (over a course of about 20 years).

I used to get emotional really easily with films, but not anymore. I think it is because I see that that is not how real people are (compared to when I was younger).

The first time I did cry when I was 14.

I think indeed, it is how 'real' characters are that decides if I do get emotional.

Maybe you haven't read the right book yet.

[Charles Darnay]

I'll have to continue with Clarissa. I am taking a rest to gain some more interest again. It moves too slowly for me, but I am still determined to read it.


There is a part towards the beginning where it just lingers on for far too long: particularly the part immediately after she runs away. But, as I've said elsewhere, the second half of Clarissa is among the best literature I have read, it just takes some patience to get there.


IBut still, I 'd like you to elaborate a little here - "visual sense is far more typed to our emotions". How?


There is psychological thought to this. We, by nature, tend towards mimicry, so if you see someone cry (in real life) something inside of you will be triggered and you may feel teary, even if you have no idea what the situation is. Film works the same way, with the understanding that bad films that are just so over the top will completely shatter the "sadness" in one bathetic sweep.

[LitNetIsGreat]

I'm also not sure that I agree with the visual over the written word, in terms of such emotional attachment. I don't think any text or film has ever made me cry, no matter how attached I felt towards it. If anything music seems to trigger such emotions in me more than any other medium.

[Delta40]

I bawled my eyes out while reading the death of Janes friend Helen in Jane Eyre. I think it is about the person, our levels of emotionality fluctuate and differ for one thing and we are triggered by different mediums.

[hawthorns]

I don't see any reason to be worried. I'd guess that the percentage of readers who bawl over a book is very, very small. Some people are just more emotional than others, just as some authors and genres are better/more likely at drawing those feelings out. Very few movies and novels have given me 'moments of weakness,' with the possible exception of inspiring scenes like the end of Braveheart (I'm a Wallace), Rudy, Shawshank, Life is Beautiful, etc.

But...if we're talking opera, that's another story entirely. For me, no other medium is as powerful or emotionally stimulating, not even close. The best of them have highs that leave you looking down at heaven and lows that can melt you faster than the Wicked Witch of the West.

[Delta40]

I don't see any reason to be worried. I'd guess that the percentage of readers who bawl over a book is very, very small.

You're right. That is a guess. Given the vast genres out there, the diversity of readers, who really knows?

[Charles Darnay]

But...if we're talking opera, that's another story entirely. For me, no other medium is as powerful or emotionally stimulating, not even close. The best of them have highs that leave you looking down at heaven and lows that can melt you faster than the Wicked Witch of the West.

The ending of La Boheme: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-zyzuuS9NY&feature=related

.....

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Where's Waldo? always got to me . . . a truly lost soul . . . WHERE IS HE? :sad:

[hawthorns]

The ending of La Boheme: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-zyzuuS9NY&feature=related

.....

Good call, Charles. Boheme gets me everytime. And, of course, my favorite:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkrGhpKZN6o

[kylio27]

Hey guys, thanks for the discussion. I really enjoy reading what others think about this, especially when they're not being rude about it.

I didn't really intend for this to turn into a "film vs. novels" argument, but I can understand why it went there. If I were to extend my thoughts on that, I would have to clarify that not many films have made me cry, they just connect with me in a more emotional way. It's always been like that for me. Even if it's only the pit that I get in the back of my throat. I never get that pit when I read.

Here's a good example of a scene from a film called Whale Rider. It has a young girl reciting a speech for her school performance in honour of her grandfather, who did not show up to watch it. It's kind of hard to "get it" without seeing the rest of the film, but I chose this scene because it is brutally honest, and presents a character who is expressing emotion(and crying). It's hard to tell that she's acting here.

(It's just her speech. It starts at 1:08:20)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNmyq4SNqGo&t=108m43s

The first time I saw that when I watched the film, I really choked up. And let's say that even if it wouldn't make me cry, or whatever, it would still strongly resonate with me. I just don't think the pathos would be as significant had I just read it...ya' feel me?

[dark desire]

There is psychological thought to this. We, by nature, tend towards mimicry, so if you see someone cry (in real life) something inside of you will be triggered and you may feel teary, even if you have no idea what the situation is. Film works the same way, with the understanding that bad films that are just so over the top will completely shatter the "sadness" in one bathetic sweep.

Phenomenology systematically refutes this. Films do not work the same way as real life. It is not the case of bad or good performance. Modern audience are always aware of the fallacy of the medium of cinema. If you see a transvestite doing something comic on screen you will laugh while if you will see one in real life near you, you will be horrified. Take another example, if a heterosexual man sees a desperate homosexual man tormented by society on screen, the emotional response will be of sympathy but if the same heterosexual man sees the same homosexual man in real life, the emotional response will be of terror. Modern audience are aware that cinema is only performance and that's why visuals do not have any more correlation to emotions than written words. Personal attuning to different forms of expression is a different issue. I find myself most profoundly attached to written words.

[Charles Darnay]

If you see a transvestite doing something comic on screen you will laugh while if you will see one in real life near you, you will be horrified. Take another example, if a heterosexual man sees a desperate homosexual man tormented by society on screen, the emotional response will be of sympathy but if the same heterosexual man sees the same homosexual man in real life, the emotional response will be of terror.

What?

I'm going to ignore this for a second.....

Yes, films and reality are difference, and the audience will always be aware of this, no matter how engrossed. But I don't think they are different enough to distort raw emotion. A baby crying in agony is a disturbing sight/sound - whether in reality on or a screen, you will feel some form of discomfort while watching it.


Getting back to the quoted part.....what?

[Scheherazade]

Where's Waldo? always got to me . . . a truly lost soul . . . WHERE IS HE? :sad:We would like to believe that he is at a much better place now... Smiling down upon us.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

We would like to believe that he is at a much better place now... Smiling down upon us.

That very thought is all that allows me to sleep at night.

[Calidore]

What?

I'm going to ignore this for a second.....

Yes, films and reality are difference, and the audience will always be aware of this, no matter how engrossed. But I don't think they are different enough to distort raw emotion. A baby crying in agony is a disturbing sight/sound - whether in reality on or a screen, you will feel some form of discomfort while watching it.


Getting back to the quoted part.....what?

Yes. I don't like heights, and while I know a film is a film, that doesn't dampen the instinctive physical reaction when I have a view of a height in front of me. Whether it's the ending of Peter Jackson's King Kong or Harold Lloyd's Safety First, I'm gripping dents in the armrests and frequently looking away.


Films do not work the same way as real life. It is not the case of bad or good performance. Modern audience are always aware of the fallacy of the medium of cinema.

[SNIP]

Modern audience are aware that cinema is only performance and that's why visuals do not have any more correlation to emotions than written words. Personal attuning to different forms of expression is a different issue. I find myself most profoundly attached to written words.

Well-written and well-performed emotionality will certainly have a sympathetic effect. I've never teared up at a book, but I have at occasional films and even a couple of comics.


If you see a transvestite doing something comic on screen you will laugh while if you will see one in real life near you, you will be horrified. Take another example, if a heterosexual man sees a desperate homosexual man tormented by society on screen, the emotional response will be of sympathy but if the same heterosexual man sees the same homosexual man in real life, the emotional response will be of terror.

I don't know if your bizarre generalization of people reacting with horror to transvestites or terror to homosexuals comes from your culture or from you assigning your individual prejudices to the world at large, but no.

[Calidore]

Deleted--mod post merge fail, and this one is unnecessary now anyway.

[miyako73]

How can a book make me cry when after finishing it my eyes are too tired to even blink? It will move me but won't make me cry the way poems do.

And the first poem that made me cry at 10 was "The Man With A Hoe," which made me feel the harshness of poverty, servitude, and labor.

[dark desire]

Getting back to the quoted part.....what?


I don't know if your bizarre generalization of people reacting with horror to transvestites or terror to homosexuals comes from your culture or from you assigning your individual prejudices to the world at large, but no.

I am not trying to generalize anything.

I appreciate your empathy and sensitivity but you cannot force that on the entire human race. Yes people in my part of the world will be horrified seeing a transvestite or a suffering homosexual. Can you hold them wrong or guilty of something?

And this is not my point. I hope you can imagine some event that will be interesting on screen and distasteful, repulsive or threatening in real life. All I am trying to do is to bring attention to the difference between experiencing cinema and experiencing reality.

Particular events - a crying child, heights, water or fire - can arouse acute emotional responses from the viewer particularly sensitive to these. Similarity can be sketched between the experience of reality and of cinema. But momentary emotions and responses cannot account for the entire experience of cinema holistically.

When motion pictures were fresh invention, people used to get amazed at the slightest of camera tricks. Now special effects alone cannot trick us, we always need a story. The more one watches cinema the more the fallacy of the medium becomes apparent.

Coming back to my point - One can also be acutely emotional about certain ways of writing or certain words. Like I am particularly sensitive to the word darkness. I feel aroused not just in my mind but also physically at the mere mention of this word. Images - static or moving - do not have any superiority of affecting human emotions to other forms of human perception. I only wanted to refute the generalization made.

[kylio27]

When motion pictures were fresh invention, people used to get amazed at the slightest of camera tricks. Now special effects alone cannot trick us, we always need a story. The more one watches cinema the more the fallacy of the medium becomes apparent.

You have to take into account that there are examples of "good" and "bad" SFX in films, from any era. And there are still some SFX that baffle me, either in how they were accomplished, or how I couldn't notice them to begin with. Most people know that the dinos in Jurassic Park are CGI, but not many realize just how much digital effects shots are in Forrest Gump(it's just accomplished so seamlessly).

Also, it's not just the SFX that should be considered, but the cinematography, the composition of a shot, the lighting, the acting. All these elements can come together(if done well) to create an engaging, and engrossing experience. It's just like in literature, how a great writer is able to better convey what he/she wants to the reader, to engage them.