The Healing Power of Pop

It's been something of an emotional weekend - I've been moving out of the Avenues and into an apartment on the other side of town. I find I'm going to miss my old digs and the neighbors I used to have. So, while packing, I stuck in one of my old Pushing Daisies DVDs... and proceeded to bawl my eyes out let a single tear slide sexily down my cheek.

I've long thought that entertainment should do more than provide escapism. Sure, I mean, psychologically it does some good for people to, as a wise man once said, "forget about life for a while." Still, I've thought that people who sought entertainment solely for the escape are doing themselves a disservice.

I don't think I understood quite how I expected movies, books, TV shows, and the like to help, though, until just recently. Surprisingly enough, I made kind of an off-hand comment (dare I say a complaint?) a bit ago about how much I was bugged by the musical The Drowsy Chaperone which actually sums up what I now believe entertainment can and should do for a body:

[You] have plays like The Drowsy Chaperone, which affirms that the purpose of musical theater is only to temporarily distract audiences from their problems, rather than enable them to confront those problems.

I've done a pretty decent job of suppressing a lot of emotions. I don't really like to tip my hand that much on what I'm feeling, even to myself. For some reason, watching the saccharine goodness of Pushing Daisies helped me to face what I was feeling.

I've encountered this phenomenon previously, but I feel a bit better equipped now to make my point known: Good entertainment can provide healing by exposing emotions a person may be experiencing but not know how to express. Positive emotions can be felt more deeply, while negative ones can be expressed appropriately and then exorcised.

"The power of pie compels you!"

So I say yet again - mindless entertainment should be more than just mindless entertainment. It should be restorative.