Do you remember the 17th element in the periodic
table? Unless you’re a chemist (or) a chemistry teacher (or) a professional who
deals with periodic table, you wouldn’t know. But, you still remember the
storyline of Titanic and the fact that Jack died saving Rose, assuming that you
saw the film some ten, fifteen years ago. Why? Is it because Di Caprio and
Winslet are attractive (or) celebrities (or) because they are your friends? No,
it is more than that.
You felt the cohesion in the story, the emotions behind each
character, and the somewhat related incidents in your life. One might ask, I
can memorize the periodic table, study the science behind it and make perfect
sense out of it, classifying the elements into noble gases, halogens,
lathanides, actinides, and so on. You can, but you need to make some mental
effort, less for some and more for others, nonetheless, you have to converge
your undivided attention on the subject in a deliberate manner. Conversely,
well written movies (or) songs for that matter, doesn’t demand deliberate
attention from you. It just flows and take you with it, making you immerse in
its intricacies and hidden nooks in its bed.
Why is the difference? What makes us move in a cinema hall
and what makes us lose focus in a classroom? Well, the complete answer and a
far more dedicated research lies in the book, ‘Thinking, fast and slow,’ penned
by Daniel Kahneman. Kahneman classifies the mode of thinking into two, System
1 and System 2. To put it in simple words, System 1 does the intuitive thinking
while System 2 is responsible for the mental activities that demand attention,
for example, complex computations, though not limited to mathematics.
System 1 and… System
2
Periodic table, Statistics, a new skill you are learning,
etc., requires your attention and needs you to work deliberately, they are
taken care of by your System 2. Seeing a movie, hearing a song, driving a car
in a lonely highway, etc., doesn’t require much mental effort and are taken
care of by System 1. System 1 is also responsible for the biased decisions we
take without weighing the odds. Remember this, we will come back to this later.
All being said, don’t think that System 1 and System 2 are different regions in
your brain. Like the pseudo scientific theory that proclaims left hemisphere of
the brain is responsible for analytical thinking and right hemisphere of brain
is responsible for creative thinking. That is horseshit. Yeah. That’s what it
is.
Finding the flow
Okay, so we have known what System 1 and System 2 are. Now,
we should understand another concept. It is popularly known as ‘flow’ by the
psychologists. Flow is a state of mind in which, we work more energetically,
spontaneously, stay emotionally connected to our work on a whole other level.
Artists, writers, sports persons, athletes, and researchers are some of the
people who experience flow in a day-to-day basis. Everyone would have
experienced flow in their life, it is just that, few occupations demand it more
from an individual. To attain ‘flow’ the task at hand shouldn’t be too complex
nor too simple. If it’s complex, you would try hard and get frustrated. If it’s
too simple, you would get bored. So, a task should be interesting and familiar
at the same time for you to get immersed in it.
A well written script checks all the boxes for above discussed
things. It hooks you in the first 20 minutes with an exciting (or) stirring
incidents, builds up suspense with intricate knots in the story, makes the
characters interact to move the plot, keeps expanding upon the cornerstone (the
one liner), and ends it all with a well fused climax, tying the loose ends. If
a script is filled with niche it will lose your attention. Unless there is a
major difference in the way of storytelling, System 1 won’t help you and System
2 won’t be stimulated at all. When a script demands enough attention and entice
you with its emotional context, it wins your heart. You enter a state of flow,
without even doing any work. Your System 1 notes minute changes in a character
through noticing the looks, smiles, gestures, and reactions to the things
happening around. Interestingly, all of this happens in the subconscious.
That’s why rushed death of a character makes you frown, as in, Daenerys
Targaryen from ‘Game of Thrones,’ even though her death is inevitable given her seeping
madness. While, Jack’s death in ‘Titanic’ feels disturbing yet poetic.
Art as a medium of
revolution
We discussed earlier that System 1 is also responsible for
making biased decisions, right? Well, an artist can change a bias in the
society by weaving a story or coloring the canvas, through expressing the
untold. Creating a discussion with the subconscious through the medium of art.
Michael Jackson did with his songs what Nelson Mandela wanted. Muhammad Ali
became a symbol of revolution, representing the same ideas which Malcolm X
possessed. Bruce Lee’s movies communicate his philosophies to a millennial kid
born after his death. ‘The Pianist’ expresses the pain of Jews as much as the
memoir of Anne Frank. ‘Joker’ breaks the mirage of dualism in movies and
attempts to provide a realistic picture of the human psyche, succeeding in
parts if not all.
One might think that discrimination is a work of System 2,
but it ain’t that simple. System 1 comes into play. Avoiding biases needs the
help of System 2. For a high class person to treat a low-class person with
respect, it needs the help of System 2. For a White American - who was brought
up in a discriminating environment - to respect an African-American, it needs
the help of System 2. For a researcher to not tweak his findings on the basis
of a single intuitive idea, it needs the help of System 2. For people to vote
for an eligible candidate, it needs the help of System 2. Yet, everything isn’t
lost for our species. Art can do the groundwork in the subconscious mind, for
System 2 to recognize the glitch in the matrix. And cinema is an excellent
contemporary medium of art.
