Expressing and Repressing Feelings & Emotions

Expressing feelings, emotions :

INTRO

What people feel and experience makes them who they are and can even change the course of their lives, as illustrated by so many novels, poems and plays. Feelings and emotions contribute to shaping one’s identity, in other words, people feel therefore they are, which is also why the way they love, the way they hate, or the way they simply live depends on their personalities. Like everyone, artists and writers seek to find a balance between reason and emotions through their art.

Love,joy, grief, sorrow, anger, hatred and more are the fuel of art, whether they are transformed into stories, poems, novels, music or simply expressed. Because feelings and emotions involve self expression, they have given birth to many different literary genres and artistic movements not to say art in itself.

Question : how expressing and repressing feelings & emotions is represented through art ?

I- WHEN YOU HIDE YOUR FEELINGS

1) Frederic William Burton – Meeting on the turret stairs

the first document is a painting by Frederic William Burton called Meeting on the turret stairs.

It represent 2 lovers about to be separated.

They come from completely opposite social backgrounds and yet love connects them. The man, a knight, must leave to fight and may never return (even if we know that in the story told here he doesn’t come back) he is hunted by the brothers of the woman who wants to kill him. The girl, who comes from a rich and powerful family, cannot afford to have an affair with the man she loves, or be in disrepute in the eyes of her relatives and other influential families.

freely express their feelings towards each other publicly is here impossible. they are doomed to love each other without really being able to approach for eternity. it is then that arrives this short time period in the staircase where the two contenders meet and exchange a sign.

The man grabs the woman’s arm and kisses her while the woman tries not to show her despair at seeing the man she loves leave. It seems like she is really struggling to fight against her feelings.

And the singer of The Cure, Robert Smith seems to have a similar struggle against his own feelings.

2) The Cure – Boys Don’t Cry

Here the document is a song produced by The Cure and released in 1979 called Boys Don’t Cry.

This song deals with love and regrets the singer is feeling.

The singer doesn’t want anybody to know what he really feels and haide his sadness and grief behind laughs to seem happy. He is scared of the eyes of others and to be judged if he cries or shows his true feelings.

He tries to laugh although he wants to cry (or is crying when he is alone) also to look more confident as if he was entirely released from the separation he has gone through.

Then as the song goes on he keeps on laughing, but this time because he realizes he wasted time hiding his true feelings behind laughter. He now laughs at himself because he knows he should have cried and let his heart speak instead of wanting to stay within the norm that says « Boys don’t cry ».

Nearly 30years later, Scott Mescudi, 24, writes « Day 'N' Nite » in which he talks about deeling with depression, and repressing his emotions.

3) KiD CuDi – Day ‘N’ Nite

In « Day 'N' Nite », CuDi does not speak of love (at least it is not the main subject), but rather of his current condition. His uncle, with whom he was very close, just passed away while they were on the outs And he deeply regrets it.

He then enters a very dark period of his life during which his only activities are going to work, going home, locking himself up in his room, writing, and taking drugs.

In this song, Scott (his real name) is trying his hardest to escape the darkness (depression) as best he can, but he never seems to catch a break. He’s in a lot of pain but he doesn’t tell anybody about it. You would think he’s asleep because he keeps to himself all the time. Although he’s suffering from clinical depression, the pain gets smothered when he slips into his “white Nikes” to go out.

He struggles not to show what he really feels during the day when he is at work or with people, but when night falls and he finds himself alone in his room, he makes an introspection and writes to free himself from all that he feels. And we can see it represented in the video clip as he is shown happy and with a girl on a date in a « Day » scene, and right after a cut we can see him in a « Night » scene chased by large demons or shadows in a dark forest.

At this time, Scott feels depressed and lost after a loss.

4) Alexander Payne - Extract from « The Descendants »

This extract is from The Descendant, a film by Alexander Payne, made in 2011.

It stages a man coming to see his wife at the hospital to tell her something.

The scene takes place in a hospital ward where a husband is coming to see his wife in a coma with his 2 children.

But !!! Before he lets the children come in the room, he pulls the curtains so he can’t be heard by them (the children not the curtains obviously…). He in fact needs some intimacy to speak to her.

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