The Stranger’s Embrace
I am Manu, and I use humour as a defence mechanism. What did that sound like? Do I sound supercool, or superlame? Well maybe neither, but Chandler sure has generated many slightly teary-eyed ‘Aww’ from the people, garnering a whopping 100 Billion views, with the very same dialogue. And the reason I have used this line to introduce myself right at the beginning is that the world loves Mr Bing. It sounded way too cool in my head, but getting it out on paper, this line is never being used again. And this is just the tip of the iceberg, with thousands of binge-worthy content coming out every other month, and people starting to switch to OTT subscription platforms, the boundaries of the real world and the fictional multiverse have been disappearing for a long time. As we move farther into the future, the probability of them being completely invisible is tending towards unity. The onset of the pandemic, which has led us to be stuck inside four wall confinements, is acting as a catalyst for the same.
The phenomenon of ‘Stranger’s Embrace’, that is at least what I will call it, is something which people who tend to be lonely (I think it to be fair to add myself to this category) experience. We tend to get hooked and binge-watch any rational content available where the protagonist has or might have a decent social circle. We might not even realize it, but we do start relating to fictional characters. We subconsciously start embodying their personalities hoping to find acceptance not only among our peers but also the society as a whole. Who wouldn’t love a Joey or maybe a Robin Scherbatsky? If I ask myself who I am, I am pretty sure I will be too overwhelmed to answer but if I just reframe the question to Who am I in terms of characters from TV Series? And Boom, take Ted Mosby, Jack Peralta, Chandler Bing, Mike Ross, Harvey Specter and maybe a few more, put them in a juicer or maybe a blender, give it a good stir, pour it out, probably add a pinch of Phoebe, Donna and Barney, garnish it with Elliot, Hendricks and Bachman with a final umbrella of Devi Vishwakumar. Well, I am so confused at this moment with numerous names in my head, but I hope you get the point. And yeah, I know I need to curb my screen time.
The two most important pillars that the so-called Gen-Z is standing on today are ‘Acceptance’ and ‘Validation’. With the world racing at a never before pace, travelling to the distant corners of the world at a click of a button, people living pseudo-transparent lives flashing across the social media, technological advancements on the verge of creating the metaverse and on-demand platforms having a viewership higher than ever, among the other things, we certainly are building more canyons among us than the bridges. The need for constant approval added to the interpersonal distances makes us wonder the sweet little scenario of What If? What If I had a life like my favourite TV character? What if what they do on-screen works in real life? And slowly enough we start trying to. And the world might find it cute at first, you might get all the attention you thought you need but sooner or later the bubble is going to burst. And it isn’t a pretty scene when your fake bubble starts collapsing and all you have for support is another TV series with another highly like character with another weird personality trait.
Is it possible to instead of watching just a TV Series like a possibility in real life, to watch it like a set of well-trained actors reading out of a script that has been re-edited thousand times just to woo the viewers and psychologically make them hooked to it? Maybe it might be in the case of some people, but I, for a fact, still thought that the Friends Apartment was upstairs in the same building whose shot came at least once in every episode until the Reunion when it was clearly shown as a set at Warner Bros. I think I was not dumb enough to know there would be a camera, but never had I ever tried to think how exactly it would be. For us, they aren’t just a couple of actors paired around on the set trying to create content, they become more. They become lifelike role models. They become the people we look up to. And slowly their ideal fictional world starts to seep into our real world. It might be fascinating to have a life like theirs but let’s face it it isn’t real. Try hogging an orange couch at a Cafe downtown without ordering anything amidst the rush hour, no Gunther is gonna let you stay, trust me.
