I think people have truly lost any ability to be patient with storytelling.
‘I don’t understand this’ They’ll explain it if you wait.
‘I don’t like how this episode left things hanging’ There’s a continuation next week.
‘This character is flat’ Wait for them to be fleshed out.
So many of the complaints I see about shows lately are people being confused by things THAT THE SHOW WANTS YOU TO BE CONFUSED BY THATS THE FUN OF MYSTERY AND FORESHADOWING YOU ABSOLUTE GOBLINS THE MAIN CHARACTER IS ALSO CONFUSED AND THEYRE GONNA DO A BIG REVEAL AND EXPLANATION LATER IF YOU WOULD JUST FUCKING WAIT
To be fair. With a lot of modern media, the odds of not getting a big reveal and explanation are… unfortunately high.
The art movie where there is only confusion, vibes and aesthetics is absolutely a thing. But it has always been a niche thing because the average viewer wants to understand what’s going on when they watch something. And in the past, the average viewer medium followed through on that. Mysteries are only mysterious until the reveal at the end. Chekhov’s guns get fired. And like a kind of suspension of disbelief, people were willing to suspend their annoyance at being confused, trusting things to make sense eventually.
But these days, shows end on cliffhangers and then don’t get renewed. Movie series change directors halfway through and never build on the promises of the first part. There is a hunger for immediate gratification because people have gotten used to “delayed” gratification being synonymous with no gratification at all. The trust is gone.
(…how is this so true? When it’s also true that watching the Tron 1982 movie felt like looking into another universe full of beautiful intricate puzzles, because I’d barely ever seen a film that conveyed so much through Showing not Telling, and it felt like every movie in the past decade was either pounding an obvious point into your head hard enough to concuss, or just making straight-up zero sense at all)
