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One of the things that continues to strike me as I teach movie classes this term is how much more sensitive my students here are than students in the US would be to the emotional impact of events on screen.  We’ve been watching Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, which is beautiful even if it’s difficult to understand the characters’ actions without the benefit of the book’s depth, and I found today that several of the girls were actually crying during the war scenes.  This was after I provided a warning– and gave them permission to close their eyes if they needed to– because I did expect it to have a strong effect on them based on their reactions to other films.  I even considered fast forwarding through these parts but decided that the importance of the characters’ actions during these scenes outweighed any potential for emotional upset.

Of course, their increased sensitivity works both ways.  Lovers finally getting together are usually accompanied by loud happy sighs.

Some of this difference may stem simply from an absence of stigmatization of showing strong feelings because of a movie rather than from an actually heightened sensitivity.  Or perhaps the absence of that stigmatization in and of itself enables an increased sensitivity as they’re not forced to struggle not to feel (and since the act of expressing an emotion creates feedback to tell the mind that it feels said emotion).  On the other hand, all this could come down to comparatively limited media exposure which reduces the personal necessity of numbing oneself to its effects.

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