La rutina del entretenimiento misántropo en las series de televisión y películas mainstream contemporáneas: la evolución del pesimismo cultural desde Hobbes a HBO

The routine of misanthropic entertaintment in contemporary mainstream television series and movies: the evolution of cultural pessimism from Hobbes to HBO

Abstract

Since the dawn of modernity, when Hobbes’ leviathan, Schopenhauer’s pessimism, Nietzsche’s will to power or Freudian psychoanalysis appeared, the epidemic of the negative, as embodied by Schopenhauer, has been culturally considered as an element that is defined as primordial in the human being. Thus, from culture, whether from the passage from the short story to the novel or from classical cinema to modern cinema, pessimism, violence, cruelty and the negative were installed in the homes of the West, giving rise in the 20th century to existentialism, nihilism and the appearance of the artistic avant-gardes. The main objective of this study has been to unravel the codes of misanthropic entertainment latent in today’s mainstream audiovisual culture and to explore the prevalence of cruelty and pessimism in the entertainment of today’s viewers, entering into the norm of fun pessimism or depressing fun. Through an exploratory critical literature review, the results show that current mass series and films give prestige to the misanthropic and pessimistic under the pretense of the spectacle of cruelty. In short, an epidemic of depressing entertainment and psychoanalytical cruelty that filters reality into viewers’ leisure time.