Sad stories always make us cry. But these days, we are drawn to them like bees to honey. The recent announcement of the world's forever teen Archie Andrews being killed may have sent shockwaves throughout the world, but Archie Comics CEO Jon Goldwater has called the decision "the most natural conclusion to the series".
Payal Chatterjee, 38, a Kolkata-based airline executive who grew up loving the series like many of us says, "As a teenager, I'd often imagine how Archie's story would end. The maximum I could think of was whether he's going to end up with Veronica or Betty, or if there would be a surprise character waiting ahead. Archie dying was unthinkable. This is too morbid compared to our times."
Grief takes centre stage
But times have changed. The decade after recession has produced gritty, realistic, even grim young adult fiction. Researchers conducting a recent study in UK, on books of our times, revealed that there were around 600 words relating to 'anger', 'disgust', 'fear' and 'sadness' that have appeared in more than five million English novels and factual books in the last five years. They found similar results for the US and Germany.
An example of such a book is RJ Palacio's Wonder, which was No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list in 2013. It's a heartwrenching story of a 10-year-old physically deformed boy, who wishes to be treated normally in school. In John Greene's bestseller, The Fault with Our Stars, the protagonist is a 16-year-old cancer patient who joins a support group and falls in love with a boy of the same age, an amputee, who is also a bone cancer survivor. Some are science fiction novels with dystopian futures like The Hunger Games and Divergent, which have been turned into blockbuster movie franchises.
Dystopian or realistic, sad or morbid; the common thread in these stories is the deepest underlying emotions — pain, anxiety, fear, anger and shame —in a young adult. What has changed over the years?
To begin with, the accepted age group of a young adult is 16-22, but these days 13-15 year olds are also reading this genre.
Social commentator Santosh Desai says, "Because of the internet reality, kids are consuming emotions much early. Maybe realistic fiction is becoming popular because kids imagine themselves more as adults early in life and want parents to treat them as equals. They want elders to grant them personhood (having individual and human characteristics and feelings)."
Amrita Chowdhury, publishing director at Harlequin, has another explanation as to why sad stories are being lapped up by young adults. "We live in a hyper-consumerist world, where social posturing (mostly through digital media) is more important than actually connecting with people. Somewhere, young adults are losing touch with themselves. Realistic stories that have protagonists dealing with identity crisis are helping teens connect with the humanity that lies within themselves."
Hormone rush
Psychotherapist Dr Seema Hingorrany explains, "Dealing with the 'unknown' gives young adults a hormone rush because they are at a transitory age. They are grappling with the realities of two worlds - teen and adulthood. Reading realistic stories makes them feel like an adult without having experienced adulthood."
In a world driven by youth culture, it's only natural that they become the focus of the stories told. Real issues that affect youngsters are thus steadily entering the pages of young adult fiction.
Award-winning American author of young adult fiction, Chris Crutcher, when asked about the main objective of writing on themes like molestation, racism, substance abuse, death, abortion and homosexuality (some of his books have been banned by certain universities) had said, "When I reached my 20s, I realised my upbringing had sugar-coated the world instead of preparing me for it". He wants young readers to be exposed to gritty life situations. "Some teens are too sheltered, and others could use a little shelter. I think the value in young adult fiction is in the ability to bring dark subjects into the open where they are not so dark anymore; where they can be talked about and considered by teens and adults alike," he explained in an interview to a website.
The current generation is severely competitive yet lonely, functioning in a robotic world. "Literature that deals with raw emotions, and tells stories of an individual's solitary battle against the world, helps youngsters deal with loneliness and gear up as they get lined up for the big, bad world out there," says author Ravi.
Gloomy words dominate fiction
In the UK, researchers used a method called Literary Misery Index (LMI) to compute how, historically, words describing emotions like 'pain', 'sadness', 'anger' increased in books right after a decade of economic gloom. The highest LMI found in fiction was in the 1940s (post WW-II), followed by the recession-hit 1980s. The post-Depression era of the 1920s came third. After the recession in 2008, we are witnessing a similar trend. The future will see more dark and realisctic stories, say these researchers.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/followceleb.cms?alias=Archie Comics,Veronica,the New York Times,Seema Hingorrany,Jon Goldwater
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