I hear the term “all the feels” around the
internet, slang, and text message. If we
follow Urban Dictionary, then feels is short for feelings— to evoke an
emotional response. Yet almost always we hear feels refer to the pop culture
phenomena. Are they the shivers when you
feel the income of a romantic relationship in books? The danger of dragons
prowling around in The Hobbit movies? Or, maybe, the face palm when I know the
character will do something stupid?
In context, I must come up with the
definition of emotion, but hold on a minute don’t emotions equal feelings. I’ll
concede to the Oxford Online Dictionary’s definition of emotion meaning
“natural instinctive state of mind deriving from one’s circumstances, mood, or
relationships with others”, but the dictionary gets even more exact by saying
“instinctive or intuitive feeling as distinguished from reasoning or
knowledge.” I would even hesitate that
emotions are completely different from reasoning or logic and that we don’t
need justification from our situation. The emotions we feel towards pop culture
are simply the state our body automatically wants to put us.
So, does our body enjoy these shivering and
nailbiting sessions we are forced into? I ponder this question about whether or
not what I feel while reading a book is legitimate, after all they are caused
by an inanimate objects that are portraying an animate people. These “emotions”
are being caused by objects that have no business being a part of my cornered
little part of the world. Yet still I like having these complicated parts of my
life even further stretched by the fact of imaginary worlds causing turmoil in
my stomach. I must point out however that the physical symptoms of these
feelings are not imaginary— the butterflies are real.
In a culture dominated by teenage girls,
myself included, the book blogging world even has some blogs that have spate ratings
based upon feels. I look at those ratings as knee jerk reactions to the book—
probably the best reactions to base a popular book rating on. Most of my
reviews are based upon the book and what my initial reaction to book is. I don’t
like the overdone synthesis of worldbuilding, plot, and character development
that is often done in reviews. My own emotions, the portrayal of the problem in
a complex way, and how the character becomes more mature is how I define a
book.
In the end feels are not only the great
buildup of pent up sighing and crying at the end of a book intensified by
adolescent hormones, but rather also a process connecting with a book. With all
the turmoil of teenagedhood I connect because of the feel. When I’m not necessarily
good with people I can have real relationships with characters. The characters
demand things of me— happiness, sadness, anger, nervousness, all part of a
human experience that catch me from being emotionless.
