I remember watching F.R.I.E.N.D.S when I was in 10th grade. It was quite popular among my friends and I found it difficult to take part in their conversation without understanding “F.R.I.E.N.D.S references”. Even though I couldn’t catch up on certain references, I managed to enjoy the show. Years later, moving into the 3rd year of the pandemic, I found myself “re-watching” it. With the huge number of new shows, series and films piling up on my watchlist, I wonder why I chose F.R.I.E.N.D.S over all of them!
Finding solace in remnants of pop culture seems to be bizarre but it isn’t uncommon now. Psychologists say gravitating to things we are familiar with is a coping mechanism against the anxiety of confronting unfamiliar events. Pandemic has brought with it unexpected changes in routines and unfamiliar work conditions which demands divided attention between work life and personal life. This squeezes up my processing capacity and to escape from the fatigue, I decided to “re-watch” F.R.I.E.N.D.S. It is pretty obvious that I’m aware of all the characters, events and in fact, quite a lot of dialogues from the show. Yet I find it soothing, satiating my impulse to escape reality. I realised this isn’t just me but many people out there take harbour in their “comfort show” to get rid of “cognitive load”.
Cognitive load is the incessant stress that came along with pandemic, where people are sabotaged with more information to be remembered, lack of leisure time, workload and pressure to take critical, riskier, decisions than the usual rate. Prolonged exposure to such a work atmosphere would lead to a saturation point where one becomes unable to take more of it. Under this circumstance, people tend to do/watch something less stressful. An already watched show/series/film would reduce the brain’s effort to remember names, plots threads and relations between characters. It involves no inquisitive anticipation or arduous suspense. As Dr Jennifer V Fayard, Professor in Psychology points out, “watching familiar TV shows can restore our feelings of self-control after a period of exertion”. Thereby, the familiarity in the story and settings would invoke a “back to home” feeling which casts a therapeutic effect on the exhausted brain.
Researchers in human psychology argue that the ‘mere exposure effect’ theory explains why people prefer the comfort of processing a familiar stimulus over a new one. The ease of processing familiar information gives them positivity and eventually gets attached to it. This is not only the case with series, films or shows. “For every hour of music-listening in the typical person’s lifetime, 54 minutes are spent with songs we have already heard”, says Derek Thompson for The Atlantic. The memory associated with old movies, series, shows, songs or books is a sort of existential therapy, especially during the tiring pandemic lifestyle. Even though new experiences can enthral us, they can also be stressful.
Apart from being a means of escapism, “re-watching” helps people to extract a nostalgic fondness about the way they thought about something before and how they perceive it now. It would let them analyse their psychological growth. It could remind them of their circumstances then and the kind of warmth they might have received from the experience of watching.
According to a recent study conducted by the University of Buffalo, rewatching has a “restorative effect” by rekindling our self-control and motivation to accomplish difficult tasks. Jaye Derrick explicates that even though this “fictional social surrogacy” is criticised, during times of social distancing, unprecedented lockdowns and work-from-home, re-watching an old favourite show/film/series managed to preserve the mental well-being of several people. Hence, rewatching favourites isn’t “uncool” as long as it cools down your brain from overheating.
