The Pleasure Of the Rewatch
What do we get from returning over and over again to the same stories?
I realized not too long ago that the number of hours I spent rewatching Gilmore Girls permanently shaped my speech patterns. I’ve been told in the past to slow down in conversations at work — that I was speeding through pitches at the speed of light. “Give people time to keep up,” a boss said. I have since taken the note, and gotten better at pitching. I still think, though, about how I ended up talking the way I do. Maybe it was the ADHD. Maybe, though, the culprit was the between 2 to 22 hours a day I spent between the ages of 10 and 25 watching a show where the actors spoke at back-breaking speed. I thought they spoke normally at the time. It felt right to me; I still find most shows’ dialogue too slow in comparison.
But that Gilmore Girls rewatch was so powerful. It always pulled me back in. I guess it’s not surprising, then, that it literally* rewired my brain.
*(I am not a scientist.)
There are years when all I want to do is rewatch my favorite shows. Re-listen to my favorite albums, reread my favorite books. Whole years I have to force myself to branch out, to open myself up to the new. The new is exciting. It activates a part of my brain that has to think, has to process, has to let the unfamiliar wash over me. Inviting in the new means opening the door to changing myself. I believe the culture we consume influences who we are as people — colors the way we seek thrill, the way we see other people’s stories, the way we have empathy, the way we argue with each other over whatever discourse is ruling the day. That opening of ourselves to the new is vital. It’s part of how we move ourselves forward.
But some days I don’t want to change. Some days my brain is very tired. Some days I just want to settle in on my couch, with a warm blanket and a cup of tea, and spend some time with some old friends.
But are we stagnant when we rewatch? Re-consume the things we’ve already digested and made part of ourselves? What exactly are we providing ourselves when we return to something we’ve already seen, read, or listened to a thousand times?
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