Fiction

It is not sex, it is desire: why 'yearning' has become fashionable in series and cinema?

Series like 'The Bridgertons' or 'More than rivals' and films like the new adaptation of 'Wuthering Heights' emphasize longing

BarcelonaPassionate gazes, fingers brushing, and sighs. The yearning for desire has become one of the keys to some of the audiovisual products that resonate most with audiences. In English, and on social media, the term "yearning" has become popularized, which in its most literal translation would be "anhel", but which more closely approximates the construction of desire built slowly and sustained over time. This concept is one of the core elements of Emerald Fennell's adaptation of "Wuthering Heights", which has just arrived in cinemas: in this very free and somewhat baroque version of Emily Brontë's story, desire sustained over time and unfulfilled for many years has devastating consequences. To make this adaptation, the English director was inspired by her interpretation of the book when she was a teenager.

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The concept of yearning, or longing, is also behind the success of series like "The Summer I Turned Pretty",More Than Rivals, or "Bridgerton.

In the first, Conrad wants to be with Belly, but he has to suppress this urge because she is his brother's girlfriend. In "More Than Rivals", the protagonists initially have a purely physical but intermittent and secret relationship due to homophobia in the sports world. A romantic relationship is not achieved for almost ten years. In the fourth season of "Bridgerton", the protagonists suffer social impediments that make their relationship impossible, causing great tension between them. On social media, the concept of "yearning" is mainly applied to the male protagonists: that is, many viewers sigh for men desperate with desire. One of the audiovisual markets that plays most and best with the delay in the materialization of desire is the Korean one, which in its dramas advances love stories very slowly and in small doses.

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Ainhoa Marzol, an expert in digital culture, believes that viewers are desperately seeking "yearning" because in recent times it has been difficult to find it in fiction. "If we think about series, they used to have a format of 22 episodes per season and lasted for six or seven seasons, there was time to build more slowly. Now you have much shorter, much more procedural series. Moreover, everyone is waiting to see if they will be canceled. Where is the space for a creator to develop a real "yearning"? They are all false "yearnings.

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It is very difficult to find fiction that has this sustained yearning over time, this slow burn, and these are highly valued things," explains Marzol. "The great success of "The Summer I Turned Pretty" is because they did the "yearning" very well. I would even say that "More Than Rivals" works very well because it tells a story that is very sustained over the years, even though it is condensed into a few episodes. The story takes place over ten years. People are looking for that," she adds.

The actors in these fictions are themselves aware of this desire from viewers. In fact, during the promotional tour for "Bridgerton", its protagonists, Luke Thompson and Yerin Ha, have spoken about it. "I think if we want to recover yearning in real life, we have to get off the apps. For yearning to exist, there has to be waiting, and with apps and phones everything is instant. Maybe we don't give ourselves time to yearn," reflected Thompson in an interview.

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Antidote to cynicism

Sandra Parmo, a psychologist and content creator, dissects and analyzes trending series through her Instagram. One of the fictions she has spoken about the most is "The Summer I Turned Pretty". "I think we are now returning, albeit with a patina of modernity, to courtship, a word that sounds very old-fashioned. That the interest and search from both sides is visible, without it having to be asymmetrical," she reflects. The psychologist attributes this search for romanticism to the political and social moment. "We are in a time when everything goes very fast and everything is very cynical. It gives the impression that nothing is important. This has also transferred to the world of relationships: many people say, 'Why start anything if it's going to end?' There is a lot of apathy and indifference," she says. Parmo assures that stories like that of "More Than Rivals" make people "regain hope."

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However, the psychologist warns that among her social media followers, she has detected a certain obsession with these types of series and with "yearning". "When people watch these series, they experience them with great intensity. My followers send me videos, edited montages, interviews. I don't need to watch content because they send it to me. There is a fan phenomenon that even worries me. People end up obsessing over the actors, for example. These are fictions with a lot of emotional charge, and in the end, these things happen," she argues. Parmo recommends consuming all kinds of stories "so as not to lose sight of things."