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

BarcelonaPassionate glances, hands that brush and sighs. The yearning for desire has become one of the keys to some of the audiovisual products that work best with audiences. In English, and on social media, the term yearning has become popular, and it is used to define the building of desire that simmers slowly and is 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 slightly 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.

The concept of yearning, or longing, is also behind the success of series like The Summer I Turned Pretty, Heated Rivalry or Bridgerton. In the first one, Conrad wants to be with Belly, but has to suppress this urge because she is his brother's girlfriend. In Heated rivalry, the main characters 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 prevent their relationship, making the coexistence between the two a pressure cooker. 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 with the delay in the materialization of desire the most and the best is the Korean one, which in its dramas advances love stories very slowly and in small doses.

Ainhoa Marzol, an expert in digital culture, believes that viewers desperately seek yearning because in recent times it has been difficult to find it in fiction. "If we think about TV shows, they used to have a format of 22 episodes per season and lasted six or seven seasons, there was time to build more slowly. Now you have much shorter, much more procedural series. Also, everyone is worried about whether they will be cancelled or not. Where is the space for a creator to develop real yearning? They are all fake yearnings. It is very difficult to find fiction that has this sustained longing over time, the slow burn, and these are very precious things," explains Marzol. "The huge success of The Summer I Turned Pretty is due to the fact that they did the yearning very well. I would even say that Heated rivalry 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 spans ten years. People are looking for that," she adds.

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

Antidote to cynicism

Psychologist and content creator Sandra Parmo dissects and analyzes trending TV shows through her Instagram. One of the series 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. That the interest and pursuit of both 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 feeling 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 Heated rivalry make people "regain hope."

However, the psychologist warns that among her followers on social media, she has detected a certain obsession with this type of series and with yearning. "When people watch these series, they experience them very intensely. My followers send me videos, edited montages, interviews. I don't need to look for content because they send it to me. There is a side of the fandom that even worries me. People end up becoming obsessed with 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 "to not lose sight of things."