How We Find Meaning in the Media We Consume

By Genavive Rutter

As someone who grew up as a hyper-sensitive kid the term “It’s not that deep” has haunted me for 22 years, and with the recent resurgence of the “Maybe the door was just blue” meme, it’s got me thinking about the media we consume and how we SHOULD be finding personal meaning in all of it, how it really is that deep, and how the door was not just blue.

I remember sitting in the theater watching the 2022 film Everything Everywhere All at Once. I was in my second year of college at the time, and I truly had never been so lost, alone, and depressed in my life. But as I sat there in that theatre surrounded by every walk of life imaginable, I realized I was feeling something I hadn’t in a while…bittersweet hope. I remember towards the climax of the film I looked around and every person was crying, and not just teary-eyed but actually feeling something profound. It felt like everyone there was addressing something they had been pushing down for a long time, and I can’t stress enough that THAT is the purpose of film.

At the risk of sounding a little bit too much like Nicole Kidman, films are meant to make you feel. Never in my life had I felt closer to strangers, because I didn’t know any of them, but I knew they were feeling exactly what I was feeling. There is something so earnest about a film bringing absolute strangers together to feel the same confusing and uncomfortable emotions. This film is a perfect example of “The Door Isn't Just Blue”, because yes it is absurd, funny, and edited insanely, but it was so much more than hot dog fingers, bagels, and googly eyes on rocks. 

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As I watched this film I thought about my dad, and how Waymond reminded me so much of him. A man who gave up everything to try to be a good father and ended up getting so much less than what he deserved. As I watched this film I thought about my mother, who I had not spoken to in over seven years at the time, and how we were just complicated reflections of each other. As I watched this film I thought about myself and how there was so much I wanted to do and so many things I wanted to be, and how it is utterly paralyzing that I would never know all the versions of myself that could have been. I thought about my dream timeline where I amounted to everything I wanted. In that timeline, the whole world knew my name and respected my work, but I wondered if I would even be satisfied there. Or if I would still think about connections that were missed or a simple life of laundry and taxes I never got to have. 

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And all at once all these thoughts came to a head and I bursted out crying with the strangers around me. It was the first time in months I hadn’t felt isolated, no one in that room knew my name but I felt more seen in that moment than I had with my own friend group at the time. I’ll never know what about the film made the man to the right of me cry or what resonated so deeply with the couple below me, I just knew that they were feeling, and that in of itself is beautiful and invaluable. A room of 100 people living equally complicated lives as me, having just as many thoughts as I had, all in their own little worlds… just feeling. 

After the film was over, I walked to my car and sat there for an hour and cried. It was a culmination of a lot of different things, but all I know is that until I watched that movie I had been operating on autopilot completely numbed to the world around me. But as I sat there angry, sad, crying, thinking deeply I was grateful that a film was able to make me feel that much. So to me, it will always be that deep and I encourage you to consume art that makes you think, makes you uncomfortable, and forces you to be vulnerable. And I hope the is never just blue for you.