"Whimsy"

[User09678]

Aibu to have a real aversion to the trend for "whimsy" in current films and TV series? I find it baffling, not funny, I can't suspend disbelief when I'm watching violent scenes interspersed with whatever this new thing is. It leaves me constantly having to shift mental gears to try and understand what's going on and is very unnatural. It might just me. Is it? Am I too old and grumpy now? I'm not sure how I'm meant to be taking it. I probably am being unreasonable. Maybe it always existed and I just notice it now.

I don't think I expected Fallout to be a serious drama with no "whimsy" elements ...

I didn't have any expectations, I never played the game. Knew nothing about it. I just really hated the style.

I think it’s just an aesthetic that doesn’t appeal to you.

I loved Fallout and thought the tone worked well. It fit well with the style of the game, with the chirpy upbeat soundtrack and 50s vibe juxtaposed with the grinding misery of the post apocalyptic world.

I dislike gothic stuff, it grates on me like nails on a blackboard. I give it a swerve now. I used to think there was something I was missing but there isn’t. I get it, I just don’t like it.

The term’s too ill-defined for the context. It doesn’t really mean anything when applied to a whole medium like film or TV drama.

A whimsical comment IRL might be a playfully irrelevant one. And that can be portrayed in drama. But whimsy as an idea doesn’t cover the variety of ways to make drama.

I wouldn’t call Mary Poppins whimsy, for example. I’d say it was fantastical wish fulfilment - and it’s very clever and subtle. Mary Poppins is a vain character who likes a drink, but is practical and wise. The social and class observations in Mary Poppins are also brilliantly done.

That was my thought too 😂

My parents have a massive collection. Started buying loads of them from car boot sales in the 90s from people that didn't realise their value was increasing rapidly.

I would like an example of the whimsy the OP is referring to though, so I can decide if it is one of my many irritants.

OMG!! My mum had all of these - you’ve taken me right back to my childhood! Dusting the living room was my Saturday chore as a child and moving all the wee fekkers to dust underneath and putting them all back was the bane of my life!

I find it hard to clearly separate out gallows humour, coping mechanism, shock value, quirky/cutsie/endearing, surrealism, and whimsy

all to me have slightly different but overlapping purposes and styles

tim burton, the zoe deshanel tv show & Maxxxine are, to use a phrase from childhood, “the same, only different” 😂

the purposes of the fantastical elements are to move the story along though

the definition of whimsey upthread says it’s ‘tetherless’ so I’m left unsure

surrealism was symbolic and so ‘tethered

dada perhaps is the whimsey equivalent? But then it was a sort of statement in itself?

so not ‘untethered’ as per the definition in the article

all of which to say an expansion of what is meant would be helpful

cos even with the china ornaments - they were in Misery, but as a way to show the character’s obsessive need for control, the merging of reality and fantasy in her head, and as a plot device during the author’s escape from the room

I loved Fallout and thought the tone worked well. It fit well with the style of the game, with the chirpy upbeat soundtrack and 50s vibe juxtaposed with the grinding misery of the post apocalyptic world.

Sums up what I thought about it - went in knowing very little but did love it.

I can't say it what comes to mind when using adjective Whimsy - Tim Burton - studio ghibli films come first but suppose it fits as it certainly had it's own style.