Towards a Film Theory of Conflict Management

About a year and a half ago, I started having panic attacks. I mean, I pretty much always had anxiety, but I used to experience it in a 'mildly scared of everything' kind of way, not through those intense and embarrassingly frequent crises I now have to deal with; the current state of things being that the merest discomfort or insecurity immediately turns into urgent and profound distress and physical collapse. Yum.

For those of you who're starting to get the mood here, I'm a man of stupidly big decisions. On the 18th of March 2021, I then declared that this mascarade had gone long enough and that I wouldn't, from this day, have panic attacks anymore.

I need to confess immediately that it, predictably, did not have the expected effect in the long run. I probably had too much Eminem to listen to, and such a resolution was obviously bound to fail. However, I engaged in some pretty useful soul-searching on that occasion, into which I gracefully offer a peek.

Let's get to the point: what I actually understood at that time, was that, since it presumably came from a fear that my needs wouldn't be seen or acknowledged, I needed to treat the various manifestations of my anxiety as media.

Although acting had never been my thing, I had to admit that I was, in fact, 'making a scene' — actually, a very realistic, sincere, painful and distressing one to witness, as well as to live. And that's what I want to talk about.

Good communication makes bad dialogue

I could — and I often have — said something along the lines of: 'I feel anxious, I'm afraid that [insert ludicrous worry here], I would like to talk about it and find together a solution that's okay for you and makes me feel seen and cared for'.

Would it have been a better approach for every person involved? Certainly.

Would it have, most of the times, allowed us to find a creative outcome for the problem? I'm sure of it.

Would it have been an accurate representation of my physical and emotional state, as well as a way of communicating the perception I had of the situation? Hell no.

I could argue that it isn't only a matter of aesthetics, but... It kinda is. But it is because aesthetics and emotions are so closely entangled that examining the ones or the others makes almost no difference but of angle — and you already know what my favorite angle is.

It's no surprise that the modes of communication that are preached as the most efficient ways to deal with conflict (I will use that term in the broad sense of 'situation implying a tension between two or more opposing forces') sound radically different from scenaristic writing. As a matter of fact, the hegemonic criteria for good dialogue, especially in conflict scenes, feature tension, polarisation and a good amount of subtext, whereas interpersonal communication preeminently needs openness, nuance and clarity.

What we learned, then, from the countless fictions that use that kind of pattern, is that a problematic situation that doesn't follow that pattern is not satisfyingly resolved, for a number of possible reasons:

• it doesn't feel real to begin with;
• the emotions involved are merely stated, not expressed;
• there is no clear ending of the conflict;
• the atmosphere and non-verbal cues don't align with one's emotional state;
• etc.

In a nutshell, we end up having a pretty clear fantasy of what a conflict should look like, and trying to resolve it in a healthy way often leaves us frustrated, not only with how bland and uncinematic our lives can look, but also how disconnected they are from our emotional scenery.

Not all cinema is good cinema

It's worth noting that, whereas the purpose of scenario and realisation is to support the construction of the story, it sometimes happens the other way around. I've seen this more than I should have in romantic comedies, where the plot device that initiates the 'characters apart' canonical phase of the movie is just a misunderstanding backed up by some purposely missed occasion of re-establishing the truth.

(Like, you know when that character gets accused of having betrayed their friend/lover/relative, and just stands there with a sad dog face instead of explaining what we know actually happened? Ugh.)

My point is not that I was traumatised as a child by Addicted to Love. What I want to argue is that, in order to get that 'movie feeling' in our conflict management, we often fall back on cheap, easy to set up plot devices — ones that precisely rest on poor communication and don't survive the merest amount of clarity and good faith.

Moreover, I think one fault of our IRL conflict scenes is: they're badly directed. You rarely see movie characters aggressively washing dishes in the background or in the corner of the screen. You may have an ominous handheld camera just at the back of their neck, or just a close up on their hands; maybe the clatter of the plates is just a little too loud and the focus is on the face of the other character who's slowly getting upset about it; I don't know, I'm no director either — but it's necessary to ackowledge that the world's not a stage. It's a damn movie studio and if you only rely on acting and some props, no one will understand a thing.

The point is, you have to tell a story. And if anger or distress comes in the way of narrating it properly, then 'show, don't tell' — but show efficiently.

Find your genre

Last March, I thought a lot about what I was expressing through panic attacks — but mostly, I was aware I had to find a way to express it in a way that, while beneficial regarding general damage, would not fail to convey the morbid and pathetic state I was in.

I reviewed quite a list of possibilities. I had to find something that would hurt me less than panic attacks — alcohol consumption, although aesthetically and scenaristically perfect, was therefore not an option.

So what is, at the same time, completely harmless and deeply unnerving? Well, turns out that keeping track of every anxiety rush by drawing tallies on your arms can be a cheap, low energy, aesthetically coherent (i.e. creepy af) indicator of your level of distress.

I mean, of course I knew a couple pen lines would not bring about the end of my life-long anxiety, but it did work wonderfully for a time. I'm not arguing either that verbal communication is overrated: in fact, this was very much supported by clear communication with the intended audience. My point is that every conflict scene has to be well-written and well-directed in order to bring emotional satisfaction in its resolution — and, mostly, than any conflict can, as long as it's managed with aesthetic fidelity.

Whereas techniques like NVC have the advantage of emotional and factual unambiguity, you can actually find great(er) clarity in carefully staged interactions. Not everyone's able to control the same things about a situation — it may be vocabulary, tone, body language, communication media or environmental arrangements. Find what you have power over and tell the fucking story.