The Post-Movie Blues Redux

I had another chance to visit the clouded state that comes from the end of a good film. The game Bioshock Infinite (2013) provided me with another dose of melancholy just about a week ago. I've waited long enough that the effect barely lingers, but it's recent enough to observe.  

Well, I didn't write when it was recent enough to observe in the same way, but
I'll still talk about it. Let's start with the core of the feelings; the
emotions that it evokes. As I've stated before, it's much like a melancholy. It
exists as a haze that seems to cover over everything else. The thoughts
presented by the given medium linger in the mind and (in my assessment) are
compared with the mundane of day to day life. Perhaps this is just a side effect
of the feeling, but I think it is equally likely that it is part of the cause.
Simple tasks like taking out the trash seem ultimately unimportant when compared to the weight and necessity of what you were experiencing before.

The Bioshock franchise, in all of its forms, is a golden representation of good
story telling. While there is little choice in terms of where the story goes,
every action taken feels meaningful and necessary. In the story of Infinite you
begin by doing things in order to pay off a perceived debt and in some ways,
figure out what's going on. As the story progresses, however, you begin to do
things in order to help someone else. This is later mixed with other motivations
including revenge and a meta-desire to understand what it all means.  I believe
that this progression and the ultimate destination of actively seeking to aid
someone else in what seems to be a very tangible way, coupled with a constant
sense of discovery and purpose, are what create the subsequent crash when it is
all over.

Maybe another factor I can derive in this equation is the entire lack of mundane
elements in these stories I experience. Everything in a movie or in a well made
story, in general, is presented to the viewer with a purpose and thus some sort
of importance can usually be derived from it. In the adventures or interesting
turns of events that are presented in all types of media, practically no one
takes out the trash and if they do, it is almost always merely a screenwriting
tool to tell us, the audience, something that matters. While I think this may
explain the source of some of my feelings, I don't know that it helps combat the
negative experience. I wonder if individuals who spend their entire lives on an
adventure or in a constant state of intrigue feel the same way when they take
out the trash. Probably not.