Breaking the Trauma Loop: Art that Hurts and Heals

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Note: This essay was originally created as a part of Theatre Philadelphia’s Content + Criticism Cohort, led by Renee Lucas Wayne.

Content Warning: Frank discussion of trauma.

When I first heard the phrase “trauma porn”, it was during a dance rehearsal. The project I was working on had some prominent themes surrounding immigration justice in the United States, and there was some concern that our performance was feeding into the creation of this…genre? Trend? Dynamic? Whatever it was, we were concerned it was trauma porn. A few years later, I was hanging out with a group of writers, and one of them expressed that they found a particular art piece to be “poverty porn.”

Artists, scholars, and thinkers love to attach the word porn to heavy, weighty subjects. Nowadays, I’m confused by our collective use of this word. I’m not sure if I’m even using it correctly myself. A few months ago, I was in a rehearsal room sharing concerns that a play I had written might be considered trauma porn. My director’s response is that it would be considered trauma porn if I had included traumatic events for the sake of shock value. We both agreed that this was not the case, but it’s crucial that I bring up an important piece of context.

 First of all, I can only share what I know, both anecdotally and factually. I am a fat, gay, non-binary, neurodivergent, white-passing Latinx person born-and-raised in the U.S. whose background means different things in different settings, especially in a geographical context. To absolute strangers, I know I pass as a white man. While I don’t think this disqualifies me from commenting on this subject, it’s important for me to name this up front. Perhaps after reading this paragraph, you may wish to discard my credibility, and that is certainly your prerogative.

 But as Americans living in one of the wealthiest, most powerful nations in the planet: I believe very strongly that we deserve to be exposed to other people’s trauma. Every aspect of our existence in this part of Turtle Island is shaped by the subjugation of the most marginalized people in the world. As long as the clothes off our backs are made in garment factories and as long as we are living on stolen land (I’m currently writing this essay on Lenapehoking, the unceded lands of the Lenni-Lenape people), I believe we deserve to experience art that makes us deeply uncomfortable, angry, and sad.

 But let me backpedal for a second: what is trauma? Bessel van der Kolk, the leading researcher on trauma theory, describes trauma as an ongoing emotional response to a stressful event that is deeply entrenched in the way that we behave. He also makes it clear that all of us have experienced trauma, and that trauma actually lives inside our bodies and alters our brain chemistry. If we all have experienced some degree of trauma, why do some of us prefer to center joy in our work over “the issues”?

 I have a former friend who spent many years living in Honduras. She had shared much about her experiences as an activist in Tegucigalpa, and she felt as though our use of the word trauma was trivializing to her experience. Is the experience of being attacked by the police state the same experience as living with an abusive family? Of course not. But if trauma is about our behavior, and not our experiences, it muddles the discourse. I hesitate to call this a debate, because so much of this subject is deeply personal, and dependent on individual knowledge.

 I can’t help but recall Audre Lorde’s Uses of the Erotic essay, where she describes the difference between the Erotic and the Pornographic: the Erotic is centered around our most authentic pleasure, and the Pornographic is centered around the suppression of our innermost selves. I will name a pleasure that I’ve had ever since I was a child: I get so much out of deeply tragic stories from movies, television, art, and media. This is my particular pleasure, and I think there is a catharsis that comes from bearing witness to these narratives. Am I the only one who feels this way?

 And most importantly: why do people like me receive pleasure from this type of art? Speaking only for myself, I can say that I’m less interested in watching the characters’ suffering, and more interested in the Truth that comes out of the narrative. In watching another person’s suffering – fictional or not – we are watching their Truth. The Truth is a profoundly emotional concept. As a survivor of the mental health industrial complex, I thrive off of these extremes, as it colors the way I live in my world. To insinuate that I am in some way toxic (another tricky word) for seeking this out or exploring this spiritual terrain in my work is a denial of my personhood.

 There is much to be said about which stories get put onstage, and why. In the distance, I hear a voice saying that plays that depict trauma seem to more easily produced than play that center radical joy. My response is to remind us of who we are, and then dismantle a binary. As theatre artists, we work in a field that is radically less commercialized than film or television. The video game industry is actually the best comparison to theatre: while they both use very similar strategies, there is a difference in the way money influences both mediums. Nobody - and I mean nobody - has ever pursued theatre to make a profit. Theatre is one of the least profitable mediums out there, next to maybe poetry or dance. A large part of this is because theatre narratives tend to be focused around political issues, even spawning the phrase “issue play” to describe the work of some playwrights.

 But the prism in which these conversations occur tends to trap it into a dichotomy. There is either art that centers joy, or art that exposes trauma. Is there not art that does both? Are there moments where we go to one extreme, and then move to the other? Any time I see binary thinking, my response is to wiggle around in both worlds and see how it feels.

…And it feels pretty good. Pleasurable, even.