The trauma plot
In my first semester of university, I took a writing class. The professor was intimidating and brilliant. She lectured about ideas I had never thought about or heard of, she scared me about the consequences of not citing works correctly, and every assignment was returned with overwhelming amounts of red marks on my copy. She prepared me for writing in a world where every word uttered counts, anything can be taken the wrong way, or held against you.
Our first big assignment for that class was to write a memoir, ten pages of our life so far. It seemed obnoxious to me already back then, but in retrospect, it was the right kind of assignment for freshmen learning how to write well. The professor did not so much interfere with the content of the memoir, rather than the quality of our writing, and way the story was told. We were free to tell our truth, and it did get all of us attention seeking eighteen year olds writing. In true coming of age fashion, everyone was shedding some part of their previous selves, and to some extent reinventing themselves. Few held back their trauma plot.
The first round drafts were all about stripping down our writing, avoiding wordiness, and working towards being clear and concise. The professor also pointed out the inevitable clichés and redirected us when bordering on victimhood. I now understand that the content of the assignment didn’t really matter, the memoir was just fluff for my professor to scrutinise our writing and teach us a lot. But unleash our main character syndrome, is what it did!
The classroom was filled with people I did not know yet, and we were to workshop each of our drafts throughout the semester, which was not only terrifying, the vulnerability of such a task was also humiliating! The writing level in the class varied, English was not every student’s first language, and, again, many topics were on the sensitive side. Workshopping the other students’ pieces was a useful exercise in learning to deliver feedback in a kind and thoughtful manner. Still, the experience left an impression on me, and altered the way I interacted with my peers, as well as my own writing. Now five years out of my freshmen year class, there is a discussion about the trauma plot and trauma dumping. Meaning, the act of oversharing one’s trauma at an inappropriate time, to foster depth or connection in a rushed manner. I wondered about this in two contexts; in relationships (such as the relationships to my peers in my writing class) and in art (the implications of trauma dumping in storytelling and/or creating a character).
In my class, workshopping memoirs sped up the process of getting to know each other within the first weeks of university. But with the knowledge of having emerged from that class friendless, I wonder the extent to which it led to any meaningful connection. I am by no means ruling out the very likely possibility that it might just have been me. Still, that semester, I would forget some kid’s name or where they were from, but I remembered the intimate details of their fragile family dynamics. It felt uncomfortable and inappropriate knowing what I knew. It almost felt insincere to seek out a friendship, because so much of what I think makes a friendship, is the gradual process of getting to know the other. And I don’t think authentic friendships can skip through that part. Maybe I was scared off by the cheesiness of it all? In some cases, workshopping the memoir felt like cheating, as though I had access to their inner life, like I had read their diary. I didn’t know the ethics of it. Could I bring up the memoir in conversation outside of class? Was it okay to use it as a conversation starter? Did I even want to go there?
A couple of weeks ago, I read an article in the New Yorker written by Parul Sehgal, discussing the trauma plot. The article discussed the cultural shift taking place in filmmaking and writing, where the trauma plotline currently reigns supreme. Of course, trauma narratives have always existed, but Sehgal notes that these did not necessarily always refer back to the past to inform the narrative: “Certainly the filmmakers of classical Hollywood cinema were quite able to bring characters to life without portentous flashbacks to formative torments. In contrast, characters are now created in order to be dispatched into the past, to truffle for trauma.” The article puts forth examples of current TV show and novel protagonists, such as Ted Lasso, or Jude, from Hanya Yanagihara’s devastating A Little Life. The criticism seems to point to the convenience of the trauma plot, the flashbacks explaining why a character is the way they are, and carry the weight that informs the rest of the narrative. Sehgal refers to this as “the tyranny of the backstory.” In that sense, Ted Lasso and Jude’s trauma is explanatory, and I see how such tactics can feel like lazy meaning-making, trauma baiting to foster sympathy for the character, to get us on their side, or altogether provide an out.
I once read a quote from the writer Mari Andrews that said: “And I’m afraid of the question ‘What are you working on’ because it’s the same question as ‘What are you haunted by'?’” In that sense, all storytelling is trauma. But I think the biggest weakness of the trauma plot is when there is more telling than showing. More explaining than putting characters through experience.
Sehgal does write that “to question the role of trauma, we are warned, is to oppress.” So we have to be careful, as with anything you utter these days! But I don’t think this is questioning the role or legitimacy of trauma, rather than identifying stagnation in the way we tell traumatic narratives. They are important, in fact, I really believe that everyone’s story has unique potential, which is why it is such a shame to see stories generically repeated. Indeed, Sehgal notes that the diversity of survivor stories are mostly not reflected by the stories told in books or on TV. Trauma plots are often reductive and inboxing, and stand in the way of further exploring the dimensions of the character’s personality, leaving no room for the character to wander or surprise us. I think this springs, in part, from the cultural and discursive shift brought about by the ways in which we engage in identity politics. In response to the same article, Brandon wrote: “Suddenly, it was not only cool but somehow NECESSARY to write from a place of identity-based authority.” He also discusses how identity used to be a mutable and personal state, but now has become a “determining”, “immutable social identity.” Indeed, this conception of identity has become the lens through which we have to create art, and the lens through which we now also perceive it.
Moreover, it seems as though trauma has become currency. Senghal goes on to write: “The dominant mode by which a young, hungry writer could enter the conversation was by deciding which of her traumas she could monetize . . . be it anorexia, depression, casual racism, or perhaps a sadness like mine, which blended all three.” Such factors, along with the opportunity for status are probably why the trauma plot currently feels so uniform, as opposed to using the traumatic to disrupt and annihilate the obvious and conforming conceptions of the trauma plot. According to Brandon, in the trauma plot’s early life, it “opened a way into fragmentary, associative storytelling. Trauma made fiction look more like life with its randomized assortments of thoughts and images. But now, we have the accusation that trauma is somehow an ordering mechanism.”
To reflect on why the trauma plot has become so prominent, is to say something about politics, youth culture, individualism, a change in values over time that values honesty, courage, and a desire to change the status quo, and dare I say capitalism? A conversation far too overwhelming to tackle by myself on here. So I will leave it at that, before I put my foot in my mouth.