On the couch

Yes, it’s that time of year again. Living rooms up and down the country will reverberate to the sound of families rowing, and the television being turned on to provide distraction. But whereas a generation ago the nation could be united by watching the only film on offer, The Sound of Music on BBC1, today’s British viewing habits, like so much else in modern life, are fragmented. Videos, DVDs, umpteen movie channels on satellite, by and large you will choose the films you watch this Christmas — and your choices will say more about you than you think.

Many people choose films they have already seen. Ritual is very important in terms of making us feel secure about ourselves and our place in the world. Watching Where Eagles Dare when we already know the ending, when we are perhaps word-perfect on the dialogue, is part of a need to self-comfort. This is especially so at Christmas, a time many people find extremely stressful and emotional.

By choosing to watch a particular film again we are also seeking, on a subconscious level, to recapture feelings from the original viewing. The man who cries only at Lassie is uncomfortable showing his emotions in human relationships, and was almost certainly sent away to school far too young. Women like films that remind them of being young and independent (Dirty Dancing, Bridget Jones). Date Flicks can be linked forever in the memory to the person you first saw it with, enough to preserve the film in a rosy-tinted glow of affection — even Zombie: Day of the Dead for those who dated before the era of multiplexes and therefore choice. The flipside of this is possible, too. I have a friend who cannot bear to watch anything featuring Tom Hanks (a not uncommon phobia, surely?) because she was later dumped by the chap who took her to see Sleepless in Seattle.