“Beef” and the Role of Loneliness in Our Behavior
How a series goes straight to the root of our humanity
The series “Beef” may be the best, most human one that I have ever watched. It always puzzles me how art can make us feel and understand things that otherwise we wouldn’t be able to do so.
All the trouble we have to comprehend our weirdest behaviors, deepest suffering, and most pressing longings become somehow smaller in this series. “Beef” helps us to figure some very important things out or at least reminds us of them in a striking way.
Mainly in the fifth episode, it becomes pretty clear that all that madness shown in the series stems from loneliness. It is not more complicated than that, as Brené Brown explains.
To me, the series wants to show us that almost every crazy thing we do, including our mindless hustle and searching for more money, status, and power, comes from one thing: our need to connect with others and to feel less lonely.
The book “The Psychology of Money” and the philosopher Alain de Botton also make this link, that we are not actually chasing money and power, but connection, feeling appreciated and respected by others, and that we crave this just to feel less lonely.
This can also be noticed in the first episode, in which the main character, Amy, is trying to tell her husband about the road rage she had.
However, instead of listening, he interrupted her and gave her a lecture on positive thinking and the power of breathing.
I guess with this the series intended to show how not being listened to reinforces our sense of loneliness, how it’s perfectly possible for us to feel lonely even though we are not alone.
The series also shows the fear that Amy feels of being herself. She doesn’t feel like telling her husband about her darkest moments, afraid of being judged by him. I think this is also a way of us feeling lonely.
A more contemporary example of this can be seen when someone who is spending some with starting to check their phone, completely ignoring our presence. How lonely we can feel in these circumstances!
“Beef” also makes a fantastic job of showing us how our past explains things that don’t make any sense to others, that are seemingly impossible to explain and for others are simply evil, dumb, and nonsensical.
And guess what: most of these things are directly connected with our sense of not belonging, of emptiness, which is, by the way, another important topic touched by the series, the lack of meaning in our lives.
In the last episode, the character Amy is straightforward about this, when she says that in her mind having a child, husband, and money would fulfill that void, the feeling of nothingness, but it didn’t, of course.
Here it seems to me that “Beef” touches on another interesting point: our need for more money, power, and status is just a symptom of a lack of creativity, of not having a clue about what else to do with our time on this earth.
In some aspects, the series seems to have a pretty nihilistic approach, suggesting that nothing makes sense in life and nothing will solve this problem of meaninglessness.
I don’t know if can say whether “Beef” is trying to tell us a positive message, a way out of this mess, or not. But I would guess it does, suggesting that we should be more aware of what we truly want in life, which is a connection, so we can stop using the wrong means to achieve it.
Not being judgemental of others and having more empathy for them, is, I think, another important message brought by this amazing series, which I hope will have another season soon.
