“Every repetition is an experiment for the brain”

The premiere of the live-action remake of ‘Moana’ does not seem to have started too well, and it is already planned considerable losses in this attempt to recapture the success of the original film and its sequel, just a decade after the release of the first installment. But that does not detract from the achievements of the original ‘Moana’: it is still, according to figures from Disney itself, the most watched movie in the history of Disney+. What is so special about that film that makes it hold such a record?

That success. Disney talks about more than 1.5 billion hours playedan amount unexpected even by the film’s creators themselves. Directors John Musker and Ron Clements they counted that when they learned the figure, the information left them perplexed: they had not imagined that the film would have such a journey in streaming, taking into account that it neither won an Oscar nor was it the highest grossing of the year of its release.

Some explanation. Sam Wass, child psychologist and director of the Institute for the Science of Early Years and Youth at the University of East London, explains for The New York Times that a young child’s brain learns by predicting. Each viewing allows you to fine-tune a different prediction: first the general plot, then the jokes, the characters’ emotions or the vocabulary. Wass places the optimal point of learning in what he calls the “Goldilocks zone” (translated: Goldilocks), the space between the completely predictable and the impossible to anticipate. ‘Moana’ is especially attractive in that regard.

The more complex the narrative is, the more repetitions are needed before it stops providing new information. ‘Moana’ meets this requirement better than a linear story, because it has several layers of reading at the same time: the maritime adventure, the family bond and the identity crisis of the protagonist. What seems like empty repetition to an adult may be, to a three-year-old brain, just the level of challenge it needs.

why andThe adult also repeats. The phenomenon does not only apply to children. The aforementioned article talks about the studies of Cristel Antonia Russell, a marketing professor, who has spent a decade studying why people return to the same content over and over again, a phenomenon that certainly goes beyond the success of ‘Moana’. In 2012, together with Sidney J. Levy, he published a study in the Journal of Consumer Research on what they call “volitional reconsumption”: the conscious search for a hedonic experience already lived.

Paradox of choice. Russell also resorts to the paradox of choice, the concept that psychologist Barry Schwartz raised in 2004 in his book of the same name: when options multiply, choosing something already proven reduces the cognitive load of deciding. It is linked to the phenomenon of marathon the same series over and over again: the self-control necessary to process new stimuli is exhausted, and returning to something familiar does not require that effort.

Clinical psychologist Lecina Fernández matches in which the pattern is identical in children and adults: knowing how something ends eliminates uncertainty, and that absence of surprise is, in itself, pleasant. Watching ‘Moana’ for the umpteenth time and watching ‘The Office’ for the umpteenth time are phenomena, deep down, not very different from each other.

The limit of the formula. But then, if repetition is so rewarding, why has the new version stumbled, with Dwayne Johnson reprising his role as Maui? Critics have sunk the remake with 33% on Rotten Tomatoesbut possibly the secret of the puncture is precisely what has led to its streaming success: the new version is so mimetic of the original that the public has no reason to pay for something they already have, free and in a known version, in their own living room.

At home, predictability is the advantage, as we have seen. But if we pay an entrance fee, we want surprises and novelty, even if the packaging is familiar. After the setbacks of the new versions of ‘Moana’ and ‘Snow White’, and despite the sweet smell of banknotes in ‘Lilo & Stitch’, in this case repetition does not guarantee pleasure.

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