Musings #2: Happy Endings
The solemn promise of The Dogs of Looser Island is this: happy distraction. Though every chapter may dip its toes into darkness, at some point before the end the main character will find a measure of happiness.
I’m not a fan of Hallmark-style happy endings, where everything turns out perfectly (absolutely no judgement if you are a fan). I want to see characters grow and evolve when they face disappointment, grief, pain. But I do want to see them evolve in a way that allows them to laugh, to experience whimsy, to revel in those moments, however fleeting, of sheer delight.
(If you’ve read my reviews on Goodreads and/or in my newsletters, you know that’s the only kind of book I review.)
Everyone has his or her or their own definition of what constitutes good literature, and there are certainly those scholars who dismiss any story with a happy ending. But I believe truly great literature allows at least a glimmer of happiness, and hope for redemption.
And so I’m re-sharing a newsletter from last August about the importance (IMHO) of stories with happy endings.
A few years ago, Netflix put out a miniseries called Hollywood, based on the appalling real-life experiences of women, the LGTBQ community, and people of color in post-WWII Hollywood.
Writers, actors, producers, dreamers . . . the takeaway from the early episodes was that if you weren’t a white man (or a buxom white woman applying for a role as Siren), even genius was likely to be overlooked.
What I enjoyed about the show was that Netflix gave it a somewhat happy ending. Not a Disney-fied, tidy and wrapped-in-a-bow ending, but an ending where, eventually, brilliance and perseverance were rewarded, and prejudices were set aside.***
(***Lots of asterisks here, as will be obvious to anyone who watched the show.)
Interestingly, critics were not impressed.
Here’s a sample of their complaints:
From The Guardian's Lucy Mangan: “This should be the perfect set-up for a scabrous look at prejudice, corruption, the trading of sexual currency, coercion, the well-oiled machinations that underlie an industry and how it all shapes history—all through a #MeToo lens. But it becomes a mere wish-fulfilment fantasy that, whether it intends to or not, suggests that if a few people had just been that bit braver, then movies—and therefore the world!—would be a glorious, egalitarian Eden.” (Quoted from the Wikipedia article)
Similarly, FAULT Magazine criticized “the show's dangerous embellishment of systemic prejudice of post-war USA,” saying, “The only ones who benefit from the erasure of Hollywood's brutal history of racism and homophobia, are those that perpetrated it.” (Quoted from the same Wikipedia article)
I’m not here to argue that Hollywood was great art, but I disagree with the cited criticism, and here’s why: I believe good fiction—on the page or on the stage or on the screen—can take tragedy, whether real or simply true-to-life, and turn it on its head.
I believe a good story can show us not only life as it is, but life as it could be, maybe even life as it should be.
In my opinion, this is not “erasure of brutal history,” this is John Lennon singing “Imagine all the people living life in peace.”
Hollywood first takes us into a world where anyone who dreams of success in film must exchange sex for recognition, and then allows us to climb out of that sordid world, and glimpse an alternate, happier ending.
And I think we need those happily ever after endings
almost as much as we need air.
If you’re so inclined, drop me a note in the comments about your favorite non-traditional happily ever after story, the movie or play or book or story where oddball characters waded through misfortune and misery and then redefined for themselves what it means to be happy.
Always looking for my next great read . . .
