three word titles

Okay, since I now have to title my posts, I figured I needed a "thing" - some people use song lyrics (which I can never remember, and I tend to like obscure songs no one knows any way) or clever puns (I am not good at that kind of cleverness) or something.

So, the first 2 posts I posted with titles had three words in their title. So I will now (as much as possible) limit post titles to three words.

***

Anyway. I saw this link over at Not Martha and found it intriguing, and also found myself nodding a bit: Dystopia Fatigue. About how lots of people "embrace" (their word) shows like Glee and things like the Pixar movies.

"How many hopeless, miserable depictions of the future can we possibly digest?"

Yes. That's one of my frustrations. When you feel like the world's going to Hell in a handbasket, you don't really want to watch movies or television shows about it. Or even when you feel as if something's vaguely wrong, that perhaps things will get better eventually, but things aren't so great right now.

I've seen most of the Pixar movies. I think "Monsters, Inc." is my favorite, with "Finding Nemo" a close second. I also have, on my shelf of movies, "Babe, the Sheep Pig," "Cats Don't Dance," a box set of the Animaniacs...and I openly admit to enjoying many cartoons. I also like musicals and the silly old comic movies.

What these things have in common is that they tend to have happy endings. Or that some problem is solved in the end. ("Monsters, Inc.," I think, has a fairly brilliant "Here's a big problem that could have implications for our society of monsters" followed by a "Oh. Here's the solution, and it's really quite simple and now everyone is happy" ending.)

And I do think most people feel a certain relief in that. Yes, we're supposed to put away childish things when we cease to be children - but I think we continue to have that need to be reassured that everything is going to turn out OK. And I think a lot of the "happy" movies like that carry that message.

I've noticed that I'm particularly susceptible to getting caught up in misery. The few bits and pieces of that show "The Colony" (about a post-human-disaster group of individuals trying to survive with no phone, no lights, and no motor car* in a warehouse somewhere) really affected me and made me essentially decide that if society was coming to an end, I'd rather offer myself up as a human shield or something than live out whatever years that remained dreaming of a time when there was climate control and t.p. and antibiotics and clean clothes.

Even though it was a stupid show. Even though the people involved knew on some level they'd be going back to "real life" after the cameras were packed away. Even though I knew that a lot of the interpersonal drama (which is what made me twitch and be sad and ultimately switch the television off) was faked up and "enhanced" for television.

If I'm going to see unreality, I'd rather see it as a happier-than-normal unreality, rather than as unhappier-than-normal.

And I periodically have to stop watching the news for several days to a week, because I get so discombobulated by man's capacity for cruelty to his fellow man.

For that matter, some of the comedies that have been on in the past few years, I just couldn't get into, because the humor was based on other people being uncomfortable or too unhappy. I never liked those shows much where someone got pranked, badly, and then had to stand around and look sheepish while the host or whoever pranked them laughed about it.

But I have to admit it's kind of a relief to realize that I'm not the only one who would rather sit around and watch stuff like "Adventure Time!" and my Animaniacs dvds, and who prefers movies that, while they may be aimed at kids, tend to end happily.

(I think Madeline L'Engle once commented that she didn't like anti-heroes, and she didn't like movies/books/whatever that had anti-heroes, or were generally pessimistic in outcome. And she felt that children - her primary audience - felt that way too).

(*Gilligan's Island would probably be a tragedy in real life - probably like Lord of the Flies but with adults - but it's a comedy in the world of vintage TV. Sometimes I admit I'd rather live in that world than in the real one.)