A Rant #1

(I blame Lindsey Ellis' video on CATS 2019 on this, and it also being late at night, and probably Shelter In Place.)


Fuck Reality.

 This is not an angsty post, despite the common associations one would get from just those two words. Also, this is my thoughts, my opinion, and it's 12:52am so deal. A thesis maybe? Or just something to work from. Once long ago, I wrote something to the effect of people need fantasies during times of strife for nostagia's sake, for escapism, for the hope that'll get better someday. Something like that, I'm not looking up my senior thesis in history for this. (I got my history degree by essentially writing about history and LOTR. No really. ^^) There are periods of time we could see the rise in this, I only picked a couple obvious ones and the effects they had on later periods.

In the current time period of utter trash fire, and some before it there keeps being this sense to make things more "realistic". As if reality is the pinnacle of all media. Reality is stranger than fiction, yes, but it is not in any way better. Fiction needs to be unrealistic. We need to see that things can be different. We need to not see "reality", but the reality that could be. To create that better world, we need to see that it's possible first.

Terry Pratchett had it right in The Hogfather, when Death tells Susan that people need to believe in the little lies (Tooth Fairy, Hogfather who really is Santa) so they can believe in the big ones. Justice, Mercy, Hope. Because they will only exist if we believe in them. It is this diet of believing in things that aren't real that help us believe in things that should be real.

But then we have these disturbing trends that get out of hand, that seek to destroy what is a human need. We have the darker and grittier trend, which is frankly depressing and smacks of wanting to make characters as miserable as you are. No one is allowed to be happy, not the story, not the people. In some ways that can be cathartic, but it seems more often just a way to be sadistic. Just enjoying causing pain to other (hopefully fictional) people. Let's make Superman (who is supposed to be a Big Damn Hero, not to mention an illegal immigrant) not give a shit about civilian life and be an angry killing machine. What does that do but debase the idea of the heroism that you could be too, all for some cheap jollies? He's a damn boy scout so that more people try to be like him in real life. And when I say people, I mean EVERYONE. The darker and grittier version only truly speaks to one small subset.

I finished watching Lindsay Ellis talk about "Why is Cats?" as in the musical, and the trainwreck of a movie. Could have been called Hubris, the movie. The only ones not being a dick in some way or another being the VFX people. Come out understanding more of why people liked the original musical, and a sense of this whole "It must be realistic!" thing has to stop. It does not have to be realistic if the whole point was to be fantastical in the first place. Reminded of complaints about The Greatest Showman not being historically correct. No shit, that wasn't the point. It's not a history movie, it's not a biography of PT Barnum. It's a musical about a bunch of weirdos no one likes finding a family. About accepting yourself for who you are, a freak, and fuck it all. "This is Me" is the focal point song. Who is it sung by? None of the top billing actors, the ones whose name got onto the poster and got most of the screen time. No, it's the bearded lady, played by Keala Settle, who I never heard of before this and I bet few had. The song is about how she had been abused, that no one would love her because of what she looked like. But fuck that, I'm not letting them win. Take it or leave it, This Is Me.

This musical movie exploded everywhere. That song did, there are many covers of it. Why? Not for the historical aspect, or being a story of PT Barnum. For the fantastical spectacle of it all, and because so many people know what it's like to be mocked for who you are. That movie is not realistic, no one is watching it for realism. They want to be entertained yes, but also escapism and looking for hope. "If those people could find their family, could stand to live with themselves, maybe I could."

And this is where the "make it realistic" aspect fails. Realism would not give you that. It would make PT Barnum more like he really was, a con man and a dick. Like the relationship between Phillip Carlyle and Anne Wheeler would have worked out so well in reality. Realism would tell you, yes you are a freak, so either hide it or change to look like the "normal" people. People are already doing that every day, they don't need a movie telling them that as well.

So let's have dragons and fairytales and happily ever afters. Where superheroes save the day and no one dies, or dies for very long. Let's believe in magic, psychic powers, peaceful galactic federations, and that "good" will always triumph over "evil". That anyone could open a wardrobe and enter a snowy forest by a streetlamp. That if you were given the One Ring, you could make it all the way to Mt Doom and throw it in.

If we can believe in that, it'll be easy to believe in a world where everyone has food on the table. That we can all have a roof over our heads or healthcare that won't drown us in debt. That we can survive a pandemic we were woefully unprepared for. That someday we can meet in person to laugh and cry and give hugs where desired.

I don't know what else to add. I'm not sure I made much of a point. But yeah, I don't need to be realistic. I will write my sappy happily ever afters. And what the hell, let's end on a quote. From the one who did not get taken in by the One Ring, and was clearly the best person in that whole book, Samwise Gamgee.

"I know, it's all wrong. By rights we shouldn't even be here. But we are. It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo.

The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass.

A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now folks in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going because they were holding on to something. That there's some good in the world, Mr. Frodo, and it's worth fighting for."