I haven’t seen Happy Go Lucky yet, but I can already tell it’s a movie that’ll piss a lot of people off. Because nothing bad happens! And that’s not realistic!
Well, no. Maybe not. And right now I think that’s just fine. I know the difference between realism and wish-fulfillment. And why, I ask you, why is it so bad to just throw ourselves every once in a while into the Great Big Mud Puddle of Smoodgy Fabulous Dreams and roll around for a while?
Dana Stevens argues in this review that “for a moral fable like this to work, the protagonist’s goodness needs to be tested against the possibility of real evil or violence.” I get that — one of the things I loved about Lars and the Real Girl was the tension early on that people would be cruel to Lars, and the marvelous sense of relief I felt when they weren’t. Lars was so realistic in that way.
But I have enough real in my real life right now, thanks very much. So I’ll be seeing Happy Go Lucky. I don’t know if I’ll like it — but if I don’t, I sure hope it isn’t because it’s too happy for me.
There’s the “being realistic” issue you mention, but I think it goes deeper than that. Maybe people like to wallow in someone else’s misery. My mom always told us that we’d find out who our real friends were not in the bad times, but in the good times. It’s easy to feel for those who are under constant trial and stormed over by unlucky clouds. They enable us to get off on a sense that our lives don’t suck so bad, that we’ve got our shit more together than our friends, so much we’re even in a position to help them. But when people are doing great we feel diminished and losers and charity cases and so on.
A woman recently came up to me with gossip about one of the young kids in our class. She said she hated how the boy was so sheltered, had a loving family that paid for his tuition and even bought him a car. I asked, “What’s wrong with that? That’s part of what I like about him.” She said, “There’s nothing wrong, other that he’s not writer material, he hasn’t experienced the pain of life.” Oh, I don’t remember exactly how I replied to that. I vaguely recall uttering something about how writing is about internal work and perhaps happy people were better suited for it than us bitter vultures, if only because they had a support network around that allowed them to sit at their desks and just come up with stories. Then I had to excuse myself and go for a walk.
What’s so bad about happy? I wish I knew, so I could spread the word. I often wonder why we can’t look at someone else’s bright and open life and go, “Wow, that’s really nice.” And do it without envy or ill-wishing, but with appreciation and feeling grateful that this world can still be a garden for such joy.
Oh, add: “also without the skepticism that characterizes most critics.”
I hope you enjoy Happy Go Lucky. I’m not sure whether I missed it or it hasn’t come to Vancouver yet. It seems like something I’d like to watch.
This may surprise you, Kelley, but I like happiness in stories. I don’t know if I’ll see Happy Go Lucky, but I’ll look into it. Have you ever seen My Brilliant Career? It might be going to far to say that “nothing bad happens in it”, but very little bad happens in it, and it always makes me happy to see a story in which someone confidently pursues what she or he wants, and gets it. (And what the main character of My Brilliant Career wants is not to trample on other people, or get revenge, or any of the other popular themes in so much commercial entertainment — she wants to be a writer, and she succeeds.)
Duncan, no, I’m not surprised at all. You strike me as a cheerful person.
I have seenMy Brilliant Career, although it’s been a while and I don’t remember it completely. But I do remember the writing part.
If you haven’t seen Lars and the Real Girl, I can really recommend it. It’s just a lovely story about people being nice to each other.
Karina, I always have to stop myself from putting my finger down my throat when someone (either a non-writer or a new writer) gives me the old shtick about suffering is what makes a writer, blah blah blah. Writing well makes someone a writer. Suffering just makes people feel bad.
The writer’s greatest tool is not personal fucking pain, it’s imagination and will.
Which is not to say that we don’t all use our pain in our work, of course we do. But that’s not where talent comes from. Artists may work with pain, or through it, but the idea that pain = art is just… argh, makes me want to kick a wall or something. But that would hurt (grin).