"There’s a lot to be said for making people laugh. Did you know that that’s all some people have? It isn’t much, but it’s better than nothing in this cockeyed caravan."
This is literally what I tried to do through my entire time at college, and yet my teachers still yelled at me about not trying to ham-fist meaning into my art an animations.
I’ve watched so many Good For You (TM) movies, so many that people recommended like prescriptions.
Not a single one of those, not a single one, gave me the emotional response of, say, Pacific Rim.
I don’t care what you think of that specific example, I just want to say that sometimes stupid escapist ridiculousness is exactly what the world needs.
"People don’t want the truth! They want opiates! They’re just sheep! They don’t care about my Important Meaningful Insights!"
Yeah, no, fuck off. My life is kind of difficult, I’ve been suicidal, I’m hella poor, I’m mentally ill, things aren’t rosy. I don’t want your fucking Saving Private Ryans. I don’t want your Brokeback Mountains.
I want Pacific Rim. I want The Rocketeer. I want Enchanted.
Because my life contains enough truth. Too much truth.
Take me away from that truth. Don’t dice it up, garnish it, and serve it back to me.
Take me away. That’s the real challenge. That’s the only art I really want anymore.
This, oh, my f’ing gawdz, THIS! This is exactly what I feel and have tried to convey to people in conversations about my ‘happy ending addiction’ and the desire to show happy, mutually-enjoyable sex and relationships (or to try aiming them at those goals and letting the reader assume they’ll get there soon).
Life really IS so full of ugly, painful, even horrible truths, and the balm for that is the soft, funny, sweet, silly, warm and fuzzy, and/or sexy fantasies or reality-bendings that I and other ficcers write (and film-makers make, and artists create) to balance all the ‘meaningful’ things in the world. It doesn’t, really, really DOESN’T mean we’re denying the real world is out there and needs to be dealt with; it just means we need to look away for a bit now and then, to let go of the negativity and pain and angst for a while, to sort of ‘recharge our batteries’ with these fictional creations, so we can deal with the real world a little better for the escape those creations afforded us.
Everything doesn’t have to be about angst, horror, betrayal, and tragedy to be considered good or relevant - sometimes you just need to watch a klutzy cartoon dog trying to learn to ski. y’know?