So Much For My Happy Ending...

I'm not a huge fan of chick flicks.

Watching a shallow, vacuous but ridiculously attractive woman stumbling to find love through a series of comical escapades does not exactly spark my interest. What WOULD interest me is if the woman, stumbling to find love through a series of comical escapades, also happened across a giant Autobot and got caught up in an epic alien battle of good and evil.

(However, the obligatory 'James-Marsden-in-a-wet-shirt-scene' would still have to be retained, even if Optimus Prime was stomping all over him.)

But I'm beginning to appreciate the sugary value of chick flicks a lot better now...because you're assured of a happy ending. I used to find the predictability of chick flicks annoying- the girl always gets the guy, they live happily ever after...but now, it's an expectation I'm growing to depend on, against the tide of realist literature and cynicism burning away at our concept of the happily-ever-after.

At the moment, I'm studying both Romantic and Renaissance literature. I thought it would be a nice foil to my law subjects. And it is. Except that almost all of my texts are extremely depressing.

Doctor Faustus makes a pact with the devil and goes to hell to burn for all eternity.

Frankenstein creates a monster which then murders everyone that his creator holds dear.

Macbeth ends with the protagonist's head being waved around as a lesson to those who commit treason and regicide.

Wordsworth's The Ruined Cottage tells of a war widow eventually pining away until she dies.

Blake's The Book of Urizen tells of an alternate creation and the bastardisation and dumbing down of humanity.

Yup. Laughs all round.

I was up until 2 a.m the other night, finishing For the Term of His Natural Life, a novel about convict Australia. It has been on my 'to read' list ever since Year Nine history, but I'd heard tales of how long and boring it was. However, ten pages in and I was absolutely hooked. I kept reading and reading and reading, through pages and pages of convict torture and lashings and betrayal, hoping to get to the end where sweet redemption hopefully awaited.

The truth it, sweet redemption was not the lot of Rufus Dawes.

Which made me extremely sad. And frustrated. Especially because the sheer brutality of the book makes you hope against hope for him to be pardoned and live happily ever after with the golden-haired young nymphet of his dreams.

The man who wrote Atonement, Ian McEwan, also wrote a novel called Saturday. I'm not even going to get into my rant about Atonement- you can see it here if you have a particular hankering to revisit the depressingness- but Saturday was a particularly interesting book. I remember reading an interview featured Ian McEwan, in which he noted that many people hated the protagonist of Saturday because he was happy. The protagonist has a loving wife and a wonderful relationship with his grown-up children. He finds his job stimulating and enjoyable. He plays squash every weekend. He revels in the comforts of domesticity.

And readers DIDN'T LIKE HIM.

So do we resent happiness in others? Or, perhaps, do we hate being presented with the arguably false hope that there is always a chance for a happy ending? I had a chat to a friend several months ago, and she was just so happy at that point in her life that she seemed to almost hesitate when she said it out loud. And that's the strange thing. Much like C-3PO, we're always quick to whine and complain about our lot in life, but less inclined to tell the world if we're happy. It's almost as if we're ashamed of our happiness when so much of the world is still living in shades of grey, or if we're afraid that people will resent us for it. We're all too quick to criticise, yet never give credit where credit is due.

I don't think it's unusual to resent happiness in others. I guess it works much like material jealousy, except instead of eyeing the wealth of others we covet that which is so much harder to obtain.

But alas, I think this girl doth protest too much. Lack of sleep of my part generally results in drowsy introspection. Also, this has helped me somewhat in nutting out the subtext of Doctor Faustus, so if you have anything to add, please do.

And if you haven't already, go out and get yourself a copy of Disney's Enchanted. It'll make you believe in happy endings again.

(And if you got the blog title reference, I do apologise. I will refrain from using Avril Lavigne lyrics in blog posts in the future.)