Going to the Chapel of Love
January 5th, 2010
Happy endings. They’re a problem, aren’t they?
Of course, some people rubbish the whole notion of ‘happy endings’, finding them ridiculously simplistic and perhaps evidence of the lowbrow tastes of those who loll about all day in peach coloured negligees eating soft centred chocolates and reading bodice rippers – as so many of us do.
Happy endings are said to be evidence of patriarchal brain washing, seducing innocent young females into fantasies of rescue and everlasting married bliss when they should be fantasising about their earning potential as merchant bankers or realising their inner potential by climbing Everest without oxygen and sans makeup. Marriage these days is not the neat end of the story; it’s not the one and only aim of contemporary western women as it used to be portrayed, particularly in post war popular culture.
It’s not the only aim, if it is an aim at all, because we know that in real life happy endings, where the lovers remain dreamily happy forever, just don’t happen. Lovers turn into partners – or not – and a whole truckload of interpersonal issues get dumped on their white picket fence and, if they stay together, they’ll be dealing with these issues until death or divorce part them.
The story of the courtship, not the forty-year aftermath, is what concerns your average romantic comedy writer. In popular fiction and film, the courtship is much more fun than the marriage because many deeper personality issues have yet to surface and we can enjoy the projected dreams and desires as much as the characters do. We can laugh at their bumbling and misunderstandings, recognising and laughing at ourselves all the while. But where to put that full stop? How can we end on an optimistic note at this point when we know what lies ahead of them?
Marriage, a lifelong commitment to another person is a hard road to travel, and almost half of those who attempt it fall by the wayside. Sustaining a marriage requires relationship skills, generosity, hope, forgiveness and an ability to reach deep into the self to find these things. It’s complicated, more so than most of us imagine when we sign on. Marriage can’t signify a happy ending in this era. So I’m still a bit wary of plonking a marriage at the end of my stories. But we still need resolution and we want an uplifting conclusion that will somehow temper the remorseless of reality, and what marriage does do is signify commitment, and maybe commitment is the optimistic ending we are after.
Getting married is an expression of hope, symbolizing that you will do your best when the bad times come – which they will – to keep the relationship together. So why should that commitment in itself be a happy ending? Why not make serial monogamy or multiple lovers or celibacy the gold standard of human happiness? Because a functioning, intimate and sexually exclusive relationship with a person you respect and enjoy being with – sustained until the end of life, meets so many of our human needs that it is, let’s face it, what most people, male and female, yearn for.
So when the lovers on screen or in the book finally sort out their differences and decide they want to be together, that is what we are wishing for them. Not a sugary, improbable happy ending, but the strength and good fortune to sustain the love until the end of their lives. We know the odds are long, but we close the book or leave the theatre hoping their white picket fence stays upright and only needs a few coats of paint over it’s lifetime.
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Categories: culture, on reading | Tags: books, culture, desire, film, love, myths, reading
4 Comments
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Hi Phillipa
Is marriage really the expected ending for even a romantic comedy, these days? It may well be, I don’t know.
For me, there’s a huge difference between a traditionally ‘happy’ ending, be it marriage, sex, or just a nice smooch, depending on the imagined demographic, and my preferred option - the positive ending.
Positive and happy are two very different things, to my mind. A Positive ending is one were the hero/heroine (or both) ends up in a place where things ‘might’ get better. They may be together, they may not. They may hate each other, it doesn’t matter.
As you say, there’s no such thing as ‘happy ever after’, so ‘might get a bit better soon’ is the best place for that full stop, I reckon. It’s usually funnier, too.
Of course, when all else fails I go with my standby ending - they all die.
I don’t think marriage is the expected ‘happy ending’ these days, Danny, but I think an optimistic ending is. Not sure hating each other can be grouped under the Optimistic Ending … altho some people do thrive on hate, I think that might be one for the lit fic gang down at the caff with their gauloise and stained fingers. I agree with your ending ‘might get better soon’ but killing them all off, well, that’s a scene for the author’s eyes only.
Optimistic/Positive, same thing I guess. Don’t dismiss hate as a route to happiness - it worked for, eh, okay, maybe not. Anger, though. Making an angry character angry about something righteous rather than something blind, I’d argue that could be a positive ending to any story.
I do wonder, though. The boy/girl thing (or boy/boy, girl/girl), is that ultimately the only happy ending we’ll accept? I’m not saying it isn’t, I’m just curious.
Incidentally, I guarantee everyone dying/hating doesn’t have to be lit fic. You just need to know where to put the jokes.
Anger – well, there is all shades of anger isn’t there? The sort of righteous anger you mention can move mountains, but all too often in relationships between people it becomes a bitter, entrenched anger, almost to the point of losing sight of the original source of anger. Holding onto it, nursing it, to my way of thinking, is a barrier – self erected – to intimacy. People who are like that don’t want the issues resolved, they want to feel righteous and superior to their partner and while they may be funny in social situations I’ve seen enough of that sort of behaviour to know it is very unfunny to live like that. So I’m with you on the righteous anger, but I stop there. Anger leads to loneliness and we can’t have that in a romcom – except as a starting point.
I don’t think finding a partner is the only happy ending we’ll accept these days – although it was for centuries of story telling. Films like Nurse Betty or The Devil Wears Prada show the heroine finding herself and what she wants to do and along the way having romances and this does reflect modern Western life. I think partnering is a fundamental human urge and a lot of life is geared around it but we have more freedom now to shape our own happy endings. I got onto this topic by listening to a friend who’d seen Avatar and he was bemoaning the positive ending and the gutlessness of the director or producer to be more realistic – we know indigenous people are killed and exploited, we know resources are plundered so why kid the audience? Two things – because the demographic for that film is young and young people – all people – need hope, and because it is entertainment and by definition popular entertainment must have an uplifting streak in it (although you could find exceptions, I’m sure).
Re dying hating and lit fic. Right again, Danny, it is all about where to put the jokes and how to relieve the tension these subjects bring up.