(no subject)

[sebastienne]

do we cry at happy endings because we know that in real life things never happen that way? that everything is confused and messy and there is no narrative structure driving our lives to inevitable conclusions?

Comments

[saf2285.livejournal.com]

I hate films with happy endings. Especially horribly contrived ones. I'm sure a lot of it is to do with the disappointment we know we're going to find in our own lives. It's like being taunted.

[mi-guida.livejournal.com]

I think maybe it is because we know that things never turn out that perfectly - or maybe it's because when we see the happy ending but not the "ever after", we impose a concept of things not being happy-ever-after, and so in a sense we're grieving for the people in the happy ending we see, that we're foretelling that they'll lose it but they aren't aware of it - even if that foretelling, or foreboding, is entirely sub-conscious in us.

As for narrative structure... some one is scripting my life, I'm sure of it. Narrative structure... yes. Every life is a narrative structure driving at something, we just don't know what.

That may or may not make any sense at all.

[sebastienne.livejournal.com]

oh, no, i get you. but i think that we impose narrative structure on our own lives, see patterns which aren't there, repetitions that seems significant and are in fact the result of chance. and i don't think that that's a bad thing; i embrace my own life-narrative, fully aware that it's all in my head, because, after all, everything that i live for is, on one level or another, all in my head.

[mi-guida.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure it's the patterns that make me think it's marrative scripted (and yes, in my head), it's where the patterns break. Hence the scripted, not just patterns repeating.

[mejoff.livejournal.com]

Perhaps because any strong emotion can provoke tears. Or as mi_guida points out, we know the happy ending is not the end... A happy ending is really a beginning, The characters reach a safe place to start from, actual endings are inherently unhappy in some way or another. Most straight-up narratives are a sequence of endings, culminating in a new beginning.

As to narrative structure... yes it's there, but none of us is a movie, or a single novel... we're long running TV shows, the sort that tend to drag on for a season or so more than they really had the material for. My problem is I know whose writing mine and they've both done better work.

[darthfox.livejournal.com]

... honey, are you okay?

[sebastienne.livejournal.com]

i think so - just ruminatory. (did i invent that word? if i did, i'm keeping it. it's nice.) i'll admit, i've been ill, which is why i was curled up reading a book with a sappy happy ending at which i cried even though i could see through it to the author saying "haha, this is a hackneyed old cliché but it works every time!"

but other than a little post-illness weakness and melancholy, no terrible life-events have brought this post; it really is just wondering, not mourning.

thanks for your concern, though. means a lot.

[potatofiend.livejournal.com]

The good ends happily and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means. Therefore, unfortunately, it's not what real life means. So I think you're right. If we view literature as escapism, we feel cheated of that relieved feeling if there's no happy ending.

[liriselei.livejournal.com]

everyone cries or doesn't cry for their own reasons - and real life is so infinitely varied that sometimes things do happen that way.

it's possible to impose narrative structure on almost anything with hindsight and sufficiently selective perception... but the only thing driving our lives is ourselves.

[anotherusedpage.livejournal.com]

I cry because I'm happy more often than because I'm sad.
I believe in happy endings in real life, or at least happy indefinitely perpetual middles.
I cry at films for catharsis, whether they are happy or sad.
I have cried more in the past two days, at random shit, than I did in the sixth months last year when I was miserable.

Dunno if this is useful or interesting to you, but it seemed relevent.
*random hugs, if you want them*

[ex-leighwoos982.livejournal.com]

I don't think we need a happy ending, just a happy journey.

[ex-leighwoos982.livejournal.com]

Also I think journeys are only happy or sad in reflection. At the time you're too busy trying and working hard and pushing towards the goal and then, at some quiet later time, you look back and think: "that was worth it"; "that turned turned out pretty well"; "that was an utter bugfuck" or "Oh shit, now I am crying".

Happy endings happen, but they are dotted around according to some enormous, un seeable pattern and then blended with a photoshop smudge tool into a new begining or a sudden arrival or the surrounding stormy grey. They only appear when you glance over it all and choose to point them out for what they are.