in defence of happy endings

I like things that are bad. Bad movies, bad books, bad television. I like it. I love it, even. And I'm sick of feeling like everything I like is a guilty pleasure. This is entertainment, after all — isn't it supposed to be pleasurable?

There seems to be some idea that unless it's hard, some great story of human suffering and triumph, that being invested in the story, caring about the characters, isn't worth it.

I would like to make a case for the happy ending. What's wrong with taking a little fantasy in the possibility of all the issues neatly resolving and loose ends being tied, everyone going home happy? Real life never works out like that, but we're all aware that fiction isn't real, and there are certain rules that just don't have to apply.

This is why I like romance novels. I was raised on Harlequin romances. If I'm feeling stressed or sad or just bothered by the rather depressing state of the world, I turn to these. Why? Because there is no question that everything will turn out all right. Nobody you care about will be killed, someone will always come to the rescue of the heroine, and at the end, we'll all ride off into the sunset and live happily ever after. I know that this is not a realistic outcome, but it's reliable.

This realization came to me back when I was in college and trying to decide where to do my internship. My two options were Elsevier, the powerhouse of medical publishers, where I would work on anatomy textbooks and nursing manuals, or Harlequin. I ended up going to Elsevier, but I said to the director of the program when she presented me with the options, "I'm more inclined to take the medical... but there's something to be said for happy endings..." This was two weeks after my mother died. I probably should have taken Harlequin. How different my life would be.

Or Twilight. Yeah, I read the books, and I liked them. I enjoy the movies because they are soooo terrible and campy (minus the street cred of being campy). No, the characters are not realistic and the whole thing is ridiculous, but hey, we're dealing with vampire stories here, it's not based in reality. It's a long saga of characters who have no real purpose or motivation except to be in love with each other. Yeah, that's kinda dumb. I get it. But it's crafted well enough that you can let yourself be engaged by the fantasy and not look too deeply for realism. It's escapism. It's not meant to be deep.

I realize that there are plenty of things that would qualify as escapism that are not necessarily as bad as Twilight or Harlequin romances, or True Blood, or Glee, or 17 Again (to name a few things that I love that I'm aware are bad), but I like that these things are at least honest about it. I don't want to fear that bad things will happen.

I guess this all stems from accidentally reading a book that I should never have read. I'd already read and enjoyed a book by the same author, and figured it would be an interesting book, so I checked it out from the library. And I was reading it on the subway and got to one part that horrified me to the point that I'd felt like all the blood had drained out of my body and was sitting in a puddle there on the ground. That book, that one scene, ruined me for reading serious books. I've tried a couple of times since then, but never been able to let my guard down enough to enjoy the story, just waiting for something atrocious to happen. I even tried to finish that book. It sat on my table for a while, taunting me. Eventually I took it back to the library because the very aura of it being in my apartment bothered me. It's something I need to get over. I never used to be so sensitive, but now I need an erase function on my brain.

And so, in defense of happy endings, I say that it's okay for everything to turn out all right once in awhile, and there's nothing wrong with enjoying that as a break from real life.