The "empowering message" with which she is disagreeing is that every problem is resolved and that we live happily ever after. That is, indeed, something for young children and not grown ups.
It's not "rejecting the light" to say that we all die and that it hurts. Nor is it "inherently masochistic" to face and endure the necessary pain of life.
This isn't an either/or. The target of Ms. Gaitskill's and my opprobrium is a culture that insists on a happy ending for every story, a resolution to every conflict, and a rose colored barrier around every injury.
It's not that the "happy side" or the "sad side" has to win an argument about what life is about. I consider life worth living, and I enjoy lots of things.
The point that I am trying -- perhaps unsuccessfully -- to get across is that you can't make art out of treacle and have it honest. You end up with the Berenstain Bears. You can say that art affirms life, that it brings light, and that it is intended to heal. But "happy endings" aren't healing; they're bedtime stories for children who aren't ready yet to think about the inevitability of sorrow, loss, pain, and death.
Grown-ups need a little bitter in their food, I think.
But she does phrase it as an either/or. She gives no qualifier whatsoever on her statement about art having a positive viewpoint. She doesn't say "some art based on..." or even "to insist upon art based on...". She says plainly and simply that "art based on the empowering message and the positive image is part of this juvenile condition."
No, you can't make honest art out of treacle, but there's a difference between treacle and sugar. "Everybody lived happily ever after" is for fairy tales, but it's entirely possible to have a happy ending to a story without implying the permanence of such happiness. One can have an honest, mature narrative which ends on a positive note and leaves the future progression open. In fact, that tends to be my default assumption: that the future is unspecified.
As a particular instance, in Secretary I don't assume that Lee and Edward stay together in marital bliss forever. In fact, I think it's a distinct possibility that things run aground in the near-to-middle future from the end of the epilogue. This is not to say that the movie isn't a fairy tale as shot (this possibility being clearly not the one the director intended the audience to assume), but just to exemplify that the end of a narrative is not necessarily extendable to the end of the characters' lives.
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Re: I call straw man
Date: 2004-02-01 12:31 am (UTC)The "empowering message" with which she is disagreeing is that every problem is resolved and that we live happily ever after. That is, indeed, something for young children and not grown ups.
It's not "rejecting the light" to say that we all die and that it hurts. Nor is it "inherently masochistic" to face and endure the necessary pain of life.
This isn't an either/or. The target of Ms. Gaitskill's and my opprobrium is a culture that insists on a happy ending for every story, a resolution to every conflict, and a rose colored barrier around every injury.
It's not that the "happy side" or the "sad side" has to win an argument about what life is about. I consider life worth living, and I enjoy lots of things.
The point that I am trying -- perhaps unsuccessfully -- to get across is that you can't make art out of treacle and have it honest. You end up with the Berenstain Bears. You can say that art affirms life, that it brings light, and that it is intended to heal. But "happy endings" aren't healing; they're bedtime stories for children who aren't ready yet to think about the inevitability of sorrow, loss, pain, and death.
Grown-ups need a little bitter in their food, I think.
Re: I call straw man
Date: 2004-02-01 12:51 am (UTC)No, you can't make honest art out of treacle, but there's a difference between treacle and sugar. "Everybody lived happily ever after" is for fairy tales, but it's entirely possible to have a happy ending to a story without implying the permanence of such happiness. One can have an honest, mature narrative which ends on a positive note and leaves the future progression open. In fact, that tends to be my default assumption: that the future is unspecified.
As a particular instance, in Secretary I don't assume that Lee and Edward stay together in marital bliss forever. In fact, I think it's a distinct possibility that things run aground in the near-to-middle future from the end of the epilogue. This is not to say that the movie isn't a fairy tale as shot (this possibility being clearly not the one the director intended the audience to assume), but just to exemplify that the end of a narrative is not necessarily extendable to the end of the characters' lives.