Rehab for Disney Movies

I saw Enchanted recently, and I have to say; it was a damned precious movie. I was in a pretty bad mood when I sat down in the theater, but after stomaching through the nauseatingly cute opening musical number I really started to get into it. It's good for a change to watch a cartoon that's, you know, actually drawn, albeit for a quick fifteen minutes or so. By the time Giselle finally made it into the real world I was thoroughly engrossed in the story, and by the heartwarming end I was left feeling absolutely elated. Things had gone so perfectly for everyone involved, and all the bad guys were either reformed through the goodness of others or, well, killed.

And that is precisely the problem I have with it. It ended in a depressingly uplifting fashion.

I don't know at what point in time happy endings started to leave me with a sickly, melancholy aftertaste, but the first time I really noticed it was with the film adaptation of Hairspray. Touching as the show might be, once I stepped out of the movie theater reality came and bitchslapped me in the face. As much as I would like to believe that a bunch of singing, dancing high schools students can end racism and change the world, and as believable and heartfelt it may appear on film, it's completely ludicrous to expect. As just and righteous Hairspray's conclusion is, things could never be so simple or the results so good. The same was true for Enchanted.

It's the little things that wear down the celluloid magic- homeless guys on the street asking for change so they can feed their meth addiction, the blatant disrespect of other drivers on the road, the dark, quiet drive home. Thoughts quickly turn away from the perfection of the cinema to other, more disquieting things: AIDS, genocide, the third world. The exploits of Giselle quickly wear off when I try to justify the ludicrous amount of privilege I enjoy in my life when there are millions of invisible people dying of hunger or getting their hands blown off by land mines.

The ideal emotional response to a tragedy is catharsis; the emptying of all emotion, usually leading to happier thoughts. As of late, though, I only get left with a crazy sort of reverse catharsis after indulging in something with a happy ending. The spells don't last for very long, and sometimes they don't come at all, but when they do they always leave me feeling a little more guilty.