Happily Ever After
A few years ago, Netflix put out a miniseries called Hollywood, based on the appalling real-life experiences of women, the LGTBQ community, and people of color in post-WWII Hollywood.
Writers, actors, producers, dreamers . . . the takeaway from the early episodes was that if you weren’t a white man (or a buxom white woman applying for a role as Siren), even genius was likely to be overlooked.
What I enjoyed about the show was that Netflix gave it a somewhat happy ending. Not a Disney-fied, tidy and wrapped-in-a-bow ending, but an ending where, eventually, brilliance and perseverance were rewarded, and prejudices were set aside.***
(***Lots of asterisks here, as will be obvious to anyone who watched the show.)
Interestingly, critics were not impressed.
Here’s a sample of their complaints:
From The Guardian's Lucy Mangan: “This should be the perfect set-up for a scabrous look at prejudice, corruption, the trading of sexual currency, coercion, the well-oiled machinations that underlie an industry and how it all shapes history—all through a #MeToo lens. But it becomes a mere wish-fulfilment fantasy that, whether it intends to or not, suggests that if a few people had just been that bit braver, then movies—and therefore the world!—would be a glorious, egalitarian Eden.” (Emphasis mine). (Quoted from the Wikipedia article)
Similarly, FAULT Magazine criticized “the show's dangerous embellishment of systemic prejudice of post-war USA,” saying, “The only ones who benefit from the erasure of Hollywood's brutal history of racism and homophobia, are those that perpetrated it.” (Also quoted from the same article)
I’m not here to argue that Hollywood was great art, but I disagree with the cited criticism, and here’s why: I believe good fiction—on the page or on the screen—can take tragedy, whether real or simply true-to-life, and turn it on its head.
I believe a good story can show us not only life as it is,
but life as it should be.
In my opinion, this is not “erasure of brutal history,” this is John Lennon singing “Imagine all the people living life in peace.”
Hollywood first takes us into a world where anyone who dreams of success in film must exchange sex for recognition, and then allows us to climb out of that sordid world, and glimpse an alternate, happier ending.
And I think we need those happily ever after endings
almost as much as we need air.
We need to see that it is, in fact, possible to have a different outcome if we can bring ourselves to be “that bit braver.”
That is, of course, what I have tried to do in Two Over Easy All Day Long, and what I try to do in all my writing. As I’ve said in Meet the Author events, newsletters, and elsewhere, Tell Your Story is my mantra and fervent hope. And as long as you’re telling your story, why not give it a happy ending?
Postscript
About that photo at the beginning of this newsletter: My personal Happily Ever After involves kids (the hairy kind and the not-so-hairy kind). So here, in addition to the photo of me with lambs and kids, is a photo of me with my grandson. Just because . . .
Two Over Easy All Day Long News
Check out the new YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@sharilane38
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Meet the Author event scheduled for Monday, October 7, 2024 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm, at Bloomsbury Books in Ashland, Oregon
Book Reviews
Fire Music by Connie Hampton Connally (2024 Coffeetown Press) follows three teens trapped in a basement-turned-bomb shelter in Hungary during WWII. Music becomes escape and salvation, and a way to heal the trauma of that time for the next generation. A lovely read and a page-turner!
And speaking of music . . .
I will be collaborating with the incomparable Adam Brock on some music for the new YouTube channel. In the meantime, check out two of my favorite songs: In This Kitchen, with Claflin and Grace, and Alice Di Micele’s Wise Old Woman.
