 Stacy Keach as King Lear, Jonno Roberts as Edmund, Laura Odeh as Cordelia, and Kate Arrington as Regan in “King Lear,” directed by Robert Falls, at Shakespeare Theatre Company. (Carol Rosegg) Every week, I answer a question from Monday’s Act Four Live chat in the Wednesday edition of this newsletter. You can read the March 6 transcript of the chat here, and submit questions for the March 13 chat here. This week’s reader contribution is a little bit different. We were discussing pop-culture endings we have a tendency to skip, and one reader wrote in with a very interesting perspective about where their approach toward happy endings and tragedy came from, and how their feelings had changed over the years. I wanted to share it because it’s very different from my own, and I think it’s always useful to see the different roads people take to the culture they love. The reader writes: I definitely preferred happy endings when I was young, even if they were bittersweet, the way that in war movies there are always some sympathetic characters who die in the service of the good guys. My religious upbringing, my patriotic upbringing and all the adventure stories and musical comedies I consumed instilled in me a sense that good wins in the long run. I disliked tragedy because it contradicted that sense. But I think that after years of watching good, bad and indifferent stories with happy endings, I came to value stories that made me feel something, even if it was sadness or anger. I still prefer comedies (any word on a “Happy Endings” reboot, BTW?), but I can appreciate tragedy too. It had never occurred to me that the very form of tragedy might represent a challenge to a moral or ethical worldview, but it was fascinating to see these stories this way. I would be curious to hear from the rest of you if this is something you’ve experienced, or, if you’re conservative, if this is something that makes you feel alienated from mainstream popular culture. Beyond simple questions of the depictions of sex or violence, I’d love to know if you feel like Hollywood has a tendency to send messages about the futility of good behavior (or the efficacy of immoral behavior). |
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