Happy Ends

[tangofiction]

What is it about an ending of a story that makes it "happy"? I've been thinking about this for years, but particularly after spending some time hovering on the fringes of the "Phantom of the Opera" fandom. (Now, when I am supposed to be writing about fungal pathogens of plants, strikes me as the perfect time to put some of those musings to paper/website. )

Click for essay/rant

Obviously there is the traditional romantic happy end, where our heroes work through their problems, resolve their differences, forgive, forget, defeat the bad guys, and live happily ever after -- circle where applicable.



This is not what I am talking about. I mean a happy ending in general, where you read a book or watch a film and come away feeling (1) satisfied and (2) positive about the way things turned out. These are two separate things. Feeling satisfied doesn't mean that the ending was happy -- it just means that it feels like the only possible, "correct", resolution of the story. Feeling happy goes beyond that. It is dependent on how many characters get what they want, and how deeply we care about those characters.



In general, I place a lot more weight on an ending being satisfactory than happy. I want to feel that the story has been brought to a logical full-stop, the main themes have been resolved well, and I can go away and think about it. I remember a lot of friends being disappointed by the ending of Robin Hobb's "Farseer" trilogy, because the main hero is basically a washed-up cripple by the end, even though he has managed to save the world. To me, this was a perfectly satisfactory, logical ending, and while I felt sad for Fitz, I didn't have a burning desire to "give him a happy end". (Sadly, Robin Hobb did, resulting in a second trilogy that gave Fitz a "happy end" I absolutely hated, because it was illogical and meaningless.)



In exactly the same way, a lot of "Phantom" fans hate the ending because the Phantom/Erik doesn't get the girl. They hate it because they are invested in the character and his relationship with Christine, and this investment is not paid off at the end. Personally, I loved the ending because my "emotional hook" was not so much whether Erik would get the girl but whether he will be able to change and achieve something like redemption. An ending where Christine chooses the Phantom (despite all his crimes) would have made absolutely no sense to me. It would be barking up the wrong tree: a story about redemption should have an ending about redemption. Obviously, to a fan for whom this is a story about romance, the ending should be about romantic fulfillment. (And there is nothing wrong with that, because the reading of any text is fundamentally subjective). This is not to say that I have any objections to the Phantom getting the girl, but that would be a whole different story, with a different purpose.



An example of an ending that was supposed to be tragic but was actually ridiculous would be the finale of "Xena". True, the show was about being burdened by past misdeeds, but it was not about dwelling on this: it was about going out there and doing good things to make up for the past. When they killed Xena off at the end and called it "redemption" (because she died to save 40,000 souls), I felt cheated. I did not feel that she needed to die to redeem herself (that's pretty drastic in any case, like using a guilliotine to get rid of a headache!). Happy or tragic doesn't come into it: this is the classic example of an unsatisfactory ending, because it resolved the wrong theme.



For a text to have a truly happy end, it first has to make you sympathise intensely with a character, a relationship or a theme, until you feel that it is yours, that it matters. And you wait with bated breath for the end because you have put a piece of yourself into the story (become invested in it) and it is as though it is happening to you on some level. Not to you personally, but to the part of you that you have made vulnerable. The text has you in its grip, and it can either make things end well, or dash your head against the rocks. The latter case is not a tragic ending; it's a depressing one. It hurts because you have risked yourself and lost.



And this brings me to one of the few films where I see a true "happy end" -- "Dear Frankie". To me, it is a story about people who have been hurt so badly in the past that they have put away their most precious dreams, secreting them somewhere they hardly dare to look at. But those dreams still exist. The main theme of the story, the thing that needs "resolving" is the gradual erosion of the protective walls that these people have built around themselves. The intense satisfaction of the conclusion is that they are at last completely vulnerable; and because these walls were the only thing that ever stood between them, the implication is that from now on, there will be happiness. It may not be perfect or immediate, but it will be wonderful. It is as magical as the arrival of the ship with crimson sails in Alexander Grin's story: the fulfillment of the secret, unspoken, seemingly-impossible wish.



To end this over-long rant: most stories don't absolutely need a happy end, but all stories need a logical one. However, there are times when the only logical end is a happy one, and the main resolution is not just satisfying but positive. Those are the true happy ends. And they are very, very rare.