One of the biggest lessons I've had to learn as I grow up is how to accept being disappointed. As children, when we don't get the things we want, we kick and scream and pout, or sulk, or grow defensive and churlish and refuse to share our toys. Sometimes I think adults act the same way, or at least we wish we could! But part of growing up is about facing that twisting, gut-wrenching pain and refusing to let it control us.
Some things are harder to stomach than others, I admit. When a job opportunity falls through, or when you don't quite manage the GPA you'd hoped for... those are hard, but in the end, it's one more step towards your eventual future. As a senior, I'm struggling with the reality of my economic situation: namely, that I'll be starting from practically nothing once I graduate. I will have to swallow my pride and accept the fact that I'll have to rely on my family for support, both financially and in my living arrangements. I'll be holding a diploma in my hand, but I won't quite be free from reliance on others to keep me on my feet. Don't get me wrong - I'm infinitely grateful for that support, and I know a lot of people don't have that blessing. But then I look at my little brother, whose mechanical engineering and/or physics degree will open manifold doors to financial stability.
Me, I got a Bachelor's in art. I'm looking forward to the cardboard box.
Joking aside, those disappointments can sometimes be easier to handle than others. At least I know I'll have a roof over my head and a skill set that will get me places, as long as I'm willing to dig in and work my butt off (spoiler alert: I am). Other disappointments - cultural, social, etc. - can strike harder blows. For instance, a story you cherished since childhood, that helped shape your creative aesthetic, that guided you to a very specific dream and desire for the future, being completely butchered in cinematic form. That hurts. Yes, it's "just a movie" (whatever that means). Yes, it had its good moments. But was it really too much to ask to expect a little less mind-numbing violence and orc-slaying?
Yes, I'm talking about The Hobbit. Don't judge me. Or do judge me, if you like, but swallow this first: movies are important. All cinema, blockbusters and indie films alike, have a place in the vast web of the human storytelling, a past-time I've devoted my life to in many ways. And it's not just a past-time, either. It's the gauge by which we measure human culture and creativity, a way to reimagine and comprehend a world that is often incomprehensible. Through the filter of stories, we can look back on our history and catch a glimmer of what the lives of our ancestors looked like. King Arthur and Robin Hood; the Epic of Gilgamesh; the fairytales of Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm; all of it is the recorded history of a world we've never seen, a world imagined by our predecessors and laid over the "real" world like The Wizard of Oz painted over with Technicolor. In the words of J.R.R. Tolkien,
"Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisoned by the enemy, don’t we consider it his duty to escape?…If we value the freedom of mind and soul, if we’re partisans of liberty, then it’s our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can!"I remember when I first heard that they were making a movie of The Hobbit. I'd grown up on it, and on The Lord of the Rings (and, eventually, the films). I was a freshman in college, working late at night on a project for Foundations of Digital Media when I saw the news article online. I walked back to my dorm feeling as if I walked among the stars. I was so excited I was shaking. It took me hours to fall asleep, mostly because I was trawling the internet for any and all evidence of potential cast lists and scraps of pre-production information. If Jesus himself had returned for the Second Coming, I don't think I could have been more frantically thrilled.
Oh, sweet childhood. The innocence of youth. The first blush, the naivete, the ignorance. They say that the anticipation of something is usually better than the thing itself, and I have to say that in this case, it was completely true. I attended the midnight premier of An Unexpected Journey the as a junior fresh out of fall semester finals, with two people I barely knew at the time (but have since become some of my dearest friends.) It wasn't perfect, I admitted, but what book-based movie ever is? The LotR films were fantastic, but even they had their flaws. I ignored the naysayers that claimed Jackson was in it for the money (three films out of one little book, but hey, he was using Unfinished Tales, right?), and just enjoyed the high.
It was probably all the anticipation that made my first viewing of The Desolation of Smaug such a flop. Looking back, I'm not sure what I was expecting; but endless, poorly-cut action scenes and about five full minutes of Bilbo screen-time wasn't it. (Isn't it called The Hobbit? I'd almost forgotten what Martin Freeman's face looked like by the end of the movie.)
So I was pretty miserable. My only consolation was that they had at least managed to cram one decent female character into a storyline populated with exactly zero. When a character that wasn't even in the original text saves the film adaptation, you know something's not quite right.
Suffice to say, it was a hard pill to swallow, but I've learned from my mistakes. No one should be elevated to godlike status, regardless of their position. I'd hoped, given the evidence of his previous work with The Lord of the Rings, Peter Jackson and his associates would be able to produce a fine piece of filmography that would revive my childhood memories of sitting at Dad's knee while he read aloud to us about Gollum's Cave, the treacherous paths of Mirkwood, and barrels out of bond. That didn't happen. But, you know, sometimes you don't get what you want. Sometimes you don't get lady dwarves (because really, if it's so hard to tell the difference between their men and women, I'm sure it's not impossible that some of Thorin's Company could have been female); sometimes you don't get a gentle giant who serves up mead and honey on bread with willing good cheer; sometimes you don't get to see Bilbo Baggins dancing around the forest, invisible, singing silly songs to madden the giant spiders. Sometimes you just have to make do.
Sometimes, you have to do the work yourself.
As a part of the wider online community, I can say with great confidence that a generation - my generation - is growing into its own. A generation made of writers and thinkers and artists who are tired of the same-old ways of Hollywood and our sexist, racist, homophobic cultural norms. These creative young people are the novelists and actors and film directors of the next few decades, and I am thrilled and fiercely proud to be one of them. Maybe The Hobbit movies aren't all I hoped they would be, but even Tolkien himself is not the end-all and be-all of good fantasy literature.
So, a toast: here's to strong female characters that are not reduced to a trope; here's to queer characters that don't exist purely for comedic purposes; here's to characters of color that overcome whitewashing in film. Here's a toast not to the new year, but to the next ten years, the next twenty. May they see a revolution sweep over our cultural norms and the storytelling of our modern world.
