Happyendingification

Whenever I get my hands on a copy of the newspaper that Americans persist in calling the London Times, I almost invariably turn first of all to the obituary pages and the death notices. This is partly to satisfy myself that I’m still here, but I do so primarily to read about the lives and careers of the recently-deceased, and to find out the age at which they actually passed on.

As I get older, this becomes an increasingly significant (and discouraging) consideration, and I suspect I’m far from being alone in finding this to be so. My grandfather once remarked that when he read the obituary pages, he always averaged out the ages of those whose deaths were reported, and then he subtracted his own accumulated years from the figure he had calculated, so as to get a rough idea of how much time and how many years he himself had got left to go.

On to the blog, I wanted to write. Research was involved in this, and the above was something I decided to share after writing it last night on cold medication, you’d be surprised how you feel the need to embellish writing when you’re in that state. Enough of some jibberjabber onto the story.

We’re always being warned not to expect happy endings to the ecological, economic and political crises that are upon the world, and yet when times are grim, these upbeat conclusions are in the stories we seek out.

Two years ago, I heard about a group called the Happy Endings Foundation that for a brief moment came into the forefront of the news.

They were demanding that authors of children’s books come up with happier endings and even suggested that works with less sunny conclusions should be burnt on “bad book bonfires” held around the UK.

It was then found out it was a hoax, like the ones floating about yesterday. A clever marketing hoax I may say. But by the time it was realised national and local newspapers had already carried the story.

The point is that this kind of campaign doesn’t seem that ridiculous. In troubled times there are plenty of people who want happy endings – an matter perhaps recognised by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, last week, when he cautioned God will not intervene in climate change to supply a happy ending.

Go back to the 1930s, particularly to films of that era since I am after all a Film Student, and you see the process of “happyendingification” in full flow during a time of grinding poverty and uncertainty about the future. What audiences wanted on both sides of the Atlantic was a dose of escapist fun. Or so the financiers of culture thought. Classic stories ended in a much more heartening fashion when they made it to the silver screen. But before you read any further, be warned – it’s impossible to discuss this subject honestly without breaking a few metaphorical eggs in the shape of plot spoilers.

Now, returning to Depression era America. Take 1931’s classic Frankenstein. In the book, Frankenstein marries but his wife Elizabeth is killed by the monster. Frankenstein then meets his doom in the Arctic. In the film, however, Dr Frankenstein and his wife live happily ever after.

Or The Hunchback of Notre Dame. In Victor Hugo’s novel, the ending sees Esmeralda hanged and Quasimodo choosing to die next to her body. In the 1939 film they both survive.

Even John Steinbeck’s tale of misery in the dustbowl, The Grapes of Wrath, found itself with a more upbeat conclusion in the film made by John Ford and released in 1940.

“The death of central characters sent completely the wrong message at a time in American history when they were coming out of a huge depression and looking forward to a better future,” according to National Media Museum film historian Tony Earnshaw. “They want to send people away from a movie experiencing the idea of the hero getting the girl.”

It is perhaps no surprise then that the term “Hollywood happy ending” has entered the cultural lexicon in Britain, and even among some non-anglophones.

Fast forward to the present day and in our current strained times and you will again see happy endings. Slumdog Millionaire swept the Oscars, representing the perfect hard times blend of a grim tale with a euphoric ending.

“Misery memoirs aren’t doing well,” reveals Philip Stone, charts editor of the Bookseller. “That genre might suffer a little bit in these times.”

Of course, the theory can be undermined by examples of happyendingification from every decade, whether times were grim or not.

Go back to 1961 and the adaptation of Breakfast at Tiffany’s. In Truman Capote’s novella, Holly Golightly heads off to Brazil. In the film there’s a romantic happy ending where she ends up with Paul.

In 1982’s Blade Runner the film ends with the protagonists happily driving through the countryside. Ten years later and Ridley Scott’s director’s cut deletes the happy ending and concludes the film with the couple leaving the apartment with their future unknown.

From the 1990s, Quentin Tarantino’s True Romance script had the central character Clarence shot to death at the end. In the film, he survives and we see him and his wife and child frolicking happily on the beach.

And don’t even get people started on Disney’s takes on traditional fairy tales.

You can even take it back to classical times. We may think of Greek drama in terms of the unrelenting tragedy of Oedipus Rex or Medea. But even the Greeks expected a happy ending.

In Euripides’ Iphigenia in Tauris, the central character is thought to have been sacrificed before the Trojan war. In fact she is taken away to the Crimea where she is made a high priestess sacrificing Greek sailors. One day she takes pity on two Greeks and one turns out to be her brother. They make good their escape. And there was a belief that a tragedy could actually make people happier.

Shakespeare had both tragedies and comedies. It’s hard to watch the bloodbath ending of Hamlet and find any scrap of comfort. A version where Hamlet and Ophelia made it to the end and lived happily ever after wouldn’t quite do, even in Hollywood.

And yet one Shakespeare play about to get the silver screen treatment – the Winter’s Tale – is the classic Hollywood happy ending to the nth degree. The play has a deus ex machina, where an ending is imposed from above, that featured so much in Greek drama. And it’s still a feature of stories today.

The ending of HG Wells’ War of the Worlds didn’t need to be changed at all for the 2005 Steven Spielberg movie. The world is saved when the invading aliens suddenly die of disease. In a time of obsession with terror and cataclysm it made the perfect happy ending for many.

But there are always some who regard the process of happyendingification as fundamentally rough, a sign of the excessive commercialisation of the concept of story, of selling to our weaker side.