Tragedy

I am easily bored, and one of the things which bores me most is tragedy. Tragedy is exactly the wrong word to use in this case, but I can’t think of a better one off the top of my head. Tragedy has a majestic connotation— it makes me think of empires falling, lovers committing suicide in fits of passion. And all of that is fine. I can watch lovers commit suicide in fits of passion all day long— well, perhaps not all day; that might get a bit wearing after a while, but I think it would for most people.

I suppose a better term would be Extremely Depressing Stories. And not all brands of Extremely Depressing Stories— it’s the mundane stories that bother me. Petty violence. Stories about slaves and serfs fall under this category, and it’s not that I don’t think it isn’t important that America’s children grow up knowing that slavery, serfdom, and indentured servitude were very bad things that should never happen again, but the kinds of books I was forced to read in grade school, in middle school, and again in high school seemed to have no point. In grade school the plot was always the same: someone would be in a tolerable situation— I wouldn’t want to trade places with them, but, you know, that’s life. And then their mother would die, or one day a Mysterious Stranger would appear and— poof!— just like that they would be married off to a cruel man who beat them and raped them routinely and a cruel mother-in-law who would make them clean the kitchen endlessly. Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about. If you’ve gone through the American school system you’ve had at least one year of American lit where you were force-fed story after depressing story. Maybe I’m getting carried away, but that was my experience.

So it isn’t even the ending I’m objecting to, really. My apologies to any Toni Morrison fans, but I had to read Beloved in high school and the scene I remember most vividly was when all of the slaves were forced to perform oral sex on some men— I don’t even remember who the men were, or why they, the slaves, and several large crates were lined up in some sort of formation, and I’m not going to reread the book and find out. I just remember it was a completely unnecessary and entirely vulgar, and at that moment I wanted nothing more than to put the book down. I can’t remember if Morrison found some way to tie that scene into the plotline, but I don’t believe she did. I remember that book like a bad dream, and it wasn’t the horror I objected to— it was the pointlessness, the futility, the why-am-I-reading-this. It’s not like I don’t know that racism exists today, and that it existed in greater quantities in the past. It’s not like I don’t turn on the news at night and hear that same story which occurred yesterday in some other country. It doesn’t even have to be fiction— it’s happening all around me, every day, and it’s not that I don’t know, it’s that I know too well. If there’s one thing I know, if there’s one thing I hear about every day, it’s petty violence. Give me something I don’t live and breathe.

Give me something weird, something to make me see things in a new light. Call down the apocalypse Cormac McCarthy style, or throw me into the alien slums of District 9. Show me something to die for— an epic battle for the sake of a great nation, a Juliette and her Romeo. Give me a protagonist with a dream and an enemy with a backstory; make me care that one of them has to die. Take the traditional British route in the style of J.R.R. Tolkien, T.H. White and, yes, the modern J.K. Rowling— people die, and the ending may be tragic, but elves still sing, dogs still bark, magic and truth and love and beauty still exist (initials before your last name optional). Give the tragedy a background to stand out against so I can appreciate it in all its bittersweet beauty.

My friend Avery says that one of the most depressing movies she’s ever seen was a French movie called Au Revoir, Mes Enfants. For the first hour of the movie you’re immersed in the world of a French boarding school, following the story of a boy and his friend. You come to know them, you come to deeply sympathize with every trial they undergo. And there’s a feeling of safety— you’re not on a battlefield, you’re in a French boarding school full of schoolboy silliness. When the Nazis invade France, the ending really breaks your heart, and that is a tragedy.