Category: Movies

Love in the Hands of Children

For as long as I can remember, romance has comprised some part of every contiguous entertainment experience that has spoken to me. While certainly the values and nature of attraction and fulfillment changed as I grew older – as did my expectations in the nuances of my entertainment selections – romantic idealism has been with me from my earliest television and movie experiences. From amorous cartoon characters floating off the ground with a single kiss to reticent movie couples surrendering to mutual attraction that’s been beating them around the head and shoulders for an hour of on-screen hijinks, love has been a theme of so much quality family entertainment throughout my life – and for a generation or two prior!

Ted Danson playing the “Long” game in Cheers (1982-1993).

And I grew up in the 80s. We were a cable family, and my parents really didn’t censor what my brother and I consumed (until they thought it would be too scary, but that’s another blog), so it wasn’t just classic musicals and Saturday morning cartoons that taught us the intricacies of romance. I followed Steve Guttenberg through his Police Academy misadventures (complete with boobies!!), Tom Hanks mackin’ on a mermaid, and Molly Ringwald waltzing her way through one John Hughes flick after another. I fell in love with Princess Buttercup and watched nobody put Baby in a corner. And I subconsciously took notes from Sam and Diane’s toxic 80s relationship.

But while I figured out pretty early on that I longed for a romantic experience in my life – that perfect poetry of true love and whatever came with it – so many of the variables were beyond my reach. Let’s take Ghostbusters, for example.

1984 was a big year in entertainment, and particularly for me. I was 8 or 9 years old. It was the year of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (damsel in distress, anyone?), The Last Starfighter (save the galaxy, get the girl!), Revenge of the Nerds (talk about cringe!), Purple Rain (um… wow), Dreamscape (man, did I want to have sex on a train – whatever that was!), and The Terminator (no way I could get the whole we’re-all-gonna-die-so-please-do-me-now vibe, but it was something). It was also the year that Peter Venkman, Ray Stantz, Egon Spengler, and Winston Zeddmore saved New York, and – you guessed it – Venkman got the girl.

Dennis Quaid invading Kate Capshaw’s dreams for some on-brand, low-key
nonconsensual lip-lockage in Dreamscape (1984).

Now it’s important to note that these were not movies about romance… it was just part of the package. Like it’s part of life. By this point in my youth, I had received the message loud and clear. But you also have to understand how we associate information with strong emotional experiences – and a movie like Ghostbusters had grabbed my imagination and refused to give ground. I was enthralled. And again… saved the day, got the girl. That’s the perfect ending, right!?

But as a boy there was one really harsh lesson life couldn’t communicate with any clarity. And that was the lesson of Ghostbusters II.

No… not that lesson.

Bill Murray and Sigourney Weaver celebrating marshmallowpocalypse in Ghostbusters (1984).

A few years later, the anticipated sequel rolls around, and one glaring issue leapt from the screen with malice aforethought. After all that amazingness that culminated in the joyous finale of the first movie, Peter Venkman and Dana Barrett were no longer together.

While intellectually I knew that this was a thing – my own parents had even undergone a brief separation in the intervening years – it still felt like a betrayal. I couldn’t wrap my head around the central question of why. What had Venkman done to lose the girl?

You get that?! What had Venkman done? In the context of the story laid out in the film – and likely corrupted by my parents’ experience – I got that he’d been responsible. That his romance hadn’t been eternal, and that it was somehow his fault. And realistically, this was a theme that played out in a lot of similar tales in the entertainment world (particularly with any degree of confirmation bias); relationships were typically shattered by the irresponsible or outright treasonous behavior of the male counterpart. Like… if she was the prize for saving the day, then you had to deserve her to keep her.

Note that there’s a lot of uncomfortable constructs in that paragraph, much of it seeded by the hypermasculine bullshittery of the era: treating a partner like a trophy, absolving one person of responsibility in a failing relationship, and doubling down on archaic gender norms that sorely needed more disruption in the entertainment world at the time. But again, the lessons for a young man were driven home with abandon.

It was disenchanting, to say the least. It set a lot of expectations. Not just for young boys, but girls as well. Was the first 50 years of TV and its attendant cinematic offerings determined to reinforce gender stereotypes? Well… yes. In a way. Producers and filmmakers made stories based on what they knew. Even Star Wars with its one tough female protagonist started as a damsel-in-distress situation; George had started his personal journey with Flash Gordon and similar offerings, where the scantily-clad girl was always a pawn in the hero’s story. The viewing public wanted men to be men, women to be beautiful and demure, and they wanted their children to enjoy the same.

Carrie Fisher representing the feminine ideal in need of rescue in Star Wars (1977)

But my principal question is this: does youth-centered and family-friendly programming still carry the same messaging? Do our kids and grandkids fall in love as the characters do in their favorite shows? I know that we’ve come a long way toward dispelling the gender norms of yesteryear, but are our kids learning the right lessons? Do they even have so much romance in their stories? I genuinely don’t know.

From The Transformers S2.E34: The Girl Who Loved Powerglide (1985)

And yes, I know a lot of the shows I mentioned above weren’t meant for kids, but I don’t think that invalidates the experience of those that were. Even the second season of the Transformers cartoon had an episode with a girl falling in love with the Autobot that saved her life. And of course, I’m not referring to programming aimed at very young children; I don’t expect romantic messaging from Dora the Explorer or Dinosaur Train any more than we had in Sesame Street or The Electic Company.

My kids are largely past this age, and like my parents we don’t censor (but we’ve always tried to keep open communication going), so it’s something of an academic question to me, but I’m genuinely curious whether the urge for romance still thrives in the hearts of today’s youth.

We’re All Part of a Neverending Story…

My friends and I from Exposition Street were discussing the tonal shift between The Neverending Story and its sequel, released some six years later with a completely different cast and crew. While I am typically very much a champion of most films, much to the amusement of my fellow podcasters, I know that this particular switch up was one that I responded to very poorly.

The movie was released in the US in summer of 1984. I was eight years old, and it was one of the singularly most influential events of my childhood. I was absolutely absorbed by the world presented in the film and the concept that it connected to me in my seat at the theater just as potently as it connected young Bastian to the realm he was reading about.

I read the book a few years later. It was originally published by German author Michael Ende in 1979, and I never saw a copy until a middle school librarian pointed it out to me. The hardback was cleverly printed in different colors to differentiate the reader’s narrative from Bastian’s narrative and the narrative of the novel he was experiencing in the story. It was trippy, to say the least.

I remember being drawn in but unable to wrap my ahead around key differences between book and movie. I was already old enough to understand that, in the way of these things, conventional wisdom provided that “the book was better.” I mean, that’s the way it’s supposed to work, right? But there were definitely things they did in the movie that worked better for the story, including changes like the English translation “Fantastica” to “Fantasia”, for example, or the original visualization of the Ivory Tower as a sort of swirly ice cream looking structure.

There were also a lot of things that they left out when they made the film. That happens. And most notably, the movie ended about half way through the book. So when they announced a sequel in 1990 called “The Next Chapter”, I definitely had expectations.

It wasn’t what I wanted. The new vision combined with a thinner budget and weird conglomeration of elements from the book and the first movie made me dizzy, and I didn’t want a new Bastian and a new Atreyu and a different Mr. Bux and all that. But that’s not what I’m here to talk about. We have a whole movie podcast where we get into the weeds on that kinda stuff.

The central message of the The Neverending Story was that allowing banality and despair to take root in the world around us diminished the power of our collective hopes and dreams. Sure there’s a powerful allegory about childhood and growing up in that, and Bastian was struggling with grief and loss, but after absorbing that message as a child I became a writer, a game master, a musician and an entertainer. I became someone intent on using my power to bring joy and share the experience of life with my fellow persons. I became someone who saw the potential in everything, loved things created by people on their own merit.

I am a terrible critic. I try, but sometimes I am just so overtaken by the magic of creativity and human ingenuity in sharing a vision with others… I love books. And movies. And music. And art. And poetry. And dance. And. And. And. It makes me kinda the object of friendly ridicule by my friends and fellow podcasters, but I have a hard time trashing much of anything. I am constantly trying to convince them of the awesomeness of damn near everything.

Sure, there are exceptions… art is subjective, after all.

So who knows… maybe I should give The Next Chapter another chance.