Everyone loves a happy ending, right?
No, not that kind (can’t blame you for going there, though).
I’m talking about what we see in TV shows and movies, especially regarding family strife. Sometimes, it’s between siblings; other times, it’s between parent and child. Either way, it almost always defaults to some kind of resolution, usually with a “happy ending” for all concerned. Yay.
Here’s an example (among many) from “The Good Doctor,” which my wife and I are partway through watching. A woman arrives at the hospital with breathing issues and finds that one of her lungs is so damaged that it needs to be replaced — she’ll die if they can’t find a donor. She figures she should tell her son, whom she abandoned 17 years ago at age 12.
Ultimately, he shows up at the hospital, they calmly exchange feelings, and he decides to donate one of his lobes to her in a live transplant, even though it’ll impact his health for the rest of his life. “I love you, Mom.” “I love you, too, son — I promise I’ll do better.” There, that put a nice bow on 17 years of abandonment. I think I threw up a little in my mouth.
Parenthetically, I note that, while the show includes many saccharine moments like the one above, “The Good Doctor” is very nuanced in how it treats the main character, who has autism, in his problematic relationship with his father. Kudos to the writers for not shying away from the complexity of that.
Let’s face it — we all love resolution
We are uncomfortable amid conflict, whether our own or someone else’s. Even music demands resolution (the kind that isn’t purposely discordant, anyway) — we’re left hanging if the final note or chord doesn’t bring the piece back where we instinctively know it should.
We crave shalom, in the most profound sense of the word, so it’s only natural that the shows and movies we watch would reflect that.
Except that real-life situations don’t always end in shalom. And I, for one, am tired of television and movies portraying strained family relationships as if the “happy ending” is the norm. Because I can tell you from experience that it’s not.
“But he’s your father!”
I could have retired five years sooner if I’d had a dollar (even a Canadian dollar) whenever someone threw that bromide in my face when mine was alive. Ten years sooner if I included every time I’ve heard it on TV over the years. For some people, blood relations are everything and should be given the benefit of the doubt even if they’re bona fide assholes.
They put it on the child to make that “happy ending” happen.
I disagree, to put it mildly. I’d love to see more complexity, nuance, and authenticity in how TV shows and movies portray family strife.
It would be interesting, for instance, to see family conflict that included a child trying to communicate with an emotionally stunted parent, a parent who would tell others how worthless he thinks his child is, or a parent who doesn’t talk to his child for years at a time but yells and calls names when he does.
That would be a different kind of reality TV
You’ve likely surmised that these are examples from my own life, and I’ll add one more besides. From the time I moved out of my parents’ house for good in 1978 until he died in 2014, my father used his beloved fountain pen to write me letters that were chock-full of a special kind of derision and vitriol. No need to share all the details, but it would be difficult to overstate the extent of it.
Now, seeing the writers portray something like that in a hospital drama would make for compelling TV, would it not?
I found the fountain pen
in his desk drawer
after he had died
and broke it in half.
This was the antivenin
to the poison
that had spewed from its
single fang,
hollow,
so that the words
could be injected directly.
Of course, family dysfunction is not exactly a rarity, so others would have different stories, all just as real as mine. And all would reflect people’s complex and unresolved experiences in unique ways that viewers would likely find interesting, if discomforting.
But what I’d really like to see portrayed more often is people walking away from toxic relationships for good instead of being called back with the ubiquitous, “But he’s your father!” For many, that would be the most desirable “happy ending” of all.
People would undoubtedly sometimes cringe with the finality of such discord, but the sense of validation for many, including me, would be palpable.
Trauma can affect parenting for a lifetime
Growing up, I would have loved to be in a parent-child relationship where feelings were exchanged calmly, respectfully, and empathetically, and the goal was to achieve mutual understanding rather than an argument win (no one ever really won them anyway). For me, as an adult, forgiving and leaving the past behind would have been liberating, but that was impossible when my father was still alive because the same behaviour continued until the very end.
The best I could do was separate myself from it and wait for the “happy ending” of his passing.
I also understand that all parents do their best with who they are and what they bring to the table. In my father’s case, he left home in occupied Ukraine when he was 13 and spent time in WW2 hiding in potato bins and God knows what else before finding his way to a post-war displaced persons’ camp in Germany. This was not an easy life, so it should come as no surprise that the scars of such trauma would manifest in his parenting.
Someone needed to break the intergenerational chain
My own mistakes as a parent (and especially as a step-parent in my first marriage) are legion, so I don’t want to climb on any high horse. But, in healing my own hurts, I’m proud to say that my family’s intergenerational trauma is over. My wife and I rarely raise our voices with each other, and my 28-year-old daughter and I have the most loving and mutually respectful relationship I could ever imagine.
And even if my daughter and I or my wife and I have the odd disagreement, we talk it through in short order in the most mutually empathetic and respectful way possible. I simply couldn’t ask for more. Shalom indeed.
In fact, we always arrive at the kind of saccharine “happy ending” that would be perfect for a typical TV or movie script.
Even if it would irritate some viewers.