I parlty figured this out,

[nadinbrzezinski]

why Americans cannot handle the truth... in any disaster and expect a Hollywood ending.

Our culture cannot handle a situation where choices are not good... one is worst than the other, and you hope you chose the least damaging choice.

We see in our personal life that at times things don't have a Hollywood ending. In fact, most of the time it don't end that way. Yet we are conditioned by the media to believe in super-powers... if this gusher was a Hollywood script, it would end in two weeks and all would be well with the world. This is NOT a movie.

But this is why people cannot handle the real truth. Our scripts, our novels, our plays... what we produce as a general culture usually has pretty nice, they lived happily ever after, endings. No wonder I don't watch any of these things any more, but then again they are pretty predictable. Things happen at 44 minutes of a script, always the same way... in a teevee show, for example. We expect it, it gives us happiness and comfort.

This is one reason people cannot handle this Faustian filled choices disaster. No good choices here, just less bad choices.

I guess this is one reason I cannot mostly sell my fiction in the Americans Markets. This is not a market where things don't end well sells. I guess I will start now seriously looking abroad, where stark choices and yes, the hero dies can and does happen. I also have to ask about the collective maturity of the population... but this has to change. What is coming down the pike will be filled with stark choices... as they say, life (and in this case peak oil) is not a Hollywood or TV script. And no, older fiction filled with Faustian choices would not sell today either. See Grapes of Wrath for example.

[Oregone]

1. I thought the movie The Road was great

Too bad they don't make stories like that any more. Its gotta have a happy ending I guess for our brain dead culture.


We have to look back in history at all the greats like Grapes of Wrath and The Wrestler. Boy...times have changed.

[DevonRex]

5. I loved that book so I'm glad to know the movie was good.

Thanks for that, since I plan on seeing it since it's on On Demand this week.

[Oregone]

8. I thought it was Oscar worthy honestly

Viggo Mortensen was great


Anyway...my point was...our culture is still making plenty of stories with realistic, shitty endings that speak true to the human condition.

[DevonRex]

13. Those are the ones that really stay with you, too, probably because

they are so real. Was it out in time to be considered at this year's Oscars? If so, then it was probably too stark for the Academy. And I wonder what kind of numbers it got at the box office.

You know, I remember the adverts about it before it came out and then there was absolutely nothing after that. I kept waiting for the "now showing" adverts and they just never happened.

[Oregone]

17. They also have a lot of meaning

As far as The Road, it also stuck with me as a father. It has some existential motifs woven in too. To be a father in a hopeless, purposeless world of anarchy...a good father at that...is as pointless as it is necessary. Touching....go see it. :)

[NoNothing]

28. Wait a minute

The Road *did* have a somewhat happy ending, as I recall - unless I saw a different cut...

Now "The Mist," that's a movie with the most horrific ending I can imagine.

[Oregone]

29. The Road did not have a happy ending

It just had an ending. Yeah, the boy found someone else to be with in a meaningless, purposeless, hopeless world. So what?

The story isn't even about the boy. Its about the struggle the father has with being human, and finding a reason to exist, in the face of utter bleakness. He keeps trying to tear himself away from savagery, but almost completely loses in the end. But by the end of the movie, its all for naught, because he dies anyway. There is no guarantee that any of his efforts benefit him or his child in anyway. His child still has to live in the shithole.

[NoNothing]

30. If I recall correctly

Not only does the boy survive, and find a family, but as the credits roll you can hear agricultural sounds, indicating a hopeful future. This gives the father's sacrifice meaning - his death was not in vain because he ended up accomplishing his goal of providing a better life for his son. Of course there's no guarantee, but there is hope and possibility. This is basically no different, thematically, than the terminator sacrificing himself to possibly forestall a nuclear holocaust or Darth Vader sacrificing himself to save Luke Skywalker.

A "realistic" ending in the vein the OP would like would I suppose end with the boy wandering for a while until being raped, killed, and eaten.

[Oregone]

31. It will eventually happen

"being raped, killed, and eaten"

It was a world full of male cannibals scouring for resources and flesh.

I guess you see what you want in it. I saw no happiness at the end. Just the end of one struggle (the fathers) and the beginning of another (the sons).

[treestar]

2. There's a definite idea that the government can step in and solve any

problem - without realizing our freedom depends on the constitutional limits.

This is an odd case because it is out at sea and there is nobody in direct danger to go and rescue.

I recall there was a Russian sub that got stuck and there was nothing anyone could do and they all perished. Good thing that does not happen here!

This problem will get resolved but it's too easy for people who don't have the job of doing it to be back seat drivers.

You definitely need happy endings to your books!

[nadinbrzezinski]

6. I tend to kill characters or drive them nuts

as to that sub... that was partially national hubris, in that case Russian. Three DSRV teams from three other nations were on stand by.

[NoNothing]

3. You start of good but go off the rails

Popular desire for "happy" novels, plays, and movies does not prove inability to handle the truth, unless you have a bizarre premise that fiction MUST be truthful, or reveal "truth" or something like that. Certainly it CAN. But fiction can also be escapist, desirable because it is NOT realistic, because we can experience things we CANNOT in reality. I don't see how you can claim there is something "wrong" with desiring that kind of fiction.

[nadinbrzezinski]

7. Results speak for it

people expect those results in real life.

[DevonRex]

4. You hit the nail on the head. We expect everything to be a movie

where the hero rides off into the sunset and the handsome nice guy gets the nice beautiful girl. We expect that one stern word from the guy in charge will send shivers up the spines of the evil doers and the world will be right again.

Didn't work for Bush or any other President. Won't work for Obama, either. Sometimes things are just so fucked up that there IS no miracle solution that will fix things.

[nadinbrzezinski]

9. Nope, real life is quite stark

[paparush]

10. Embracing Denial.

[nadinbrzezinski]

11. Yep, that is a good way to put it

We will be dragged kicking and screaming into peak oil... of course if the civilization collapses, it will be over very fast and the nightmare will just begin.

[paparush]

15. I see it everywhere in America.

We deny death with fancy funeral homes.
We deny nature and mow our lawns to look like carpet.
We deny the impact of fossil fuels by driving monster trucks and huge SUV's.
We deny responsibility and accountability.

sigh.

[nadinbrzezinski]

23. Me too, and the first one, been going on for oh a hundred years if not more

I see the stark contrast here.

American TV news we are lucky when they show a yellow tarp covering a body at a scene. Their Mexican counterparts will SHOW THE BODY if they beat the cops to the scene.

[NoNothing]

27. And what does that prove, exactly?

Is there some suggestion that Americans are unfamiliar with what a dead body looks like? Even if true, why is this important knowledge?

Does the TV news report on all the people who weren't killed? Just by determining that the only news is bad news, you are creating a FALSELY negative perception of reality - in the name of realism!

[nadinbrzezinski]

32. As a prof of mine put it many years ago

he was even more cynical than me... the population has been made quite infantile, and filled with fantasies.

[grasswire]

12. we could blame it on Disney

selling generations of kids on happy plots.

[nadinbrzezinski]

19. It is not just Disney

it is the general culture. And Bambi was pretty stark, that fire scene, when mom dies scared the living daylights out of me... was actually my first intro to stark choices as a what five year old? Bambi would not be produced today. TOO SCARY for kids you see.

[MicaelS]

14. As depressing as real life, can and often is, WHY

Would you expect someone to pay money, and spend valuable time reading, for what is for all intents and purposes, negativity?

Yes, people know Faustian bargains exist, that why the term entered the language.

Those old "serious" literature memes of "The world is terrible, humankind is terrible, life is terrible, existence is terrible" aka the various forms of Nihilism, lost favor with people for a damn good reason and it has nothing to do with maturity, or lack of same. It is depressing, and does not uplift one's "spirit", for lack of a better term. No religion implied.

If that's your worldview, and your preferred form of fiction, I can see why you can't sell in the US.

[nadinbrzezinski]

20. I prefer reality over fantasy

now fantasy is part of the problem. Now I also like FANTASY fiction... there is a reason WHY IT IS CALLED FANTASY. Truth be told though, in that genre you have some of that going on and it does sell. See Lord of the Rings.

[NoNothing]

26. If fiction weren't fantasy

It would be nonfiction.

[nadinbrzezinski]

33. Your handle is quite appropriate

:-)

[snooper2]

16. "But this is why people cannot handle the real truth."

That's why religion is such a good business...


Majority of sheeple can't grasp or don't want to grasp the fact that when they die, that's it. atoms back into the earth and those atoms in 4-5 billion years will be dispersed back into the solar system.

[nadinbrzezinski]

21. Yep, we are star stuff

want to go down the rabbit hole though... look into quantum mechanics, which is way too complex for most people...

[CrispyQ]

24. They also can't handle the fact that there may not be any meaning to any of this,

other than the meaning we each give it.

My mother once told me that she thought my view that there is no life after death is very sad. I told her that quite the contrary - it makes every moment you have on this planet even more precious than you can begin to imagine.

I've always loved that pic of the Milky Way & the little arrow pointing to an even littler speck & the words, "You are here." I know a few people who don't like it because it makes them feel insignificant.

[nadinbrzezinski]

25. You and I have had very similar conversations with mothers

eerie!!!!!

She asked me once when did you lose it?

When I stared into the unblinking blue eyes of a five year old who died when dad ran her over, in a terrible accident...

Yep, that's when I lost my religion

[CrispyQ]

18. My husband & I complain all the time that too many American TV shows & films are not reality based.

They're too hooked on the "good guys always win" mindset. I just recently watched the entire MI-5 series (called Spooks in the UK) & they kill off characters, the good guys don't always win & some of the good guys even get killed. It makes for more interesting TV in my opinion, instead of the same old formula week after week, where you know going in that the good guys are going to come out on top.

[nadinbrzezinski]

22. Why i LOVED Battlestar Galactica, not the campy

1970s show, the latest iteration. It was much closer to that... even if the ending was so full of holes I had fun poking fun at them. Hell some of them were so bad that I could drive the BattleStar, the Enterprise and a slew of other space ships line abreast thorough them... and include the whole civilian fleet too, and have room to spare.