I have, in the past, been accused of negativity.
To be fair, this is not my fault. In America, things must always have a happy ending: movies, books, even the news. Think about it. Your evening news starts out with murder and tragedy and ends with a heartwarming fluff piece about puppies, clowns, or seven year olds who fly airplanes.
These pieces tell you relatively little about the nature of the world.
America is, after all, the nation that worships the pursuit of happiness.
Diet plans and real-estate scams are all based on selling you the idea of
happiness. The MX missile was sold on the premise of peace. Americans
are suckers. Anything without the prerequisite happy ending is suspect.
I'm sure that when Shindler's List was screened, a guy in a suit from the
studio said, "Why is no one smiling? I look at the screen and NO ONE is
smiling. Not for two whole hours. I only laughed three times the whole
film Speilsburg; Jesus, lighten it up a little. We've all seen Hogan's
Heroes- we know it's not as bad as all that. Where's the guy with the
monocle? And Black &;White? BLACK &;WHITE? We're shooting for
commercial viability here, buddy."
I also thought about when the books of the Bible were being shopped
around for a publisher. Envision the apostle Paul sitting down with the
publishing representative.
"I don't know, Paul. It's short. We do appreciate that. Means we can publish
it with similar stuff, an anthology. Maybe we can even serialize it in some
of the popular Judaic magazines. We may even be able to give a kind of a
running reference to the Torah; you know, bibliographers can do wonders
these days. Hey, now there's a snappy little title- "Bible." We just want to
make sure we don't saturate the market. I mean, if we put this sucker on
every night stand in every inn, who's gonna want to see it? We don't want
to breed resentment. That's why we're nixing the Latin version. Keep it in
Hebrew, that's where the market is. Too many in-jokes for the goyem.
They'll never understand."
"Also, Paul, I want to talk to you about the end. How can I put this? We
can't publish a book where the main character... Dies at the end. Especially
in such a nasty way. Crucifiction, now that hurts."
"Don't get me wrong. We love the betrayal with a kiss. Maybe we could get
some more milage out of that. About that end though, I know it's cliché,
but how about making it all a dream? You know, like, he had a lot of wine
at the last supper and dreamt the whole thing. You've got to resolve this
thing. Look, find a way to bring him back and we'll publish it. We gotta
leave the door open to a sequel.