Don't Despair, Kids

There's a difference between sadness and despair, in movies and in life. 

Sadness is when someone close to you dies. Bring on the natural reactions; a sense of loss, tears, a solemn piano at every scene (typically movies-only). It can be a great hook, and kids movies are no strangers to sadness. In fact, plenty of them do it brilliantly. Sadness is the tear-jerking beginning of Up. Sadness is Andy saying goodbye to his toys in Toy Story. Mufasa's death in The Lion King is sadness. Even in Finding Nemo, where the father's clutch of eggs is destroyed, a single one remains to provide hope. That makes it sadness. None of these are despair. 

Despair is when the sadness doesn't pass. It's when the feelings of hopelessness and darkness is so all-consuming there appears to be no exit. In the last couple decades, despair has been somewhat absent in children's movies. Even in sad scenes featuring death there's sacrifice or heroism. In defeat, there's hope. In darkness, there's a lit path. It's like a mandate has gone out to children's movie and television creators deeming true despair just too difficult for a child's mind to handle. However, pre-2000, writers seemed to have no qualms with it at all.

The NeverEnding Story's Suicide and Drowning

The NeverEnding Story! The kind of story that would likely be described with the word "fantastical". A boy tries to save a kingdom, meets a bunch of gnarly creatures, and the whole thing resembles a well-crafted, German-made acid trip. How swell! Except for the scene where a horse gives in to its depression and drowns itself in a lake of its own sorrow. 

The scene is somehow every bit as disturbing as it sounds. The boy tries to save his horse who's caught in a metaphorical pit of sadness. He begs and pleads, trying to get it to move and come with him. It doesn't. Instead, it sinks further, and the boy becomes more urgent, more desperate. It's too late. The horse is submerged, and the boy is left alone. The location is the aptly named "Swamp of Sadness." The horse was battling depression (represented by a thick, sucking mud) and it fails to overcome it. It's suicide by tar-pit. 

This is where there's that difference between sadness and despair. The death of the horse is not one of sacrifice. It's not noble, not bittersweet, not beautiful. It's swallowed by sadness and full only of defeat. In that scene, there is no redemption, nor is there a "light at the end of the tunnel." 

I can't help but thinking how this would play in the modern era. I picture as the horse is sinking, the kid would show the horse that no matter how dark things seem, love is always there, and you can't crush hope. Cue the trumpets. It's a close call. They carry on their way, their bond stronger than ever. Does its death make a more memorable scene? Undoubtedly. But is it better?

I Guess We Should Have Known How Dinosaurs Would End

Yes, yes, I'm stretching my own rules. Dinosaurs is a television series, and I was talking about movies. However, this one's hard to pass up. A pleasant comedy about - you guessed it - dinosaurs, the final season's theme is about rampant, unchecked technological advancement and the effects it has on the natural world. You know, light, child-like concerns.  

In a nutshell, the main character, Earl, (think Homer Simpson in dinosaur form, except exactly) has through bumbling errors and his species' hubris quite literally doomed all of civilization. The technological advancements they were using to make their lives easier caused a chain of events that led to all plant life on the planet to die, bringing on an ice-age. The final scene is split into two parts; first, Earl is explaining to his infant child that it's going to get very cold. They're to sit and wait and die, as there's nowhere else to go. The second part is a deeply disconcerting scene with a newscaster saying the forecast is one of "continued snow, darkness and extreme cold." He closes with a solemn "goodbye." The scene ends. The series ends. Roll credits. 

The implication is the characters you've come to know and love are to die to either cold or hunger, whatever fate takes them first. It's beautiful and sad, but there's no triumph, no success, no eventual that-was-close-but-we-turned-it-around moment. Honestly, it's one of my favourite television endings, but it's undoubtedly devastating. 

This goes beyond just "sad", because the sad moments of the modern era are eventually eclipsed by the victories of the protagonists. Failure is used almost entirely as a stepping stone to eventual success. However, this is just full-on despair. There is no redemption here. Lovable Earl caused the death of not only his family, but the entirety of the dinosaur species, dooming them to a final cold, hopeless existence. He has to live (or, more accurately, die) with the consequences of his actions. Watching him have to explain they're about to freeze to death to his infant child is heart-wrenching. As a viewer, you wait for a dinosaur in a lab coat to rush in and say, "I've come up with a fix - but we've all got to work together!" You wait for the inevitable lesson of having to treat nature with respect and kindness. You wait for something so these characters you love aren't left to a horrible fate devoid of hope. It doesn't come. The lesson is they died and you don't have to. It's a powerful message.

There's some deep-rooted metaphor in there about the dinosaurs eventually turning into the oil that... well... you know... dooms us the same way as them.

But hey, "not the momma!", am I right?! Ha!

Bojack Horseman "Gets" Depression? Check out The Brave Little Toaster

If you've never heard of it before, The Brave Little Toaster is a heartwarming adventure story of a number of forgotten appliances trying to find its way back to their owner. It's Toy Story but with vacuums and alarm clocks. As a bonus, there's an air-conditioner voiced by Phil Hartman! He dies terribly. They really didn't pull any punches back then.

It's a solid movie, made all the stronger by a number of excellent musical numbers of which there's one particularly standout. It's upbeat and catchy, with surprisingly well-written lyrics that have a depth that would be undoubtedly lost on the youth they're appealing to. Admittedly, there are plenty of modern-era kids' movies that have songs that would fit the same description. However, The Brave Little Toaster's "Worthless" stands aside. Taking place in a scrapyard, old vehicles are being crushed down into tiny cubes. Before going on the conveyor belt that sends them to the big highway in the sky, they sing their life stories.

Lets take a look here. The first car, an old farm vehicle, is at the end of his rope. He just can't get to work anymore. The daily grind and hard physical labour have worn him down to the point of breaking. It's an indictment on the 9-5. (Of course, since we've introduced those pesky child labour laws, I don't think many kids will grasp that as a concept). In the end, he's destroyed, having lost his worth and ultimately cubed. Despair.

One shortly after is a broken down race-car thinking back to the highlights of his career. He wonders how "close he came" to greatness before crashing. He used to be the best of the best, but now he's shattered and broken in a scrap heap, forgotten. "So much for fortune and fame," he laments. Even if he's repaired, the technology has moved past him. With no place left in the world for him to go and unable to compete in what he's built for, he's destroyed as well. Despair.

The deepest, darkest (and best written) lyrics follow right after. A limousine, adorned with longhorns, speaks of taking a "Texan to a wedding". There must have been a crash and a death, as the next car is a hearse - that's dropped upon the limo. The latter's lyrics are chilling: "I took a man to a graveyard; I beg your pardon, it's quite hard enough; just living with the stuff I have learned." He's seen such terrible things, it's hard to live with. He's to be crushed into a cube, but the peace of death gives him a release from the memories that haunt him. My God that's despair. Holy crap is that ever despair.

The final car tells his story of working on an "Indian reservation". (It was 1987, OK?) He took kids from A to B, and liked his work - until he started to get old and broken down, and eventually they called him "worthless". Now here he is in the junkyard. His story is the saddest of them all, as when he's about to be picked up by the sentient magnet that collects the cars and brings them to their ultimate end, he revs up and speeds off - onto the conveyor belt that leads to the crusher. Devastated at having lost not only his life's work but the respect of those he worked for, he chooses death. He's functional, but just functional enough to go out on his own terms. Despair.  

So how does this play out in 2020? What's the difference? Let me write it for you.

The toaster and crew speak to all the broken down cars. They say how they're useless, time has moved on, etc. etc. It's a pretty sad scene they come across. One old truck tells them all there's no use in trying. He's gruff, rusted, angry. The toaster snaps his... fingers?... and comes up with an idea. They realize the first car has a broken-down engine. The second is missing her tires. The third has a busted... I don't know cars... busted something. They scour the junkyard, find the parts, and put them back together again - not good as new, but good. With the cars reformed, they escape the magnet monster, and drive off to their next destination. The gruff old truck is apologetic but approving. He's sorry he didn't believe in them. Now, they ride back together to go find the people they're looking for in the first place. It's redemption. It's finding solutions. It's working together. No one commits suicide because it's a freakin' kids movie about an anthropomorphic toaster going on a wacky adventure. 

Final Thoughts

I really don't know how to feel about this. I remember all these scenes when I was a kid quite clearly, but what I can't quite figure is if they were overall positive experiences. Were these concepts I should have been exposed to as a child? Were they too extreme? Is there a disconnect because while all the beings we've spoken of are living, emotive, speaking creatures (the horse is an exception on the latter, but - you never know!) none of them are human? It might be appropriate for despair as an emotion to not feature in children's movies, but considering how strongly these scenes have stuck in my head, there's a chance that it's worth the time. That, or it's stuck in my head because that's what mental scarring is.