Tragedy: The many faces of it.

As a gut instinct, we do not want to see something bad happens to anyone. We don’t want bad things to happen to us. We want to see the world as a happy place where everyone holds hands and sing happy songs. However if this world has proven to us one thing, it’s that the world we live in is shit. We do not live in a world where nothing bad ever happens. The probability that someone will die, either from cancer or being murdered, while I am writing this. And there is nothing to change that. It sucks!

Now with art, while having people forget about the bad things and have an escape route into a world of fiction where we cheer for the hero and have him, her, or them, succeed. However not every piece of art are happy, because sometimes an artist needs to have you think. And an artist can convey tragedy in different ways.

 Small Hands is an “animated” puppet short film (animated is in quotes because your mileage may vary on how you view puppetry as live action or animated) that is about tragedy. Specifically the film shows us three animal couples, a pair of owls, rabbits, and frogs (presumably a boy and a girl because this is a Christian college after all *wink, wink*) as they are happy with bright colors surrounding them. Until the world decides to say “NO!” to happiness and has the couple spit apart; a snake eats one of the frog, a fox eats one of the rabbit, and a hunter shoots one of the owl. Then the color changes from happiness and into darkness as we see the remaining frog, rabbit, and owl lonely and sad. And for us to see the cute animals sad, it’s heartbreaking. I got upset when the owl pair was spilt up because they looked so cute together. Yeah I said cute! What about it! >:C But anyways, I feel that this is effective since the cute, adorable puppets, and might I add that the art direction looks fantastic, which I can’t help but feel like it was supposed to be symbolic for childhood innocence as we feel broken by what happens. And really that’s actually a good thing that it wasn’t sugarcoated. I mean how many times in a kids film that you saw (even when you were little) where someone dies but then comes back to life for a quick fix or a fake out? All too often. It’s refreshing to see someone takes, pardon my crudeness here, balls and puts it bluntly that life sucks!

Fridge is a different view of tragedy. It takes place in Ireland (I think. Maybe it’s in Scotland. I forgot and I’m always getting the two mixed up) and in it, a boy is trapped in a fridge where his only salvation are two drunks who must save him from suffocating but they are practically bipolar. They try their best to get some help however no one takes them seriously because…they’re drunks. This can be viewed in two ways. One, and my initial reaction, is how most of the world turns a blind eye to bad things that happens. Whether on the news or by word-of-mouth. Which then they do tend to become ignorant of the problem and shut people out who need help because we are selfish. On the other hand, the second reason why is because…they’re drunks! The boy does make it out when someone helps the two, ironically it was the same guy that had him trapped, even though it was his brother that locked the kid in the fridge (I don’t know if they were brothers, I could barely tell what any of them were saying). The good news is that the boy lives, but the bad news is that the drunks don’t get their rightful reward or recognition. Except from the guy who trapped him then saved him. It’s more bittersweet in tragedy, but the film shows how we turn a blind eye to what’s really going on and how we treat people that are considered improper. In this case the drunks. They don’t show them as misunderstood since one of the two leaves for what seems like hours to get a beer after an argument, which brings more of a reality to this.

World of Glory, which is by far the darkest (arguably but after the opening scene I don’t think anyone will fight me) out of the short films we watched. In it, we are witnessed to something out of a Holocaust
movie, ala Shindler’s List, and we see how this effects the main character, a business man, who took part in this horrific act, who tries do forget it and move on with his life, which while we watch it turns out that his real life isn’t as great as it seemed. However we see people from the event in the first scene appear who are in this guy’s life. The more the movie goes on, the more we see his mental status decrease. The symbolism is that we can never forget something horrific. And it’ll be even worse when you took part in it since it eats at your conscious. Because really how could you? This is a metaphor for how in life we tend to move on with tragedy but in doing so we are reminded by how haunting it is. At the end of the movie we hear someone screaming. The man is disturbed by it. The wife tells him that it'll be alright and that he must sleep. The man tells him it won't be alright.

The importance of the videos is to show us that as an artist, or for an art form, that we (or they) must never shy away from being brutal and honest. That you can't just tip toe over a subject. Because the most powerful message is showing how (pardon my French) fucked up this world is. There shouldn't be any sugarcoating when dealing with dark material, it needs to be honest with it's audience, not condensed to them.

And yes I know this post is late. :P