This weekend I read a quote from Sylvester Stallone (yes, that Sylvester Stallone) that I can't get out of my mind. He said, "Good action films are really morality plays. They deal in modern mythic culture"(Time Magazine, August 23, 2010). I agree with him. We need to feed our souls with the mythic, cleanse the ugly in the world with a healthy dose of good vs evil where the good wins, feel that, at least in the story, things are as they should be.
This is the reason I love genre fiction. In genre fiction you can count on things to be the way they should be. The good guys win, the bad guys get their comeuppance, the murder gets solved, and people fall in love forever. In genre fiction we don't have to worry that the corrupt banker gets even more money and a hefty bonus after cheating the hard worker out of his life's savings. We don't have to deal with companies so greedy that they ruin the environment yet post major profits in following years. We don't have bombers escape justice year after year after year. In genre fiction, the banker goes to prison after having to pay back all the money he steals, the company and its CEO's collapse to be replaced with a company with a conscience that saves the otters, and the bomber is taken out by a Navy Seal, who also happens to be good looking.
In the movie SECOND HAND LIONS (love, love, love this movie), there is a speech given by the character Hub, played by Robert Duvall:
“If you want to believe in something, believe in it. Just because something isn’t true, that’s no reason you can’t believe in it. There’s long speech I give you young men. It sounds like you need to hear a piece of it. Just a piece. Sometimes the things that may or may not be true are the things that a man needs to believe in most: that people are basically good; that honor, courage, and virtue mean everything; that power and money, money and power, mean nothing; that good always triumphs over evil; and I want you to remember this: that love, true love never dies. You remember that, boy. You remember that. It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. You see, a man should believe in those things because those are the things worth believing in. Yeah. Got that?”
Yeah.
--Gabi
Books I'm reading now:
Kitty goes to War by Carrie Vaughn
Always a Scoundrel by Suzanne Enoch
I love that speech! AND I agree with you whole heartedly! Wonderful post, Gabi. :-)
ReplyDeleteSly is an interesting cat--heard more about him when I heard David Morrell (author of Rambo) talk about his part in the scriptwriting and birth of the on-screen Rambo.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes to genre fiction! Give me a good romance/thriller/sci-fi book anyday and let me escape to the world of good, satisfying endings! (Bonus points for a chai latte and/or muffin.)