Did Hollywood Happy Endings Ruin Expectations in Life?

I wish there was massive data from social scientists pre-dating Hollywood that could show what people’s expectations in life were. It feels so embedded in our culture that everything happens for a reason, good things happen to good people, sometimes things are meant to be, it all works out in the end, and so forth. I don’t know what pills people are popping but it is my experience that life is actually pure chaos, bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people, most things that happen that feel “meant to be” end up working out temporarily and not permanently, and while many silver linings can be made and things can work out fine…sometimes things really do fall apart in a way that’s hard if not impossible to put back together.

Not everyone has had the life I’ve had and while America has quite a few problems, we are at the end of the day a first world nation and we are not experiencing war on our land or dealing with some kind of intense collective daily trauma that makes it hard to survive in a literal sense, so a lot of people have had more good things happen to them (or at least neutral things) and haven’t had their perspective dashed. I could go into my sad stories, like my parents dying young, my failed heart procedure, my stalkers (yes, plural), and all kinds of other fun things I’ve endured. But I’m sick of me and have better examples to give anyway. I am going to talk about other people who had a helluva journey or hero’s tale and what ended up happening to them. Here’s three people who had three unique battles:

One woman quit drinking, left an abusive relationship, and bought her dream place on the beach. She felt like she had a new lease on life and finally was going to have some agency in making better choices in this fresh start.

Another woman left an abusive marriage. When she left her marriage she had a heart still full of grace, empathy, warmth, and authentic sweetness. She was not bitter but empowered and eager to get to finally really living life to the fullest.

And finally, this last woman beat cancer. Then her longterm partner left her. She kept her spirits up, but was always authentic about the parts of her life that made her sad. But she really did love life and was beyond appreciative for each day she had. She trusted life would get better and never took a day for granted.

All three of them deserved a great next chapter. They were all real but hopeful. They all had optimism and worked hard to get where they were at. They all deserved a great life after lessons learned or hardships endured, and that would have been even sweeter if they found a romantic partner given how they all had weird (at best) circumstances surrounding their breakups so it would have been cool to have them finally “win” in that category. Sadly though, all three died not long after where the summary I gave ended. I won’t reveal their identities or who they were to me, but the first woman was dead seven months later after a brief illness. The second passed away maybe two years later after battling colon cancer for the majority of those two years. The third had her cancer return (also colon) a few years later and after the most grueling fight I’ve ever seen until she passed away earlier this year (after surviving the pandemic being 100% isolated from friends and family due to having cancer AND losing both of her parents in a short period before her own death). None had much time left after the main trauma or battle they overcame; the first two literally had barely a few moments of time before they got sick and the third had an eye of the storm followed by a way worse second wave of a storm. None got to accomplish what they wanted nor did they get what they deserved. It sucks.

Yes, I miss all of these women and I get really in my feelings about it sometimes, but honestly a lot of it isn’t about me and my loss but how unjust and unfair their deaths were for them. I’m learning through unpacking my trauma that things that are not just or fair are actual triggers of mine but I haven’t resolved any of that yet so I’m finding myself leaning into it more. I even have a tendency to fixate on and get tunnel vision when things aren’t fair. It gives me a lot of material to mine when writing screenplays and can serve as comedic inspiration for jokes/movie ideas/characters (watch out for a nepo baby character coming soon), but otherwise it’s probably an incredibly unhealthy habit. To the untrained eye it may seem like it’s my first rodeo in learning that life isn’t fair but it’s quite the opposite. It’s a trigger because I’ve seen how life isn’t fair for a lot of my life, in different ways and not only in death, and my feelings never had a place to be processed because I kept being hit with more unfairness (both to me as well as witnessing other people’s unfairness). Now that I’ve been actively trying to heal trauma, some triggers pop up and rather aggressively at that because processing trauma is like when you get treated for acne- the problem gets worse before it gets better.

All of this is to say that the above is my inspiration for this post. I’ve been more in my feelings about this topic lately and therefore more annoyed if not triggered by people saying sunny and positive cliches. Hollywood folks are full of them, and I get it. We all have to believe in ourselves, to what can feel like a delusional extent, before hopefully getting discovered and sometimes platitudes and hopeful expressions are what help us from not imploding. No judgement. But I’m at a point in life where expressions like, “good things come to those who wait” or “the cream rises to the top” personally just doesn’t do it for me anymore. Those expressions can be true but I’m not convinced they’re the rule but the exception. Taking myself 100% out of the equation, I know so many people who are insanely talented and not nearly as successful as they should be (and frankly haven’t even had much success at all). It’s heartbreaking. I believe in these people’s ability to succeed but I also don’t know for sure what will happen.

I know talking about Hollywood can be a little “inside baseball” but I’m sure everyone reading knows someone at their job who didn’t get the promotion they deserved, can’t find a job regardless of how qualified they are in their field, or had their career stall out for weird reasons out of their control . Yeah, Hollywood is an industry where people are more likely to try to be successful or die trying but plenty of other industries have individuals who never advanced past what they deserved or were capable of. You may even be that person who was the smartest in your class but you’re stuck in a fine but mid-tier job. The reality of today doesn’t have to be the reality of tomorrow and I imagine for many things will get better. But sometimes people die before they level up. Sometimes people never recover from a derailed career situation. It’s naive to act like everyone reaches the top levels of their field or even the next levels of their fields. People would have a helluva a lot more career satisfaction if that were the case nor would they complain as much about their jobs.

But of course, when I talk about having a happy ending most people think of a good old fashioned romantic Hollywood ending right before the credits play. Most romance movies (and action movies, which I low key believe are rom-coms but with fight scenes as most I’ve seen has a central love story no deeper or any less problematic than a good old fashioned rom-com), and television shows with long character arcs have endings where people get coupled off in a happy way. I can’t help but wonder if that’s why everyone thinks that there’s “someone for everyone” or that “everybody eventually finds someone” because I’m not at all clear where they get their data from otherwise. I know tons of single people who wanted to find someone who have died, including but far from limited to the women I knew and described earlier in this post. I know not everyone needs or even wants to be in a long term partnership, but many people do and not everyone in that pool gets that dream realized. On the other side of the coin I’ve also known married people who were in terrible marriages when they died. Just because you die married or partnered doesn’t necessary mean you die happily in love…just sayin’.

Retirement is another interesting topic in this discussion. Most people think of retirement as a more carefree and deserved third and final act of life after a life of working hard, but there’s some crazy statistics about how many people die very early on into retirement. That sucks to think your life finally belongs to you and not have to work anymore only to die before you can enjoy that. Adjacently I’ve heard of a few deaths that occurred on someone’s first vacation after building a successful business where they could finally take a few days off and enjoy their success. What a nightmare to work so hard, take a moment to celebrate, and have it all be over because of some freak thing that happened on vacation. I’ve also known of people dying on their honeymoons, which is just heartbreaking. I can’t even imagine thinking that this wonderful chapter of life was starting only to have it all end, nor can I imagine the whiplash that all of their loved ones experienced. Retirement, successful businesses, and getting married don't automatically mean a happy ending but rather is occasionally when it all ends. All of this is to say why do people act like everyone gets a gold star eventually and it’ll stay golden forever after that? Do people force themselves to believe everything will eventually end up fine to get them through the day? Or do people truly believe it’s all going to be okay eventually because they have no reason to question why that may be false?

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about how entertainment has shaped our sense of self, society, and how life works at large. Until the Golden Age of Television, almost every episode of television ended up on a high note, resolved a problem, or at least ended in a way that felt like justice was served. We were spoon fed happy, just, fair, karmic, and even simple endings every time we watched television. Depending on how many sitcoms you watched growing up and were even watching into adulthood, that’s quite the pattern your brain is latching onto. We are a species who learns and processes life through comparing what others are doing (comparison isn’t all bad but that’s another post for another time) and I’m genuinely interested in what television and movies has done to our expectations with how life works. This notion could probably be its own post and it’s not like I have hard data, but anecdotally I’ve heard people of all ages, genders, and sexualities cite television shows when giving advice about how it all works out for people, a la “Well Ross and Rachel finally found their way back to each other.” Never mind encouraging the toxicity that most on and off again relationships can have, but saying fictitious TV characters found love so we will too is a candy coated-parasocial-hellscape-fun house mirror that proves nothing. We all know that television can be realistic but also is a largely if not mostly an escapist fantasy…but do we?

I’m not mad at people for staying positive and frankly when people get too negative that also feels unhealthy. But there’s a balance to be struck. I think being realistic is that balance. You can believe in yourself or where your life is going and believe in other people. But to act like that belief is the law of the land is dangerous and damaging. Sometimes being realistic keeps you from having your hopes dashed. Sometimes understanding the assignment of how hard something is helps you brainstorm problem solving in more effective ways because you’re not blinded by the idea that things will be more fine than they are. People’s journeys matter too. A lot of my loved ones died not just tragically but in ways that felt like their journey was incomplete, and no matter how sad that is what they endured and what happened to them matters. I’m not going to rewrite their lived experiences to put on a bow on it to make myself or anyone feel better about it. I’d be pissed as hell if someone did that about me.

As of writing and publishing this I am alive (knock on wood) but people love to put silver linings on my genuinely awful experiences and insist that things will get better in the categories that are at a stalemate instead of improving. I hope they’re right but it feels insulting to my intelligence and lived experiences when they insist it’s a fact. Some things have been bad for me for most of my life and haven’t improved yet, so maybe it’s better I own that it’s not a given it’ll get better? I’ve been doing that more this year, not in a negative or despondent way, but really letting it sink in that the reality of my life may not be a place where dreams come true. It isn’t pretty or pleasant, but it’s also freeing up some mental and emotional space and energy not being constantly disappointed. How is that a bad or negative thing? If I’m meeting life with where it’s at, why can’t people meet me with where I’m at? And even if every dream I have comes true, I know too many people who died with life still in their veins and their dreams still out of reach. Some people do really get amazing silver linings because much of what seemed like a nightmare put them on a path to have their dreams realized. I think that’s awesome. But that doesn’t happen to everyone and I’m not going to erase the people who never had their lives truly improve nor will I erase their experiences just because I don’t like that they died in an unfair way. On Creepy and Kooky I’m constantly talking about respecting the dead, and often times that involves accepting that the dead were flawed individuals and giving them a “Disney edit” is not only watering down whatever journeys they made but actually disrespectful. Do you like it when people overly simplify your life? I can’t imagine you do.

I’m all for keeping the faith, but I want to live in a life where we’re realistic regarding that no experiences are a monolith and outcomes may vary. That helps us all feel seen. And while there’s many micro zoom ins I can and likely will do about ways to see people for what they’re going through, for now this was my first adventure into establishing these values in a broad way. It’s a huge bummer that not everyone gets a happy ending, but it shouldn’t invalidate the fact that some people really don’t get a happy ending. Maybe more of us would get happier endings if we accepted this. Speaking from personal experience, some parts of my life have improved by accepting reality and responding accordingly versus trying to shove a square into a circle hoping the outcome will be different. Maybe all of our lives would improve if we didn’t feel pressure to have ourselves or others live up to an impossible aspirational standard of having it all together and have everything we want in life when we don’t. For example, we all know people who over promote their relationship online only to eventually split. We’re constantly trying to live up to what we think is the standard, but we usually can’t because often the standard isn’t reality but a fantasy, a marketing campaign, or only is the rule for fictional characters. How much less pressure would we have if we didn’t do this? How much more would we live in the moment and therefore possibly could find sustainable contentment? I don’t know about you, but this is the world I want to live in, though something tells me we aren’t trending in that direction.

If this piece spoke to you, please consider following me on social media (buttons at the top or bottom of the page, depending on what device you’re reading this from). And if this topic interests you, this book, Bright-sided by Barbara Ehrenreich goes way more extensively into why positive thinking can in fact be harmful. (If you click the link I may make a commission sale). I felt pretty seen by this book because I was already having these exact thoughts I’m sharing with you today, but Ehrenreich expands into toxic positivity around cancer patients, how spirituality gurus take advantage of the disenfranchised but optimistic, and goes into tons of other categories where positive thinking can actually hurt you. I highly recommend, but either way, have a lovely Friday!