In some respects, it has not been an excellent yr for feel-good motion pictures supposedly based mostly on true tales. One of those motion pictures, the 2009 movie “The Blind Side,” had already are available for criticism as a consequence of its “white savior” theme, however in the summertime, information broke suggesting that the movie might have coated over a case of old-fashioned white exploitation as a substitute. Another recent information story entails the difficulties now being confronted by the real-life person on the coronary heart of the 2016 feel-good movie “A Street Cat Named Bob,” and that’s the topic of this piece.
To deal appropriately with that topic, nevertheless, tales and their significance to us first should be analyzed. Stories have such significance for human beings that the time period “homo narrans,” which means “storytelling human,” has been proposed. There is not any recognized time or place wherein human beings haven’t associated tales to 1 one other. Surely, the reason being that tales, whether or not narrated, written or acted out, play a vital position in serving to us perceive life and adapt ourselves to it. As such, tales replicate actuality. That doesn’t imply that tales are essentially actual within the strict sense of the phrase. Generally, the characters of our favourite tales, though presumably based mostly upon single or composite people, are themselves works of fiction and the tales themselves might embody components of a most fantastical and unrealistic nature.
For occasion, in two extensively completely different tales, “Cinderella” and “The Metamorphosis” by Franz Kafka, such components are evident and important to the storyline. It is, after all, hardly to be anticipated that in actual life, a fairy godmother will come and switch pumpkins and mice into coaches and horses or that one morning, a touring salesperson will awaken to seek out that he has grow to be an enormous insect. Yet, what causes tales to clutch us is that they’re basically relatable and, in that sense, real. The two examples above replicate the thought of exclusion and exploitation by members of the family and, as such, maybe foretoken the alleged actuality below “The Blind Side.” Even if the reader has in a roundabout way felt such an expertise, they are going to be extremely lucky in the event that they haven’t felt equally handled by others in a special context.
It is to be famous that “Cinderella” and “The Metamorphosis” signify two completely different sorts of tales. The first is a feel-good fairytale, whereas the opposite is a tragic story. I’ve averted utilizing the phrase “tragic” to explain it, because it has a particular which means within the arts, although in its on a regular basis utilization, the time period actually applies to Kafka’s story. The distinction between the 2 sorts of story issues the ending and never how many of the plot performs out. For each a feel-good and a tragic story containing darkish components, there may be quite a lot of disturbing materials in “Cinderella,” for instance. The distinction is that within the tragic story, these components overwhelm the hero by the tip, as is seen within the meaningless dying of Gregor Samsa in “The Metamorphosis,” whereas within the feel-good story, the hero surmounts them and as with “Cinderella,” she or he will get to “reside fortunately ever after.”
Feel-good story
As “A Street Cat Named Bob” is a feel-good story, I’ll give attention to this kind. While “Cinderella” is an ideal instance of a feel-good story, its archetype is to be present in “The Odyssey” by Homer. Here, the hero Odysseus passes by means of quite a few hardships to ultimately be reunited along with his spouse and son from whom he has been lengthy sundered. Thus, it ends with out the phrases being express, with a “joyful ever after” second. This sort of story doesn’t belong merely to the Western literary custom. For occasion, Sinbad the Sailor in “The Thousand and One Nights” follows an identical sample and should owe one thing of its origin to the story of Odysseus.
As with “The Odyssey,” a “fortunately ever after” ending doesn’t should be explicitly written; that’s the prerogative of fairy tales. But express or not, it’s a vital, certainly defining, ingredient of the feel-good story and infrequently, as within the case of Cinderella, entails the wedding of two lovers. In the novel Jane Eyre by “Charlotte Bronte,” Jane goes by means of many hardships, however it’s a feel-good story in that on the finish, she is reunited with Edward Rochester, the person she loves, and when the ultimate chapter of the novel pronounces, “Reader, I married him,” it’s an implicit, “and he or she lived fortunately ever after” if ever there was one.
Indeed, Bronte goes on to spell out precisely what this implies. A perspective 10 years later, Jane states of her married life that “I maintain myself to be supremely blest – blest past what language can categorical; as a result of I’m my husband’s life as absolutely as he’s mine … we’re exactly suited in character – good harmony is the outcome.” A cynic may observe that this very best view of marriage was written whereas Bronte herself was nonetheless single. Be that as it could, the diploma to which marriage could also be seen as such a needed ending for a lot of a feel-good story could be understood from “The Story of Layla and Majnun” by the Persian poet Nezami Ganjavi. Failing to supply the 2 lovers of his masterpiece of a poem with an ending entailing marital bliss on earth, Nezami unites them as a substitute in everlasting happiness collectively in heaven.
It is debatable that in our age of larger psychological consciousness, there was a change within the nature of the feel-good story. The conventional one represented by “The Odyssey” and “Cinderella” is one wherein the hardships overcome by the hero are exterior to them. In the fashionable feel-good story, the difficulties are both inner or a mixture of inner and exterior. It is especially noteworthy that even J.R.R. Tolkien, essentially the most resolute foe of contemporary literature, has in The Hobbit his character of Bilbo internally developed as he progresses by means of a myriad of exterior difficulties earlier than reaching his “fortunately ever after” ending. As such, Bilbo goes by means of a narrative whose body is just like that of Homer’s, however his odyssey is inner in addition to exterior and certainly, it’s his inner one that’s of the larger significance.
Here, I want to go from literature to cinema, although I wish to level out that all the tales above have been changed into movies and all the motion pictures talked about under, together with “A Street Cat Named Bob,” are based mostly on books. This highlights that the character of a feel-good film is similar to that of a feel-good story.
For the psychological feel-good story, a distinguished instance have to be the Academy Award-winning movie “A Beautiful Mind.” This movie can be based mostly on a real story and depicts John Nash, a genius who suffers a severe and lasting psychotic break. However, by the tip of the movie, he has mastered his state of affairs not by ridding himself of the visions he has however by studying to reside with them and overcoming them in that method.
Yet, within the movie, as in actual life, Nash has schizophrenia. This can hardly be classed as a personality failing. The extra typical type of psychological feel-good movie is the place the hero, usually a good person, has, as a consequence of their experiences, fallen right into a rut and acquired caught in it earlier than lastly surmounting their difficulties. A great instance right here is the 2000 movie “The Legend of Bagger Vance.” In this movie, as a consequence of his horrific experiences in World War I, the hero, Rannulph Junuh, has turned to drink and is psychologically unable to return to the promising life that appeared laid out earlier than him previous to his enlistment. However, throughout a three-day golf event, he vanquishes his interior demons and is redeemed.
There is an element linking the above movies collectively. That is a determine who assists them in overcoming their difficulties. The titular Bagger Vance, performed by Will Smith, is a few religious determine – certainly, the movie has been criticized for utilizing the “Magical Negro” trope – who step by step will get Junuh to make peace with himself. A special trope, that of the long-suffering spouse of genius, a topic I’ve touched on earlier than, performs an identical position in “A Beautiful Mind.”
‘A Street Cat Named Bob’ and its aftermath
However, as its title suggests, in “A Street Cat Named Bob,” a special type of determine of assist, that of a cat, assists the hero. For ailurophiles like myself, this raises the feel-good issue of this film to an entire new stage.
Here is a short synopsis for individuals who have no idea this story based mostly on actual life. James Bowen is a homeless man recovering from a heroin habit by means of using methadone and who’s given a council flat to reside in. A cat enters the residence on his first evening there. Bowen notices the cat has a wound and brings him to the vet. Now named Bob, Bowen types a powerful bond with him and, as a busker and later a vendor of a homeless newspaper, finds individuals are extra beneficiant when Bob is with him. The presence of Bob in his life permits Bowen to place proper all that’s improper with it, together with coming off methadone and repairing a strained relationship along with his father. He can be provided a e book deal wherein to inform his story. This is a traditional “joyful ever after” ending.
And, in actual life, it initially turned out to be so. The precise Bowen had the e book written along with Garry Jenkins and along with its personal success, it was changed into the aforementioned well-received movie. Bowen himself even had a job within the movie, although not taking part in himself, and met the present Princess of Wales on the movie’s premiere in London in 2016. Further books and one other movie adopted.
However, Bob died in 2020, and the media within the U.Ok. now reviews that Bowen, who estimates that his story has earned him about 1,000,000 kilos over the past 12 years, is about to lose his home as he can not afford the mortgage funds on it, that he wants the help of meals banks to feed himself, that he has damaged up along with his girlfriend, that he has had ideas of suicide and that he had relapsed into heroin use, though he’s as soon as once more clear.
This could also be an upsetting shock to followers of the e book and movie, as initially it did to me. In my case, it didn’t entail merely the emotions of sympathy one feels on the misfortunes of one other. I initially felt as if by some means the movie had been ruined. However, upon reflection, I shortly realized that such a sense is definitely a fault alone half and I’ve written this piece to discover this difficulty. I got here to see that as homo narrans, we will permit tales to have an effect on us in an unhealthy method. When life proves the story improper, we might really feel betrayed. But the true improper is that in such a case, our predilection for tales has led us to misread actuality and that’s the supply of the betrayal. In quick, we create tales to make sense of life, however then these tales, with their kind of fictional components, tackle a seeming absolute actuality of their very own, coming to affect how we view life itself and might lead us to view it wrongly.
The feel-good story with its “joyful ever after” ending is essentially problematic whether it is based mostly on a real story, for from its finish, life is anticipated to proceed however proceed with none of the trials and tribulations which have led as much as the ultimate second. When thought-about that means, it’s a unusual expectation certainly. Nevertheless, the clearly fictional feel-good tales resembling “Cinderella” and “Jane Eyre” may also be considered as problematic in that they instill a false expectation within the reader {that a} level could be reached in life from which all is obvious crusing from then on, of their case that time being that of a wedding.
For these with psychological points, amid which habit resembling Bowen’s is one, the feel-good “joyful ever after” concept is particularly problematic. It promotes the concept that sure experiences, such because the change undergone with Bob, are completely transformative in such a fashion that there could be no return to 1’s earlier situation, one thing like that of an inverse Gregor Samsa. While it’s a sexy concept, it’s an inaccurate one. Addicts who’ve grow to be sober rely the times from which they’ve stopped utilizing the addictive substance. There could be no level to this if the renouncement of the habit have been in itself sufficient. Yet they’re conscious that the pull of the addictive substance is ever-present and {that a} slip backward is at all times doable. Metaphorically, it isn’t a case of a one-off everlasting vanquishing one’s demons however somewhat a life-long battle of attrition with them, wherein battles could be misplaced.
So the truth that Bowen has skilled quite a few difficulties lately, particularly in mild of the truth that he not has Bob, is one thing that feel-good tales might not put together us for, however upon reflection, is one thing very comprehensible.
The level is that in actual life, and essentially unreflectable by tales that should have an ending, there isn’t any cutoff level earlier than which issues are troublesome and after which they essentially won’t be so. Although this may occasionally strike a pessimistic observe, it’s, the truth is, a realist one which counters pessimism as a lot as optimism. For it’s equally legitimate within the inverse case. Those who really feel that they’ve reached some extent in life from which something constructive is not doable to them may additionally discover that the passage of time fortunately proves them false consistent with the old adage “the place there’s life, there’s hope.” Let us hope that the longer term proves brighter for Bowen whereas remaining conscious of the dearth of a essentially fastened constructive or adverse state in his or our personal lives.
