Up, Grief, and Healing from Loss

(via kingofwallpapers)

Disney-Pixar’s Up has a special place in my heart. It’s a fun adventure film with some stunning animation and great writing, and every time I sit down to rewatch it, I find myself in love with nearly everything on the screen all over again. This wasn’t always the case, though. The story is centered on a man dealing with his wife’s death, and fridgings are an overused trope that I hate a great deal. But the more I thought about it, the less this fridging in particular bothered me. Up takes that common trope and reworks it into an important life lesson with a surprisingly positive message about dealing with the death of a loved one.

Magical Mondays: Death and True Sight

In fiction, characters don’t just die. Death always serves a greater purpose to the narrative. Even in total bloodbath stories like Game of Thrones or The Hunger Games, the myriad deaths are there to underscore the cruelty or randomness of life or the meaninglessness of war. Death informs our storytelling because it’s inescapable, and therefore holds a cultural fascination for us in a way that other life landmarks do not.

In stories where magic plays a role, death can still provide this commentary while also having tangible side effects for the living. One of these that I’ve noticed is that being party to death in some way can open a character’s eyes. Literally—death-adjacency can give people magical “true” sight that they had previously lacked. This ability, like anything involving death in fiction, is used to underscore the message of the narrative by providing some kind of insight to the characters and readers.

(via Pottermore)

When Disney Teaches Us to Uphold Death more than Justice or Mercy

(via disneyprincess wikia)

I love Disney movies. They’re a nostalgic staple of my childhood, but like almost everything, when viewed from an adult perspective, they are far from perfect. One worrying trend that I see in childhood films is the idea that death is the same thing as justice. Disney is hardly the only company at fault for doing this, and this trope does show up in media designed for older audiences as well. But my experience with Disney was really the first time I was exposed to the idea that villains deserve to die awful horrible deaths. Even if the heroes initially want to show their villains mercy, the mercy will be misplaced, and very rarely will actual justice be done.

This of course begs the question: do villainous characters truly deserve to die, especially in such awful, violent, and painful ways?

Magical Mondays: Dragon Ball Z, Raising the Dead, and a Lack of Consequences

I love Dragon Ball Z. I used to watch it all the time as a kid. I still read fanfiction for it, and I follow the amazing Dragon Ball Multiverse fancomic. The story has also become a cultural icon, and it is probably one of the more well-known manga today. As much as I adore this story, though, I have to admit that I always wanted more from it. DBZ is more or less about a bunch of super martial artists who have banded together to save the world from alien invasions, cyborgs, monsters, and any and all villains that they find. Along the way, a good number of our DBZ fighters die, including the main character. Multiple times.

DBZ is so named because within this universe, there are seven magical balls that, when gathered, summon a giant Dragon. This Dragon has the ability to grant a person any wish, including bringing people back from the dead. While a neat idea, this is also unfortunately problematic for creating suspense. It removes consequences from the story, and that only hurts the narrative.

Spoilers for all of DBZ below.

Oh, My Pop Culture Religion: Who Needs an Afterlife, Anyway?

image via The Examiner

This weekend marks lots of spooky celebration in the Western world. Pagans and Wiccans celebrate the Gaelic festival Samhain, marking the harvest and start of the darker half of the year. Hispanic cultures celebrate Día de los Muertos, a three day festival with roots in ancient Aztec religious beliefs. Christians celebrate All Saints Day and All Souls Day, honoring saints and remembering loved ones. Even secular Americans love to celebrate Halloween. It’s the time of year when lots of people are remembering the dead and pondering mortality. This got me thinking about the way the afterlife appears in our geeky media. Saika and I have already written posts about Heaven and Hell, respectively. Both of us note that each realm is usually twisted in some way (either corrupted or comically), or kind of boring. So do we really need to give our characters an afterlife?

Magical Mondays: Laughing at Death

Death is a big scary universal constant, and we humans are obsessed with writing about it. And while some fantasy stories have serious themes about life and death (see: Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Fullmetal Alchemist, Game of Thrones, and many more), some use the existence of magic to poke fun at life’s last great mystery.

I love these sorts of stories in particular because, when I engage with fictional media, I want to experience a world I can be jealous of—one that, for whatever reason, is cooler than the real world. And while I appreciate the weight of lessons like Fullmetal Alchemist’s “nothing is equivalent in value to a human life” or Game of Thrones’s “death can be sudden and meaningless”, sometimes I’d much rather read something where death is not treated as The Number One Most Terrifying Thing.

Sleepy Hollow: “Pilot” Review

Monday night gave us the premiere of Sleepy Hollow, Fox’s modern retelling of the classic Sleepy Hollow short story. It follows Ichabod Crane, who finds himself in the twenty-first century after suffering a near fatal wound back in the eighteenth. He teams up with police officer Lieutenant Abbie Mills, and together they go off to stop the Apocalypse—yes, that Apocalypse. The one the Book of Revelation tells us all about. The Headless Horseman is one of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse—Death, to be precise, which is not something I had expected when going into this show. This opens up a whole new can of worms that I didn’t see coming, but I’m glad for it, in all honesty. Without some kind of spin like this on the classic legend, I don’t think a story about just the Headless Horseman would have had a lot of room to work with.

I have high hopes for Sleepy Hollow, especially considering that it’s the network’s highest rated fall drama in quite a few years. Overall, Sleepy Hollow seems to have been well received by general audiences, which is good news for me, since I’m quite certain that I may have already fallen in love with it.

Spoilers after the jump.

Theatre Thursdays: Rest in Peace Cory Monteith

I’m sure by now you have heard that Glee lead actor Cory Monteith passed away Saturday at the age of 31. Reports came in Tuesday that the autopsy revealed Monteith died from a mixture of heroin and alcohol.

It’s a tragic end to a brilliant performer, and puts most of the theatre world back on their heels. Monteith’s death opens up a ton of questions that must be asked.

Ace plays Final Fantasy X: The Dead

Final Fantasy X has so many religious themes going on. Of course, that’s not surprising when you establish a world heavily ingrained with religion and base that religion on three very popular faiths and ways of life: Buddhism, Shintoism, and Catholicism. Sometimes, FFX feels as though it’s all over the place, as if the writers couldn’t figure out which religion should dominate. But for the most part, and excusing any plot holes, Yevon seems like a solid faith that I could see existing given certain circumstances.

But like with all things religious, an afterlife must exist, so it’s only natural that Final Fantasy X makes mention of the dead. In fact, if there’s one aspect more dominating than religion in the game, it would be how the dead affect the living. And also like with everything else involving this game and my over-thinking things, yes, I found some more plot holes.

Oh, My Pop Culture Jesus: Religion in Harry Potter

So the other day while I was thinking (a very dangerous thing to do), I realized that no one seemed to be religious in Harry Potter. Nobody ever mentioned going to church, or praying that Lord Voldemort didn’t come from the sky and strike them down, or anything like that. At first it didn’t really trouble me. After all Harry Potter was a fictitious story that took place in an imaginary world. And then I did a little more thinking and realized that it wasn’t an imaginary world at all. Rather, it was a world that was supposed to be the same as ours, except with a wizarding secret society. So why did the story make no reference to religion?

I suppose it was largely due to Rowling’s personal choices. She probably didn’t want to endorse one faith over another. But in difficult times (such as those Harry and his friends are experiencing), sometimes it’s very natural to turn to religion for help and guidance. Not to mention there is always a Christmas vacation, yet no one mentions coming back for Christmas dinner after church or anything like that. And there is zero mention of Judaism, Islam, or any other world religion.

While Rowling did not include any specific religion/religious references (such as crosses or other symbols, or mention the religions of some of the students), she did put in subtle references. On his parents’ tombstone, Harry reads the quote “The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death,” while on that of Dumbledore’s mother and sister, Harry reads, “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” The second tombstone inscription is a direct quote of Jesus from Matthew 6:19, the first is from 1 Corinthians 15:26.

But this brings up the question: why are there cemeteries with tombstones with Bible passages on them if no one celebrates anything religious? Sounds awfully fishy to me…

The series’ preoccupation with death and whether there is life after is fascinating. Harry spends the entire seven books struggling with loss, of his parents, of Sirius, and in the final book of many more. When Sirius died in particular, Harry became very preoccupied with whether or not he was dead and if there was a way to get him back. And then there is our BFFL the resurrection stone, which can in fact bring people back from the dead (in a sense). Maybe this is my very little Catholic Sunday School talking, but I thought Jesus was the only one who could do that.

Anyway, when Harry collects all three hallows he becomes the Master of Death. Other than Lucifer in Supernatural (and I suppose Lucifer in general), I wasn’t aware anyone, much less a mortal being, could master death.

Which brings me to that scene in Harry’s head after he’s been killed, where he’s talking to Dumbledore in King’s Cross Station. My guess is that is supposed to be some kind of Purgatory where you can decide where you want to go. Again, the Sunday School speaks and thinks where you end up is someone else’s job.

And the philosopher’s stone, and every spell. I mean, in all seriousness, if all I need to be Jesus is a wand and a spell book the entire religion thing is a little disenchanting if you are a wizard (no pun intended, and yes I am prepared to get in very big trouble for that last sentence). So what role does religion play if miracles are child’s play?

I can totally understand why Rowling wouldn’t write entirely about religion, she didn’t want to endorse one set of beliefs over another. And rereading this post right now it sounds very negative, which was not my intention. Rowling tried to insert a little religion in, but she didn’t want her beliefs to become too overbearing, which is why she has hardly spoken on the subject. And issues such as life after death are something we as individuals all struggle with. However, officially it’s a question that each religion has its own way of answering. And as nice as Rowling’s answers seem in The Deathly Hallows, it leaves some big questions still open.

If she had given her work a little more of a religious context as to how religion fit into the wizarding world then I probably wouldn’t have to talk about these things. But she didn’t so I went there.