It’s easy to explain how… You just can’t…
But nonsense is a rubbery sort of sense. You can pull it like taffy, wind it around your neck, let it harden into one of those neck rings like some of those African women who put on more and more neck rings until their neck bones separate and they can never again take the neck rings off because they will die of a broken neck if they do.
That’s probably a racist joke. Although it is not really a joke, but more of a surrealistic observation. They really do wear those neck rings. The Ndebele tribe from the Transvaal Region of South Africa wear these things sometimes even without being in a Black Panther movie in the MCU. In Black Panther movies they are worn by the Dora Milaje who protect the Black Panther. And the words “Dora Milaje” mean the “Adored Ones.” And you have to adore them, or else they might kick your butt, or even break it into three pieces. They are very tough and determined ladies.
And then there’s the Scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz. He wears crazy stuff too. But if he tried to join a nudist organization and become a nudist, he would disrobe and suddenly be transformed into a small haystack of straw. And what would that look like? A straw pile with two little white eyeballs laying at the peak of the pile?
And obviously that could be a racist joke too. But what race would we be running? And how slow would you have to be to be beaten in a race by a naked straw man?
But straw men are even more discriminated against than other men, nude or not. You see, politicians are constantly setting them up because when you are arguing with the other party, they are easy to knock down with your superior arguments. But, of course, the Democrats are always easier to knock down anyway, because they don’t rely on made-up facts and scare tactics. They only try to scare you with true stuff. And they are more likely to start wondering what a naked strawman would look like.
And then you take the rubbery nonsense and wind it all around the parts of this picture. It has a lot of real things in it, yet most of those things are not really real. Like Mickey Mouse. He’s real. I mean, there’s a real guy or girl inside the hot costume. But the outside is not really real. And you would be hard pressed to actually see the really real guy inside the suit because it is really hard to see what’s hidden inside a costume if it is currently in a colored-pencil drawing. In fact, Cissy Spasek is in the picture, but as the character who kills everybody in the movie Carrie. So, which part of that is most real? Carrie is a real book by Stephen King. And how many real people are in this picture? And how many fake people? That’s the thing about nonsense… It doesn’t make any sense.
Catch a Falling Star 
Why Do You Think That? (Part Two)
In my short, sweet sixty years of life, I have probably seen more than my share of movies. I have seen classic movies, black-and-white movies, cartoon movies, Humphrey Bogart movies, epic movies, science fiction movies, PeeWee Herman movies, Disney movies, Oscar-winning movies, and endless box-office stinkers. But in all of that, one of the most undeniable threads of all is that movies make me cry. In fact they make me cry so often it is a miracle that even a drop of moisture remains in my body. I should be a dried-out husk by now.
I wept horribly during this scene. Did you?
And the thing is, people make fun of you when you cry at movies. Especially cartoon movies like Scooby Doo on Zombie Island. (But I claim I was laughing so hard it brought tears to my eyes. That’s the truth, dear sister. So stop laughing at me.) But I would like to put forth another “Why do you think that?” notion. People who cry while watching a movie are stronger and more powerful than the people who laugh at them for crying. A self-serving thesis if ever there was one.
Movies can make you cry if you have the ability to feel empathy. We all know this. Old Yeller is the story of a dog who endears himself to a prairie farm family, saves Travis’s life at one point, and then gets infected with rabies and has to be put down. Dang! No dry eyes at the end of that one. Because everyone has encountered a dog and loyal dog-love somewhere along the line. And a ten-year-old dog is an old dog. The dogs you knew as a child helped you deal with mortality because invariably, no matter how much you loved them, dogs demonstrate what it means to die. Trixie and Scamper were both hit by cars. Queenie, Grampa’s collie, died of old age. Jiggs the Boston Terrier died of heat stroke one summer. You remember the pain of loss, and the story brings it all back.
Only psychopaths don’t feel empathy to some degree. Think about how you would feel if you were watching Old Yeller and somebody you were watching with started laughing when Travis pulls the trigger on the shotgun. Now, there’s a Stephen King sort of character.
But I think I can defend having lots of empathy as a reason for crying a river of tears during Disney’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame. You see, identifying with Quasimodo as the main character, hoping for what he hopes for, feeling like a monster and completely unloved, and fearing what he fears connect you to the story in ways that completely immerses you in the experience. This is basically a monster movie.
But the film puts you inside the head of the malformed man, and you realize that he is not the monster. Righteous Judge Frollo and the people who mistreat Quasimodo for his deformity of outward appearance are the real monsters. If you don’t cry a river of tears because of this story, then you have not learned the essential truth of Quasimodo. When we judge others harshly, we are really judging ourselves. In order to stop being monstrous, and be truly human, you must look inside the ugliness as Esmeralda does to see the heroic beauty inside others. Sometimes the ideas themselves are so powerful they make me weep. That’s when my sister and my wife look at me and shake their heads because tears are shooting out of me like a fountain, raining wetness two or three seats in every direction. But I believe I am a wiser man, a more resolved man, and ultimately a better man because I was not afraid to let a movie make me cry.
The music also helps to tell the story in ways that move my very soul to tears. Notice how the heroine walks the opposite way to the rest of the crowd. As they sing of what they desire, what they ask God to grant, she asks for nothing for herself. She shows empathy in every verse, asking only for help for others. And she alone walks to the light from the stained glass window. She alone is talking to God.
Yes, I am not embarrassed by the fact that movies make me cry. In fact, I should probably be proud that movies and stories and connections to other people, which they bring me, makes me feel it so deeply I cry. Maybe I am a sissy and a wimp. Maybe I deserved to be laughed at all those times for crying during the movie. But, hey, I’ll take the laughter. I am not above it. I am trying to be a humorist after all.
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Filed under cartoon review, commentary, compassion, Disney, humor, insight, inspiration, movie review, music, philosophy, strange and wonderful ideas about life
Tagged as empathy, movies that make me cry, Old Yeller, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Toy Story 3