Canto 22 – The Puppets on the Wall
The puppets in the workshop were all hung up by the strings on the workshop wall. There was a triple row of pegs to hang them from and they were basically all there. All hanging from strings and all in their bare wooden forms without costumes or wigs.
Shandra woke up with a start. She shook her wooden head awake. Sawdust flew out of her ears.
“Mark! Mark? Are you here too?”
“Yeah. To your left.”
Shandra turned her wooden head to see Mark smiling at her.
“You been awake for long?”
“No, Shandra. You woke me up by calling my name.”
She would’ve smiled back at him, but her face was made of wood and was fixed in a frown.
Below them both and to the right they heard a female voice crying. It was weeping softly.
“Who is that down there?” Shandra roared.
“That’s the Gingerbread Witch you burned up on stage,” said the mouse puppet directly on Shandra’s right.
Shandra glared at the mouse. It turned its little gray head away.
“So, what you cryin’ about down there, Wicked Witch?” Shandra growled.
“You burned me,” replied a shaky little voice.
“But it weren’t real… was it?”
“Everything that happens on that stage is real. Mr. Mephisto controls reality. How you think we all got to be puppets?” said the mouse angrily.
“I was just a runaway girl whose parents never looked for her. Mr. Mephisto promised to find a foster home for me when my punishment as a puppet is done,” sobbed the witch puppet. “Now, when he puts me back in my real body, I will probably be horribly burned all over my body.”
Shandra’s little wooden tummy immediately turned to ice… well, it felt like that anyway.
“I didn’t know…” Shandra started to say. But then she got angry. “Why didn’t you defend your little timid self, then?”
“I couldn’t. You are so forceful and scary.”
“Wait a minute,” said Mark, “you are saying all the puppets here are being punished for something?”
“Yeah. Running away from home is a sin that the Devil punishes.”
“I was a runaway too,” said the mouse.
“I ain’t no sinner,” growled Shandra.
Mr. Mephisto was suddenly there laughing. “You burned poor little Dierdre here. You put a hit out on Poppa Dark. You are definitely a puppet for a reason, little girl.”
“I’m gonna run away from here,” declared Shandra.
“You can’t. Your arms and legs only work on stage,” said Mephisto.
“You wouldn’t leave me here alone?” asked Mark meekly.
“No, of course not. What did Mark do wrong, by the way, Devil Man?”
“He ran away from loving parents to be with you, an evil influence.”
“So, we are in Hell, then?”
“No. More like purgatory. But for a reason. The angels in Hell are fallen angels, but still angels made by God.”
“Are you sending me to a home all burned?” whined the witch.
“You came here in 1925, Diedre. You are 103 years old now.”
“But you control reality, Devil Man,” Shandra said. “You could put her back as a child… and not all burned up, either.”
“That’s right. I could.” Mr. Mephisto grinned.
“So, why are we really here?” Shandra asked.
“Because God is a just god. Some will earn redemption. And some will get the punishment they deserve.”
“And what if we don’t believe in God?” Shandra growled.
“Well, whatever… He definitely believes in you. For good or ill.”
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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Tagged as empathy, movies that make me cry, Old Yeller, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Toy Story 3