Media Analysis - the Popularity of Happy Endings and Its Meaning to Our Society

Easing to Winning

For half a decade, the James Bond sequence has always managed to fill up the theatres with movie-goers of all generations. Despite that long-living reputation, all 007 movies strangely seem to have one common plot. Each movie starts with 007 receiving a heroic mission to save the world from a lunatic billionaire. Then, he blatantly penetrates his opponent’s controlling center and promptly walks into a perfectly-set-up deadly trap that never really works. Finally, he blows up the whole headquarters to spoil the life-time plan of the poor billionaire who would never understand why he was defeated. However, the reason is obvious: 007 plays the winner. By playing that role, Mr. Bond is entitled to stay invulnerable and be able to crush one army with a few bullets. The director allows that fictional plot and the audiences, happily enough, accept that. Seemingly a matter of taste, yet the ubiquity of such a pattern may hint at a flaw in our society: most people are afraid of the harsh realities behind genuine successes.

Not usually would audiences consider a “winner” a role in popular media, especially in movies. Rather, they think about being a winner as an achievement of a particular role, very often, through hardships. Being winner qualifies for more than that. After all, a role is a set of actions one is expected to play out, and a winner fits neatly to that definition because no matter what happens in the beginning, very often the protagonist is expected to score the final victory, even in an inexplicable manner. Besides the James Bond sequence, that pattern also appears in the very popular “Rocky” movies from the 1970s and 1980s. At the end of those movies, Rocky Balboa, played by Stallone as the underdog, always engages in a big fight against a very powerful, yet wrong-behaved, boxing champion. As usual, our hero starts off slippery and gets dominated by the opponent. Until he becomes totally bruised and breaks some of his ribs, he suddenly...