This weekend Shrek the Third opened, grossing $122 million in the United States. Next week, Pirates of the Caribbean – At Land’s End, is scheduled to open over Memorial Day Weekend, and it too will probably make a large fortunes at the box office as many of us rush to the movie theaters to eat overpriced popcorn, candy and drinks.
Perhaps its no surprise that fairy tales (comedic or otherwise) have made such a big comeback in movie theaters in the Bush era. We all want to believe that good will always defeat evil, that the villains we face are truly inhuman monsters, and that we’re the good guys defending truth, justice and the American way in a world of Nazis or Super Villains or terrorists bent on our destruction.
The truth is, however, much nastier, and much closer to home. We aren’t the good guys anymore, at least not in the eyes of much of the world. It is our leaders who start wars without any reason but greed, our soldiers that commit atrocities, our waste and excessive lifestyles that are literally turning the planet into a melting pot of global climate disasters.
And worse still, we, collectively, as a nation, don’t even care all that much for the dignity and sanctity of human lives, not for other people, nor for our own.
(cont.)
Certainly not for our soldiers or their families, or their health crises.
Not for those suffering with AIDS in Africa.
Not for people with dark skin.
Or brown skin.
Not for peaceful protesters’ rights.
Not for people with or at risk of getting cancer
Not for people with no or inadequate medical insurance.
Not for people who eat tainted food from China.
Not for our brave firefighters of 9/11 fame.
Not for the volunteers who looked through the wreckage of the World Trade Center for the living and the dead, nor for the people living in lower Manhattan after 9/11.
Not for gays, lesbians or trans-gendered communities.
Not for women or women’s rights.
We all want to believe in the fairy tale that the United States of America is the best country in the world, the best place to raise a family, the most just, the most tolerant, the land of the free and the home of the brave. But like all fairy tales, it’s just a story, a fiction, a make believe tale for children. And as long as so many of us prefer to hear the fairy tale rather than the truth, we will continue to fail, as a society, as a nation, as caring and compassionate human beings.
Fairy tales are fun to watch in a movie theater. They are fun to read to your kids. But they shouldn’t be used as an excuse to mislead, to lie, to maintain the status quo or to prevent the advancement of human rights.
We ain’t kids anymore, people.