Dear Disney, Marvel, sitcoms, romcoms and finding your true self dramas,
Could we please have another script? Because you’ve been using the same one for too many years and it is booooring.
What’s the script? The hero, the key character has to… ‘look inside their heart!’
Take this little conversation that is the turning point in the Disney animation Hercules (1997). Hercules has proved himself by defeating every monster pitched against him. But he cannot yet become a god. Why not? Nobody can tell him, not even Zeus his father. Instead, he must look inside his heart.
Here’s the script:
Zeus: I'm afraid being famous is not the same as being a true hero.
Hercules: What more can I do?
Zeus: It's something you have to discover for yourself
Hercules: But how can I—
Zeus: Look inside your heart
And when this cliché was delivered my young son audibly groaned and then pinned the Disney writers to their boring and unimaginative wall. ‘They say the same thing in every movie.’ And he’s right.
Please dear scriptwriters can we have another reason for living or pursuing good or risking life or kissing that girl or boy other than someone looked inside their heart and found the truth that had eluded all the thinkers of the age?
Okay, I know it’s not your fault. You’re beholden to the culture of our age – there is no objective truth. And no wisdom in past generations. And there is no God who might have something, anything, to say. Instead, truth exists in only one place – the individual’s heart. But it is only their truth. It is no one else’s truth – all 6 billion truths and counting.
One recent writer has called this the age of expressive individualism. We are only truly and authentically human when we live out what is true for us as an individual. We each have to look into our own heart and discover our truth. Until we do, we are not truly human. We are living in denial of reality.
But sigh. I thought you scriptwriters were supposed to be creative! How could you be so boring, repetitious and false? I know you’re writing scripts to sell movies, tv-series, self-justification & merch but I hoped for higher motives. I hoped for the occasional script that might question the unquestioned orthodoxies of our age.
Perhaps it isn’t fair to lay the blame on you. We viewers are culpable. I mean really, if our hearts were overflowing with truth, we would have realised long ago that we’ve been sold a lie about our hearts and we’d stop being wooed by such shallow slop. But instead, we listen to the lie and hold it dear in our hearts.
I guess we do it to keep the truth of who we are far from our thoughts. And to justify our decisions, ‘I have to be true to myself.’
But it isn’t just boring, it’s dangerous. Hitler, no doubt, was true to himself. As were Stalin and the Son of Sam. As are all those who commit adultery, lie, steal and so on. Something in our heart said, ‘Go for it, this is the right thing to do!’ It’s why Jesus warned us
“What comes out of a person is what defiles him. For from within, out of people’s hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immoralities, thefts, murders, adulteries, greed, evil actions, deceit, self-indulgence, envy, slander, pride, and foolishness. All these evil things come from within and defile a person.
And this is where the falseness comes in. You scriptwriters know it is a disaster when people live according to their own personal truth, their heart’s desire. You, like us, see the results of it every evening. The script is written on the evening news.
On reflection, I guess that’s why you don’t write scripts that tell the truth about our hearts. Sure, I get it. It is too truthful. But please, could you stop being so boring? Couldn’t you be just a little more creative?