Ok, call me a softie, a bleeding heart, whatever, but sure enough, three-quarters of the way through the opening sequence of Pixar's new movie
Up, my lip was quivering and the moisture gathering on the edges of my lower eyelids threatened to trickle down my cheeks in the image of the waterfall depicted on-screen. And this is a cartoon, for Pete's sake! What gives with this
lachrymal impulse?
Up isn't the first movie to get me teary-eyed and won't be the last, I'm sure. Earlier in our marriage, when Mark was traveling a fair bit, I learned the hard way that revisiting
The Sixth Sense when he was away on a business trip wasn't perhaps the best cinematic option to watch solo. The penultimate scene, when Bruce Willis's character realizes the truth of what's happened, had me looking like a cross between a racoon and W.C. Fields, what with my smeared mascara and rubbed-red nose.
Of course, these cinematic scenes strive to be
lachrymorose, to jerk those tears right out of our
lachrymal ducts. And also, of course, some efforts work better than others and what elicits sniffles from one person as easily evokes snickers from others. But I expect that for just about everyone, there's a scene or song or some other surrogate that has elicited that
lachrymal reflex.
So how does this happen? How can a bit of what's so clearly fiction incite this kind of emotional response? The ancient Greeks understood the power of fiction to hold a mirror up to life and to purge oneself emotionally through the experience of
catharsis, a term originally meaning "cleansing" and "purification."
But why do we respond with such real emotion to something that we know is, well, not real? Empathy. I can watch Carl's life with Ellie unfold onscreen in
Up and relate to these cartoon characters' all too believable experiences. I can see Bruce Willis's character's emotion as he watches the video of his wedding and feel the emotions of my own wedding. Doesn't matter if their fictional experiences are not mirror images of my own; the emotions are the same.
This is the boon of consciousness, the ability to relate to the experiences of others -- even strangers -- because in them we can recognize ourselves. It's both selfish and altruistic at the same time.
So I don't apologize for my
lachrymal response to
Up. Those tears are part of what makes me human. The trick to being fully human, however, is to be as equally open to the real scenes and emotions around me in the offscreen, mundane world and to be as equally emotionally responsive to them and not jaded or flummoxed into inaction. That's harder than when you're sitting in a theater or movie seat and the lights come back up. A curtain will not magically fall over the hurts, the hunger, the loneliness of the real people around me.
Catharsis and tears may be about purging, but it doesn't hurt if they provide a solid kick in the conscience, either.
