I have a problem with fairy tales. Yes, I cringe every time Cinderella decides to hand her fate to the next handsome lad on the road, and I smack my forehead when Aurora twirls around to accent her unachievable (and frankly, unhealthy) curves, but those are not the problems that leave me reprimanding my four year old cousin as she cheers when the beauty is finally reunited with the beast.

Its the happy ending that bothers me; the well defined point at the end of a movie, (I’m not just picking at Disney anymore) when everyone is rejoicing. The evil character has somehow on permanent lockdown, or has suddenly become a good character, and everyone else is jumping up and down, smiles plastered on their faces, professing their love, kissing their partner.

Life doesn’t have happy endings. There are no “good” characters. Now before you call me a deluded cynic here to ruin your childhood, think about it. I’m not saying there is no such thing as happy. There will always be a day when you look around yourself and thank the world for everything its given you. But these are moments, not endings. We work for them, enjoy them for a while, and then work for them again. There are no “good” or “bad” people, no green smoke surrounding the obviously messed up ugly-faced villain. There are just a lot of imperfect conflicted people surrounded by varying colours of smoke, who have to make tough decisions, and live with them.

The problem lies in well-defined boundaries, in classifications, in stereotypes. Then the harder questions pop up. Does making bad decisions make a person “bad”? Can we be complacent in our happiness? Then again, Cinderella and the Failed Foot-fetish Based Marriage won’t hit the box office with the same force, I guess.