I originally thought we were going to see SUCKER PUNCH this weekend. I mean, the trailer was pretty nifty. Dragons! Airships! Girls kicking butt! But both the critical reviews and the informal feedback led me to believe that I would be better served just watching the Disney mash-up trailer again instead. At this point I have too many suspicions that the people behind SUCKER PUNCH are of the belief that girls in sexy outfits kicking butt = female empowerment. Not that there aren’t plenty of great movies with girls in sexy outfits kicking but who are also empowered and have agency in their worlds.

So anyways, instead we say RED RIDING HOOD. And I really enjoyed it. It helped that I had just rewatched Veronica Mars Season 1, so I was predisposed to associate Amanda Seyfried with excellence. But I also loved the visuals (especially the village and Grandmother’s house), the band of multi-ethnic werewolf-hunters, and the fact that the love “triangle” wasn’t particularly sordid or annoying. But when it was over and Bob and I were walking out of the theater I kept feeling like there was something that had been missing. I finally figured out what it was.

Humor.

There was not a single scene or bit of dialog in that movie that made me laugh (intentionally). And it made me realize just how important humor is. Even in a dark romantic story about werewolves. Even in an epic fantasy adventure (hello, Merry and Pippen!). It’s the comedic notes that allow us, in a way, to take the brutal, epic stuff seriously. And without them, I ended up laughing at a number of inappropriate moments, because they just seemed so overblown and over-dramatic.

I really liked the definition that author Laura Amy Schlitz gave of comedy, in her recent write up of her choice in the ongoing Battle of the Books at School Library Journal. She writes:

Comedy is a celebration of human resilience. At its best, it takes the tensions and failures and tragedies of life, and transmutes them. It pulls the threads taut, mending the rift in the cloth. It draws the toxins out. And of course this is tremendously refreshing, because we are surrounded by tensions and failures and tragedies.

It’s fitting that I should be thinking of humor and comedy now. Because one of the writers who taught me the power of humor, how the best books make you cry and laugh, was Diana Wynne Jones. The world lost a huge creative talent when she passed away earlier this week. DOGSBODY was one of the books that made me want to be a writer. When I daydream about the kind of writing career I aspire to, I think of her. What an amazing legacy she has left us. Dozens of books, filled with flights of imagination and dazzling characters. And so many readers– so many authors, including me!– who name her as an inspiration.

Thank you, Diana Wynne Jones, for inspiring me to dream and to create. For making me cry over the ending of DOGSBODY and laugh over Chrestomanci’s quirks and hope for a happy ending for Howl and Sophie.

I will confess that I have not read every book by Diana Wynne Jones. I do that sometimes, with my most beloved and prolific favorite authors. Because I don’t want the day to come when there are no more. So I am, indeed, grateful that I still have copies of HEXWOOD and CONRAD’S FATE and several others sitting on my to-read shelf. I think it’s probably a time to pick one of them up and remind myself of the magic and wit and humor that Diana Wynne Jones gave us.

Tags: reading