Every fiber of my being tells me that I'm going to regret making this blog that digging into the past allows others to see parts of my life that, for better or worse, I want to keep locked in my head away from the world. For some reason or another, I'm imagining right now that by letting others into my own past, they will somehow judge me for what they read. Of course, that ignores the fact that all of us were at one point six years old, that we each have a past of naivete.
Looking into my own past there are two examples that I wanted to share, and although I really don't want to, I'm going to take a deep breath and keep typing.
The first romance story that I remember, if it can truly be called that. Is The Land Before Time. For those of you who may not have seen the movie, or may have forgotten the plot, it follows Frye's simple design of a cyclical shift from the world of the idyllic to the demonic or night world and back again. The story follows a young dinosaur named Little Foot whose world is, in many ways perfect. One day, however, all of that changes with the fall of a giant asteroid. The dinosaurs are forced to migrate to a new home, a paradise of legend if they want to survive. Along the way, Little Foot is first separated from the larger herd, and then his mother is killed, sadly, before he meets up with a few other small dinosaurs. I can actually remember all of the names now that I think of it. Ducky: the duckbill, Peetrie (not sure how to spell his name): the pterodactyl, Spike: the stegosaurus, and Sarah: the Triceratops. It's surprising to me that I can still remember those names after so many years. Continuing the story, the young dinosaurs travel across a barren waste land, searching for a land that they are not even sure exists. Along the way they are confronted by monstrous, carnivorous dinosaurs that I can remember being terrified of as a child among other hardships. After days and days of searching, when all hope seems lost, the five young children not only find the lost paradise that they had been looking for but also reunite with their families.
The other romance naive story that I can remember fairly well involves the, as they were called then, Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers. Again a quick synopsis of the plot for those of you who never had the pleasure of seeing the show, it follows the adventures of five teenagers who are charged with protecting the world from the evils that threaten it. As with the story of Little Foot and his friends, the Rangers are most definitely good and their foes evil. It's harder to remember any specific details of the storyline as the plot changed from episode to episode, but there is no doubt that each week the Power Rangers fought to protect the world from the evils of a witch (that much I remember) and her no less frightening gargoyle like warrior lieutenant. Between the two of them, and the monster that they created, the world was constantly in danger, but there was no doubt that the Power Rangers would win the day and the world would return to normal.
As Frye says "[the] characterization of romance is really a feature of its mental landscape. Its heroes and villains exist primarily to symbolize a contrast between two worlds, one above the level of ordinary experience, the other below it" (53). He goes on to describe the greater world as "the idyllic world [and the] other is... the demonic or night world" (53). the last piece from Frye that I wish to include before concluding with my own thoughts involves a "plunge downward at the beginning and a bounce upward at the end. this means that most romances exhibit a cyclical movement of descent into a night world and a return to the idyllic world" (54).
In more simplistic terms, though Frye does do a good job of that himself, the romance is a story divide between the forces of good and the forces of evil, between light and darkness, and it is the loss of their ideal world and the attempt to return to that ideal world that pushes the plots of romances forward. In the case of The Land Before Time, the story is a romance because it begins in a world where everything is indeed perfect, where plant eating dinosaurs live in peace and are not threatened by any outside forces. That all changes one day as has been said above and a group of young dinosaurs fall into a world of shadows where they must struggle until they can reemerge into a world of peace and prosperity. The fact that they do so is what makes the movie a romance I would argue and allowed a child like myself to see a world with no greys but only light and darkness.
In the case of the television show Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, the world is clearly divided between the forces of good and the forces of evil. There are no ambiguities to stress a child, making him or her wonder about the motivations of either side. Rather one side is constantly struggling to destroy the world while the other struggles to stop them and save it. The fact that they do, the fact that each episode begins in peace, falls into chaos, and ends with the return of that peace, makes the Power Rangers yet another example of the Romance.
So this is the end of my current blog, and I hope that it was somewhat useful and helpful in explaining Frye's diagnosis of the Romance. As much as I was nervous about sharing these facts from my past, the process of putting them down in my blog has helped to make me at least more comfortable. It's actually been quite refreshing to return to that mindset.
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