On this day in “1951,” Father John Patrick Francis Mulcahy was lamenting that, the day before, he had not been able to eat corn on the cob on the Fourth of July. He had, the day before, expressed his pleasure at the idea of eating the corn he’d been growing. “All week I’ve been dreaming of getting butter on my cheeks, juice on my shirt, and a niblet wedged between two molars.” Now, the chronology of M*A*S*H is complicated at best and flatly contradictory more often than not. But the way he talks about that corn on the cob is almost enough to make me want to experience it, and I don’t like corn.
TV shows have more room for joys like that than movies, especially long-running ones. Though I will say the only moment of Bridesmaids I really liked was when Annie made a single cupcake. If more of the movie had been like that, I would have watched it all the way. I didn’t like what I did watch, but that one moment of exquisite happiness in a single simple moment, of strength and competence, was one of its best and most pure. Similarly, Angelo Martelli in Fame taking joy in the quality of his son’s music and the fact that his son is in love is one of the warm spots of that cold, dark, beautiful movie.
Joy is not dramatic. Joy is arguably the opposite of dramatic. In Inside Out, Joy’s whole job is to pretend drama isn’t happening, at least narratively. It is in finding room for the other aspects of Riley that she grows and develops. And of course growing and developing is what stories do tend to be about. But there is something to be said for the quieter moments in a movie or TV show, the ones that let us just be with the characters for a moment and feel what they’re feeling. Sometimes, it’s Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and we are feeling Cameron’s connection with the little girl who is just dots if you really look at her. But sometimes it’s Trollhunters and we are watching Jim enjoy cooking at the beginning of the day.
Joy can be shown in loving gestures—Jim is far from the only fictional character who demonstrates his love for someone by bringing them food, as Norm Gunderson would make sure we knew. Norm loves his wife, and one of the ways he shows her how he loves her is by feeding her. And of course she is happy in that moment of being fed, because pregnancy is hungry work. These moments are taking pleasure in just being with the person you love and doing something for them, and that can be a great joy indeed.
It’s not an emotion actors are called on to show often—maybe sometimes at the end of a movie, when everything is resolved, but not even always that. And it’s not one that we really take the time to live in. But perhaps we should, more often. So much of the human experience is joy. So much of it is specifically joy in the simple things. A moment with a loved one. Being good at what we do. Seeing someone we care about being good at what they do. And, yes, eating corn on the cob. Or simply anticipating it.
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