Despite being a beloved corporate overlord of the entertainment industry, every now and then there's just a Disney project that just sort of becomes...lost to time. Perhaps it's due to timing, perhaps it's due to lack of availability, but whatever the reason, some things Disney makes are just lost in the shuffle, never to be seen or heard from again. Until I come along and remind you all they exist, via this blog. This weeks post is one of those times.
When I was a little girl, I caught a movie on TV. To be fair, I didn't even know it was a Disney movie for the longest time, and also, I was never really an enormous Disney fan to begin with, so. Either way, I caught a movie on TV, and that movie was called Susie Q. What makes Susie Q extremely interesting to me is not actually how lost it is, though that's interesting too, but more so that it's a Disney movie. Well, to be fair, it wasn't actually a Disney movie proper, they were simply the distributors of it in the US. Semantics aside, the film is from 1996, so this was only a little into the Disney Channel's lifespan (which began in 83), and they might have just been somewhat strapped for content back then, I don't know.
Either way, it was one of those things they played repeatedly, so I managed to catch it time and time again. I think I even asked someone to record it for me eventually so I'd always have a copy, but alas, they either never did or I lost the tape they did it on, so. Besides Shelly Long and Amy Jo Johnson, there's not really anyone of note in the film, nor was it produced by anyone of note either, so maybe it's not really a surprise that it wasn't seen by many people, considering it was on a cable network when not everyone had cable, and didn't really have a whole lot of star power behind it. But I caught it, and I loved it, and I've remembered it ever since.
I think a good portion of why it's stuck to my brain so prominently lo these many years is primarily because of my fascination - especially my childhood fascination - with the concept of death and ghosts. When I was little, I watched an uncle die of AIDS, and then my stepfathers parents, when I was in elementary school, were murdered in a house fire, so death constantly surrounded me in some form or another. Whether it was relatives dying or pets kicking the bucket, death was always around. Children, I believe, are inherently curious about death, simply because children are just curious about everything. As a child, everything is fresh and new, and death is the ultimate question mark that can't be answered, no matter how many times a child repeats the question.
"Why do people die?"
"They just do."
"But why?"
"Always been this way."
"But why?"
Etc etc. Kids are full of questions, and a lot of those questions don't have easy answers. Death is easily the most prime example. Children, especially very young children, are simply not aware of their mortality. They go through day to day life taking in the sights and sounds and smells around them, if they are capable of doing so, and never once does the thought that all of this will one day blip away into nonexistence cross their mind. To them, life is a forever thing. I am alive, therefore I will always be alive. Susie Q is a rather dark film, about death, with some foul language in it, and yet it aired on the squeaky clean Disney Channel. Granted this was back in 96 before everything was so severely sanitized that children couldn't have fun anymore, but I stand by my statement. So for a weird little girl like myself, who begged her parents to stop driving so I could take pictures of roadkill (yes, I really did that, and yes I still have the photos on a hard drive somewhere), it was the perfect movie for me.
I'm not a religious person. I'm barely a spiritual person. I'm Jewish. I don't really believe in Heaven or Hell, and I especially find it hard to believe in things like Angels. But Ghosts? Sure. Mostly because, from a purely scientific standpoint, the evidence is overwhelming. Even if it isn't the way the movies make it out to be - or they don't appear to us in a bright pink chiffon prom dress circa 1950 - ghosts are still being seen as simply energy signals, and that's enough proof for me to warrant the conclusion that, alright, maybe there's something after we die, even if it's still fairly inconclusive. I mean do I look forward to the inevitable possibility that I'll spend the rest of eternity as nothing more than an electrical current of some kind? Absolutely fucking not. But it's something.
And therein lies the problem with humanity itself, laid bare at my feet by a Disney channel movie from 1996...people crave closure. Closure, a manmade concept, by the way, is something we all chase after. And not just in life, but in everything. If a TV series is prematurely canceled, we mourn it like we would an actual person. When someone dies too young, there's always that one person who says "they could've had such a fulfilling life", and we say the same exact thing about canceled TV shows, that, had they had the chance to go on, they could've been so good. We crave closure even in entertainment, because without it, what was the point of the experience? That's what people say anyway, but I say closure is a bullshit idea. You don't get closure when you die. You just die. I'm certainly, much as this movie might make me wanna believe otherwise, not gonna haunt some high school kid in a Mary Kay knockoff.
I'm going to die, and that's a fact, and not having that closure, not knowing what comes next, is what drives a lot of people crazy. It's why we came up with the whole idea of ghosts. Hollywood has made billions alone off our fear of the sheer simple fact that people die. Whether it's Oscar bait cancer movies or it's something along the lines of Poltergeist, death, in all its forms, supernatural or otherwise, is a money maker. The funeral business alone ought to give you enough proof of that.
Is it weird that Disney made, or rather distributed, a movie about a dead girl in her dance dress who haunts some kid? You're fucking right it is. Is it weird that that movie clawed its way into my brain and stayed there for the last 20 years simply because of its content? You're fucking right it is. But is it weird that I equate this movie to being worthy enough to ask the actual questions about what comes after life?
Probably also yes.
But I don't care. Because in the end, what it boils down to is the fact that I like talking about the concept of the afterlife, and death, and I like this movie. As a child, someone, in their infinite wisdom, gave me all my favorite things together in one weird unknown piece of media, and for that alone I'll be forever grateful.
You can watch the whole thing via Youtube if you wish. I'll link it right here.
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