On Dreams: Why Tangled is Better than La La Land

If you believe the thugs who frequent the Ugly Duckling pub in the movie Tangled, then everybody has a dream. Despite the fact that this song is silly and “grotesquely optimistic,” there is no doubt that that the struggle to achieve personal dreams is one that resonates with many, many people. This is a strong theme in the movie La La Land and is one of the reasons it was so well received. While Tangled is, at its heart, a love story about characters with dreams, La La Land is its opposite: a dream story about characters in love. This tension between dreams and relationships is resolved in two different ways in these two movies. Tangled gets it right. It might be a feel-good children’s movie, but its portrayal of dreams and characters is so much better than the intended realism of La La Land.

At its core, La La Land asks whether or not following your dreams and being in a lasting relationship are compatible and, if not, which is more important. The answer given is that when they are incompatible (as they often are) you should choose the dream over the person. After all, isn't that better than a person giving up what they have always hoped for? The ending of the movie is bittersweet, as anyone would admit, but it comes across as trying to be more happy than sad: both Sebastian and Mia have achieved their dreams now, and she even has a husband and a daughter. Happy ending. Better to have your own personalized dream and some nameless guy, than to stick it out with the person you've already given yourself to, and have to make sacrifices. After all, men in Mia's life are apparently interchangeable. Dreams are not.

Morally, there’s no question that Mia and Sebastian should have stuck together, because they were already living together and sleeping together and acting as if they were married. The only acceptable choice at that point is to commit and actually get married. Although the movie’s argument would have been better had they not been sleeping together, it still doesn’t have much to stand on. When Sebastian joins a band to support the two of them, it is viewed as a betrayal of his person. But why? Isn't he becoming a better and more selfless person by temporarily putting his dream aside for the sake of someone he loves? Are dreams truly what define you as a person? Do they define you at all?

Tangled shows us lots of characters with dreams, including Flynn with his selfish dream of money and solitude, and Rapunzel with her childhood dream of seeing the floating lights. Although these dreams are more whimsical and fantastical than the career goals we find in the more realistic La La Land, the point doesn’t change. Both movies are trying to tell us something about dreams and how they define you. In Tangled, the characters are not defined by their dreams. Rather, the movie acknowledges that dreams can change (take Flynn for example) and that even if you succeed in achieving your dream and it's everything you've ever wanted, life goes on and you get to find a new dream (i.e. Rapunzel). Flynn gives up his selfish dream because he finds something better, and he becomes a much better person because of it. He helps Rapunzel achieve hers, and then they get married and live happily ever, content to have each other and to find new dreams together. (Another movie that portrays this beautifully is Up, which shows us an amazing couple with a dream they don't get to achieve, but neither Carl nor Ellie would have given up the years they had together just to get that dream.)

So let's ask the question ourselves. Are relationships and dreams mutually exclusive? Is a creative or artistic drive incompatible with a committed relationship? And which one is more important?

I'm a creative person. Creating things has been at the center of my life for as long as I can remember, whether that be writing endless books and scribbling poems in notebooks, making up games to play (both board games and outside games), taking pictures, my brief dabbling in drawing, bringing music to life on the piano and composing some myself, or even just creating delicious and beautiful food. Not having a creative outlet is really hard for me. So I get it. I get why Mia and Sebastian would want to have their dream artistic careers. Who wouldn't? It's hard to not live all your dreams. But at the same time I'm married and have an almost-6-month-old child, and those are permanent relationships. I don't have the option of leaving either of them for any dreams I might have.

With Gwen being the baby she is, it is hard for me to be all that creative these days. It's hard to do anything artistic when your child barely lets you keep up with housework, after all. So my spending time caring for and loving her involves sacrificing the time I could have used on composing, writing, or playing piano. And because it's a sacrifice, it isn't all that fun and it definitely wears on me. But in return I get to see my little girl's smiling face and hear her amazing laugh. I get to help her grow into a wonderful little girl. I get to make this little apartment a pleasant home for the two most important people in my life. And even though I can't spend as much time on my hobbies as I could if they weren't in my life, them being in my life actually inspires me and gives me ideas for all those hobbies. I have more things to take pictures of now, more things to write about, more reason to play music, more ideas to compose into music. I wouldn't even have written this blog post if it weren't for Nick saying "I never thought of that before. You should write about it!" Maybe I don't have the time to get to all the things I want right now, but that's okay. I have the rest of my life. Tolkien was 45 years old when he published The Hobbit, after all. I'm only half that old. I'd rather be here with my husband and daughter than doing any of those things, even if it means I never get to do them, because ultimately being a wife and mother is more important. And more difficult. And so much more rewarding.

Sometimes the hard things are the better things. And sometimes, when you are willing to sacrifice a dream, you discover new and better ones.