We know the good guy is going to win. And when he does, this makes for a very tepid resolution. It would be like watching football every year, despite knowing that it's fixed so that your team wins. Would spectator sports be interesting if this were the case? It's only through the utter, disastrous, excruciatingly painful experience of defeat that victory becomes such a pulse pounding and euphoric event. Sports fans know this. Apparently fiction writers don't.

Nor is it true that impressionable children should only be shown the absurdly unrealistic and optimistic in their cartoons and films. I don't believe children are behooved to see this fake conception of the world, where good consistently triumphs over evil. Good does triumph sometimes, and it should, by all means. But it doesn't always. And portraying the struggle between the two so facetiously betrays the gravity of the matter. Children are intelligent enough to sense that there is something exceedingly contrived about these conflicts. And contrived conflicts breed poor writers- not morally upstanding individuals.

Good doesn't have to always be portrayed as the "winner" to make it attractive for young minds. The qualities of being good should speak for themselves.

One of the finest films of the 90's is one in which the bad guy triumphs. In Silence of the Lambs, a psychotic, homicidal cannibal gets out of prison and promises to create for himself a very eccentric tasting menu. Now, those of you who watched the film will say that the bad guy doesn't entirely win, since the protagonist is unhurt, and kills a separate bad guy. This is true, but in the follow up novel and soon to be film, Hannibal, Lecter and Agent Starling become lovers and fellow cannibals dining on federal agents. (Oh sorry, I guess I spoiled that ending for you). So you see the bad guys do win in this particular one. And it makes for a great or at least challenging work of fiction.

The bad guy can win, and morally upright audiences can still exist. Good consistently triumphing over evil does not result in a more moral audience, or a more entertained audience. Oh sure, every work of fiction has mini defeats for the side of good. The monster always eats a few idiots, a few soldiers always bite the bullet.

But in the end, there is always triumph. Triumph of some sort, even symbolically, as evidenced at the end of Glory. The soldiers in that film all die. But even in death it seems the virtues of a multi hued ethic win out over the racism of the era. The triumph is admittedly noble, but it's also seen coming a lightyear away. Unexpected, unassumed triumphs of will and values are more precious I'd wager, than force fed fare such as this.