Interesting analysis of longing for happy-endings:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7976192.stm
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Hmmm. I thought this was going to be about massage parlors. 
I think there’s an important factor that the article omits: People identify with and therefore enjoy a story better if it reflects their own personal sense of life. Does one see the world as a forbidding place where all of our futile dreams are ultimately reduced to ashes, or does one see it as a place where human beings can thrive and accomplish glorious things? Are human beings driven by fate, or can they determine their own destinies?
If one has a positive sense of life, then one is more likely to appreciate happy endings, particularly if they are brought about by the successful actions of heros and heroines rather than by deus ex machina devices. Most of my favorite books and films have happy endings. In those cases where they have sad or tragic endings, at least the protagonists go out gloriously. If the world has to end, let it be with a bang rather than a modernistic whimper (if you remember the close of T. S. Eliot’s “The Hollow Men”).
Hmmm. I thought this was going to be about massage parlors.
I had the exact same thought. Scary.
That’s the only reason I clicked on this thread. What a disappointment.
False advertising! I’m not even clicking the link I’m so disappointed.
Well, ACTN3, I guess you and I are the only ones in this thread who have any class. 
This may set a catastrophic trend to art. Diluting the ending of Notre-Dame de Paris, Disney style, is one thing, Playboy making Esmeralda give handjob pleasure to Quasimodo in response to public demand is quite another story 
“Playboy making Esmeralda give handjob pleasure to Quasimodo…”
Hmmm, maybe I should take back my comment about your having class.
Well, I just followed free market capitalism. There seems to be demand for not having class.