TMNT: Compersion Goals

The 1990 “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” is one of the best movies ever filmed, hands down. One of the things that makes it great is it’s so dang wholesome. And one of the aspects of how dang wholesome it is, is its clear and joyful demonstration of compersion.

Compersion is being flagged by my spell-checker as not a real word, so it might not be well known yet. To summarize — compersion is the opposite of jealousy. It seeing someone getting something that makes them very happy and feeling very happy yourself that they get that. It’s popularly used in the polyamory community as the word for the feeling you get when your partner is having a great time with some s/he is dating.¹ It is joy building on joy and it’s pretty great!

red-squiggle underlines everywhere!

The four ninja turtles are all deeply crushing on a star reporter, April O’Neil. When circumstance throws her into their lives, they vie for her attention. Competition is fierce but also good-natured — they tease each other about how much they’re into her and who has the actual best shot of landing a date or a kiss.

But in the end none of the turtles end up with her. She chooses a new friend in the group, a standard pink non-shelled human with rugged good looks and a talent for putting his foot in his mouth. Casey Jones.

When the turtles peer down from the rooftop where they just won the victory of their lives and see Casey Jones kissing April they aren’t even slightly upset. They are all overjoyed, in fact. They hoot and cheer. Their friends have found joy in each other, and that brings joy to the turtles as well.

This is compersion. This is a beautiful model of it, easy enough for a 10-year old Eneasz to understand and rejoice in. It’s super easy to understand, and if the world had more examples of this sort of thing it would be a better place. Many polyamorous people complain about how impossibly hard it is to find any sort of representation of us in media, any sort of recognition that this is a wonderful way to live for many people. Any understanding of the inner lives that make us who we are and how those differ from the majority norm.

Well, sometimes these inner lives and foundational emotions don’t need to be portrayed in a directly polyamorous context. We can find them in more subtle portrayals, were we can see the unusual parts of ourselves reflected in beautiful shards rather than full “this is the focus” depictions. Anyone can watch TMNT (1990) and love it for the great movie it is. Anyone can instinctively understand this display of compersion and feel on a deep, intuitive level why it’s great. It doesn’t need to be wrapped in a full poly movie. If mass audiences can see and relate to one aspect of ourselves, that’s a huge part of building a bridge across that understanding gap. And we can feel delight in seeing this core of ourselves on screen at last. :)

I gotta go rewatch this, it’s been a few years²

1. Not everyone gets this feeling, and it can be circumstantial based on lots of stuff.

2. Other great things about this movie: positive masculinity and authentic male bonds and guys supporting each other. Also: every single character is working class. Every danged one. This was pretty common at the time, but is outstanding when compared to today’s movies. No bourgeois, no yuppies, no one with a degree, not even anyone upper-middle class. Solidly earth-bound working class people that sweat and curse. It’s culture comfort food. :)
Actually Shredder is nobility, so it’s even more stark via contrast that the villain is coded high-class while all the heroes and supporting roles (and mooks that the villain dupes into fighting for him!) are all working class.