This is a thread to talk about a storytelling
The Storytelling Thread
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Yeah, I saw Tenet and was quite disappointed by it.
(And it was better when Red Dwarf did it as Backwards 30 years ago.)
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Reminds me of this movie years ago that had a young hot Michelle Pfieffer as a lonely, down on her luck waitress. There was a scene that had her on a Friday night walking home alone with a box of pizza in an apartment that is hard to imagine being in on a waitress’ salary – tips and all.
If that was FRANKIE AND JOHNNY with Al Pacino as her co-star, it was based on the play Frankie and Johnny in the Claire de Lune where Kathy Bates played the role across from F. Murray Abraham. I remember a lot of critics at the time pointing out that it was a little difficult to buy Pfeiffer in the same role basically written for Bates, but the entire play was rewritten for the screen so they had to change a lot. In the end, it was pretty successful.
Casting is tough, and it is hard to sell a lot of actors to the money people for the movie because the filmmakers are trying to make the best movie or television show while the people financing only care about how many people an actor can attract to see it. So, they can’t just argue that an actor can do the best job in the role, but that they can get people to see a movie. So you might have an actor lined up and ready for production, but then a television or movie they were just in flops, and suddenly you have to recast because they aren’t bankable in the eyes of the investors.
Or a talent agency has packaged up the whole thing or could be losing their clients work because they want them available on another packaged product that might not even happen, so you can’t even get to offer them the role. It’s a f–ed up business that has always been f–ed up but changes so that it’s just f–ed up in different ways – especially for actors.
However, as far as audiences, it doesn’t really make much difference. The World Is Not Enough made the most of any Bond movie before it and Frankie and Johnny was a modest hit as well critically and financially. Michelle Pfeiffer was even nominated for a Golden Globe (or was it an Oscar?). Audiences don’t care and critics don’t really care that much either. URBAN COWBOY was a hit at the time, and really it was pitched more as SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER for Country Music and that’s why Travolta got the role. The primary problems with THOSE WHO WISH ME DEAD aren’t with the casting, but more to do with the by-the-numbers thriller plot from the writer director Sheridan who really came to prominence by not doing things by the numbers.
Still, I’ve seen plenty of positive reviews for it regardless, and the casting isn’t that out of place based on Jolie’s previous roles, LARA CROFT, MR & MRS SMITH and SALT, for example. The main difference is that those were popcorn movies while people going to see it for Sheridan rather than Jolie were not really into that. Like if you went planning to see SICARIO and instead they played DIE HARD.
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I loved BOARDWALK EMPIRE, partly because I’m a sucker for period dramas, but mainly because of the performances of so many cast members — Steve Buscemi, Shea Whigham, Michael Shannon, Kelly McDonald, Stephen Graham, Michael Kenneth Williams, and Bobby Cannavale, just to name a few. I loved how fictional or composite characters (“Nucky Thompson” was based on real-life Atlantic City figure Enoch Johnson) interacted with real characters like Lucky Luciano and Al Capone. It ended too abruptly, but up to that point it was a riveting story.
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Come on, let’s just admit we all watched SOPRANOS for the dancers at the Bada Bing Club.
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Plot armor
I first heard this term in the old MW Game of Thrones thread. Some of the characters were guaranteed to be there the last season so you knew they would survive whatever came.
Like Indiana Jones’ hat. 😂
The problem is It does take away from the unpredictability of a show that takes itself seriously.
Or in comics- I recently read the gist of this latest Marvel event of the Squadron Supreme. In the crossover issues, a LOT of formidable teams that opposed them (even Galactus, Watcher, Thanos with the gauntlet, Phoenix..) went down way too fast in their fights.
Only (you guessed it) the remnants of the Avengers defeated them in the end and restored the timeline.
The plot armor was the SS team mowing through everyone without any casualties until the end.It is all fixed. As if it is fiction. But the fact that it looks so fake and contrived takes away from the overall story.
Bad storytelling.
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The thing about plot armour is that it’s not just that the hero survives, but it’s that he survives stupid things that *should* kill him.
We know that the hero is going to face minor threats along the way, and we know that he’s going to win. There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s basic storytelling. If the hero went from “Here’s the quest” to “Now fight the big boss” with nothing inbetween then you’d not only have a very short book, you’d also have no opportunity to learn about the hero and watch him grow. That’s what all the intervening threats are there to do, and we know that so we don’t expect him to die.
But it doesn’t work if the threat is so extreme that there’s no way the hero should survive it. As soon as that happens, we see the plot armour for what it is and the book loses credibility.
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Speaking of GoT, this is what GRRM says now about the last season. He never thought the show would catch up with him:
https://www.buzzfeed.com/alexgurley/george-rr-martin-got-issue
That’s his own damn fault. If he had just hunkered down and written the books, he would have beaten the show.
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I first heard this term in the old MW Game of Thrones thread. Some of the characters were guaranteed to be there the last season so you knew they would survive whatever came.
At the same time, the possibly biggest draw of Game of Thrones was that some characters who you thought had plot armour just didn’t. For people who didn’t know the book, Ned’s death came entirely unexpectedly and was horrifying because of that. Same goes for the Red Wedding; these characters were killed at a moment when all our instincts were telling us that their plots were building up to something big, that they were absolutely cloaked in plot armour. But that was just GRRM fucking with the reader.
That was the last big one though, it has to be said, and you can’t pull off that kind of thing forever, of course. Some of the heroes have to survive and make it through to the ending – subverting expectations is one thing, but there’s a limit to how much you can piss off your readers.
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That was the last big one though, it has to be said, and you can’t pull off that kind of thing forever, of course. Some of the heroes have to survive and make it through to the ending – subverting expectations is one thing, but there’s a limit to how much you can piss off your readers.
Martin also mentioned that as well in a sense:
“If you have planned in your book that the butler did it, and then you read on the internet that someone’s figured out that the butler did it, and you suddenly change in midstream that it was the chambermaid who did it, then you screw up the whole book… You have got this foreshadowing early on, and you have got these clues you have planted, now they are dead ends, so you have to introduce new clues, and you are retconning, and it’s a mess.”
For a while Game of Thrones became more of a game in itself than a story. In the way you can almost put together a betting pool on what major character would die every season and that was the appeal rather than what goals the characters accomplished or failed to do in the story. Then it becomes more about finding ways to surprise the audience than actually leading people along the natural development of the narrative.
The initial surprising death of Ned Stark was supported or “foreshadowed” by the deaths of Mycah and Sansa’s wolf Lady. Even the opening scene introducing Ned is an execution that he performs (and he also killed Lady). When Ned dies, it is clear that there were no promises made by the story to the reader other than the characters will face the consequences of their decisions and there are no grey wizards or fairy godparents to make sure everything turns out okay.
At the same time, every outcome will be supported by events and actions preceding them. Ned was essentially his own executioner and every major death early in the story was the natural consequence of the actions of those people that died. Even in minor deaths, usually it was an error or offense committed that led to the death. That wasn’t true by the last season of the show, though.
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Still, popular movies and entertainment are not supposed to be instruction books on life or meant to be providing any examples of moral or acceptable behavior, and the material that does have a message is probably only going to reach the people who don’t need the message. People go to the movies or play games to escape – so it makes no sense to expect any moral restrictions or censorship of whatever the creative minds behind the works are trying to sell. The material will appeal to the audience that pays to enjoy it.
Essentially, much of what people see as “PC” is just simply the business. The guys paying for the movies, televisions shows and every other form of entertainment are trying to make sure their very expensive products don’t generate some unexpected bad press. At the same time, the criticisms fly so fast from every unexpected angle – and are so ubiquitous – I’m seeing more of a trend where they just don’t care if anyone gets offended anymore as long as people are buying it.
In the end, it comes down to if the movies and shows are making money, then that means people are going to see them and enjoying them. If they weren’t, then people would stop making them. If anyone is having trouble getting something made, the excuse that it isn’t PC is not convincing. It most likely is a variety of other reasons and at the top of the list is that there aren’t enough people out there willing to pay for it. There are plenty of extremely PC, representative movies with a positive message on diversity and belonging that don’t have anyone going to see them, too. On top of that, it’s just an extreme longshot that anything will get made much less that anyone will go see it if it does. If anything is wrong with show business, it’s that there are just too many people who want to get into it, and not enough ways to make money at it.
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Tarantino is probably talking out of his ass
![Image - 205416] | You Don't Say? | Know Your Meme](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/facebook/000/205/416/vampires-kiss.jpg)
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Bill Maher is increasingly an old man shouting at clouds. There’s always some truth in criticisms but his entire shtick is becoming ‘kids today’ in the same way men in their 60s were moaning about his generation in the 1960s and 70s.
He’s another that goes on and on about this so called ‘cancel culture’ and ‘you can’t say anything these days’ when he has his own TV show where he says whatever he thinks and then plugs all the live shows he’s doing at the end.
There are plenty of films of all kinds made every year, he doesn’t have to watch the superhero ones if he doesn’t want to. I am not a huge fan of horror movies, I only like a very few that have maybe an original edge to them, so although hundreds are made every year I don’t bang on about it, I just watch something else. It’s very easy.
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Here is what Bruce Lee’s daughter had to say about Tarantino and others:
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“I had a situation like that where somebody asked me about something, ‘Well, why didn’t you do this like this,’ and I go, ‘Oh, would you have done that?’ ‘Yes, I would have done that…’ OK, but you never would have written that script, and you never would have made the movie, and thus you never would have been at the Cannes Film Festival in the first place, so it’s a moot argument,” explained Tarantino. “But there has become a thing that’s gone on, especially in this last year, where ideology is more important than art. Ideology trumps art. Ideology trumps individual effort. Ideology trumps good. Ideology trumps entertaining.”
I get his point artistically when it comes to the content of his answer to the actual question, but he should stop being a petulant fucking child. Oh, someone dared ask a political question? How terrible, ideology has become more important than art because someone dared to question my massively successful, well-loved-by-critics, Oscar-nominated, many-awards-winning movie at Cannes, where it was also nominated for the Palm d’Or! Woe is me!
Though, honestly, I don’t think he necessarily believes it or even means anything about it. Or if he knows what he means. It reads more like the thing people say in interviews to sort of fill space. Same for Maher. It’s something to say rather than saying something.
Well, I think with both of them it’s something that comes out in this kind of moment because it’s what they’re talking about all the time. Maher especially. Just… ugh. “Virtue-signalling”. I hate that whole term so much. What, so there are a lot of movies in which the good in people triumphs over their worse instincts? What a crazy thing, to have that in the theatres! Man, someone should tell Charlie Chaplin to fuck off with his virtue-signalling speech in The Great Dictator!
There’s always been that kind of movie, and there always will be. But just because Bill Maher apparently hasn’t seen I’m Thinking of Ending Things or Guns Akimbo, that doesn’t mean there’s only two kinds of movie now.But what Maher is really talking about, of course, is that so many movies are making an effort to include previously excluded minorities or shape female roles in such a way that the characters have an agenda of their own. How dare they! When obviously the only movies worth a crap are exclusively about white middle-aged men!
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But what Maher is really talking about, of course, is that so many movies are making an effort to include previously excluded minorities or shape female roles in such a way that the characters have an agenda of their own. How dare they! When obviously the only movies worth a crap are exclusively about white middle-aged men!
On top of that, honestly, it’s not that many movies doing it anyway, and a lot of them that are overt about it don’t perform very well at the box office either. It’s complaining about something that is not really having much of an effect on movies or television. Instead, movies and tee vee have much bigger problems and the amount of attention given to it – especially negatively in the sense that movies are getting too woke – isn’t really justified.
Instead, what’s happening is that the market is contracting for anything that isn’t the dumbest, least exciting or original material available. That’s a bigger problem and it has nothing to do with social justice or diversity initiatives.
It’s like in sports where there is all this controversy over transgender athletes when they represent hardly any portion of the actual number of athletes out there and where they do compete, the athletic associations often are able to successfully integrate them fairly in the competitions. However, the thing that has a much greater effect on competition is doping and you’ll find the same people going nuts over transgender athletes basically shrugging off the effect of steroids or HGH on the same sport.
I mean, Tarantino really should shut up about “virtue signalling” or “ideology” when he’s never really openly addressed his relationship with Harvey Weinstein who turned out to be a much bigger problem in indy filmmaking.
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Will Cancel Culture Lead to the End of Insensitive TV Characters? (Guest Blog)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines
Betteridge’s law of headlines is an adage that states: “Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no.” It is named after Ian Betteridge, a British technology journalist who wrote about it in 2009, although the principle is much older.[1][2] The adage fails to make sense with questions that are more open-ended than strict yes–no questions.[3]
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Will Betteridge’s Law Lead To Less Clickbait?
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Will Cancel Culture Lead to the End of Insensitive TV Characters? (Guest Blog)
That was a terrible “article”. It offered no insight or real explanation.
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There are actresses who decline it and it is in their contract. One reason is they don’t want perverts to “overuse” the pause button to “you know” to the image. And for the most part it really isn’t necessary.
You’re right, it really isn’t necessary to pause it if you’re quick enough.
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Star Wars Return of the Jedi – Lose the Ewoks and bring in another race of aliens.
I remember it was originally gonna be Wookies.
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Godfather 3 likes: Such a same Copolla could not pull off a trifecta. What I liked was showing Sonny’s illegitimate son he had when he was banging that bridesmaid in the first movie. Copolla could also have shown the next generation, how Sonny’s, Michael’s and the sister’s kids would have accepted his illegitimate son, maybe a power struggle as to who would succeed Michael, just emphasize them coming of age. Lose the whole Vatican story and Michael’s redemption, maybe bring in an up and coming rival family, and Michael’s last master plan as his last hurrah. Have many wonder if he is too old and still has it in him. And play up the intrigue.
Godfather 3 was just ill-concieved. Most of the previous two movies had been based on history to a loose extent, but this one had no connection to reality or believability whatsover (a helicopter strafing a boardroom in the middle of a city?)
Honestly, they could have rejiggered the whole “Mafia assassinated Kennedy” thing to great effect.
Imagine that Michael’s son, rather than being an opera singer, instead was a US senator who opposed the Bay of Pigs invasion and was tough on organized crime and now was in line to be the next President. In the first movie, Don Corleone did not want Michael to be a gangster and instead wanted him to be a real bigshot – a senator or big time CEO. Michael said “we’ll get there, pop.” So naturally, that would be what he wanted for his son.
Then, his son does become a legitimate power but he threatens Michael’s “family” the La Cosa Nostra. So Michael has to make a choice – his son or his family – and it leads to an assassination of Senator Anthony Adams (he takes his mother’s surname) while he is on the campaign for president.
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One point about Star Wars… how does Princess Leia know that Obi-Wan goes by Ben Kenobi (a crappy alias, you have to admit)? Had they ever met?
As far as my headache with the Matrix – even though it and X-men were influential on the current crop of colorful underwear adventures, the sequels always felt somewhat off-point compared to the original. Essentially, imagine if you’re reading the Bible and Jesus is anointed the Messiah and instead of leading a movement, he becomes John the Baptist’s sidekick and goes on raids against the Romans with Mary Magdalene and a team of quirky zealots.
At then end of the movie, Neo says this:
Well, nothing changed and Neo wasn’t showing any of “these people” anything of what that promised. The people who were “trapped in the Matrix” were completely ignored in the sequels when the original ending promised a kind of disruption of the simulation that the machines could not control.
It is in some ways what I don’t like in superhero movies in that the people the heroes are saving are non-entities or NPC’s really in the movies.
I look back at the old shows like Maverick, the Lone Ranger, Have Gun Will Travel, Superman, etc. and the story of the people the hero encounters and helps really is the story of the show. We may learn things about the hero, but really the elements of the story are what he walks into and he becomes a part of their story rather than they become a part of his.
What was promised was Neo freeing people and forming a movement, but what we got was just a collection of heist movie tropes and battle scenes with Neo being a reactive hero rather than driving the action.
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It already is a good movie.
Seriously, though, I heard that originally, Tommy’s character was going to secretly be a thousand year old supernatural being who was trying to fit in with a culture he did not really understand.
Honestly… maybe that really is the story of the movie.
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I read an interesting dissection of Ghostbusters and Jurassic Park on the MensLib subreddit. I will quote the post below, but since it’s referring to a quote from another post, I’ll post that small one first. For context:
Another MensLibber and I read bell hooks’s The Will To Change together, and we both flagged this quote from Olga Silverstein:
“feminist masculinity would have as its chief constituents integrity, self-love, emotional awareness, assertiveness, and relational skill, including the capacity to be empathic, autonomous, and connected.”
With respect to integrity, what she means is that traditional masculinity tells us to ignore or excise the ‘feminine’ aspects of our personality, so not allowing us to be whole persons. ‘Emotional awareness’ and ’empathy’ are in contrast to the reserved and stoic nature of traditional masculinity, while ‘assertiveness’ replaces the need for dominance in traditional masculinity.
[Edit: given how the word ‘traits’ is being used below, let me point out that feminism doesn’t see these as ‘traits’ in the sense of intrinsic or genetic traits (i.e. biological). Rather, these are learned behaviors and skills, as ‘traditional masculinity’ is also a set of learned behaviors and skills. So one way to think about the quote is as ideas for how we might teach boys to be men, absent patriarchal dominance.]
And here’s the promised dissection of Ghostbusters and Jurassic Park:
So [the above post] with a quote from bell hooks got me thinking about putting down something that’s been floating around in my mind. This past fall, we did an outdoor home theater for social distanced Halloween moving viewing, and I watched Ghostbusters for the first time in years. I was struck, perhaps unsurprisingly given being released during the peak of Reaganism, of how conservative it was in its worldview, broadly, but how feminism really serves as as the villain. More recently, I was shocked to learn that my wife had never seen Jurassic Park (I mean, seriously, if you are in your 30s and haven’t seen this, were you living under a rock as a kid?!) Similarly, I was struck by how (more overtly) feminism was central to the plot. The conclusions couldn’t be more different, however, with Ghostbusters doubling down on traditional masculinity, while Jurassic Park encourages evolution of men. Allow me to elaborate – and I apologize in advance if I mistake some details as I’m trying to write this quickly during my kid’s nap.
GHOSTBUSTERS AND INSECURE PROJECTION
I was surprised to learn, when my suspicions of Ghostbusters political undertones led me to doing some googling on the subject, that the movie is well regarded in conservative to libertarian-leaning circles. There are some very obvious red meat quotes for this crowd, with the early jab at academics from Dr. Venkman:
“Personally, I liked the university. They gave us money and facilities, we didn’t have to produce anything! You’ve never been out of college! You don’t know what it’s like out there! I’ve WORKED in the private sector. They expect *results*.”
Ultimately, too, the initially captured ghosts are released back by the combination of bureaucratic malfeasance and environmentalism at the hands of the “dickless” (as Ray insults the agency goon) Environmental Protection Agency. The mayor is initially no help, until being pitched with an cynical and reductionist view of politics about being interested only in votes.
But the point of this essay isn’t the broad conservative viewpoint espoused – I only reference this to reinforce that there is an ideology, intentional or not, to Ghostbusters. More fundamentally, the roles of Dana and Louis project significant insecurity of the consequences of growing women’s liberation.
Venkman is undeniably the central protagonist. Despite being a Dr., he acts more like a “gameshow host”. He is no abstract theoretician, but a very-hands on charismatic speaker. He is insistent, cocky. He openly mocks Egon as an egghead scientist despite the fact that their whole enterprise depends on his and Ray’s scientific work. He’s an archetypal fulfillment of many traditionally masculine ideals.
On the other hand, we have Louis. Diminutive in stature, which is strongly emphasized by his “flirting” at his awkward client party, also insistent with women like his neighbor Dana, but in a creepy “Nice Guy” kind of way. He’s a “nerd” – the fact that he likes numbers is the butt of more than a few jokes. He’s a necessary punching bag because this kind of man – a white collar professional – is ascendant in America in the 1980s. Rest assured, blue collar man, these new rich guys are dweebs!
Dana, too, fulfills a projection of insecurity of an emerging class – the independent woman. She’s middle-ageish, single, urban-dwelling and presumably career-oriented woman living in NYC, a sort of boogeywoman for working class male insecurity at the time. While she is put off by Louis, she somehow succumbs to Venkman’s relentless, pushy insistence and agrees to a date. Upon showing up for the date, we see Venkman’s real-time confrontation with the Madonna/whore complex. He’s drawn into the now-possessed Dana’s sexual aggressiveness, but stand-offish at the end
Dana: “I want you inside me.”
Venkman: “Go ahead! No, I can’t. It sounds like you’ve got at least two or three people in there already.”
A joke about her possession? Or a projection of the idea that feminism = sexual promiscuity that ruins women for men? You decide!
This flirtation with gender roles gets even stronger as the Gatekeeper and Keymaster emerge (note the sexual imagery of inserting the key into a lock!). These two – the white collar nerd and professional single woman cannot be paired – it would be doom for all! And when they do, the product is Gozer, who selects a highly androgynous, Bowie-esque female avatar. Gozer’s appearance does not escape Ray who instructs his companions to “aim for the flat top”.
To defeat this demon of androgyny, the Ghostbusters perform a rather homoerotic act of crossing the streams. The phallic nature of this act cannot be denied – upon initially encountering Gozer, the Ghostbusters “grab their sticks, heat them up, [and] make them hard”, and later these hard sticks’ streams are crossed to vanquish the marshmallow man, covering everyone in a thick, white goo (yuck!).
Message received: fear not, male solidarity in the face of changing gender norms is the only solution. Do not be a Louis or an Egon. Do not be an environmentalist, a government bureaucrat, a scientist or an academic. Be a smooth-talking everyman, stick to your womanizing ways and we’ll defeat the possessive demon of feminism.
JURASSIC CONTRAST
Jurassic Park as a feminist statement is quite clear – Dr. Sattler is an undeniable badass, as is the young Lex. There are a handful of explicit references to gender/feminism:
Dr. Ian Malcolm: “God creates dinosaurs, God destroys dinosaurs. God creates Man, man destroys God. Man creates dinosaurs”
Dr. Ellie Sattler: “Dinosaurs eat man….. Woman inherits the earth”
Or when Hammond halfheartedly protests Dr. Sattler’s volunteering to turn the power back on because he’s a…and she’s a…
But beyond these superficial themes, there’s a deeper thing going on, which Dr. Grant is the center of. Most of the men embody traditional and toxic masculine traits. Dr. Malcolm is a flirtatious rock star and bad husband (a pretty good stand-in for Venkman, if you ask me). Hammond is focused solely on technological achievement and not morality. The lawyer is immensely greedy, abandoning the vulnerable at first chance, and Nedry a greedy, anti-social nerd with a chip on his shoulder. Muldoon is calm, cool and collected, but violent by nature, and more than a bit cocky of his ability to dominate nature. Sattler calls out Hammond’s behavior directly in the visitors center after she makes her way back, when he’s eating ice cream to console himself, but her message goes unheeded:Dr. Ellie Sattler : But you can’t think your way through this, John. You have to feel it.
John Hammond : You’re right. You’re absolutely right. Hiring Nedry was a mistake, that’s obvious. We’re over-dependent on automation. I can see that now. Now, the next time, everything is correctible…
Dr. Ellie Sattler : John…
John Hammond : Creation is an act of sheer will. Next time it’ll be flawless.
Underpinning all of this is masculine insecurity. Jurassic Park is evidence that we’ve reached sufficient technological sophistication that men are no longer “necessary”. An entirely female island (well, kind of…) is genetically engineered without need of male sperm. Metaphorically, women have reached a point where the traditional man is no longer necessary. They are their own, independent beings that don’t need to be subservient to men to survive. The traditionally masculine men on the island are themselves dinosaurs on the precipice of extinction.
The only man that fully breaks the mold is Dr. Grant. He clearly dislikes children, a rejection not of fatherhood per se, but rather the empathy and emotional connection it requires to be a caretaker which is not consistent with traditional masculinity. Yet, it is in his nature not to follow the designated paths assigned to him. Twice he is the instigator to break the “rides” he is on – once in the visitor center rotating theater, and a second time by climbing out of the car when seeing a sick triceratops. When the shit hits the fan, he finds his place as a protector, not saving Lex and Tim simply through acts of physicality, but because he connects with them emotionally. He lifts their spirits with jokes, he encourages them when they are afraid.
Dr. Grant undergoes a metaphorical evolution of his own, which is prefaced in the tree with Lex:
Lex : What are you and Ellie gonna do now if you don’t have to pick up dinosaur bones anymore?
Dr. Alan Grant : I don’t know. I guess… I guess we’ll just have to evolve too.
Ellie is mentioned here, too, but it’s hard not to read this as “now that you are an unnecessary fossil, yourself, what are you going to do?” Upon safely rescuing Lex and Tim, Dr. Grant looks out the helicopter window, reminded that dinosaurs evolved into birds, and we cut back to a shot of Grant, wings spread over the children, and an approving, knowing look from Dr. Sattler that Grant has evolved into a “bird” of his own.
To me, it is critical that this isn’t a simple evolution that Dr. Grant is ready to be a father. It would be a rather constrained view of evolved masculinity that we only find purpose as fathers. Rather, Dr. Grant is caring for someone else simply because they are vulnerable. His paternal role is not to dominate them, but to support their growth and emotional health. A lesson we can all learn as men. It
A CONTRAST IN MESSAGING
It seems the message in Jurassic Park is too clear to deny it wasn’t a top-of-mind metaphor for the writer(s), which is a bit surprising given that Michael Crichton’s politics are a bit of a mixed bag. Yet Ghostbusters writers Aykroyd, Ramis and Moranis’ politics are unclear, it seems they were channeling popular culture sentiments of the time – insecurity about cultural change, anti-government sentiments, blue-collar primacy, etc. And in doing such, I suspect that a lot of the meaning of Ghostbusters was a projection of cultural insecurity about feminism, rather than an intentional theme. If it were intentional, it seems the only way you would consciously write a conclusion that were a laughably homoerotic statement of masculine solidarity were if you were very subtly satirizing the political views of the time. Yet we have little evidence to suggest satire here.
Written just a few years apart, we see two highly contrasting views related to insecurities about the rise of feminism and successful, independent women. The first, is Ghostbusters, which seems to suggest not only zero necessity for self reflection or evolution, but in fact a doubling down on gender roles. The latter, in the case of Jurassic Park encourages an “evolve or die” mentality for men. We are walking dinosaurs, our traditional masculine roles of dominance are no longer relevant, so what does that leave us? Stop solely thinking our way through things, stop our tendency towards achievement without consideration for consequence, and instead reconnect with our emotions and our caretaking nature. Be a bird, not a dinosaur. Don’t accept the path your vehicle is on, jump out the door and go see the Triceratops!
I welcome your thoughts or additions, and hope this isn’t a pointless navel-gazing about pop culture, but instead an opportunity to think about how art and culture reflect (or challenge) the values we espouse here.
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I look back at the old shows like Maverick, the Lone Ranger, Have Gun Will Travel, Superman, etc. and the story of the people the hero encounters and helps really is the story of the show. We may learn things about the hero, but really the elements of the story are what he walks into and he becomes a part of their story rather than they become a part of his.
This is where modern sequels or on-going series fail. They’ve told the hero’s story, and then they’re stuck with what to tell next. They either reset (reboot) and tell the same story again, or they raise the stakes x10 so you think you’re getting something new, but they still really tell the same story again.
There are (generally old) shows where you spend half of it watching the supporting cast before the nominal “protagonist” even appears. I was thinking about this watching a Colombo re-run recently. 40 minutes into a 2-hours film and we’re still with the murderer. Columbo comes in almost as an afterthought in his own show — but once he does come in, he instantly commands every scene, and he look better because we’ve just spent 40 minutes learning how clever his adversary is.
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Dana: “I want you inside me.” Venkman: “Go ahead! No, I can’t. It sounds like you’ve got at least two or three people in there already.” A joke about her possession? Or a projection of the idea that feminism = sexual promiscuity that ruins women for men? You decide!
It’s the first one.
It’s definitely the first, but I believe the second part is there too.
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It’s the first one.
It’s the general headache of film analysis or any criticism that seeks to find messages in stories other than the actual story itself which is a piece of fiction. Whatever “message” or “meaning” the analysis claims to discover is always going to be a projection of the analyst. It is not the message or meaning of the movie – it’s the analyst’s message.
In 300, the Spartans could represent the xenophobic isolationist and militant American culture faced with a terrifying threat from the Middle East. This was 2006 and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were still hot. The apparent propaganda push seemed pretty obvious.
However, as many pointed out, the Spartans could equally represent a small group of insurgents facing the overwhelming power of a massive and advanced cosmopolitan and decadent imperial invasion force – essentially they could just as easily be symbols of the Taliban or Al Qaeda.
When all we can really say is that they were entirely fictional characters in a story taken from a comic book that adapted a legend that was already completely divorced from even any historical facts. There is no definite interpretation and fiction in general has nothing substantial to say about reality.
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Ah, yes. The age old adage that any story can’t have a message or subtext that is bigger than the story. Like the story of the rabbit and the turtle, which is about a turtle and a rabbit racing, nothing else. Any ideas about morality in any of the classic fables is derived purely on the whims of the person the story is told to. As it ever was.
In the end, it always is. Take a look at the story of the tortoise and the hare since you mention it. The “moral” of the story is usually written as “slow and steady wins the race.” However, even children know that is nonsense. If the hare had simply taken a nap after the race, it would not have mattered how steadily the tortoise plodded along, it never would have won. Depending upon your opponent to be lazy and stupid is a poor strategy.
Sometimes, the moral is written as “victory does not always go to the swift” but that simply points out the uselessness of the moral. Not “always”… but most of the time really. Any kid who heard that parable would still pick the hare over the tortoise in a relay race. The moral is part of the form of the fable or parable or even many modern fairy tales, but in the same way a punchline is part of a joke. Not all stories – not most stories – require a moral, and even those that have one require it only in a formal sense — not as something that can really be applied in any practical way.
However, the moral is not the subtext and the subtext is not the interpretation. If I told you the “real meaning” of the tortoise and the hare was that it is meant to teach people not to take pride in, feel ashamed of and suppress their individual talent, naturally, someone could tell me that is simply supposition and they’d be right.
That interpretation is simply a reaction to the story and it is neither right nor wrong, but it is not an innate part of the story, the author’s intent or any universal reaction to it.
It’s not subtext either.
In Chinatown, which most people have probably seen, Jake Gittes discovers that the Mrs. Mulwray that hired him to prove her husband Hollis Mulwray was having affair was an imposter when the real Evelyn Mulwray shows up in his office and threatens to sue him for slander and any other number if invasion of privacy violations. Jake then pursues the case to find out who set him up and repair his reputation.
That’s the text of the story. The subtext is that he pursues the case because he’s attracted to Evelyn and what drives him isn’t just a need to get even with those who used him but he’s falling in love with her. The subtext are things the audience knows that the characters do not that reveal the actual reasons and motives behind their actions in the context of the story. When Hollis Mulwray is murdered, Jake has no practical need to continue his investigation. He’s not part of the story anymore, but he has a need to continue pursuing Evelyn and he uses the investigation as the excuse.
Chinatown does have a moral, naturally, and it’s that the rich can get away with anything, but that is still in the context of the story. It’s when someone tries to give it some kind of specific interpretation – a Marxist one such as Noah Cross is rapacious capitalism and when he raped his daughter it represented the way capitalism victimizes future generations, for example, that it becomes divorced from the story and becomes supposition – an individual reaction to it, and not an inherent part of it.
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(Note of warning: We’re headed towards Death of the Author territory here.)
It was only a matter of time.
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(Note of warning: We’re headed towards Death of the Author territory here.)
It was only a matter of time.
After all, death is the only certainty in life.
(Not taxes, as any modern multi-national will attest.)
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Your stance presupposes that there is something like an “actual story” or an “actual message” of the text (or the “author’s intention” and “universal reaction”), and that the analyst is trying to uncover that, but getting it wrong.
I generally agree but you’ve misinterpreted what I mean by “actual story.” ;)
What I mean is the actual experience of an individual viewing or participating in the physical medium – not what the author intended or the conceptual text, but the experience of enjoying a piece of fiction or artwork. Obviously, a Florentine viewing Michelangelo’s David in 1502 would have an entirely different perspective emotionally and intellectually than anyone seeing it today. No matter what Michelangelo intended or what the overseers of the cathedral intended for him to intend, that would not matter today and depending on if the person was noble or a peasant, it probably meant many different things even in the time it was sculpted and first displayed.
However, there are general specific details that people can agree upon when it comes to works of fiction. In Hamlet, every can agree on the events depicted in the scenes. On the other hand, people can disagree on surrounding motives and subtext for the reasons underlying the events. For example, when Hamlet puts on the play-within-a-play “The Murder of Gonzaga,” King Cladius’ reaction to it is taken as evidence by Hamlet that his uncle is guilty of the murder of his father, the previous King Hamlet.
On the other hand, others would point out that in the play Hamlet puts on, it is the story of a nephew who kills his uncle to take his place. So, is Claudius’ reaction motivated because he believes Hamlet – who’s been intentionally acting insane – is now planning to kill him for the throne and not because he suspects him of his brother’s murder? Is Hamlet’s assumption that this proves Claudius is guilty in error?
In the end, though, I like fan theories. There is a really fun theory that in PUNCH DRUNK LOVE, Barry is actually Clark Kent learning to be Superman. There are a lot of clue and Richard Donner’s Superman is one of Paul Thomas Anderson’s favorite movies, but in the end it is just fun speculation and there is no reason to believe that it had anything to do with the making of the movie any more than there is any reason to believe that Jar Jar Binks was originally intended to be a secret Sith Lord (still it is fun).
However, even if a movie or story (like almost all of Dickens’ novels) include a moral message, I don’t think it is revealing any sort of truth. Fiction is an enjoyable escape and often people will claim that a book “can change your life” (usually people invested in the business). Nevertheless, I feel like people simply find what they want to in it. Like reading the Bible – you can pretty much find anything in it to justify anything you already believe – an atheist can find all the evidence they need from the Bible just by reading it with their preconceived view in mind.
In CITIZEN KANE, the moral could be summed up as “wealth does not lead to happiness.” Is that really true or does it just make people who are not wealthy feel good for a little while? Certainly a lot of people who sell that moral get rich doing so.
I do believe there is value in pointing out how narrative fiction misleads – especially how it is used in advertising and politics. The amount of cigarettes, alcohol, cars and clothes sold due to what people see in movies or on television certainly indicates they have an effect, but it’s not the moral of the story that has that effect on people and, often, those morals are not worth learning.
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Wow
You guys have taken the thread to a much more elevated discourse and new heights.
Excellent!
Carry on…
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Well, for one thing moral messages are often not conducive to literary quality. Dickens is a bit of an exception there. When it comes to truths, though, I mean… it depends on how you define “truth”. I don’t know about a single piece of art transforming anyone’s life, but I do think that literature can deliver an understanding of human nature or of ideas in a way that makes it important to us.
I find that as well. For example, reading Chekhov gives me a nice understanding of the lives of peasants and the class system in 19th century Tsarist Russia. Very important to my life.
I think people do read books to get out of their own lives and into someone else’s (though usually that other person really has no relation to reality – and that’s the appeal) and there is a sense that it is “expanding” the consciousness, but I also think that is probably exaggerated (to sell more books, or movies, or television shows that in turn sell more crap to the viewers). I suspect that the real appeal of entertainment is similar to the appeal of alcohol to an alcoholic. It provides temporary relief to the everyday problems people want to put off as much as possible. It may be possible that people who don’t particularly feel any desire to read or see movies, attend plays or spend any time with fiction or media are actually more sane the majority of the population that is enamored of all these distractions. Or that enthusiasm for fiction indicates a strong disappointment or anxiety with real life.
Fiction – even dark depressing fiction – provides a design and structure that real life does not have, and if it reinforces the notions one already possesses, all the better. It’s not like some German in the 30’s read MEIN KAMPF and was suddenly convinced out of nowhere that “of course! It’s the Jews! It’s always been the Jews!” The book gave people who already were in line with that thinking a structure for it, but, then again, while it was probably widely published and purchased, I can’t believe many Germans actually read the whole damn thing.
Plato and Aristotle both had differing views on the uses and effects of poetry (fiction) and drama. Plato thought it promoted immoral behavior, but at the same time he proposed that there should be a state-sanctioned mythology to create a stable class system in society (The Republic). Aristotle agreed that drama had no direct positive effect on society as far as promoting good behavior, but he thought it was a way of expressing destructive emotions that if left repressed would eventually lead to social discord. “The theatre is a safe place for dangerous things.” Censors should be required to have that over the door before they start cutting all the “disturbing content.”
His theory of catharsis is based on the old idea of the scapegoat. Tragedy means “goat song” and in the ancient world there was the practice of sacrificing one goat to the gods and then taking another goat, ascribing to it all the evil spirits of the village and then driving it out into the wilderness. The latter goat was the “scapegoat” (from escape), and the tragic hero often represents the same thing. When the hero dies or falls (driven out of the city), then evils troubling the community are lifted. Oedipus’ fall lifts the plague from Thebes. Macbeth’s death lifts the kingdom from tyranny. Hamlet dies and makes way for Fortinbras who is often left out of many productions, but it is important to note that Hamlet himself admires Fortinbras for having the confidence and boldness of action that he himself lacks.
Comedy also has something of the same effect but I find it darker. Ironically, in tragedy, there is the possibility of happiness at the end after the fall of the hero. However, comedy holds up the hilarious contradictions of life, personality and society and even though everyone laughs at how ridiculous it all is, it remains ridiculous once the curtain closes only now you can’t laugh at it any more.
Some primatologists and zoologists believe laughter is related to fear. Chimps will play practical jokes on each other – basically jumping out and yelling “boo!” and will laugh when someone in their pack takes a fall just like we do. Essentially, the laugh begins as a scream (“oh shit, it’s a lion! Ah!”) then dribbles out as a laugh when they realize something they thought was serious was not (“oh, it’s just Bing again! Ha ha!”). So it is bound up in releasing fear and, in humans, anxiety.
Stephen King suspected that horror was effective when your subconscious mind would look at the supernatural or impossible nature of the horror – ghosts, demons, monsters – and then say “you know, if you just changed it here and here, this is real.” Uncontrollable screaming and laughing is a sign of insanity, and it may just be that the popularity of entertainment is due to the fact that people are keeping all that madness tightly reined in for a great part of their daily lives.
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I find that as well. For example, reading Chekhov gives me a nice understanding of the lives of peasants and the class system in 19th century Tsarist Russia. Very important to my life.
Well, for one thing you could argue that an understanding of the class system in 19th century Tsarist Russia is important to your life, or to anyone’s really. It’s important to how the modern world came about and deepens our understanding of how the world works. More importantly, finding out how it was to live in systems different from our own makes us aware that the way the world is right now, for us, is not the way it always has to be; that people have lived in different circumstances and that those circumstances can change. Understanding and feeling for those people in 19th century Russia also means that you can understand and feel for anybody anywhere, and I think that’s one of the most important things that literature can do.
But of course you can take away a lot more from Chekhov than that. You can experience what it is like to live in a world that is slowly dying, in which everything seems to decay and fall apart and the characters are frozen, paralysed by this process and feel that they are unable to do anything about it until chaos breaks out. That’s an experience that’s good to see on the stage, given how things are unfolding these days. I could go on about Chekhov, but I am sure you get what I mean.I think those other things you mention are all true, as well – fiction as a relief from everyday life, as an experience of structure and narrative order that the world doesn’t give us, the idea of catharsis (not just in the way you described, but also taking one step back from Aristotle’s ideas of society just to the purification from emotions, which I think we today would see in a way more positive than Aristotle – that it’s just healthy to experience pity and fear and horror in this safe space of literature and art).
But it also can do much more than that. I mean, let’s take the idea of structure and design, the idea that life is orderly and can be understood that I think you’re saying is an appeal of fiction on the whole. That doesn’t explain the appeal of Kafka’s work or of a movie like Eraserhead or the theatre of the absurd. (Part of) the point of these works is to express the experience that there is no structure, no meaning, no development, no simple wisdom to gain [theatre of the absurd] or that we are lost in a world that not only we can’t understand but that is hostile in unforeseen ways [Kafka].
In the end, different kinds of fictions will give us very different experiences. Some of those are purely entertaining, taking our minds off the world as it is and exploring our instinct for stories. Some go a step further than that in different directions.
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Well, for one thing you could argue that an understanding of the class system in 19th century Tsarist Russia is important to your life, or to anyone’s really. It’s important to how the modern world came about and deepens our understanding of how the world works. More importantly, finding out how it was to live in systems different from our own makes us aware that the way the world is right now, for us, is not the way it always has to be; that people have lived in different circumstances and that those circumstances can change. Understanding and feeling for those people in 19th century Russia also means that you can understand and feel for anybody anywhere, and I think that’s one of the most important things that literature can do. But of course you can take away a lot more from Chekhov than that. You can experience what it is like to live in a world that is slowly dying, in which everything seems to decay and fall apart and the characters are frozen, paralysed by this process and feel that they are unable to do anything about it until chaos breaks out. That’s an experience that’s good to see on the stage, given how things are unfolding these days. I could go on about Chekhov, but I am sure you get what I mean.
In truth though, I was being facetious. To be brutally honest, reading Chekhov really gives me no practical or even academic knowledge of what life was like for Russians in the turn of the 19th to 20th centuries and reading Tolstoy would give a completely different and sometimes contradictory point of view (or Gogol or Turgenev). Now, if I read all of them, some might claim it provides a more well-rounded point of view, but that is doubtful except in the sense that the contemporary point of view may be informed by the instances of these fictional accounts. So I could say I have an informed point of view about what people today believe life was like back then. However, in the end, it is based on fiction so what’s that really worth?
Which is my primary problem with the idea that fiction can inform our lives in any practical sense. It can inform our feelings, maybe, but the idea that I would know anything really useful about Russian life from reading Russian authors dead for over a century and the stories of their fictional Russians seems sketchy. It can’t be practically applied to my life and probably would lead to more trouble than benefit if I tried. In many ways, I think this is how conspiracy theories grow – something that is really fictional “feels” real. It “makes sense” and thus is more attractive than reality which doesn’t make sense.
Instead, what we really learn when reading these authors is about fiction which is really the only thing anyone can definitely say fiction provides – it conditions people how to experience it. What’s important about Chekhov to the reader has nothing to do with Russian peasants, or declining families, failed artists and disappointed lovers, but the emotions it can bring up in the reader. Emotional turmoil that the reader voluntarily feels in the reading and dissipates when the book is closed (or movie ends, etc.).
Even in the cases of Kafka, Camus, Becket, etc and their absurd stories, even then, it is not what they say about life that matters – they are still fiction, and certainly they wouldn’t claim to be providing anything to the reader other than distraction (well, maybe not Camus – the blowhard!). Instead, the reader’s sense of the absurd, even gloom and horror, are voluntarily brought up and then equally extinguished at the end of the reading. And the same challenges of real life are there when they finish. No matter what the content of the story, the form it takes has a point of view – or a frame in movies – it provides the perspective that life lacks. Like the way dreams in movies never really are or can be like dreams in real life. Even dreams in books aren’t like dreams in life.
Circumstances change, but that doesn’t mean they can be actively changed. And even when they change, life remains much the same with the same problems – particularly mortality – people have to face. The fictions provide some release, but all fiction can primarily teach a person is how to use it – not how to live.
I suspect really that it is more of a panacea for emotional disfunction. Plato was probably half-right in that a person of perfectly sound mind would have no use for fiction. It provided temporary and necessary relief of everyday emotional suffering, but at the same time encourages the common emotional instability that attracts people to seek it out. However, since no one has a perfectly sound mind or even an imperfectly sound mind, we have this method of dealing with it hopefully at least until we grow old and die and can’t cause any trouble. The basic benefit is that fiction gives people a way to spend their time (both creating and consuming it) and might help people cope with emotions as a kind of practice. You feel something in the fiction and it helps you when you feel it in a serious situation.
At the same time, it’s like self-medicating or going to an unlicensed quack for therapy – these writers and filmmakers are not qualified to treat anyone.
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In truth though, I was being facetious. To be brutally honest, reading Chekhov really gives me no practical or even academic knowledge of what life was like for Russians in the turn of the 19th to 20th centuries and reading Tolstoy would give a completely different and sometimes contradictory point of view (or Gogol or Turgenev). Now, if I read all of them, some might claim it provides a more well-rounded point of view, but that is doubtful except in the sense that the contemporary point of view may be informed by the instances of these fictional accounts. So I could say I have an informed point of view about what people today believe life was like back then. However, in the end, it is based on fiction so what’s that really worth?
Then again, would you say that reading non-fiction books about those times and places would provide you with more insight?
I doubt it. I mean, it would certainly in many respects provide a clearer image, but I think fiction can provide a different experience that deepens that understanding, with its emotional framework, in a way non-fiction can’t. You can easily find out about the failure of the American Dream in the mid-20th century by reading some articles about it, but watching Death of a Salesman will give you a different kind of understanding of the dreams of people back then, and the strain these dreams sometimes put on their lives and relationships. You could talk about all of these ideas, about how the American Dream could be a great thing but also a terrrible thing and lead to unspeakable misery, by just discussing it or by writing about real-life examples for it. But watching this kind of play allows you to experience it along with the characters, and that anchors these things far more clearly than reading non-fiction could (or at least that is my experience).Which is my primary problem with the idea that fiction can inform our lives in any practical sense.
Yeah, that’s fine with me, I certainly don’t know about practical. You’ve mentioned the idea of practical application quite a few times, but that’s certainly not something I argued for, and I wouldn’t even know how to make the argument that there’s anything of practical value in literature.
certainly they wouldn’t claim to be providing anything to the reader other than distraction (well, maybe not Camus – the blowhard!)
Oh, I think you underestimate the vanity of all writers. I think all of these would claim to be doing something more meaningful than mere distraction. I always liked that Kafka quote that literature was “an axe for the frozen sea inside us”.
The basic benefit is that fiction gives people a way to spend their time (both creating and consuming it) and might help people cope with emotions as a kind of practice. You feel something in the fiction and it helps you when you feel it in a serious situation.
Well, again, that’s another thing literature can do, sure.
Circumstances change, but that doesn’t mean they can be actively changed. And even when they change, life remains much the same with the same problems – particularly mortality – people have to face.
Well, yeah. Nothing’s ever going to change that one.
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Others look too much into a sci fi movie expecting it to be as dramatic as a Shakespeare play or Oscar material. I have to say that as long as the movie does not have a major plot hole/flaw and does not insult the intelligence, it should be given a pass.
There is an interesting point here that in the case of many “thrillers” massive plot holes, stupidly complicated twists and baffling behavior are almost part of the enjoyment. Thriller actually covers such a wide range of material from action movies to murder mysteries that it is more of a vague category than actual genre, but I’m specifically thinking of things like the Now You See Me and Fast and Furious franchises or even The Firm with Tom Cruise (or any number of Cruise movies, really).
Recently I saw a movie called BASIC that I kept getting mixed up with a different John Travolta military murder mystery (now that’s a specific genre) called THE GENERAL’S DAUGHTER (I think). The beginning of the movie was fairly complicated and contrived, and by the end of the movie literally everything that came before turned out to be false – and actually didn’t make any sense at all – but because of the way the movie was directed (by Jon McTiernan), acted and written, it did keep me interested in each scene even though the scenes actually did not connect to each other.
I think that is often the simple intent of the filmmakers. They want to make sure each scene is effective and, since none of it is really happening – it’s all playing pretend – it doesn’t really need to make sense at the end as long as the audience gets what it pays for.
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Recently I saw a movie called BASIC
Yeah, that’s a perfect example of a movie that makes no sense at all.
I enjoyed it, but it’s been years and years since I saw it.
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I think the biggest mistake some reviewers make is criticising a movie for not being what they want it to be, rather than what the movie wants to be. You have to appreciate every work of art on its own terms. If a movie aims for nothing more than just pure entertainment, it’s a mistake to criticise it for not being deeper (or the other way around). Figure out what a work is trying to do, and then critique it based on that. Does it achieve its aims? Or does it fail to? If it does fail, does it do so in an interesting manner?
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I think the biggest mistake some reviewers make is criticising a movie for not being what they want it to be, rather than what the movie wants to be. You have to appreciate every work of art on its own terms. If a movie aims for nothing more than just pure entertainment, it’s a mistake to criticise it for not being deeper (or the other way around). Figure out what a work is trying to do, and then critique it based on that. Does it achieve its aims? Or does it fail to? If it does fail, does it do so in an interesting manner?
This is one of the reasons Ebert was such a great reviewer, I think. He would approach each movie on its own terms and assess how well it did what it was trying to do, rather than let his own tastes get in the way. So he’d give some fairly lowbrow stuff high praise if it was a good example of its type.
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There are those who say things like : “I walked out on x (Star Wars ANH or whatever) in the first 15 minutes.” Well, some movies take time to establish and explain themselves. It is not a 30 second commercial, so walking out in the first 15 minutes says more about you than the movie.
There may be various reasons for this, but beginning in the 1980s there was a trend (often attributed to the content on MTV) toward “quickcutting” in the editing of movies and TV shows to make them seem like a music video, and an increase in cinematography effects such as use of the shaky-camera to make things feel more immediate and urgent. Compared to that style of filming, a film like SW: A NEW HOPE could feel static and boring.
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I think that disconnect has only become greater over the years. My kids are used to very fast-cut YouTube videos and TV shows that don’t stay still for more than a few seconds at a time. So for them, the pacing of something like Star Wars or Superman feels incredibly exasperating and they struggle to maintain their concentration.
I’d say it’s not the quick edits (or shorter shots) that is as significant as the continuous, unmotivated camera movement in the shots. The main reason modern audiences or younger audiences get sleepy is that older films had more sedate camera movement with nailed down p.o.v. Nowadays, even in scenes where everyone is standing still, the camera can be whizzing all over the room. While in older movies and television, camera movement was done for specific reasons.
Hitchcock for example was knows for his use of camera movement, but take a look at this scene and notice not the camera movement, but how little the camera actually moves at all(also, I believe this would have been a 3D movie in cinemas).
There is one particular notable camera move designed to draw the attention away from her face so we don’t see the killer approach from behind. Each movement is motivated by the action in the scene.
Now, a very modern movie. Instead of looking at the points of focus, look at the edge of the frame. Now, most of the subjects are barely moving relative to the camera, but the camera and lens and focus are always shifting even though it’s not motivated by the action, but is simply to keep your attention activated. Your eyes are always moving slightly even though you don’t really notice it except subliminally.
In fact, when the camera stops moving very occasionally in a movie, it is usually more tense – it’s like the “freeze” response in “flight, fight or freeze.” However, if the camera wasn’t moving a little in every shot, instead of tension it now communicates that “nothing is happening.”
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Does this translate to attention deficit in daily life, because real life don’t have fancy edits and jump cuts?
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Does this translate
attention deficit in daily life
cause real life don’t have fancy edits and jump cuts?
Never really thought about it.
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Possibly. My wife tends to fall asleep in some specific kinds of movies – especially Christopher Nolan movies
– and that does inform my perception of the “action” nature of the movies. Though she does like a lot of romantic movies and shows – shows that don’t have a lot of personal stakes but are interesting in the ideas they present don’t interest her as much. So out of Nolan’s movies, The Dark Knight, Dunkirk, The Prestige and Inception are what interest her. Tenet, Interstellar, Batman Begins, Dark Knight Rises and Memento didn’t keep her attention. Same for Fincher actually.Also, if a person says they fell asleep or walked out of a movie, then about all you can say is they don’t want to talk about that movie. In America, at least, talking about movies – really, talking about television shows – is a way of talking about yourself without actually talking about yourself. Though I’m often reminded of an interview with an ad salesman on This American Life.
And I loved creating these relationships, a type of relationship I’ve never had before, which is just this glib, friendly relationship based on complete empty chatter about the weather or TV. I developed this theory that those really popular TV shows, one major function is to provide conversation to Americans. And not conversation about the show, but the actual conversation of the show.
You would just say, “Hey, do you remember last night when Kramer said that? Boy, that was funny. And remember when Elaine said this to Jerry? Oh, that was funny.” I didn’t know that people did that. People would do that to me. And then the next sales call, I’d do that to the next person. And they seemed to like it.
I started realizing it doesn’t matter what you say, it doesn’t matter how vapid it is. All that mattered was that I felt comfortable and that I gave them the illusion of some kind of false intimacy.
In general, maybe we’re not really revealing anything about ourselves when we talk about movies, books and television, but using this as a way to really avoid talking about ourselves and maintaining the projection we want people to see. Yet another way fiction is little more than a different kind of recreational drug designed to appeal to our egos and escape facing reality!
Back on point, often it depends who I’m with as to whether or not I enjoy a movie or show. If someone tells you they fell asleep or walked out of a movie that you liked and are pretty sure was a good movie, suggest that maybe it was the people with them. You could get a date out of it to see the same movie, but better this time.
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I took 1 year of Graduate studies in History. I did not get much out of it other than this. My professor emphasized hard that everyone understand that Historical Studies are not facts but rather biased analyses and we need to discover how the bias affects the material so we have a proper view of the point these studies are trying to make
Some posts were Tl/dr so if i am repeating others, i apologize.
Dana: “I want you inside me.” Venkman: “Go ahead! No, I can’t. It sounds like you’ve got at least two or three people in there already.” A joke about her possession? Or a projection of the idea that feminism = sexual promiscuity that ruins women for men? You decide!
the reason why I agree with so many who said it is only a joke is that I happen to find Feminism=promiscuity to be a bit absurd and a projection is a mental image so we have already left the world of facts and delved into analyses, reviews, criticisms. Everyone is allowed to have their own interpretation but if you try to persuade others of that viewpoint you must realize they may not hold the same truths as you. TRUTHS are not FACTS.
The reason why I believe Feminism does not equal Promiscuity is Feminism, imo, means Women are strengthening their selves and lessening their need for men. If they are lessening their need for men, why would they be increasing their pursuit of said men for sexual purposes.
BTW, I liked BASIC and Now You See Me because at their core, they are movies about perception. NYSM is about illusionists trying to trick you and Basic is about the fictions the 2 opposing groups were telling the investigators to avoid suspicion. The Director of Basic showed everything the same way to keep the audience guessing. He kept revealing Truths and made whatever facts revealed a lesser priority. There is some fancy psychological term to describe the narratives but I don’t remember it.
p.s. Isla Fisher and Connie Nielsen were also main reasons why I liked those movies too.
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BASIC seemed like a movie where the story didn’t exist until they got into the editing room and then did some reshoots.
However, that is an interesting element of movies. There is a sense that the movie is derived from the screenplay, but a lot of that is an artificial imposition. The real film “maker” is the person that does or decides on the final editing of the movie. When the novelty of the “picture show” wore off early cinema and it became a narrative medium – especially when sound and dialogue became a part of movies – it came about in a time when books, short stories and plays were the primary way people enjoyed stories. Considering how many movies – even silent films – were based on novels, the prominence of literature was still quite high even when films did not need scripts. Comedies might have a scenario, but since most of the actors were from improvisational theater like vaudeville, they could come up with sketches on the spot with just the bare bones of a story outline.
It’s easy to see why movies adapted the theater production process especially when a lot of actors, writers and directors who came to movies came out of the theatre – especially for dialogue – but just isolating the actual medium of film from the culture of the time, a good cartoonist or storyboard artist could provide the preliminary material for a movie as well as any writer.
When we watch something on the big or small screen, we aren’t watching writing. We’re not even watching acting. We’re watching the editing. The sequence of cuts, images, sounds and shots that convey the story to us. That’s the “storytelling” in movies – not the screenplay. It’s a bit of a distortion of cinema that the screenplay has become such a dominant crutch in filmmaking to the point people worry about a movie’s fidelity to a script.
In Tarantino’s ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD, he’s basically honoring the old television and movie making culture of the 60’s. He even mimics some of the techniques, but what I found interesting was how he defied the actual process of production to tell the story.
There’s a scene in the production of the Lancer series where Rick Dalton (Dicaprio) forgets his lines. In general, the scene suggests the way that shows were produced at that time, but it’s still a Tarantino movie and it “lies” continuously to give an impression that would never be accurate to an actual production.
When Rick forgets his lines the first time, it’s followed by a reverse shot of Jim Stacy (Olyphant playing the actor who plays Johnny Madrid/Lancer). In an actual production, all of Dalton’s lines would’ve been shot and then, after a break, all of Stacy’s lines would’ve been shot. Also, there is a very “Tarantino” pan around that would not happen in a television show.
Here’s a scene from the actual show Lancer that probably inspired Tarantino.
What’s interesting is to look at the differences in the “storytelling.” Obviously, they aren’t telling the same type of story, but it is pretty close. One thing to notice about the television show is that standard close ups are much closer than movies, and certainly much closer than on television today. Primarily, this was due to the size of television screens in the late 60’s. A 22″ screen was considered fairly large, so a close up needed to fill the screen just so the family at home could see their faces clearly (especially with the resolution available). It is interesting that today we’re watching videos on even smaller screens, but the resolution of those tiny screens keeps framing at a “cinematic” sort of scale.
In Tarantino’s movie, it gives the impression that the scene is shot in order and in sequence. In reality, the television was shot entirely out of order. Normally, they’d shoot both the entrance into the scene and the exit right after each other. Once the actors were in place, they’d shoot all the close ups and then once an actor was all shot, they’d send him to the trailer to get ready for the next scene which could actually take place before the one they just shot in the final version of the show.
Actors flubbing their lines was really no big deal because they weren’t performing like it was a play. They often wouldn’t even stop rolling and just go back a few lines because it would all be sorted out in the editing.
However, that would not have supported the story Tarantino was telling so he made the shooting of the show much more like filming a play in progress to give the desired effect to the audience because that is kind of how we see the shows or movies when we are watching them. The interesting thing is that, in reality, they would have shot that scene in the movie with Dalton and Stacy (Dicaprio and Olyphant) the same way more or less that the old shows were actually shot. The scene outside the saloon could’ve been shot weeks before the scene inside depending on the availability of the actors and the equipment, horses or any number of factors. The shots inside the saloon could have and probably were put together from many different takes that were filmed out of order and hour or even days apart. Some shots could’ve been pick ups that they needed after the initial shooting.
When you read a book, you don’t often notice the words, really, if you’re into the story. If you’re telling someone about the book you aren’t usually repeating the actual text to the person – instead, you’re telling them “what happened” as if it was an actual event you witnessed. Same for movies, but it is not words you read, it’s the editing. However, you’re not usually saying, and then there was a pan around shot to Rick who said this and forgot his lines. You’d say, then Rick forgot his lines and went nuts in his trailer.
The thing about story telling is that the telling is usually ignored – it is a kind of magic trick where what we remember is not actually what we were seeing and hearing.
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I have seen a lot of Star Trek fans say the show that is truest to the spirit of TOS and TNG is The Orville, which isn’t even a ST series. When it first aired, the critics slammed Orville but viewers tuned in and enjoyed it. Seth McFarlane unapologetically ripped off ST but he and his team kept the best bits and added some contemporary sensibilities. It has a good balance of standalone stories and larger arcs. The dash of frat boy humor also sets it apart. It’s not a great or landmark series but it is fun and enjoyable. It kind of has a 1990s feel to it. You can feel McFarlane’s love for ST in it.
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And he owns Orville more or less. If your franchise created a specific kind of demand, it needs to deliver or someone else will figure out how to supply.
Fast and Furious was Point Break with muscle cars instead of surf boards. You couldn’t really see Point Break starting a series but there are about 9 or 10 F&F movies now.
if someone could figure out the key to combining Pennywise with Beetlejuice and Ghostbusters, it would probably be a new franchise. There is something about that dark horror meets clowny dark comedy that audiences dig, but it ain’t easy to package.
