Levels of Reality in Genre Fiction
 

It sometimes jarring to watch a work of fiction and find that the laws of physics have flown out the window, or that rules of psychology/folk-psychology have been suspended ("Hey, people don't work like that!). On the other hand, it is sometimes jarring when the rules do apply ("Hey, I thought this was a comedy?").

High Level of Realism - Drama You're good-old-fashioned boring drama. You know, people, relationships, feelings, loss, are the most realistic works of fiction that we have.

Low Level of Realism - Surrealism You're good-old-fashioned, "What the hell am I watching, what is happening, and why should I care?" art flick that dares you to hold in contempt and dares you to reveal yourself to be an intellectual lightweight who doesn't "get it" by complaining.

In the Middle - Comedy Comedies exaggerate folk-psychology. People react too strongly, reason too poorly, and forgive too quickly and so on. The point is not to hold up a perfect mirror to reality, but to laugh at our imperfections by magnifying them. Physics is also exaggerated (big falls break bones, but rarely maim or kill) -- a fun house obedience to known laws of nature (no one flies like Superman, but no one dies when they slide off a roof either--injuries are comical and generally fixable).

Sub-genres, of course, have their own rules. Dark Comedies, for example, may be quite serious with the laws of physics and biology.

Genre offers an initial frame for our expectations and then the filmmakers creates their own rules (something we usually use words like "tone" to describe). The contract of fiction is "make me believe in your lie, get me to invest in your falsehood," but the terms and conditions of that contract vary wildly in terms of genre. This is probably a large part of why some genres and sub-genres don't work for some people (i.e., they cannot accept the proposed bargain).

Re: Levels of Reality in Genre Fiction
 

The laws of physics make me think of The Three Amigos - the movie's premise is actually feasible based on the time period (actors during the dawning age of film are mistaken for actual gun fighters by an undeveloped country via film interpreted as newsreels). Silliness with the comedy aside, the whole thing is still feasible until... the invisible swordsman and the singing bush. These things don't exist.

And this is where the movie lost me since, up till that point, it was enjoyable and funny BECAUSE it was possible - it was a situational predicament based on a misunderstanding due to the level of communications at the time and a language barrier. But it suddenly broke beyond the "level" at which I was willing to suspend my disbelief.

(I did make an exception for the musical number with the singing animals, because throwing reality out the window during musical interludes has long been a Hollywood trope - we kind of interpret it as this is how the music makes us feel inside as opposed to picking the scene apart analytically. How many times have we seen Elvis on a beach with an acoustic guitar break into a song, when suddenly he's accompanied by electric guitars, an entire orchestra and background singers who aren't there?)

Musicals are interesting in that they shift in and out of reality. Normal, everyday stuff, and then BOOM! everyone is singing and then the song ends and we're back in the real world.



I don't remember the 3 Amigos too well now. But yeah, this sort of thing happens to me too. The movie sets a tone, reveals the rules, hangs it's hat on a genre and then some random-ass turn comes which does not fit and all the sudden the lie (which I knew was a lie) seems like a lie to me and that upsets me. Strange.



I recall watching The Usual Suspects and heard many viewers complaining on the way out of the theater. And they continued to complain weeks later. The basic complaint was that the film was pointless, because the whole thing turned out to be a lie. But every film is a lie(!). For them, however, it broke an implicit rule--you have to stand by most of the lies you tell the audience, or they feel cheated. The twist must both be a surprise, but it cannot be a cheat, it has to somehow have been there in plain sight the whole time. As audiences become more sophisticated, Whodunits are trapped between the Scylla of obviousness and Charybdis of "Cheating." For them, this turned out to be a cheat. The bought into the lie and invested and felt that the rug was pulled out from them when the conman narrator turned out to be a conman.

I never understood the “audiences feeling cheated” aspect of it unless it’s something blindingly obvious like Haute Tension. Definitely don’t see how that applies to Usual Suspects, I’d argue it is a case of the answer being there the whole time, as one could have noticed the clues from , if one had known what to look for. (I do know someone who’d never heard anything about the film and isn’t a film buff, but worked out the resolution quite easily).

I’m now genuinely intrigued by this perspective on Usual Suspects; it just seems so alien to me (and I’m in no way a fan of “twist” endings). Sounds like someone unfamiliar with the concept of unreliable narration.

I have some thoughts on the topic of the thread itself, but can’t seem to quite get them organised yet.

I never understood this criticism of The Usual Suspect either. By my lights, this is precisely what makes the film great.



People do, however, want to invest in fiction as a sort of reality. We develop bizarre parasocial relationships with characters. They feel like friends. We feel like we know them. We mourn them when they "die." And we vote for celebrities for political office, because they feel familiar. People go to conventions dressed as their favorite characters and debate canonical facts of their favorite fictions with the same intensity of the great apologists of old.



At bottom, we want our fictional worlds to be real. We want to live there figuratively (or literally, such as the response was to Avatar when people painted themselves blue and fell into depression because they slowly realized they would never be able to live in Pandora). When the apparent rules of the world are violated, then it no longer seems like a play we could live.

At least two paradoxes are relevant here,

1. People have emotional responses to characters, objects, events etc. which they know to be fictitious.
2. In order for us to be emotionally moved, we must believe that these characters, objects, or events, truly exist.
3. No person who takes characters or events to be fictional at the same time believes that they are real.

Perfect description for what they did with The Three Amigos!

Strange thing is, I know some people for whom the random-fantasy elements are their favorite parts and they explain it by saying the randomness adds to the comedy as you don't see it coming. (Well, of course you don't see things coming that don't exist in reality that suddenly pop up in an otherwise plausible story.)

Don't get me wrong, I still like the movie, but would have liked it more if their "rules" had remained consistent. (My other big criticism was, in the third act, Martin Short spends the majority of it hanging from a banner - with the camera checking in on him once in a while - maybe it's a gag that's funny for a minute, but it almost feels like they cut his character from the final part of the movie.)

P.S. The Three Amigos, Galaxy Quest, and Tropic Thunder are all comedies that use the same basic premise - actors are mistaken for the people they portray on film and then get caught up in "real" situations that echo those they act out in movies or TV shows. The question is: can actors rise to the level of the heroics they portray on film?

I don’t dispute that that’s probably what’s going on, but I also think there’s a degree of painting everything with the same brush to it. You could arguably have parasocial relationships with the characters of your favourite book without ascribing an underlying reality to them. (E.g. in cases where a limited physical description of a character exists, picturing one’s crush/ex; surely one controlling the ‘reality’ alerts one to lack thereof). It’s interesting that you mention apologists; there’s definitely an element of ‘belief’ to all this which as a diehard materialist I was never comfortable with. I guess I don’t fully get why one can’t be invested in something without ascribing a degree of reality to it. But maybe that’s true and one can’t.

Take fanfiction (a phenomenon I personally abhor). Of course people invest in the original work and become attached to the characters (hardcore fans even more so), but at the same time, how could one possibly claim an underlying reality to them while changing their behaviour at one’s whim in fanfiction (no matter how canonical that is, it’s the ‘writer’ making all of the decisions on behalf of the characters, adding backstories and hence having non-diegetic control, etc)?

It’s this formulation that I personally struggle with:

I don’t know where the certainty that that’s the case comes from. To use a slightly extreme example, plenty of people worldwide find meaning and draw references from religious scriptures, even when it comes to the creative process (narratives inspired by all manner of religious writings). When it comes to The Epic of Gilgamesh, is the argument that anyone actually believes there’s an underlying historical reality to it (other than that a King Gilgamesh (probably) existed)? The typical response to that is that it’s a kind of psychological reality, but even so, there are plenty of influential mythological narratives that imo have limited psychological verisimilitude, yet humans are still emotionally moved by them.

I have a family friend who explicitly acknowledges that he watches/reads horror/speculative genres to ‘get away from [his] terrible reality’, because surely the happenings in genre fiction are ‘worse’ and his real life feels bearable by comparison. It’s been decades since I first heard this, but it blew my mind as I cannot relate at all, so that does make me wonder if it’s as much of a universal take on the speculative as he seemed to think.

(I actually think Hume somewhat addresses this in his analysis of Dubos:

It’s amusing that ‘real life’ was at the time perceived as ‘perfect tranquility and repose’ or a ‘languid… state of indolence’, but, yeah.)

Anyway, I feel like one mostly gets adrenalin from tragedies/emotionally taxing genres, and is a rush of adrenalin that disagreeable? I think it can be fun. I don’t know. On the other hand, surely some of us know someone to get upset by horror and get no ‘pleasure’ whatsoever from experiencing ‘disagreeable’ emotions vicariously?

That level of analysis feels a bit rudimentary, but maybe we just can’t get to the bottom of our response to narratives as a species yet. I will fight Hume’s corner when it comes to most things, but would really love to read something where someone tackles it in appropriate detail, taking into account the contemporary understanding of neuroscience.

Being a "die hard" anything hints at deep belief.

Materialism is an ontological monism (the universe IS material, wholly material, and nothing but material), which requires a firm commitment to the proposition that what cannot be proven empirically need not be proven--this is a commitment to the cognitive fallacy "What you see is all there is." More charitably, it is a leap of faith.

I accept aspects of utilitarianism, but not as a monism (i.e., happiness in various formulations is good, but does not exhaust the good). I also accept materialism, but not as a monism. Strictly speaking, this means I am not a materialist, because materialism is a monism by definition. As the ancient monotheistic Gods have demanded of people, the new God of materialism demands that we shall have no other Gods before It (Checkmate Idealists!).

As far all-in-one Gods go, however, I must admit that Materialism is quite formidable as explanation device of the material world. Of course, I must also admit that Mathematics and Logic are quite formidable as an explanation device for abstractions (and let's not forget that we can't do science--the Holy Church of Materialism--without foundations in mathematics and philosophical commitments).

I would wager that it is not your materialism that holds you back here, but merely your understanding that fiction is a game and that we should not get too carried away with it. Or perhaps, you are one of those people who gets enough of a "fix" in fiction (a complete experience) experienced directly that you don't need fan fics, and conventions, and Silmarillions, and schematics of the Starship Enterprise to enjoy fiction. Now, I personally, will admit to having an occasional fascination with the expanded world or a deep world, but I also recognize that it is a fools errand when pushed too far (like lifting up the frame of the painting in the expectation of exposing a hidden part of reality).

Long story short, I think your aversion may just be a sign of sanity, or at least just a understanding of the contract of fiction.
Well, we do talk about suspension of disbelief, right? We do get upset when a drama becomes too unrealistic, yes? You do have emotions when watching movies, right? You have cried? You have laughed? You have screamed? You have felt anger, even rage? If so, the question is why we would be so moved by what we know is a lie--moreover, why would we hold fiction's capacity to move us to be a primary metric of quality (e.g., a comedy that makes no one laugh is not much of a comedy).
When kids play with action figures from their favorite cartoons and movies, I suppose that they're doing the same thing. When adults do the same thing, I think it similarly suggests that they want another helping, that they want to playful explore an enjoyable place.

My main complaint with fan fiction is simply that so much of it is bad (cringey AF). If you are not an accomplished writer who can write as well and in the style of the person who made the original, you will only produce drivel. It's... ...embarrassing.

And I suspect, in some cases, that some of this stuff hints at mental illness (e.g., those fans who painted themselves blue and reported massive depression after having seen the first Avatar film, a film which wasn't even that good). If your need for escapism requires an experience machine, a constant connection with another world, then something seems to be going wrong in the world you're in).
Well, that's a bit of a rhetorical flourish. I love hyperbole. I do not commit to the proposition that we believe wholly, but that, in some sense (I do not know precisely what), we must believe. If we cannot, in some way, go through the looking glass, then we will only experience fiction from the outside. But we don't. Our minds have a talent for simulation very little stimulation and we can invest in these stories.

Perhaps this has something to do with our capacity to dream? Or perhaps this is connected to consciousness itself (which is a continuous story told to us in our minds as our brains reduce millions of bits per second down to the narrow bandwidth of consciousness).
Sure. Again, rhetorical flourish. However, if you felt moved with by Gilgamesh's loss of his friend Enkidu--it must have seemed real in some way to you. And if you have ever cried during a movie, it must have seemed real enough to move you to tears. There's a paradoxical alchemy in fiction.
This is where genre comes in. Genre is a kind of contract. It tells us what to treat as signal and what to treat as noise.

At some level, fiction must drill down to something "real" so as to make us respond. The mirror must reflect something we recognize as "true" in order for us to travel through it.
That is one of the traditional answers to the paradox of tragedy. There may be some truth in it.

I have, for example, been an adherent to the roller-coaster theory of horror (a safe simulation of terror which allows us to experience and in some way master our fears). Fiction gives us "safe danger" as does the amusement park ride.

However, I have also known people who have reveled in their own tragedy and horror. Listen to two old people compete verbally in listing their various ailments. Listen to a parent boast of how much harder it was for them, when they were kids. In short, I think that the appeal of tragedy, is that we all like to feel like martyrs and suffering saints--that is, our suffering is proof that we're right and that life is meaningful in some way. It allows us to take the world seriously. Comedy is the enemy of tragedy. It deflates deep meanings and those who tilt at them. It reduces the world to serious accidents (which is quite nice when the world feels too overwhelming and we do not wish to take it so seriously). I think people like the pain, because it is an ennobling pain (without the actual consequence--in the case of fictive tragedy--having had to do anything to earn that ennobling aspect). Like horror, tragedy allows us to have our cake and eat it too. I don't think it is necessarily or predominantly a case of schadenfreude, but "Sainthood on the Cheap."
To the extent that we do not live epic lives, I suppose this is true. Our heroes go on adventures which few of us ever approach (and those who do come back with PTSD and fewer limbs).
That's true. However, I can imagine a roller-coaster rise that I would NOT ever get on (one that has a substantive threat of death) and games I would never play (Russian Roulette). I think the people who cannot abide horror are more sensitive souls who feel as if they are in the scene more deeply than horror lovers. Horror fans are more like lucid dreamers. As a child, for example, I remember horror movies being quite traumatizing. As an adult, I made an adjustment and learned to enjoy them. As an old man, I am typically disappointed because very few films scare me know (I just see tropes, stock characters, bad plotting, character beats, etc.). I would not wish to revisit the terror of my childhood (the prepubescent child watching slasher movies), however, I do miss the roller coasters of my early adulthood. Now the park appears to me to be filled with kiddie rides.
Perhaps it's not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be enjoyed? In good fiction we believe what we don't believe.
Ah, you are a dedicated materialist. Dig deeper into biology and you may only find more correlates. You won't necessarily find meaning there, just descriptions of how various bits are associated with other bits. I am sure that there are truths of psychology to be learned in neuroscience, but it is of no help, for example, in solving the "free will" problem. Everything we needed to know about the brain to recognize the problem philosophers recognized hundreds of years ago. More trivia about how the brain works doesn't bring us any closer to untying the knot of determinism. At most, it is overkill, beating a dead horse named "libertarianism." Beware greedy reductionism, the impulse to explain everything from one level of observation. Someone had to engage in deductive abstraction a priori, before we could get to the a posteriori accounts of the neuroscientist. A world may be nothing more than what the materialist promises, but it must be lived and understood as if it were not (as if our abstractions are substantive, as if there is a realm of ideas, as if our choices are free, as if we have self-understanding).

I don't actually think very many films aim for true realism. Maybe some movies that came out of the Italian neo-realism strain. And there are some out there which blend documentary footage with scripted narrative in such a way that we are presented with enough realism to start questioning what is real and what is not. But pure realism, it's not really what movies do. Not even Jeanne Dielman which, as much as its general thesis is about documenting the day to day minutia of a life that feels very real, is really realism. It is much too cinematic for that, taking great pains to control literally every element of that house so it responds to being watched by a camera. Even it's famously long scenes which pass by with no cutting at all from the drudgery of life, in fact call our attention Towards the camera. It forces us to wonder 'is the camera ever going to cut away from this'. We can't really pretend any of this is an attempt at true realism. It is real life on by proxy of cinema.


Just because we have some suspension of disbelief, to the point we might cry if something sad happens to a character, are we really truly crying about that? Or are we crying what the sad event represents to our own lives. Are the dyinf characters simply just avatars of all the people who have already died or we worry will eventually die in our true reality


Cinema is, above and beyond anything, artifice. And sometimes a film isn't even meant to be playing with any kind of reality at all. It is meant to be reckoned with purely as film. Experimental films are pure this way. Sometimes surrealism. And camp. Or the sort of films which exists mostly to reflect back what we already know of films history (De Palma, Tarantino)


Usually though a film is a blend of these two things. It might offer enough believability for us to understand it as a reflection of the real world we are really living in (but it's only ever a reflection). But also enough of the pure cinema so that we simultaneously understand that is mostly just a reflection of itself. And more often than not, the dance between these two illusions is the sweet spot.


So, while some people may not be able to help but feel cheated by a film that breaks the supposed contract of realism they believe the movie made with them, it's mostly a contract that exists in their mind. One of little more than expectations the film never owed them in the first place. So while they are entitled to get their knickers in a twist over Usual Suspects or whatever movie cheating them of some imaginary thing, they are also exposing themselves as filmgoers who are pretty ignorant to the long history of film and just art in general.


Films are not only here to manipulate our emotions and assumptions about the world around us. But they are also meant to manipulate our assumptions about what film is even supposed to be. If anyone is breaking a contract, it is the people sulking that they didnt get what they thought was their divine right when they started shoving popcorn in their maw. But movies don't owe anything beyond being movies.


Now of course everyone commits this particular sin from time to time. Yes, even me. But people who make a business of consistently not understanding this are ultimately a strain on the evolution of art. While we definitely need some pushback against expectations being defied, there is just such an overwhelming amount of this stupid ass shit, that too many studios and producers and even artists themselves can't help but cater to such whining. And it becomes a problem


So, basically, **** those people. They are speed bumps and I encourage art to just drive over them at top speed

I agree with basically all that, but I think there's a weird tension that inevitably follows: transgressive art, while running over the pushback, also kind of needs it.

Transgressive expression needs standards to transgress against. Without conventions, without audience expectations, there is nothing to subvert, nothing to play with. It's nearly identical to the linguistic debate between subjectivism and prescriptivism. Creative, counterintuitive turns of phrase or irony or whatever are only possible once there's some kind of informally agreed-upon standard, even if that agreement is unstated and imperfect.

It's true that no given movie owes us anything. But we don't owe it anything, either. And I'm not entirely sure the relationship between art and viewer, in that context, is actually adversarial even when it seems that way. Sometimes it's symbiotic.

I realize that someone can note those transgressions without saying "this isn't a movie" or whatever provocatively reductive thing you tend to see in Internet arguments. But it's interesting to think about the push-pull of creating boundaries and then crossing them, over and over.

I'd say more but I'm like 75% sure we've had more or less this exact discussion before.

I mention how some amount of pushback is necessary, otherwise the boundary crossing may not even be noticed at all. And that wouldnt be terribly interesting since we need to consider the reasons for those original boundaries for the transgression to have any real weight to it.

But at a certain point the pushback can become stifling and legitimate impede to many artists. Or norms can simply be much too established and their isn't enough people out their willing to acknowledge the value of whatever particular rules are being broken.

Basically both of these things can be extremely frustrating. And obviously not even for artists. In the case of movie forums, it can even be exhausting just talking critically about these things when the conversation can never move past the reflexive offence so many people have. We end up having to have the same ground zero arguments over and over again like they never happened. And this almost makes it not worth trying after decades of the same thing over and over and over and over

What is "true realism"? I can't think of any films which aim for true (dead on balls accurate) realism, apart from austere documentaries or perhaps super-serious historical dramas--but here it is almost inevitable that some history license is taken (e.g., consolidating events and characters, excluding some details, actors who are more charismatic or exaggerated than their historical counterparts).

Dramas, nevertheless, are still more realistic than actions movies (e.g., which feature Hollywood Ballistics™, lengthy car chases, bad guys who politely wait their turn to fight the hero, convenience stores which are just about to be held up until the arrival of the protagonist, absurdly high stakes, implausible betrayals, and conspiracies).

Are there exceptions? Sure. Are there transgressive movies? Sure. Are dramas still more realistic than action movies? Yes.
The amazing thing is that we can actually suspend disbelief with regard to what we know is a lie. It is amazing that we can invest in the lie enough to be moved by it.
And do we only recoil when we see a bad accident because we know it could happen to us? Or is our flinch at witnessing agony just those darned mirror-neurons kicking like our knees when the doc taps them with a tiny hammer? And does it matter?

Mitigation by explanation is a cheapest trick reductionists pull. "Well, consciousness is not all that interesting or awe-inspiring, it's just information and self-referential feedback processing in the brain." No, consciousness is pretty darned amazing and so is the fact that we sometimes cry in response to what we know is false. The fact that we have any suspension of disbelief is amazing, as it allows us to pass through the looking glass. Waving this off with some theory of "egoistic avatars" does not make the result any less amazing. The achievement still remains. Somehow, someway, we go through the looking glass. You seem obsessed with sterile formalities without a care for the life-world of narrative (you get strangely exercised by the idea that cinema is about storytelling).
Well, that's my point. We are, nevetheless, moved by artifice. There is vital essence, life, in literary artifice. It is a reality or quasi-reality that we inhabit. And genres do, in the main, offer us different default expectations of reality as a tacit contract. You're big on transgression, but you can only transgress a line of realism in a given case if you implicitly acknowledge that the line is already there, waiting to be challenged. Yes, there are transgressive films, but... ...so what?
Perhaps, but this is the exception and not the rule. If we don't go through the looking glass and suspend disbelief at any point, if we don't go in, if we're forced to observe from the outside, then this is very sterile, like reading literary criticism or reading pedantic posts (such as the one I am writing).
You remind me of Ash from ALIEN. "I admire its purity. An artifact... unclouded by narrative, rules, or delusions of reality."
These are not "pure" (entirely devoid of any realism), but rather examples that operate with different and less stringent standards of realism. Surrealism is a kind of realism. Indeed, surrealism can cut through the rational mind like butter and take us into primal aspects of our conscious experience (e.g., irrational fears of our reptilian brains). A surrealism which is merely formally kaleidoscope is not really that interesting. Camp is an exaggeration, a fun house mirror, but it is still a mirror and there are still rules in effect, even if it is negotiating rules along the way. Ditto for Tarantino's pastiches--they touch on the collective unconsciousness, the great alter-land of cinema which sustains a sense of reality via internal rules and references.
Hence the title of the thread which inquires into the different levels of reality. Just as no or few films are "totally real," so too is it that no or few films are "totally unreal." It's a dreamland, a limbo.
Sure, but some genres have a different tacit contract establishing different default expectations of how and in what way the film will seem real. Some genres are more verisimilar than others. My point here is to entertain an exploration of these levels, and not to simply worry about straw asymptotes which we never reach.
No. Not every twist is earned. It may not be the case that "the customer is always right," but neither is it the case that "the viewer is always wrong" or "not owed anything" (as if films are not commercial products for which we pay and which we expect to be entertaining!). A film that cleverly subverts the audience's expectation to be entertained, probably isn't that clever.

If you don't think that films have any sort of contract with the audience, that the audience is not owed anything at all, then take it to the courts. They disagree with you. To be clear, I am not endorsing the idea of taking legal action over movie trailers, however, if the courts see the possibility of taking legal action over implicit contractuality in a commercial product, then we can damned well speak of aesthetic contractuality between text and audience in an artistic product. If you hold the audience in perfect contempt, you're doing it wrong.
And yet we still observe stable expectations about genre. You can only change so much, so fast. I didn't say that the varying expectations or realism relative to genre are unchanging Platonic Ideals. I am only committed to the notion that they are stable enough to use as touchstones in our present discussion (e.g., "drama" is consistently more realistic than "action").
LOL, you seem to see cinema as a strict schoolmaster with the unquestioned privilege of Clockwork Orange-ing audiences regardless of consent and investment. "Come and see! It is pure. Unreal. It is... ...cinemaahhhhhhh!"

Sorry, no. It's a dance. A film, of course, may not be made for me (personally), however, it is made some audience. And even if the film the film wants to violently transgress da' rules, there still has to be initial observation of conventions (foreplay), or the audience will have no idea what's happening to them as the rules are being "ravaged."

Films owe us a minimal amount, and if we want to play the game, we owe films a minimal amount. It is in this mutual owing that we come to artistic conventions, the very conventions which you seem to hold in contempt, as if film could (or should) be some unmediated experience of unreality, as if any rules as fundamentally bad and cluttering our view of the object, hamstringing the artist. Without conventions, however, reaching for that otherness will be unintelligible. For example, language requires certain conventions to work. Conventions change, sure. But a language with no rules is not a language and the people who spoke it would be mere babblers understood by no one, save for that which is conveyed by the deeper biological rules of nonverbal communication.
Sin? Are we going to the movies or Sunday School? For someone who holds "the rules" in contempt, you have rather severe rules yourself. Films are free to transgress, but audiences who refuse are moral transgressors? Hmm....
Meh. The audience is the audience. Art is made for the audience. It is indeed an "artifice" (made by humans) with a purpose (it is for humans!), which is why the audience matters. You can't hold them in total disregard under some bizarre ontology of the perfect autonomy of art--like it is some space whale that isn't meant to give a care about the people for which it is made.
It depends. Sometimes the audience is a little behind. Sometimes the film is a little too far ahead. It's a coordination problem. However, your admission that "we definitely need some pushback" is a damning one--the audience is, in fact, owed something, aren't they?
What a violent figuration. What a strict schoolmaster. How can we ever push back if we're being run over as "speed bumps" -- also, aren't speed bumps occasionally necessary?

Probably mostly true, but it seems clear he's saying that you (meaning, whoever's upset with the movie for upsetting their expectations) are not necessarily that audience. What seems to set him off is the idea that any particular movie (or that all movies) need to abide by these strictures/tendencies/whatever.

Yes

As for the idea that art is 'mostly' made for an audience, I think most of the time it explicitly is (most artists do want positive feedback and so many either completely or at least somewhat cater to what they believe is expected of them....which is their business and not mine or yours or anybody else's)


But then there are artists who only sort of cater to an audience. Maybe even barely, considering ones definition of audience. I often think of a quote of Jim Jarmusch that goes along the lines of 'I have no idea if anyone is ever going to be interested in the kind of movies I make....but I want to see them, so I have to assume there must be others out there that do as well'


Some artists cater to this 'audience' of one. They live with the hope that maybe it is more than just them, but they can't let they discourage the from the path they are on. Art for many who deal in more experimental or abstracted or unconventional forms are frequently a leap of faith for the one creating them. And for some out there, ie me, we find a beauty in the defiance of pursuing this vision even if no one ultimately cares.


So this notion of 'who cares about transgression', it is an absolutely essential element of what art is and how it moves forward. Even transgression that ultimately fails Even transgression that is only for transgression sake. Transgression is what allows the hope that there are other ways of doing things outside of the box the rest of the standard audience (ie Corax) would prefer it to stay inside of. Even when it doesn't work, it offers a route for future attempts that might. That might be transformative. Thst might even be what ultimately creates a new box for people to try and keep art inside of.


As for the whole idea of artifice in cinema, and how it is used to evoke empathy, I don't really see how much of what I said is in opposition to Yarns posts. It was mostly just an addition to it. But arguers got to argue I guess. Got to eventually get ones money's worth from those lucrative philosophy courses

I imagine part of the tension here is what kind of art we have in mind when we talk about this.

For example, if one person is thinking of art in its totality, obviously "I made this for myself" is a perfectly valid reason to create something. Art can be therapeutic, and many people paint to relax and then put it in an attic, or whatever. But (almost) by definition, we never hear of it.

Contrast this person with another, who's thinking specifically of film. Maybe a specific film that cost millions of dollars, where the director's on some rudimentary press tour insisting they don't care who sees it because it's not there to cater to audiences. Even if that could be true, it doesn't seem likely to be true. It's more likely that they're creating or reinforcing their brand as an uncompromising, challenging artist, with correspondingly uncompromising hyperbole.

I think the number of filmmakers we've heard of who literally don't have an audience in mind is vanishingly small, and I think the ones who say or imply this are mostly just signaling a heavily diluted version of that. And while this is a little harsh, I think sometimes it's probably a defense mechanism against a lack of commercial success they'd probably greatly prefer.

I find myself taking this kind of stance on a lot of things: believing a thing exists but doubting nearly all purported examples of it in practice.

I imagine there are some out there who do do this as a defense mechanism. But I don't think that an artist who does do things predominantly for themselves is a terribly rare thing.


We can argue the semantics of what exactly does 'do it for themselves mean' (cue Yarns bat signal), and I'll agree I dont think it is often Purely this. But I think the notion of creation has become completely polluted by the simple spectre of commercial prospect to the point we become skeptical anyone would do it for any otherreason. That creation becomes impossible to be seen when divorced from it. As if that consumption and profit (of either money or reputation ) is the predominant reason people create. And....it isn't. Not when it comes to the basic process of what art kind of is. It's a struggle to find oneself. It is the hope that when found it might communicate something to someone else. And, if we put any faith in this sort of thing (which I do, and it is very much faith based), then these things lessen in their value when they aren't done with as little care to audience expectstions as possible. There are artists to me whose primary value is how divorced they are from everything else that is happening around them. They offer a window into their minds that can only happen when they put blinders on to the rest of the world and what it expects of them. It doesn't work when it caters to any particular audience.


And, I'm not ignoring that hope for communication part. But that finding a receptive audience to these things only matters if they are born from these very self obsessed artistic motivations. When the audience is what is being catered to it becomes something completely different (with different kinds of value)


Now because so many artists can't help but want adulation, want monetary gain, I agree this kind of thing gets corrupted way more often than I would like. And sometimes it is just a pose by the artist. But I dont think we should be waving our hands away at this particular struggle to communicate the personal and maybe unknowable parts of ourselves through art. It's a real thing that many artists clearly do. And it does a great disservice to those who do by doubting in it even existing

Also, lots of examples of art hidden away, done as a personal project, that eventually leaks out into the world.


In the Realm of the Unreal being one of the most famous examples. And while I imagine Henry Darger had some imaginary audience all of his own while he was in the process of creating, it's hard to imagine his flights of imagination had any belief that such an audience for his work even existed in the real world. His work, which is absolutely a work of serious art, was very much made for himself, and was likely used at as reckoning with whatever traumas hr suffered as a child, and with the complete alienation he felt from society in general

I was writing that response very quickly during my break at work on phone, so a lot of that probably got mutilated by spell check and getting distracted by people and all their stupid lunches.

The idea behind this thread was invite to excavation of the implicit levels of realism in varying genres and subgenres--making that which is tacit explicit--in order to consider the norms that govern them. We often speak of genre as being divided by content (e.g., Western, War movies, Space movies) and by purpose (e.g., to make you laugh, to make you cry, to make you thrill), but we rarely discuss the differing approaches to reality that they feature. These are rules of expectation that we rarely consider "on the front burner."

You entered the thread and went off on the idea that genre should constrict art at all and rather violently (figuratively, not literally) suggested that audiences who expect movies to meet their expectations should be run over like speed-bumps(!). You offered an aesthetic objection radiating with moralizing contempt for the very middle ground that would make the discussion I propose possible (i.e., the idea that there is a middle ground, that it is a dance, and that audiences are owed something).

You've been dragging the discussion to the extremes, instead of considering the very resource for transgression that genre provides (you can't cross a line unless the line has already been drawn). And so you have been arguing to the alleged autonomy of the work of art so that you can try to claim that artworks need not care about their audiences (they are independent). When you've admitted that we do need a guardrail to push-back, you've returned with talk about artists who themselves don't make art for anyone but themselves (well, these guys are independent!). You have attempted to mitigate the experience of reality(ies) that people get out of art (and which draws them to art), by attempting to deflate it out of existence by arguing that we only egoistically feel for avatars representing ourselves.

If you look to the original post in this thread you will see that I have noted that genre provides a resource for transgression--again, I have offered no brief for genres as unchanging Platonic Ideals. All this transgression business is besides the point. Again and again, I have asked "so what?". Yes, films transgress.

So, again, the idea here is to consider the rules of expectation definitive of "reality" implicit within genres and sub-genres, to consider these as default starting points, a sandbox for artists to play in. When we reach for genre, we're reaching for equipment that has been on the playground for generations. It's no surprise that artists make use of these features to tell stories so that they don't have reinvent the whole wheel (what is the tone?, what counts as real?, what are the stock characters?, what sort of resolution is initially expected?, what sort of motivations do we expect?).

They are related arguments. When talking about the illusioary reality of film, this opens the door to questioning what reality is at all in regards to film. And to properly talk about this it makes total sense to at least acknowledge abstract and experimental cinema and what their relationship to emotional responses are. You certainly don't just exclude whatever approach to filmmaking you don't think qualifies as a film because it doesn't live up to your 'expectations to be entertained'. They are as much a part of the conversation as what you were saying about genre.


But I get it. Unless people decide to respond to your post exactly as you anticipate them to, you find it frustrating. Which is hilarious considering you are the guy who scribbles outside of the lines of every single post you've ever responded to. So why do you get to blather on about unrelated shit in everyone else's thread and we have to be puritanically observant thread monks in yours?


But, regardless of this, my initial post has a lot to do with what you're talking about. I know any acknowledgement of non narrative cinema irritates you to the point you consider people who talk about it androids, but just because you fundamentally do not understand how these two topics are at least tangentially, if not directly related, is your enormous Blindspot.

This has all been addressed. I was shifting gears in the hopes of seeing if you have anything of interest to offer besides a moralizing take out of the prompt premised on as assertion of artistic autonomy that your own analysis has contradicted (e.g., when you talk about the need for push-back on transgressions) or your attempts to drag the conversation exclusively into the realm of your imagined exceptions.

Your main line of attack has been mitigated to insignificance via your own concessions to Yoda and your "exceptions" are irrelevant to the prompt, because I am talking about genre and how genre functions where you are attempting refocus on particular artists and what they do (apples meet oranges). I am talking about genre as a default expectation. You are moving downstream of this to assert that artists can transgress boundaries--a point that has been conceded and which is not competitive with the idea of the prompt (initial conditions meet terminal conditions).
This is a mischaracterization of my position. And again, I am talking about genres offering default frames of reality for artists--this is a precondition that allows for creative approaches.
No, they aren't. This material is non-competitive with the assumptions of the prompt and off-topic relative to the prompt.
No, I was hoping to be surprised, to hear ideas about tacit conventions in genres and sub-genres which I had not considered.

Your entry into the thread was blustery, moralizing, and violent (run them over!). Kicking over the lemonade stand and then blaming the proprietor for customers not doing business in the way they expect is hardly a failure of the proprietor. You have some some rather extreme and deeply held ideas about art. These ideas don't interest me, but my prompt has apparently conflicted with your intuitions, so here we are.
Well, this is really what this is about isn't it?

I frequently invite interlocutors to show me how and where a response have made has gone off-topic. I invite clarifications a regular basis.
You're then who came in the thread bemoaning the very idea of the conversation, and your objections have been addressed, at length. I have performed that labor for you and not merely dismissed your arguments out of hand.

What are we doing here?
This has already been addressed. The original formulation of the take-out was taken out by your own concessions to Yoda. That's done.
The only thing I find baffling is your stance that film is not about narrative. I find that quite odd. I do, however, enjoy discussing formal properties as much as anyone else. That stated, at the end of the day, we have to consider all the elements come together in telling a story. The proof of the formal pudding is in the tasting of the elements in the experience of the narrative.
I understand that there are connections. I am not the eliminativist here. You're the one who consistently has these bizarre denials of the relevance of rules, relevance, story, anything that gets in the way of your idea of art for art's sake and unrestricted auteurs creating new forms ex nihilo.

Our conversation is not moving in a productive direction, so I suggest we leave off. At least, I am done.

Keep on truckin'

There was no contradiction. The fact that there is something to push back against does not mean the artist isn't working independently from their own instincts. Some artists may deliberately push these buttons, but just because lines are being crossed does not mean all artist do this specifically to cross those lines. Some artists may simply want to do the things you aren't supposed to do because they think there is something interesting there to play with or explore.



I think it is telling you can't see the two as being possibly separate.


Huh? Artists and genre aren't mutually exclusive. Genres are an outgrowth of what artists have done with them over the years. Certain reflexes and expectations can codify. They are never entirely independent from the whims of an artist. One comes along, shakes things up, and the genre changes.

Exactly how long have you been on these kinds of movie forums? Have you read anything anyone has ever said?

Holy ****, man. You literally mentioned (twice) in a recent thread about religion about MKS getting hit by a car and dying in a gutter. You called out a specific poster directly by name and made violent allusions towards him.

And I of course was outraged by such a....no, I realized it was a ****ing joke. Or are you the only person who is permitted to make jokes related to car violence....don't answer. Of course you are

Yeah, film isn't narrative. Terribly extreme. Or maybe just a fundamental understanding of what film is that you totally lack.

Like that time you baldly accused me of supporting child exploitation in a discussion about film.

You do it all the time. You have a history doing it. You have a history of many many many posters calling you out for doing it. But I guess its just a big conspiracy against you.


My initial post was completely in earnest. It was you who misread its intent. Probably because you were too closely identifying with those horribly maligned speed bumps.

My stance is not abnormal. Or even remotely controversial to anyone with even a fragmentary understanding of art history. If anything, the fact that you still find these claims 'baffling', after twenty years on movie forums where this very point would have been mentioned hundreds if not thousands of times, by a variety of different posters, says everything I need to know about how little you actually pay attention to what anyone ever writes in these spaces

Yes, please tell everyone what they have to do again.

And I'm the one forcing my film morality down people's throats.

You are simply unwilling to give a fraction of a second to anything that doesn't fold to your extraordinarily narrow definitions of art.

I don't deny any of these things. This is once again an example of you either not reading or not understanding a ****ing thing that glazes across your eyeballs. My point is, and has consistently been for twenty ****ing years, that my issue is with people who discount art that does not fulfill the functions of those particular things.

This is not me rejecting story. This is me rejecting ******** who reject anything that dares not be. Learn to distinguish between these two things.


Oh, I wonder why.


lol

Re: Levels of Reality in Genre Fiction
 

So... how does what J.J. Abrams did to Star Trek fit into all this?

Sure, within the realm of sci-fi... a realm that's already dealt with time travel, alternate timelines, and parallel dimensions countless times... the "rules" were already in place for more such stories or even entire counter-continuities to completely subvert entire franchises.

But it seems like Abrams was so preoccupied with whether or not he COULD, that he never stopped to think if he SHOULD. ;)

JJ's a thing unto himself. I think he really thought he had the "secret sauce" to story telling figured out with that mystery box shtick. Sorry JJ, but it turns out you need to have something good in the box and you can only have the main action outrun your plotholes for so long.




Star Trek has never really made all that much sense in terms of the physics or internal consistency. Every week on the original series they would encounter a technology they could use to solve a problem next week. Hmm, that formula which makes you move faster than a wink of an eye would come in handy? Hmm, that time travel thing sure would come in handy right now? Hmm, perhaps we should have saved the configuration the Kelvans used to make the Enterprise fast enough for intergalactic travel?



At least with most Star Trek, however, the B.S. makes sense within the confines of a single episode. Forget about the alien device that would have solved this week's problem and the episode works OK.



J.J. Trek, however, just piles on the B.S. on multiple levels. It doesn't makes sense in terms of the internal logic of its own story, the wider logic of Star Trek (e.g., canon), or the external logic what we know about the world.



J.J. Trek doesn't even makes sense in terms of the folk psychology. Jim Kirk, for example, has "THOR" syndrome (i.e., in every movie he's having to learn to grow up to become a true leader). And the emplotment doesn't make sense, on face. So, OK Nero appears when Kirk is born, but waits two decades to attack Spock? Why? Khan is this ancient Earth leader who is put in charge of developing high technology? What? Now we have backpack transporters that can transport people from Earth to the Klingon homeworld directly? OK, so why do we need starships anymore?



J.J. is a gingerbread man who is just trying to run from one frame of the storyboard to the next with no wider view of the overall story. It's dream-logic, set pieces that are moving so quickly that the idea is that your brain won't notice.


The problem with J.J., however, is not a problem of genre but simple a problem of competence.

Re: Levels of Reality in Genre Fiction
 

There was a deleted scene to explain why Nero waited 20 odd years. He was imprisoned by the Klingons for that time and escaped and used his ship to destroy a bunch of Klingon ships.

Right, but that they decided to cut this important connecting detail to keep the momentum going is so very J.J. (even if he wasn't in the editing bay).



Also, the idea that this giant advanced ship that could destroy any Federation ship of the period was just sitting in an "impound yard" waiting for Nero to steal her back is also so very J.J.

I agree they should have kept that scene in as it was puzzling as to why Nero took so long. Before I saw the D/S I just took it that they needed a long time to repair their ship then went into hiding while awaiting for Spock.

Yeah it is a bit odd that the Klingons wouldn't have stripped the ship for all the future tech that they could get their hands on. Its like how the heck did Maz get Lukes Lightsaber from Bespin. That is never explained.

I think this suggests a "kind" of reality we expect of science fiction, which we don't expect of screwball comedies--internal consistency and/or basic common sense behavior (e.g., people with a burning desire for revenge don't wait 20 years if they don't need to).

A screwball comedy can defy internal consistency and common sense for a gag, where a science fiction film will defy basic laws of fundamental physics but still respect commonsense reasoning, basic folk-psychology, and internally consistent rules/sequencing.

J.J. irritates some of us by violating reality relative to the genre. If J.J. were making an Airplane-style parody of Star Wars or Star Trek, we probably wouldn't care about these details and be more concerned about whether it made us laugh.

NOTE: The implicit contract of different levels/varieties of reality explains why we will watch Nosferatu (1979) and argue about whether the rats which run pour onto the docks would have spread the plague, as only black rats have fleas that spread this plague, but we will NOT argue the more obvious unreality (i.e., that vampires exist). We tune our expectations to the implicit contract of the genre.

Re: Levels of Reality in Genre Fiction
 

Comedies in the genre of Airplane! and its sequels... (I'd say one step beyond screwball.. with such notables as The Big Bus, Top Secret, the Naked Gun series, etc.) basically have no rules, which is made apparent early on. Anything can happen (and usually does) and in most cases just to make a verbal or visual pun as they satire more series genres that came before them.

These types involve a barrage of the impossible from the get go, whereas I see screwball comedies as plausible but improbable, then there are the plausible comedies that, while still involving a heavy degree of improbability, adhere to the basic rules of reality (such as a movie like Midnight Run).

Still, there seems to be a thin line between the "level" or "rules" of a movie and plot holes that are the result of poor writing or shoddy editing.

More About Vampire Films

Default Expectations of Reality by Genre: Vamps

1. Sustained by Blood-Drinking

2. Sharp elongated canine teeth

3. Supernatural Ontology

a. Demonic or Satanic origin

i. Vulnerable to Holy Water
ii. Unable to Enter Churches
iii. Averse to Crucifixes

b. General Magical Powers/Properties

i. Batform and/or flight in human form
ii. Mistform
iii. No Reflection
iv. Unable to enter without invitation
v. Undead

5. Vulnerable to Sunlight

6. Vulnerable to Fire

7. Averse to Garlic

8. Can be killed with a wooden stake

This list is not intended to be exhaustive or necessarily perfectly organized, but rather to lay out traditional features.

Although many films pick and choose which elements are relevant to their tales, a vampire film will honor some of these features. A film that embraces none of these features (or the most salient ones) will probably be rejected as belonging to the category. Thus, for example, there is some debate as to whether the creatures in Lifeforce are vampires or quasi-vamps or vamps-by-proxy, etc. For another example, vampirism in Near Dark and do not have fangs, which makes this one a quasi-scientific vampire film, however, they do have limited immortality and the elemental weaknesses of vampires (e.g., sunlight, fire).

A vampire film that rejects highly expected features will often feature explicit exposition early in the film to establish what is NOT to be expected in this world. Thus, Blade tells Karen (our audience surrogate) early in the eponymous film, Blade, initially, dodges supernatural ontology by explaining vampirism as a blood disease (probably to drop Christological baggage), but we do meet a "blood god" at the end so even this scientific film enters into the supernatural.


The rules are negotiable, but once they're set, we have a revised contractual reality. And we will expect plausible folk-psychology and (for the most part) plausible folk-physics, and coherent sequencing/causality to obtain.

Re: Levels of Reality in Genre Fiction
 

Speaking of vampire rules (not meaning to go off topic) - but what's the deal with a vampire turning a person into another vampire?

I've seen a vampire get someone under a spell, but not kill them, with a limited bite and a little blood sucked out.
But to kill and convert, it seems the vampire must drain a body of enough blood so it dies and then the victim becomes a vampire themselves (due to the vampire's "venom," presumably, which replaces the victim's human blood?)

However, in some movies the vampire must "get" the victim to bite the vampire and drink the vampire's blood in order for the victim to become a vampire?

Is there any set rule or are the interchangeable based on the story / writer?

The rules here vary. (1.) Sometimes it's enough to just be bitten by a vampire (Innocent Blood). (2.) Sometimes only some people who are bitten will turn (those marked by the devil as a having a wicked soul (Twins of Evil, IIRC). (3.) Sometimes you have to be intentionally sired, usually by drinking the blood of the one who turns you (usually with the obligatory scene with the master vamp screaming "enough!" when their novice starts taking too much blood in their newfound enthusiastic thirst). (4.) In some cases, the vampiric death with an improper burial will result in the return of the dead (folklore, tradition, right?).

I think that those stories that show us central characters being turned will explicitly worry about the mechanics of vampiric progeneration. Thus Interview with the Vampire details how vampires are "made." Otherwise, we will have the classic vamp vs. hero thing and the story will focus on the rules of how to evade and eventually kill the thing as opposed to how join the club.

There is an expected "consistency" of "tone," however. That is, if the rules of Top Secret went from being "wide open" to "real-world consistent" half-way through the movie, we would feel cheated in that the film would have violated it's own "unreality."
In that case, I suppose we need a label for those films in the super-wacky Mad Magazine style of Airplane.

Romantic comedies will typically allow for more physical abuse than the real-world would allow (without debilitating injury) such as Meet the Fockers or Just Friends, but don't involve warp drives, ghosts, or time travel. I think these operate on the level of improbable or implausible, but "verisimilar if you squint at it." That which could, if we stretch, imagine happening in our world as we know it.
Right. A comedy that can "play it straight" with reality and still make us laugh comes from the pen of a talented writer as the author operates within tighter constraints and (arguably) the laughs feel more "earned."
Exactly. There is this grammar we've been fluent in our whole lives without really knowing it. We know that a long black transition implies (in many cases) longer passage of time, but few of us would note this as a rule. We just "know it when we see it." Ditto for the rules of the real in fiction. We know, more or less, what is appropriate to genre, but we do this mostly by feel, it seems.

This reminds me of a very-debated scene: Superman going back in time / spinning the Earth backwards in Superman (1978).

Of course, the premise of the entire movie requires us to throw physics out the window in lieu of science fiction explanations (like rays of a yellow sun enable a Kryptonian to defy gravity and somehow accelerate their body through the air) = with such explanations containing virtually all fiction and no science.

But even upon my first viewing at about age 13, I interpreted the changing of the Earth's rotation as a movie-style visual metaphor for flying so fast that Superman was going backward in time. It was a perception provided to the audience that was not meant to be taken literally - or, in this case, visually, IMO anyway. (Perhaps it was intended as a way to show how Superman himself might have perceived his own traveling backwards in time?)

It was similar to other movie metaphors relating to the passage of time: like pages of a calendar being torn off, or a clock's hands suddenly sped up or time-lapse photography showing the passage of days & nights, or even something as blatant as a caption saying "One year later...". Even if the film is dead on realistic in all other respects, no one is presuming the audience will think there's a giant caption hanging in the sky somewhere that reads "One year later...".

It never occurred to me that Superman was supposed to have changed the rotation of the Earth (until people started arguing that doing so would devastate the planet) because I was thinking in that same symbolic language of movie time-passage metaphors (and how Earth spinning backwards would be a visual perception of such a concept) rather than trying to analyze or explain the physics of what appeared to be the Earth changing its rotation.

Question: what was the intention of the filmmakers? Visual metaphor for faster-than-light, reverse time travel, or Superman reversed the rotation of the planet which somehow didn't destroy the Earth, but rather transported him back in time?

I dunno. I couldn't offer a better analysis than what you just gave here. 13-year-old you was much cleverer and subtler interpreter than 13-year-old me. As a kid it just to seemed to me that there must have been some conceit of physics behind it.

I don't have a guess as to the artistic intention.

I do agree that this was an odd moment that challenges suspension of disbelief. I think they got away with the goods emotionally rather than logically. We were upset with the passing of Lois and so, like the children we were, we were willing to hope against hope that there was some way out from death--kind of like pounding on a wall in grief--Superman flies around the world, and he is Superman, and this is his movie, so... ...time travel.

Run Lola Run has a similar emotional function. The titular character keeps running until she gets it right, reality be damned. The Pirate Movie also invokes the primacy of emotion over reality when Christy McNichol's "Mabel" demands a happy ending to her story (which she gets). Of course, the former is an experimental movie that is premised on Lola running and rerunning and the latter is a very light comedy with lightsaber wielding pirates, so there is not much room for complaining about the triumph of emotion over reality in these cases. With Superman, you just kind of scratch your head a bit and just keep going.

Time travel in general is narrative acid, IMO. If you can kill your own grandfather, all bets are off. If Superman can go back in time anytime he pleases, why would he ever let the good people of Earth suffer a humiliating loss of life? Fat old Brando can only lecture him, he can't stop him. Time travel only works intuitively if you don't think about it. As "Older Joe" says in Looper to his younger counterpart Time travel only works logically if we suppose branching realities. That is, you don't change the present, but create a new past, a new present, and a new future. The world you left goes on without you.

Wasn't sure where to post this (but this thread seemed kind of close... but not really)...

Interesting stuff (I especially liked the one about how The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was really a commentary in support of vegetarianism while criticizing the livestock industry)...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajWg_saO9ZA

Re: Levels of Reality in Genre Fiction
 

I agree with the some people about The Usual Suspects in that the movie also felt pointless to me since the whole thing was a lie.

As for how realistic movies are, I am often not bothered by it. Some people are taken out of it. I know someone who is a nurse, and she cannot stand shows like Grey's Anatomy that just throw everything medically realistic, out the window she ways, and it bothers her.

However, I myself have had jobs and experience in audio recording, and I see movies where they really push the limit and even past it, as to how good recording equipment is in real life, especially in movies dealing with audio espionage and surveillance. But it doesn't bother me for some reason and I still get sucked into the story anyway.

I find I am more bothered by character decisions that can sometimes be too dumb or questionable compared to physics more often.

I think ‘medically realistic’ is a separate issue, though, especially when it’s about medicine as a sector/business/professional environment. There’s suspension of disbelief, and then there’s blatant disregard for the realities of a profession (and, at times, the laws of physics when it comes to medicine). I’ve heard this from many medical professionals about most medically-themed shows.

I rarely watch anything relating to my own (litigation comms, crisis management, high-level financial corporate comms) sector, but from what I’ve happened to skim, Succession was perfectly realistic/grounded/well-researched in terms of the minutiae of comms work (which you’d expect, seeing as it’s about a very real and powerful media empire, but then when you have things like Emily in Paris popping up, you realise how rare that actually is).

I do think though that ‘realism’ in sector-specific issues/portraying professional services work is a whole other ballgame/thread.

I’ve recently been rewatching Mr Robot, which I love. It manages to spend a fair bit of time on PR for a show about hackers, as it needs to keep Angela busy and somehow adjacent to all the events, which isn’t easy.

Well, even so, the comms sector portrayal here is absurd beyond belief, it doesn’t throw me out of the show exactly (seeing as it’s all ), but even so, I was mildly bemused to see a twenty-something (with next to no prior experience save for a stint at a tiny cybersecurity firm) come to lead a crisis comms team

It’s not so much the fact she gets the job (bribery and pulling favours do exist) but the fact that she supposedly does said job ‘well’ in the show’s universe. (Incidentally, I’m also annoyed that she’s shown to be doing no work whatsoever between her bouts of sneaking around and disrupting things for the sake of moving the plot along. I realise this is a minor, nit-picky gripe and you can’t fit everything into a show, but still, I did notice it. Plenty of people here would argue, though, that her comms work isn’t ‘essential to the plot’/‘necessary’ and so it need not be shown, and I do see the logic here).

All the ‘technical’ references when it comes to crisis comms are very much, hilariously off (such as the binary choice between Fox (!!!) and Bloomberg for one’s interview exclusive).

But I think the question is, how central is this to the plot? I’m super-pedantic about accuracy generally, but I can’t expect people who clearly understand hacking/cybersecurity well (as far as I’m aware, the tech side of Mr Robot largely holds up to scrutiny) to have a similar grasp of a sector that generally requires a diametrically opposite skill set.

In short, I feel like as long as there aren’t any obscene goofs, we’re good. Some sectors are easier to get right than others; most of John Grisham’s work, both the books and the adaptations, is accurate to the point of eliciting hysterical tears from those working anywhere near the legal sector.

And yet they're all lies, through and through. Hogwarts does not exist, nor Falstaff, nor Oedipus. If the devil is the father of lies, then the greatest trick he ever pulled was the creation of narrative fiction, literature is but an elaborate lie, and "beware the storyteller" is as good a point as any. Another point is, "beware your biases and assumptions." Kujan assumes Verbal is stupid and tells him that he is not going to go anywhere until he tells him what he wants to hear. Verbal obliged him.

Of course The Usual Suspects was told as a “lie”. The main character is making it up as he goes along, feeding us, the viewers, as well as the detective, a story that obviously didn’t happen because of who he is.
The movie itself is not a “lie” anymore than Rashomon, with its multiple point of views of the same event each ending differently.

It’s lazy criticism.

Re: Levels of Reality in Genre Fiction
 

Well I feel that Rashomon was a lot better because I cared about the situation more and found the characters more compelling, especially the protagonist. I guess The Usual Suspect's story I felt did not have any depth for me to get sucked into in comparison. I guess Rashomon just made me care about the lies.

I don't think that your experience here was unique. I think a lot of people were turned off by this film as it breaks a rule of story-telling which is "the lie must be true(ish?) for the duration of the lie... ...er, I mean story." Reminding the viewer that the story is just a lie during the story is a bit like a prostitute reminding you that s/he is only doing it for the money in middle of the conjugal act. I think that this is what bothered people--the film transgressed a boundary condition that is not explicitly written anywhere but part of a tacit-contract of how reality functions in fiction. Myself, I love the Usual Suspects, however, I am more interested in why people rejected the film "for lying," than I am in judging them for doing so.

Is the previous post about Rashomon or The Usual Suspects, or both?

The Usual Suspects

Re: Levels of Reality in Genre Fiction
 

I didn't really get a strong sense of tension from Rashomon, even though the writing was usually very impressive. The Usual Suspects was one brutal but well-told story that always kept pushing the boundaries of tension.

Re: Levels of Reality in Genre Fiction
 

Well I guess The Usual Suspects was well paced and cut for sure, if that adds to it, but I felt Rashomon had more to say when it comes to believing witnesses in crimes, and themes of jealousy and lust.

Also, in The Usual Suspects I felt cheated how the main character in the flashbacks changes appearances in order to support the lie with different actors playing him. Whereas at least in Rashomon the same actors still played the same characters in te lie, so it didn't feel as forced for me if that makes sense.