The risky tautology inherent in the
contemporary writing project has begun:
in order to evoke a debased language
(the debased language your character
might use), you must be willing to represent
that mangled language in your text, and
perhaps thoroughly debase your own language.
----How Fiction Works, James Wood, p. 32
contemporary writing project has begun:
in order to evoke a debased language
(the debased language your character
might use), you must be willing to represent
that mangled language in your text, and
perhaps thoroughly debase your own language.
----How Fiction Works, James Wood, p. 32
Consider a problem. How to portray boredom? Do it too well and you bore the audience. Unless one has an obnoxious artistic commitment to "truth all the way down" (cleverly subverting the audience's expectation to be entertained), this is a problem.
Solutions are various. There are, for example, strategies of compression. We might watch the accelerated clock on the wall quickly passing through hours while our character is stuck. We might present a montage in which our character scratches marks on a prison wall. Alternatively, we might play it for comedy--we laugh at a character who expresses comical annoyance at the lack of stimulation. Too much truth can kill the fun. In many cases, the artist must "tell" the truth without having the audience experience it.
Consider a moral problem - "How to make a war movie that isn't subtly and implicitly pro-war?" Film makes things beautiful. We can't leave our audiences with PTSD and we want them to be engaged (thus, we don't really tell a dirty little secret of war--that it is largely boring as troops march around and wait for orders). We must make it dramatic. We must make it tragic. In so doing we make it beautiful. Beauty is enticing. If we are taken in by the film, then to some extent we are also taken in by war. This has proved a tougher nut to crack.
Consider another problem of versimilitude, the problem of the truth appearing false. There are parts of the "true story" of Hacksaw Ridge which were allegedly omitted because the audience, it was felt, would not believe the depiction (too good to be true).
A related problem is a "moral" rejection of the truth. Sometimes the whole truth is not told, because it would create a distaste for our main characters. Thus a bisexual love triangle in Bonnie and Clyde (1967) was cut from the script and John Nash's homosexual exploits were omitted from A Beautiful Mind (2001).
We had a dust-up in another thread, and I have no wish of extending it here, but it does raise some interesting questions about historical fiction (which appears to have a duty to "tell the truth" as well as "entertain").
1. If depicting what "actually happened" casts a group in an untoward essentialist light (e.g., racism), is it dirty pool to depict it as it happened?
2. If in depicting all events as they really happened, the narrative takes the appearance of melodrama (undermining the seriousness of the message with apparent "overplaying"), would it be better the scale back the depiction of the events for maximum impact (e.g., Hacksaw Ridge holding back on "unbelievable" heroic details)?
3. If spending too much time "with the enemy" makes us sympathetic to evil, should we not spend too much time with the devil? Consider the problem of people identifying with Travis Bickle, Vic Mackey, and Walter White. Should we NOT make too many films like Das Boot, lest we humanize institutional evil?
4. Should the Devil always be made to look the part of the devil, even if the historical record shows that a particular engagement involved no atrocities by the other side? Solutions are various. There are, for example, strategies of compression. We might watch the accelerated clock on the wall quickly passing through hours while our character is stuck. We might present a montage in which our character scratches marks on a prison wall. Alternatively, we might play it for comedy--we laugh at a character who expresses comical annoyance at the lack of stimulation. Too much truth can kill the fun. In many cases, the artist must "tell" the truth without having the audience experience it.
Consider a moral problem - "How to make a war movie that isn't subtly and implicitly pro-war?" Film makes things beautiful. We can't leave our audiences with PTSD and we want them to be engaged (thus, we don't really tell a dirty little secret of war--that it is largely boring as troops march around and wait for orders). We must make it dramatic. We must make it tragic. In so doing we make it beautiful. Beauty is enticing. If we are taken in by the film, then to some extent we are also taken in by war. This has proved a tougher nut to crack.
Consider another problem of versimilitude, the problem of the truth appearing false. There are parts of the "true story" of Hacksaw Ridge which were allegedly omitted because the audience, it was felt, would not believe the depiction (too good to be true).
A related problem is a "moral" rejection of the truth. Sometimes the whole truth is not told, because it would create a distaste for our main characters. Thus a bisexual love triangle in Bonnie and Clyde (1967) was cut from the script and John Nash's homosexual exploits were omitted from A Beautiful Mind (2001).
We had a dust-up in another thread, and I have no wish of extending it here, but it does raise some interesting questions about historical fiction (which appears to have a duty to "tell the truth" as well as "entertain").
1. If depicting what "actually happened" casts a group in an untoward essentialist light (e.g., racism), is it dirty pool to depict it as it happened?
2. If in depicting all events as they really happened, the narrative takes the appearance of melodrama (undermining the seriousness of the message with apparent "overplaying"), would it be better the scale back the depiction of the events for maximum impact (e.g., Hacksaw Ridge holding back on "unbelievable" heroic details)?
3. If spending too much time "with the enemy" makes us sympathetic to evil, should we not spend too much time with the devil? Consider the problem of people identifying with Travis Bickle, Vic Mackey, and Walter White. Should we NOT make too many films like Das Boot, lest we humanize institutional evil?