This came to me after watching Nebraska a few days ago. What I’m wondering can be easily dismissed via the “this is how fiction works” route, but I’ve been thinking about the deep reasoning behind it all the same. This probably ties in quite a bit with the “no respectable film has a happy ending” concept, but either way, I’ve been thinking it gets a bit boring when whenever
. This, in turn, probably ties in with the existential postmodern dilemma of “what do you do if the audience is savvy enough to anticipate every potential plot twist”, but even so, I feel like it makes even more sense to go with the “less expected” option (e.g.
.
This can be extrapolated to other examples of picking the, as it were, “unhappy turn of events” option, such as in Philomena the
. Don’t get me wrong, I mostly hate happy endings, but I also feel this in itself is a bit of a cop out/like taking the easy route.
With the lottery example, I’d be very interested to watch a fiction narrative about someone who did actually win the lottery and that ****ed the person up (like Michael Carroll, or maybe in a slightly more sophisticated Lords of the Rings/elder wand”-type way, such as that the money led the person to be killed in a robbery etc). My point is not that I’m particularly interested in watching people win the lottery and live happily ever after, but it could be spun differently, even as a Wolf of Wall Street-type redemption narrative where they spent all the money and then did something worthwhile with themselves, whatever. Yet we only seem to see that in biographies, very rarely (if at all) in fiction. In Nebraska itself, I’d be much more interested in seeing how
than in the “redemption”/“emotional journey” narrative being pushed (though I enjoyed the film).
Same applies to Harry Potter snapping the elder wand - there are tons of examples. I feel like it’d be much more interesting, narratively challenging and exciting to try to see that story to its logical conclusion when someone does win the lottery, does meet a long-lost son who, I don’t know, hates them but isn’t just dead, does turn out to be the descendant of royalty with a claim to fame, etc. Feels like there’s also an element of glee of sorts in watching these people get their faces rubbed in the dirt, not win the lottery, get the thing taken from them, etc, which is not unlike the worst kind of “torture porn” impulse making people delight in Hostel.
WARNING: spoilers below
a lottery ticket is mentioned, the protagonist never (yes, there are exceptions such as Run, Lola, Run,
) wins/if they’re told they won, it all turns out to be a mistake/they have to give it back/etc
WARNING: spoilers below
though to be pedantic, there’s no anticipation/disappointment dynamic of the lottery win there
WARNING: spoilers below
the lottery win being real, because as it is, it’s genuinely boring to watch someone discover that, oops, tough luck, they (obviously, duh) didn’t actually win.
This can be extrapolated to other examples of picking the, as it were, “unhappy turn of events” option, such as in Philomena the
With the lottery example, I’d be very interested to watch a fiction narrative about someone who did actually win the lottery and that ****ed the person up (like Michael Carroll, or maybe in a slightly more sophisticated Lords of the Rings/elder wand”-type way, such as that the money led the person to be killed in a robbery etc). My point is not that I’m particularly interested in watching people win the lottery and live happily ever after, but it could be spun differently, even as a Wolf of Wall Street-type redemption narrative where they spent all the money and then did something worthwhile with themselves, whatever. Yet we only seem to see that in biographies, very rarely (if at all) in fiction. In Nebraska itself, I’d be much more interested in seeing how
WARNING: spoilers below
an 85-year-old man would spend a million dollars - would he share? Gamble? Buy a house? Buy a million beer bottles?
Same applies to Harry Potter snapping the elder wand - there are tons of examples. I feel like it’d be much more interesting, narratively challenging and exciting to try to see that story to its logical conclusion when someone does win the lottery, does meet a long-lost son who, I don’t know, hates them but isn’t just dead, does turn out to be the descendant of royalty with a claim to fame, etc. Feels like there’s also an element of glee of sorts in watching these people get their faces rubbed in the dirt, not win the lottery, get the thing taken from them, etc, which is not unlike the worst kind of “torture porn” impulse making people delight in Hostel.