The problem of the fantastic in Stranger Than Fiction

My wife got the 2006 film Stranger Than Fiction from Netflix this weekend, and since she went with me to see giant robots pummeling each other I watched it with her.

(OMG SPOILERS AHEAD RUN!!!)

The premise of the narrative is that the protagonist, Harold Crick, one day begins hearing the voice of author Kay Eiffel in his head, narrating his life. He eventually figures out that he is a character in one of her books, and since she kills off all her characters, he must find a way to stop her from finishing her manuscript.

In the end, all parties, including Harold, decide that Eiffel's book is just so good that it needs to be finished, and therefore Harold must die. This is, of course, absurd, but I can suspend (just barely) my disbelief and imagine that the book was so moving Harold and everyone else found its completion more valuable than his mundane life.

The problem with the narrative is that Harold and Eiffel meet, and Eiffel becomes aware of what she is doing. At that point the conceit of the story ceases to be fantastic and becomes mechanistic.

In The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre, Tzvetan Todorov defines the fantastic:

In a world which is indeed our world, the one we know, a world without devils, sylphides, or vampires, there occurs and event which cannot be explained by the laws of this same familiar world. The person who experiences this event must opt for one of two possible solutions: either he is the victim of an illusion of the senses, a product of the imagination – and the laws of the world remain what they are; or else the event has indeed taken place, it is an integral part of reality – but then this reality is controlled by laws unknown to us. Either the devil is an illusion, an imaginary being; or else he really exists, precisely like other living beings – with this reservation, that we encounter him infrequently.

The fantastic occupies the duration of this uncertainty. Once we choose one answer or the other, we leave the fantastic for a neighboring genre, the uncanny or the marvelous. The fantastic is a hesitation experienced by a person who knows only the laws of nature, confronting an apparently supernatural event. (25)

Once Harold meets Eiffel and they confirm to each other that they are each real, the phenomenon becomes a real phenomenon, and like all real phenomenon it is subject to rules, even if we don't understand those rules yet.

In other words, at this point in the narrative the phenomenon shifts from something fantastic happening to Harold to a super power that Eiffel possesses. As every comic book reader knows, super powers follow rules and have loopholes. And the film itself establishes some rules for her power: things only happen to Harold once Eiffel has typed them on her typewriter; writing with a pen won't do it. And they only fully take effect once she has typed the period at the end of the sentence.

So, once we've established that the phenomenon is real and follows rules, any sensible person would try to find out what the rules are and game them. Rather than choose between Harold's life and the greatest piece of literature of the decade, why not try to game the system so you can have both? Anyone faced with this dilemma would have tried to, for instance, change the main character's name to see if that would break the link between the manuscript and Harold. Or, since pen writing doesn't count, have someone else try typing her penned manuscript, to see if Eiffel personally typing is required for the power to be activated. Or she could write a happy ending, then throw out the last few pages and write the ending she wanted; presumably her power doesn't extend to changing the past.

Obviously, a story about Eiffel testing the rules and limits of her newfound super power is not the movie the writers wanted to make. But the fact that the characters don't act in a way that any sensible person would without any explanation is a glaring problem with the narrative.

Narrative Formation and Commercials

How do commercials affect narrative formation? Commercials for a narrative product are seen months before the actual narrative is out. They are designed to create anticipation for the narrative product, and so they inevitably also create expectations for it as well. When consumers actually get the product, therefore, they have already formed an understanding of it that will color their interaction with the narrative.

On a superficial level, this can just mean that people will go into a movie saturated with media hype that the movie will be totally awesome, and will come out thinking that it was indeed pretty awesome, even if they would have hated it absent the hype. And, of course, commercials can totally misrepresent products, creating disappointment in a product that would have been good on its own but doesn't measure up to its own advertising.

But what happens when a commercial does something more subtle, like emphasize one element present in a narrative over others? Can it make consumers go into a narrative more attuned to that element than otherwise, in effect playing a part in constructing the narrative?

I think it's possible. I started thinking about this after going back over the excellently produced commercials for the Xbox360's flagship games, Halo 3 and Gears of War. First, the several Halo 3 commercials from its advertising campaign:









These commercials are brilliant. By setting them decades after the events in the game, as interviews with veterans decades after the battles in the game, they in effect become an afterward to the game. Although they are advertisements, they become part of the narrative. They actually create new narrative content. In addition, they create a new narrative emphasis for the game. The commercials construct an image of Master Chief as a hero that gives the marines hope, drawing them together and giving them the courage to fight on, a shining beacon in the dark hell of war. Decades later, that heroism and that hope is still etched indelibly in the hearts and minds of the veterans.

The game story itself is fast-paced action narrative, where Master Chief goes from crisis to crisis with hardly any moment to catch a breath. There is not a lot of room for character development. The narrative does feature some hints of the heroic image the marines have of the Chief; he is greeted with joy when he comes across a new group of them, and they rally around him. But this is certainly not the narrative's main focus, and it doesn't devote much time to developing the marines, the Chief's relationship with them or the image of the Chief in their popular imagination.

Do these commercials bring out that narrative element more strongly? I think its possible that they do. Every time a marine cries “It's the Chief!” players will probably think about the commercials, and how these marines, elated to see Master Chief, may decades later become the veterans who reminisce about how the Chief gave them the hope they needed to keep fighting. The marines' happiness at meeting Master Chief is an element present in the game, but I think the commercials bring it out much more strongly by linking it to the new narrative content they provide.

And then there's the Gears of War commercials:



Although not as involved as the Halo 3 commercials, this commercial still contributes to narrative formation. In the game story, again an action narrative that moves from one barely contained crisis to the next, Marcus Fenix is portrayed as a gruff, unflappable soldier who accepts that every battle will probably go FUBAR and turn into some fresh hell. A hell he is fully prepared to shoot and hack his way out of. Despite his soul patch, his character is not developed as the kind of person who would wander through the crumbled remains of a once-glorious city, examining broken statues and reflecting on what the world has lost.

This commercial adds that narrative element. Fenix barely comments on the ruined world around him, and is more concerned with using it as cover than pondering it. But as the narrative takes the player from demolished concrete buildings to astonishingly well-preserved beautiful structures that provide a glimpse into the glorious city that once was, players might well remember Fenix morosely examining the ruins of the city, reminding them that there might be another side to his character when he's not flung headlong into battle after battle.

So when commercials act more subtly than just hyping or misrepresenting a narrative, I think they can contribute significantly to narrative formation by emphasizing certain elements present in the narrative that might otherwise not have come out as strongly. And in some cases they can even add new narrative content, acting like an addendum to the main narratie.

Battlestar, we will miss you

I'm glad Battlestar Galactica concluded, but sad that it's over.  Or, more accurately, I'm sad that there's nothing else on TV that even approaches its caliber that I can watch now.  

BSG is, I think, on the short list for best TV show ever.  It is a serious attempt at a narrative that takes advantage of the television format to create a vast narrative scope.  It has a movie's focus on a singe coherent narrative, but the long format creates a story that could never be told within the time limits of a movie.  

It is definitely the best Science Fiction TV show ever made, and possibly the best visual SF narrative as well, right up there vying with Blade Runner and such.  Unlike most science fictional narratives it:

• Has real characters, with real flaws.  They obsess, fail, get drunk, get depressed, act irrationally, marry, divorce, break down, etc.  In most SF television shows characters only have superficial flaws (i.e., Worf is antisocial, Rodney McKay is arrogant), and only do anything seriously wrong when under the influence of an alien virus/transporter accident/mind control or when replaced by an evil version of themselves from another dimension.
• Has a plot.  As mentioned above, it has a single coherent plot that progresses from the first episode to the last.  Although there are couple of episodes that focus more on character exposition than plot development, for the most part BSG avoids the planet-of-the-week trap that most SF shows fall in to.  And because it is a TV narrative it can tell a more in-depth narrative than any short movie, no matter how brilliantly executed.
• Rides the Science Fictional knife edge perfectly.  There are two ways to go wrong with the science fictional element of a SF narrative.  The first is to essentially ignore it, fiat that some technology exists that lets us do all of this stuff in space, and not try to engage with it.  This is what happens in most SF anime; the science fictional element doesn't add anything to the narrative, and the war that is being fought in space might as well be fought as a naval war in Earth's oceans, except that giant robots probably wouldn't float so well.  The second way to go wrong is overemphasis of the science fictional element, at the expense of the plot and characters.  This happens mostly in SF novels, where an author is more excited about explaining his fictional technological development than creating a narrative.  It also hurts shows like Star Trek, which use technological wizardry to solve any problem and save the characters from having to make any hard choices.  BSG, however, has just enough science fiction.  The science fictional elements are crucial to the plot and add significantly to the narrative (cylons, resurrection, the nature of FTL travel, etc), but the technology doesn't take center stage, and it doesn't save the characters from having to fight a bloody defensive war that engenders great loss.

Of course, the big thing that sets BSG apart is that it is just well written.  It tackles big issues, and its themes are both timely and timeless.  It investigates the morality of torture right alongside the nature of humanity.  Characters are believable and mutable.  The plot mysteries are layered, so that the mysteries presented at the beginning of the show are peeled back to reveal more mysteries underneath.

It is, overall, one amazing narrative, and it will be missed.

Most men internally refer to themselves as "ore"

That from a discussion of the revisions to the list of Jōyō kanji over at No-sword. "Ore," the more aggressive, self-elevating male first person pronoun, is apparently in the official list of commonly used kanji this year.

I've always wondered about that. Although there are some hints in interior monologues in literature, often personal pronouns are left out altogether, making it difficult to pin down what pronoun characters would refer to themselves with in the absence of social considerations.

Some photos of architecture

Here are a few photos of a new addition to the University of Virginia's Campbell Hall (appropriately, the architecture building). It really has a great modernist aesthetic, showing off the austere beauty of unadorned concrete, metal and glass. I really like it! It's especially nice in Charlottesville, where, for some reason, everything must pretend to be built with brick, even buildings that no one would ever really build with brick.

At the right is the old building it attaches to (brick, of course).

For some reason they felt the need to fill the framing holes with these plastic things. It just looks kind of cheap. Is this normal? I can't be sure, but I think in buildings I've seen before they've just been left open.

It's Intentional

Great post from Acephalous on convincing people that comic imagery is worth analyzing:

As anyone who teaches funny books or films knows, the task of convincing students that the scene before them is anything other than incidental would try Job's patience....

I've designed an introduction to visual rhetoric assignment that forces students to understand that all comic and film images are obscenely overdetermined. On the first day of class, I'll present them with Alan Moore's script for the eighth panel on the first page of The Killing Joke:

NOW WE ARE LOOKING AT THE POLICE CAR SIDE-ON SO THAT WE SEE THE UNIFORMED OFFICER STANDING FACE-ON TO US OVER ON THE LEFT AS HE STANDS WITH HIS BACK TO THE CAR AND COMMISSIONER GORDON FACE-ON OVER TO THE RIGHT, LEANING AGAINST THE CAR AND DRINKING HIS STEAMING COFFEE, MAYBE LOOKING UP WITH A QUIZZICAL AND CONCERNED LOOK OVER THE RIM OF HIS CUP TOWARDS THE EXTREME LEFT OF THE FOREGROUND, WHERE WE CAN SEE THE BATMAN ENTERING THE PICTURE FROM THE LEFT, IN PROFILE. SINCE BATMAN IS (a) CLOSER TO US AND (b) TALLER THAN EITHER THE COMMISSIONER OR THE PATROLMAN IN THE BACKGROUND WE CANNOT SEE THE TOP OF HIS HEAD HERE ABOVE THE BOTTOM OF THE NOSE AS THE FRONT OF HIM ENTERS THE PANEL ON THE LEFT. HIS EYES AND UPPER HEAD ARE INVISIBLE BEYOND THE TOP PANEL BORDER AND ALL WE CAN REALLY SEE IS HIS MOUTH, WITH THE BIG AND DETERMINED SQUARE JAW AND THE GRIM AND DISAPPROVING SCOWL OF THE LIPS. THE BATMAN DOES NOT APPEAR FROM HIS POSTURE TO SO MUCH AS GLANCE AT EITHER GORDON OR THE PATROLMAN AS HE WALKS PAST THEM EVEN THOUGH BOTH OF THEM STEAL GLANCES AT HIM WITH DIFFERING LOOKS OF UNEASE. THE PATROLMAN LOOKS UNEASY JUST TO BE IN THE BATMAN'S PRESENCE, WHILE GORDON LOOKS MORE CONCERNED ABOUT THE BATMAN'S POSSIBLE STATE OF MIND. RAIN DRIPS FROM EVERYTHING, INCLUDING THE BATMAN'S JUTTING AND GRIZZLED CHIN. GORDON GIVES THE LARGELY-OFF-PANEL VIGILANTE A PENETRATING LOOK OVER HIS COFFEE CUP, AND THE BLUE LIGHT ATOP THE CAR WASHES OVER ALL OF THEM AS IT CIRCLES.

No Dialogue.

Then I'll ask them to draw it. After assuring them that I did indeed say draw it, I'll let them have about ten minutes to transform Moore's prose into stick-figure theater before showing them how Brian Bolland interpreted it.

Discussion will ensue. I'll show them the scripts to other panels—ask them why, for example, Moore insisted the receptionist at Arkham Asylum be reading Graham Greene's The Comedians—and if all goes well, I won't spend the next few months reading essays about how in this panel Alan Moore wanted Batman to punch someone in the face so he told Brian Bolland to draw a picture of Batman punching someone in the face.

Unlike photography or film, where things can enter a frame because they just happened to be behind the subject, everything in a comic frame is placed there intentionally.  And since every additional element added to a frame increases the work required (and therefore the cost) to produce it, you can bet that authors/artists aren't chucking stuff in randomly.  A comic panel is quite deliberate, and should be analyzed as part of the narrative.  We have no compunction about picking apart, parsing and analyzing the minutiae of sentences in literature, and there's no reason narrative art shouldn't be subject to the same analysis.

The new I-novel?

The New Yorker has a great article on cell phone novels (keitai shousetsu) (via Meta no Tame):

The cell-phone novel, or keitai shosetsu, is the first literary genre to emerge from the cellular age. For a new form, it is remarkably robust. Maho i-Land, which is the largest cell-phone-novel site, carries more than a million titles, most of them by amateurs writing under screen handles, and all available for free. According to the figures provided by the company, the site, which also offers templates for blogs and home pages, is visited three and a half billion times a month.

In the classic iteration, the novels, written by and for young women, purport to be autobiographical and revolve around true love, or, rather, the obstacles to it that have always stood at the core of romantic fiction: pregnancy, miscarriage, abortion, rape, rivals and triangles, incurable disease. The novels are set in the provinces—the undifferentiated swaths of rice fields, chain stores, and fast-food restaurants that are everywhere Tokyo is not—and the characters tend to be middle and lower middle class.

Read the whole thing. What's interesting to me is that keitai shousetsu seem to be a modern iteration of the I-Novel, (Watakushi-shousestu or Shi-shousetsu) a literary genre popular in Japan around the Taisho period. The I-novel is characterized by narratives that are both confessional and fictional. Part of the appeal of the I-novel was that authors would "confess" dark secrets from their own lives, but the novels were not autobiographical, and freely mixed in fictional characters or settings or events with the confessional elements of the story.

In the Taiso era these novels were mostly written by men, often confessing their affairs. The keitai shousetsu, however, seems to be a kind of new I-novel that is primarily produced by women. Like the I-novels of old, they freely mix fiction with the author's own true-life confessions.

However, the Taisho I-novels were written by famous novelists, and part of their attraction was learning about the sordid details of the lives of these famous cultural elites. Keitai shousetsu, on the other hand, are written by amateur authors, pecking away at their cell phones anonymously.* What's the appeal to consumers? Do they feel they can relate to the narratives? Does the amateur nature feel more honest? Is it refreshing to read literature in a format and language they are more comfortable with? I'd be very interested to find out.

I also like the interaction of media here. Authors publish theirs stories on websites, the best of which bubble up and are seized by print publishers. But simply printing the story isn't enough:

Printed, the books announce themselves as untraditional, with horizontal lines that read left to right, as on the phone. ... Other conventions established on the screen are faithfully replicated in print. Often, the ink is colored or gray; black text is thought to be too imposing. “Some publishers removed the returns, but those books don’t sell well,” a representative of Goma Books said. “You need to keep that flow.”

Does the horizontality, colored text and excessive line spacing create a feeling of intimacy between the reader and author? Does removing these conventions destroy the sense of amateur honesty, making it seem like a "professional" media production? This little interaction between different types of media is pretty fascinating.


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*Inputting Japanese on cell phones is easier than inputting English, but even so I can't imagine writing a whole novel on one! My poor thumbs!