The metaconflict: Artist vs. plot

Back in college my friend tried to get me into Evil Dead. I wasn't impressed. Besides the fact that I didn't (and still don't) like horror movies, Evil Dead just didn't seem very good. My friend tried to impress on me that there was another story going on: that a bunch of film students without much in the way of equipment or experience went into the woods and made a whole movie, with plot and editing and makeup and a script and everything.

I didn't see that story, even though I see how he did. I didn't have the interest in the mechanics of film as such to analyze how or if they were done. Besides, I figured, the story of "someone made this thing" necessarily underpins basically everything.

Lately I've noticed myself paying attention to that "someone made this thing" narrative, though, and today I remembered Evil Dead.

If you watch my blog's sidebar (and I don't really know why you would) you've seen that I've been working my way through The X-Files. Girlfriend and I have been watching it in large gulps, almost always while one or both of us are working. As a long-running show, it had its good episodes and its bad episodes, but we noticed an odd and very unscientific correlation: the better written an episode was, the more likely that characters would survive and the problem would actually be resolved. Some weeks, it seemed, the writers stumped themselves completely with whatever terror they had thought up.

Of course, every writer faces this problem to some extent, but most of the time not coming up with a smart solution meant shoehorning in a dumb solution. The structure of The X-Files had the advantage (drawing, maybe, from the horror branch of its genealogy) that failure was an option. The entire supporting cast of an episode could die without upsetting the status quo. There was no guarantee that Mulder and Scully would solve the mystery, either. If the writers wrote themselves into a corner, they didn't necessarily have to write themselves out again.

Sometimes, when an episode didn't seem brilliantly written, Girlfriend and I would start watching the other story--the one about television writers on a deadline trying to think up a solution to their premise in time to save the supporting cast. They won some; they lost some.

I only recently realized how often I do this, though.

Yesterday Girlfriend and I got to see the Folger Shakespeare Theater's production of The Taming of the Shrew (on the very last day, no less). I didn't have any particular need to see The Taming of the Shrew as such, but well-produced Shakespeare is often worth the trouble. We were particularly interested in how they would "handle" it, because there's so much in the play that, taken at face value, is offensive or even disturbing to modern sensibilities. So we went out fully expecting a sort of gladiatorial theater: Folger Theater vs. The Taming of the Shrew; a fight to the finish, perhaps even to the death.

I'm glad to report that both combatants survived. However, there was no clear winner. The theater's strategy was bare-fisted; rather than cut the play deeply they tried to pin it down by laying interpretations on top of it. Two choices in particular were, in retrospect, like breaths of fresh air.

First, a lot hung Petruchio's sincerely exasperated and regretful delivery of "He that knows better how to tame a shrew, now let him speak; 'tis charity to shew."

Second, after the scene where Petruchio denies Kate a a hat and dress, they added a dialogue-less scene in which Kate, alone, discovers that Petruchio has given her an even better dress (well, really a nice duster and a pair of pants, since the whole thing was western-themed). As a rule, I dislike such brazen insertions, but in this case I'll concede that it was welcome.

I'm not sure there's any way around Kate's speech at the end, though. Ultimately we and Shakespeare's audience just have different ideas of what constitutes a happy ending; we have different conceptions of the natural state that needs to be restored. To the first audience, that Kate was unequivocally submissive was an unequivocal good. Petruchio's responsibility, they might have said, was to be a fair and loving master, not to share power. Try as we might to find an ambiguity to hang our own ideas on, Shakespeare didn't give us one. Because ambiguity is a flaw in a happy ending. So, because our ideas have changed, the ending of The Taming of the Shrew is unambiguously uncomfortable.

You are what you eat

It's almost Saturday again, and I'm trying to think of something to post other than that nothing much has changed since the last time I posted. I've made incremental progress on a lot of things. I've been researching video games (no, really) for another article pitch, and brainstorming adventure ideas. Plugging away at Nenle and Death. At least some parts of it have gotten to where I want them.

One disappointment is that the whole 72-hour response thing I expected from Paizo turns out to be a very old estimate. Like other venues, the normal wait can apparently get into months. So, I am still waiting, and coming up with other ideas mainly as a change of pace from other sorts of writing.

I've wanted to take a page from Alexandra Duncan's book (her metaphorical one, not her real one) and make a list of my media intake over the year. Where it seems to get tricky is that I haven't finished anything since the beginning of the year. Should I add something to the list when I start it, or when I finish it? What if I stop? Also, what if people who give me presents read my blog? What if I don't get around to reading or watching or playing everything I have? That's not really a what-if at all. I think I will always have a backlog of media, as I find things interesting at a significantly faster rate than I take them in.

On further thought, I figure I might as well try it. I can always take it down if I decide it's too much trouble. So, the guideline I'm using is that if I go to it twice, or finish it, it's on the list. This is to keep things off that I pick up once and never go back to. Things (like League of Legends) that I only do once but am pretty certain I'll go back to make the list too, though I'm more lenient about video games than books or television, and if I don't get back to the media in question in a reasonable amount of time I'll take it off the list. Anyway, I'm not going to claim to be reading Pope's translation of The Odyssey because I'm far from sure I'll pick it up again. Not to speak ill of Mr. Pope, of course, but in this day and age a little bit of that sort of thing goes a long way.

Lately I've been watching The X-Files. Almost at the end of season one. Skipped the episode about the Jersey Devil because of some sort of technical issue, or possibly boredom. Girlfriend and I came to the show as a compromise. We were looking at Netflix. I wanted Star Trek: The Next Generation, and she wanted Law and Order. I think we found a pretty satisfying middle ground.

I remember coming to that show very late (it premiered when I was eight). I think David Duchovny was gone already at that point. I liked it then, so I'm generally liking the older stuff a lot. Not that it's all good. There was the bit with the sentient computer that communicated entirely in sinister computer puns. And I think that "Born Again" and "Roland" may in fact have been the same script used two weeks in a row.

I was singularly impressed with "Beyond the Sea," which, as the 13th episode, I believe would have been the series finale if things hadn't taken off. It would have been a good one if that were the case. For one thing, it turns out that I really like Brad Dourif (and by "really like" I mean that when he wants to, he terrifies me). Mostly, or largely, though, it was a meditation on evil and skepticism and desperation that completely ruined my mood in the way that good art sometimes should.

I  haven't spent nearly as much time as I've wanted to playing Skyrim, which is almost certainly a good thing. My opinion, on the whole, has been going up. Just after I started complaining that the world was too safe, I started hitting monsters that scared me, and even ran away from the end of one boss fight to come back to it in a few levels. I still don't much care for anyone I've met yet though.