Assorted Nonsense

Alfred Hitchcock used to call people who cared too much about logic in stories the Plausibles.  He thought the Plausibles were looking for the wrong thing in his movies, that instead of looking for flawless narrative logic, they should yield to the narrative.  And it was the job of the storyteller to give the narrative sufficient momentum to compel the audience to do that.

A while back I finished reading the first Harry Potter book to my kids.  Afterwards I thought, wow, that was some really solid plotting on Rowling’s part.  In my opinion she really set up the ending nicely. 

A couple of months later I sat down and rewatched the end of the movie with the girls.  And I thought, okay wait a minute.  How did Quirrel get through the chess match?  It was completely intact when Hermione, Ron and Harry came across it.

The movie doesn’t say how, and neither (I believe) does  the book (I haven’t gone back to check yet). 

This, of course, makes me a Plausible.

But Rowling produced sufficient narrative momentum that I didn’t notice this logical gap until well after I read the book and saw the film.  And I must confess that it wasn’t until after I’d read the book for a second time, and seen the film for a third time that I gave this omission any thought (perhaps I’m not a Plausible after all).

I know that some people probably don’t care.  They assume that Voldemort must have helped Quirrel somehow, or because Quirrel was a professor he must have known some secret backdoor or the like.  But I find it interesting that Rowling doesn’t make any attempt whatsoever to cross this particular T.  (I will have to reread that portion of the book to confirm this, but the movie certainly doesn’t make any attempt.)  And this omission on her part (or the filmmaker’s part) has done nothing to dampen audience enjoyment or diminish sales.

What does this mean?  It means a few things.  It means Hitchcock was right, for one thing.  Absolute narrative logic is beside the point.  Entertainment value, suspense and narrative momentum trump narrative logic hands down.  It means storytellers don’t have to dot every i and cross every t.

It also means I’ve spent way too much time sorting out the intricacies of the labyrinthine plot of my work in progress…

Here’s more on Avatar, in response to this blog post, which I really think is over thinking the matter.

So now I’ll just go ahead and over think it:

Cameron’s hero is white because he’s white.  If he were to make a
movie with a hero of a different skin colour he would probably find
himself subject to even greater criticism, so he’s pretty much gotta
stick to white.

So he makes a movie about his white hero interacting with aliens.  He
could make the aliens white, but then they’d be the same as his hero.
It would be a completely white movie.  What kind of criticism would he
be subject to then?  So he doesn’t make them white, he makes them a
different colour, blue.  Why blue?  Because his mother dreamt about a
nine foot tall blue alien when he was a kid, which he thought was cool
and always remembered.

Now he’s got three choices.  Either the aliens are more advanced than
his hero, or the same technological level, or more primitive.  If he
made them more advanced there would be no comparisons to Dances With
Wolves and probably a whole let less criticism.  Maybe he should have
done that.  Better yet, had he made the natives the same technological
level as the hero it would have been a fair fight at the end and he
also would have avoided comparisons to Dances With Wolves.  Probably
he should have done that. Except that environmentalism is all the rage
now and it fit the plot he had in mind so he made the mistake of
making the aliens noble savages, and the comparisons to First Nations
folk becomes inevitable.

So what is the criticism in that post exactly?  That this movie is a
product of guilt, that it’s a white guy trying to make up for the
crimes of his own race by creating a hero who saves another race from
his own.  And that the movie is also a product of wish fulfillment,
because while he’s at it the hero (with whom the filmmaker and
audience both identify) gets to be just that, a hero, and the coolest
member of the other race.

On the first point, Cameron himself isn’t responsible for the white
invasion of the Americas. So I think it’s quite an assumption that he
would feel any guilt on that matter.  Why should he?  He didn’t have
anything to do with it.  He probably does (and should) deplore any
atrocities associated with said invasion, but I don’t see how any
residual racial guilt would necessarily find its way into any of his
films.  That being said I suppose it’s entirely possible that his
great grandfather was General George Armstrong Custer, in which case I stand corrected, but I doubt it.

On the second point I expect Cameron is guilty as charged.  It’s
completely wish fulfillment.  But what’s wrong with that?  What’s
wrong with fantasizing about being the hero, and getting to fly on the
backs of cool huge birds, and being able to fight like a son of a gun?
 Even if it is fantasizing about being a hero among a race other than
your own?  Maybe it’s just about being accepted, accepted by people
you happen to think are cool, and no more than that, certainly not
about being accepted by people a whole bunch of other people (who have
no more in common with you other than your skin colour) once treated
(exceedingly) poorly.

The more I think about it the more I realize that Cameron’s one true
mistake was making his aliens blue.  If he had made them white it
would have been exactly the same movie, but nobody would have been
able to read more into it than is actually there (although I expect
they still would have).  In real life we strive to be colour blind,
because we know that skin colour doesn’t (or shouldn’t) matter.  I
would suggest that the same should apply to this film.  It seems to me
Cameron is being picked on because of the colour of his skin.

Sometimes an alien is just an alien.

Somebody on a listserve I’m on trashed Avatar recently.  Having just stated on the same listserve that I liked the movie, I felt compelled to respond.  I can’t post the post I was responding to, but it should be pretty clear the sorts of things they were saying in my response:

Hi **********,

***********Spoiler alert**********

As someone who enjoyed the film I feel compelled to respond.

Cameron is the first to admit that the story is a hodge-podge of all his favourite science fiction tropes gleaned since childhood.  I don’t see how this is a bad thing as long as it’s not plagiarism, and the original sources are not denied; we all stand on the shoulders of giants.  No less a misanthrope than Harlan Ellison has stated that he would have been fine with Cameron “stealing” his ideas if only he had been credited (for Terminator).

Yes, the natives are Noble Savages but again I don’t see why that in itself is bad.  We’re not allowed to create stories about primitive cultures, or allegedly advanced cultures encountering those primitive cultures?

Your main criticism (if I’ve interpreted it correctly) seems to be
that the so-called primitive (non white, somewhat matriarchal) society needed to be saved by a member of a so-called advanced (white, male) society.  However, in the film it doesn’t appear he taught them much.  He certainly taught them little or nothing about fighting.  For one thing he didn’t have much time to.  He simply led them, brought them together to fight, inspired by the example of a previous generation of natives (as opposed to some innate “white” wisdom he himself brought to the table).  And ultimately when his attempt to thwart the enemy
failed, it was Pandora itself that responded, achieving success with its own methods, spurred into action by the memories and knowledge of a woman (admittedly white).

I would submit that the white man learned far more from this primitive culture (and the example of least two female mentors and role models) than he taught them.  Specifically, environmentalism and how to utilize (as opposed to exploit) your environment.  In return, the only thing he really taught them was the reality of the threat that they faced, which (through no fault of their own) they were ill-equipped to
appreciate.  And why shouldn’t he be allowed to teach them that if that was what they needed to learn, and it was all he had to offer in return for the riches with which they endowed him?

Finally, when the hero faced the American military leader in the end, the larger battle had already been won, by Pandora.  He was not therefore fighting on behalf of the natives at this point.  The final confrontation was about saving his own life.  And he didn’t even win that fight; he needed to be saved by a native (a woman, no less).

I would like to hear your unabridged thoughts on this movie’s
treatment of heterosexism, anthropomorphism, gender politics, Real Men and the fight between military (male) and cultural sensitivity etc. to understand exactly what else about this (in my opinion) really quite enjoyable movie got under your skin.

Regards,

Joe

Freaky Friday must seem like a strange movie to write about. It’s not a classic movie by any stretch, especially the remake this past decade starring Jamie Lee Curtis and whatsherface.

But the 1976 version is definitely worth watching, but only to catch one of the few film performances of the effervescent Barbara Harris.

I picked up the movie recently for the kids to see. I thought they might enjoy seeing Jodie Foster as a kid, having just seen her as an adult in Nim’s Island. I was also curious what I would make of Foster’s performance as a kid. I remember as a young boy being struck by her charisma. But although perfectly serviceable her performance doesn’t really stand out in Freaky Friday, especially next to Harris, who blows everybody else in the film completely off the map, and who makes Jamie Lee Curtis in the remake look like a complete amateur.

When Harris first appeared on screen I didn’t have a clue who she was, and I wrote her off as some forgettable B string actor from the sixties (though later I realized I have seen her, in films such as Grosse Pointe Blank, and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels).

But almost as soon as she switches bodies with Foster’s character Harris proves she’s a cut above. She inhabits the role of a child in a full grown woman’s body, making it utterly believable, but more than that she’s just so darned interesting to watch, beautiful for one thing, but beyond that vibrant and funny, quirky in the best sense of the word, and ALIVE. I was glued to her performance for the entire film, and as soon as it was over I raced to the internet to figure out who she was.

Turns out she was a well regarded Broadway actor who only ever did a smattering of films (16 all told, I believe), perhaps most notably in Robert Altman’s Nashville, which I haven’t seen yet, but must, just to see her.

BEST NOVEL: The Yiddish Policeman’s Union by Michael Chabon (HarperCollins, Fourth Estate)

BEST NOVELLA: “All Seated on the Ground” by Connie Willis (Asimov’s Dec. 2007, Subterranean Press) [See SF Signal review]

BEST NOVELETTE: “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate” by Ted Chiang (F&SF Sept. 2007) [See SF Signal review]

BEST SHORT STORY: “Tideline” by Elizabeth Bear (Asimov’s June 2007) [See SF Signal review]

BEST RELATED BOOK: Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction by Jeff Prucher (Oxford University Press) [See SF Signal review]

BEST DRAMATIC PRESENTATION, LONG FORM: Stardust Written by Jane Goldman & Matthew Vaughn Based on the novel by Neil Gaiman Directed by Matthew Vaughn (Paramount Pictures)

BEST DRAMATIC PRESENTATION, SHORT FORM: Doctor Who “Blink” Written by Stephen Moffat Directed by Hettie Macdonald (BBC)

BEST PROFESSIONAL EDITOR, SHORT FORM: Gordon Van Gelder

BEST PROFESSIONAL EDITOR, LONG FORM: David G. Hartwell

BEST PROFESSIONAL ARTIST: Stephan Martiniere

BEST SEMIPROZINE: Locus

BEST FANZINE: File 770 edited by Mike Glyer

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JOHN W. CAMPBELL AWARD FOR BEST NEW WRITER: Mary Robinette Kowal

Somebody said The Dark Knight just may be one of the top ten movies ever made.  So I made sure I saw it on the Big Screen, expecting to be blown away.

If you haven’t seen it already, let me do you a favour by lowering your expectations somewhat.

It is a good movie.  A very good movie.  And I use the word “very” knowing full well that it is the whore of the English language, as my old English teacher Mr. Arsenault used to say.  But is The Dark Knight one of the ten best movies ever made?

No.  It may be one of the ten best comic book adaptations ever made.  Maybe even one of the top three.  ’Cause Spiderman Two was better.  And Batman Returns was pretty darned good too.

Now a part of this might just be my own personality.  I’m a big fan of humour myself.  Not Batman the Television series kind of humour, just humour.  Anything funny.  It doesn’t have to be all funny, but a few chuckles never hurt anything.  And to be fair there are two or three subtle chuckles in The Dark Knight.  Intelligent chuckles too, that not everyone watching got, I don’t think.  I appreciated those chuckles.  I could have used a few more.

Here’s the thing: in my view critics are all over this movie because it’s a serious movie.  It’s without a doubt the most serious comic book adapation ever made (at least until The Watchmen comes out).  They’re calling it a dark movie.  But it really isn’t so much dark as it is SERIOUS in big bold blinking letters.  And that’s why the critics love it, because it’s so stinking serious.  Covering some seriously serious themes, such as, how do you beat the bad guys when they don’t play by the same rules as you do?  And it’s fine all this seriousness, it’s fairly intelligent and not goofy and definitely way closer to the spirit of the original Batman.

But in my view the seriousness, the earnestness of the movie also tanks it a little bit.  Who likes to hang out with someone who’s so friggin’ serious all the time?  Even Heath Ledger’s much vaunted Joker is pretty serious.  A little more wit from the man wouldn’t have hurt, and would have added to the entertainment value.  ‘Cause the movie wasn’t quite as entertaining as it could have been.  It was thought provoking, and interesting, but entertaining?  Silence of the Lambs wasn’t all that entertaining either, come to think of it; it was a movie (and a performance) I appreciated more than enjoyed.  I’m not sure you can be both grim and entertaining.

The curious thing about The Dark Knight is that it was so adult and so serious and yet so full of plot holes at the same time.  Now, I’m not that much of a stickler for plot holes; I kind of subscribe to Hitchcock’s notion that if the ride is exhilarating enough the odd plot hole shouldn’t bother you.  And The Dark Knight certainly had its share of exhilarating moments.  But in a movie so ostensibly adult and serious I had trouble getting past the following question: (Spoiler alert) How the heck did the Joker place all those bombs everywhere without anybody spotting them?  How did he manage to walk away from Gotham General without some sharpshooter or even beat cop plugging him in the chest?

Yes, I know it’s a comic book adaptation and HItchcock would decry me for a “plausible.”  Sorry, Hitch.

I did enjoy the movie.  But I wish I’d seen it with my expectations properly managed.

You’re welcome.