The UMass Amherst Science Fiction Society Library is the second largest on the East Coast, and contains roughly 8,000 books of widely varying literary quality, fame, and level of wear on the binding. Some are by very famous science-fiction authors, some by renowned scientists, and a depressingly large percentage are written by untalented pulp-novelists who were intimately familiar with the desires of their well-trained audience. With such breadth on almost every count, one common thread that unites the collection is sure to shock the casual browser. I don't think the statistics have never been accurately tallied, though some poor grad student surely thought he had found a dissertation when he noticed that roughly one out of every ten books is averred to be the product of a “Forerunner” or “Magnate” or “Grand Master” of the Science Fiction genre.
Most of these appellations are misnomers granted to any schlub who published a story in 1930's pulp, but one man, Isaac Asimov, truly deserves that title. He wrote on everything, from black holes to the bible, but his biggest mark was on science fiction, to which he gave the much-stolen“Three Laws of Robotics”. He is best known for his robot stories, but his most daring achievement was the Foundation series, which revolves around the Foundation, a planet of the Galaxy's best and brightest created by mathematician Hari Seldon to advance his meticulously calculated plan for the future of the galaxy. The seven novels in the series, and either other works that are set in the same universe, meditate on the progress of history, criticize modern academia, and rebel against predestination. Using his oracular science of psychohistory, Seldon had seen the course history would take for thousands of years. His basis thesis is the extremely plausible belief that historical trends can be predicted by simulating the reactions of vast groups of people, much like the average behavior of large volumes of gases can be predicted, though single molecules move at random. The stories in the series are brief snapshots of different stages in the course of the thousand year long plan, and the ebb and flow of history is ultimately more important than any individual plot.
The series is astounding, and is an excellent example of great science-fiction that is also very good literature. When I recently reread it, the psychohistorical approach fascinated me most. Only a year before, the seed of the same idea had sprung up in my head, and I had feebly attempted to build something out of it as well. I began to construct a fantasy world by a similar historically process: by starting with certain initial groups and allowing them to grow and interact as organically and free from artificial stimulation as possible. Asimov's description of Seldon's Plan used almost identical ideas, but for science-fiction, not fantasy. Outsides often view these two genres as cousins, because they both deal with worlds that differ vitally from our own, but a fan of either or both almost always has an instinctive urge to separate them. The UMass Science Fiction Society owns both, but I shudder to think of the punishment that would befall the fool who sought to group Tad Williams's Otherland series with his Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn. I do not think I am qualified to give a good opinion on why such a division is necessary, but I hope by examining two of the main dividing lines between the genres, I can peer into the inner workings of each and relate the issue to the larger question of why we feel compelled to sort our books so carefully, as though a Linnaean taxonomy of literature were somehow possible.
The most obvious distinction is atmospheric. SF hides its unreality under the guise of technology, while fantasy buries itself in the cloak of magic. From this perspective, a Vulcan is just an elf from space. It's a very popular idea, because it makes sense ("It is called Science-Fiction, ain't it?") and lends itself to easy classification ("Oh, look a wizard. This must be fantasy.") The trouble is that it is superficial and does not give any information on the inner workings of the genres. A very popular problem case is Star Wars. Under this system, it is clearly science-fiction; after all, it has robots, and lasers, and galaxies and stuff. The case is closed, until you realize that there is practically no science anywhere to be found in the original trilogy. The parsec is a unit of distance, not time, for instance, so before many embarassed readers dove in with some creative retconning, legendary starship pilot Han Solo didn't even understand the rudiments of interstellar measurement. Similarly, you don't need a midichlorian count higher than master Yoda's to realize that the Force is a magic system with no scientific justification. Why don't we say that Star Wars, at least the worthwhile movies, is clearly a fantasy set in a society with futuristic technology?
We often adopt such obvious and appearance-based ways off defining genres, because they do have legitimate uses. Generalizing that Science Fiction uses lasers where fantasy would employ fireballs is true, because authors tend to use the same creative devices as their inspirations, gradually establishing a list of tropes appropriate to their trade. If we sort books based on the tropes they contain, we have stumbled upon a fairly reliable way of tracing literary influences and intertextuality, and of subtly comparing authors by the different ways they uses the same narrative tricks. Since our tastes develop based on what we learn at a young age, we will tend to gravitate towards settings and plots we loved in our youth, and dividing the genres so roughly can provide a good guideline for guessing what will and will not appeal to us. Despite this usefulness, such a simplistic litmus test is of little use for the critic or scholar of literature. Its decision relies on surface characteristics of the narrative, and once it has decided where to shelve a work, it can offer nothing more. It would behoove us to find a categorical scheme that helps us understand the themes and philosophical working of a book.
If we accept the logic behind shelving Star Wars next to The Hobbit and A Song of Ice and Fire because it doesn't rely on science we arrive at a somewhat clearer distinction between the two genres. Our last definition only looked at the skins of the genres; we need to dig deeper. A couple of robots is not enough to justify a claim to Science Fiction; there are enough Golems, Colossi, and Warforged floating around the fantasy multiverse to debunk that claim. When you give one of those robots a positronic brain, however, you clearly separate him from his divinely- or magically-animated counterparts. The most interesting difference between fantasy and SF lies not in the props the authors use, but in the reasoning behind those props and set pieces. Science-Fiction writers tend to build their worlds with empirical reasoning and scientific processes, while fantasy authors prefer more subtle, imaginative logic.
We should be very clear that the sort of reasoning involved can often be very subtle, and need not be restricted to anything we are already familiar with. This caveat is most important to Sci-Fi, which needs enough imaginative room for its Fictional aspect to escape being tied down by the Scientific. An imaginative Steam-punk author does not have to abide by the laws of nature and any writer who tries to break the cosmic speed limit, whether with a Gravitic Hyperspace Engine, an advanced Warp Drive, or a Flux Capacitor is not a good-for-nothing who deserves to have his Science license revoked. As any worthwhile scientist would admit, the laws of physics as we have formulated them are simply apparently trustworthy models of reality, and any day another Einstein could turn up to totally subvert our understanding of the world. Another Sci-Fi Great, Arthur C. Clarke, sick of second-rate hacks who thought that every teleporter and ray gun had to be explained in pseudo-physics, put forth as a countermeasure his famous Third Law: Any Sufficiently Advanced Technology is Indistinguishable from Magic. Basically, we don't understand the universe, so we are probably wrong about just about everything. Since trying to explain impossible things with our limited vocabulary is like trying to take a hike in the fourth dimension, just let it go. This allows writers to explore the social and scientific limits of their imagination without checking Scientific American every month to justify their dreams. It gives them the freedom to work with every facet of the genre, which is fundamentally not about shiny spaceships or Newton's Third Law, but about man's interactions with his creations and the vast universe that he finds himself in.
With an idea of Science-Fiction that revolves around scientific logic, we might conclude that Fantasy is simply nonsense and pixie dust, a branch of imaginative fiction without the intellectual rigor to play by the rules. That's certainly not the case. Fantasy is the rebel, the genre that breaks out of the rules others set for it, attempting to arrive by creative means at truths as evident as the ones the rules account for. It is about mythopoesis, inventing and telling stories for the sheer sake of creation. The history of Middle-Earth isn't written with comprehensive sociological factors in mind, but it makes as much as sense as Heinlein's Future History, and has as much emotional resonance as anything since the ancient myths. Of course, not every rebellion succeeds, and the creative freedom inherent to fantasy can be its downfall. The unconstrained liberty to create anything the author wants is a powerful invitation towards Mary-Sueism, and a lack of creativity can lead to disaster, as anyone who has ever seriously thought about Eragon or Twilight can certainly attest. Of course, this occurs in any form of creation (after all, 90% of everything is crap), but the voluminous shelves of identical pulp novels that dominate the Science Fiction Society library bear witness to how much more common crap seems to be in science-fiction and fantasy. This is why we need a more mature definitions for the genres. We need to form our ideas about them based on their utmost potentials of imagination and creativity, not based on the wealth of constantly repeated plot structures and character archetypes that make the uninitiated fear that all imaginative fiction truly is the same.
In closing, I just need to say that even these definitions are not the final step in the categorization of fantasy and science-fiction. For one thing, they need to be fleshed out significantly more to be truly useful. For another, and more importantly, no single way of thinking about an entire genre will ever always be useful. As we saw, a naïve classification based on appearances can come in handy, and there almost certainly are or will be books that violate my system. This is because a genre is actually nothing more than a name people give to a bunch of artworks that seem to go together. By putting together everything we thing belongs and abstracting the similarities, we obtain a description of a genre, but something will always arise that definitely fits in but does not have quite the right features. In these cases, it is always the genre definition that is wrong or flawed, never the book. Art makes genres; genres should never make art.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Who needs the artist? (Rough)
In general, I favor a style of interpretation that subjugates the author's intended meaning of a work in favor of the meaning that the work expresses itself. It seems that this point of view would be noxious to most artists, because it excludes them from the loop of their own art, but I believe that in most cases the artists intention is the true meaning of the artwork. To give an overly simplistic example, when a friend says "I will be at Franklin at 5:30 if you want to meet me there", his intention can be inferred from his statement, but there is little reason to go that far; the meaning of the words themselves explain all that is necessary to understand the intention. This sort of reasoning generally holds for more complex works as well; the artist creates intentionally, and the meaning will almost always therefore be derived from his intention.
This solves the dilemma that might result from ignorance of an artist's intentions. If the intentions were necessary to understand a work, the artist would need to write an essay explaining every one of their creations and justifying their ideas. If they didn't, they would not be creating a full work of art. (This is assuming a fairly conservative definition of art that says that art is intended to express a thought or emotion.) In fact, one might argue, albeit rather weakly, that such a theory of interpretation leads to infinite regress. If an artwork is intended to express an artists intentions, and the artist must explain his intentions in order for the artwork to be complete, the explanation is part of the work. He then has to write a new explanation for this new artwork, and an explanation for the artwork this constitutes, ad infinitum. To avoid this paradox, it seems that the artwork must be able to exist on its own, without necessarily being explained by the artist's intentions.
What then do we do about O'Keefe's painting "Black Iris", a painting that seems extremely sexual, but whose connotations she always denied? It seems that such a theory completely negates her opinion in favor of the uneducated, sex-crazed masses, who don't know what the painting is "really about". And it does. I admit that. I think with its complexly manifold surfaces, its sensual line, and the mysterious negative space in its center, the painting definitely communicates something sexual and even vaginal. Even if O'Keefe did not intend those associations, how can we say they are not there? They seem so apparent, and don't take any outside knowledge to understand (except possibly a cursory familiarity with female anatomy). Why are they less real than O'Keefe's intended meaning, which is not as obvious in the painting and requires outside elucidation? If we take that point of view, it seems that Black Iris is a bad artwork, because it does not communicate its point. But it seems meaningful, and I would like to call it good. If that requires a theory of meaning that ignores the author's intentions, so be it.
(The above was for a class in the Philosophy of Art. We had to write an online discussion about the relationship between intention and meaning. I have some more stuff to say about what interpretation does, and about the O-Word [Over-thinking] and how much I hate it, but I don't have time now. Maybe later.)
(Or now, the next day, instead of doing homework)
Another important reason meaning should not be necessarily 'intentional' is that intention implies consciousness of action, and I am sure most artists don't do everything with a specific meaning in mind. They must often simply have good instincts that lead them to create things that are extremely aesthetically significant. A painter does not have to have a plan for every brush stroke; she just has to paint something that she feels and intuits to be meaningful and worthwhile, and it might have some significance that she could not have intended. Likewise, scholars often read literature as though the author intended a divine meaning to rest in each word they wrote. I can't believe that anyone could be so skilled and foreward-thinking, but I don't criticize this style of interpretation. A good author has an ear and a sense for what words belong where, and each word contributes to the larger whole, even if they did not intend. After all, what is an artwork but a collection of brushstrokes or words, and the meaning develops from such small items.
It may have become apparent that I have rather different ideas of the purpose of interpretation than many other people, especially non-students of literature. It seems to me that most people think that a work of art is complete and sacred unto itself, and critics project their own ideas onto the poor defenseless text, suffocating it and eventually crushing all of the life out of it with their convictions. I don't deny that that is sometimes the case, but these people sorely misrepresent what interpretation can be, just like Nickelback (oh, poor Chad Kroeger, everyone's scapegoat) does not give a very good idea of what rock music can be.
I think Oscar Wilde best explained what criticism can be in his preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray. He said that "the critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things". In the preface, Wilde goes on to deny that artworks can have meaning, but this idea is potentially debunked by the rest of the book, and I don't think we would be wrong to consider the critic "he who can translate...the meaning of beautiful things". Artworks can have meaning even before they are explicated; you can feel something about a painting without verbalizing what it is you feel. The critic, the interpreter, takes this feeling and explains, draws out its significance, and tries to understand its place in the world without changing it. He is like an alchemist, melting down a precious metal and extracting its quintessence to be studied and cataloged.
This idea is my heart speeds with fury in my breast whenever I hear the word "over-think" thrown around. It's not a useless word, of course, but it is used indiscriminately and wantonly to assail the poor interpreter wherever he hides. Many people think that any attempt to understand the details or meaning of an artwork, to try to put the author's ideas into words he did not write, is 'over-thinking', an apparently capital crime that should be punished as such. If a psychologist noticed that a character manifested every symptom of a certain mental disorder, but the author denied that he had had such a disorder in mind when constructing the character, the shrink would be run out of town by a mob if he attempted to stand by his ideas. But why should he, if his observations were accurate and conducted with due consideration for the character's position within the work. Couldn't this book then be thought of, in addition to its other meanings, as a new way of thinking about this disorder?
Of course, such analysis without regard for context is pernicious. The prime is Freud's Oedipal reading of Hamlet, for which there is little or no direct evidence in the play. It is certainly true that Hamlet is uncannily obsessed with his mother's sexuality, and it was sharp of Freud to draw attention to this strangeness. But he reasons chiefly based on these small details to erect a grand structure of psychoanalysis that is not supported by the rest of the play, or particularly constructive to its interpretation. Over-thinking is certainly possible. But a few prominent bad apples need not spoil the whole bunch.
This solves the dilemma that might result from ignorance of an artist's intentions. If the intentions were necessary to understand a work, the artist would need to write an essay explaining every one of their creations and justifying their ideas. If they didn't, they would not be creating a full work of art. (This is assuming a fairly conservative definition of art that says that art is intended to express a thought or emotion.) In fact, one might argue, albeit rather weakly, that such a theory of interpretation leads to infinite regress. If an artwork is intended to express an artists intentions, and the artist must explain his intentions in order for the artwork to be complete, the explanation is part of the work. He then has to write a new explanation for this new artwork, and an explanation for the artwork this constitutes, ad infinitum. To avoid this paradox, it seems that the artwork must be able to exist on its own, without necessarily being explained by the artist's intentions.
What then do we do about O'Keefe's painting "Black Iris", a painting that seems extremely sexual, but whose connotations she always denied? It seems that such a theory completely negates her opinion in favor of the uneducated, sex-crazed masses, who don't know what the painting is "really about". And it does. I admit that. I think with its complexly manifold surfaces, its sensual line, and the mysterious negative space in its center, the painting definitely communicates something sexual and even vaginal. Even if O'Keefe did not intend those associations, how can we say they are not there? They seem so apparent, and don't take any outside knowledge to understand (except possibly a cursory familiarity with female anatomy). Why are they less real than O'Keefe's intended meaning, which is not as obvious in the painting and requires outside elucidation? If we take that point of view, it seems that Black Iris is a bad artwork, because it does not communicate its point. But it seems meaningful, and I would like to call it good. If that requires a theory of meaning that ignores the author's intentions, so be it.
(The above was for a class in the Philosophy of Art. We had to write an online discussion about the relationship between intention and meaning. I have some more stuff to say about what interpretation does, and about the O-Word [Over-thinking] and how much I hate it, but I don't have time now. Maybe later.)
(Or now, the next day, instead of doing homework)
Another important reason meaning should not be necessarily 'intentional' is that intention implies consciousness of action, and I am sure most artists don't do everything with a specific meaning in mind. They must often simply have good instincts that lead them to create things that are extremely aesthetically significant. A painter does not have to have a plan for every brush stroke; she just has to paint something that she feels and intuits to be meaningful and worthwhile, and it might have some significance that she could not have intended. Likewise, scholars often read literature as though the author intended a divine meaning to rest in each word they wrote. I can't believe that anyone could be so skilled and foreward-thinking, but I don't criticize this style of interpretation. A good author has an ear and a sense for what words belong where, and each word contributes to the larger whole, even if they did not intend. After all, what is an artwork but a collection of brushstrokes or words, and the meaning develops from such small items.
It may have become apparent that I have rather different ideas of the purpose of interpretation than many other people, especially non-students of literature. It seems to me that most people think that a work of art is complete and sacred unto itself, and critics project their own ideas onto the poor defenseless text, suffocating it and eventually crushing all of the life out of it with their convictions. I don't deny that that is sometimes the case, but these people sorely misrepresent what interpretation can be, just like Nickelback (oh, poor Chad Kroeger, everyone's scapegoat) does not give a very good idea of what rock music can be.
I think Oscar Wilde best explained what criticism can be in his preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray. He said that "the critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things". In the preface, Wilde goes on to deny that artworks can have meaning, but this idea is potentially debunked by the rest of the book, and I don't think we would be wrong to consider the critic "he who can translate...the meaning of beautiful things". Artworks can have meaning even before they are explicated; you can feel something about a painting without verbalizing what it is you feel. The critic, the interpreter, takes this feeling and explains, draws out its significance, and tries to understand its place in the world without changing it. He is like an alchemist, melting down a precious metal and extracting its quintessence to be studied and cataloged.
This idea is my heart speeds with fury in my breast whenever I hear the word "over-think" thrown around. It's not a useless word, of course, but it is used indiscriminately and wantonly to assail the poor interpreter wherever he hides. Many people think that any attempt to understand the details or meaning of an artwork, to try to put the author's ideas into words he did not write, is 'over-thinking', an apparently capital crime that should be punished as such. If a psychologist noticed that a character manifested every symptom of a certain mental disorder, but the author denied that he had had such a disorder in mind when constructing the character, the shrink would be run out of town by a mob if he attempted to stand by his ideas. But why should he, if his observations were accurate and conducted with due consideration for the character's position within the work. Couldn't this book then be thought of, in addition to its other meanings, as a new way of thinking about this disorder?
Of course, such analysis without regard for context is pernicious. The prime is Freud's Oedipal reading of Hamlet, for which there is little or no direct evidence in the play. It is certainly true that Hamlet is uncannily obsessed with his mother's sexuality, and it was sharp of Freud to draw attention to this strangeness. But he reasons chiefly based on these small details to erect a grand structure of psychoanalysis that is not supported by the rest of the play, or particularly constructive to its interpretation. Over-thinking is certainly possible. But a few prominent bad apples need not spoil the whole bunch.
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Tu, was du willst (Rough)
I am sure almost everyone who is reading this is familiar with The Neverending Story. For most of you, your exposure to it is probably the movie, but I don't hold that against you. You did certainly miss out, because the end of the movie is only the midway part of the book, and the second half is orders of magnitude more exciting than the first. You probably liked the movie quite a bit, but if you read the book, you loved it. It was impossible not to; the book may have been the perfect fantasy adventure. The fantastic images and ideas flowed ridiculously and realistically, and if you cared to pry, each had a coherent symbolic meaning, which rarely felt contrived or tacked on. It was a giant imaginative whole that all added up to, as the Frankfurter Allgemeinen Zeitung puts it, "a impassioned, audacious, wonderfully artistic plea for fantasy's right to exist: in literature and in us." I want to talk about some of the ways that The Neverending Story pleads for fantasy, by making us experience all sides of its wonder, as the reader and the writer, the partaker and the creator.
Just as a side note, and really not intending to brag, but should I happen to make any quotations, they will be poorly translated from the German by me. You probably noticed that the Frankfurter Allgemeinen Zeitung is not English, and that is because the version that I most recently read was the original German, as practice. It was really neat to see just how it was originally written, but I don't think reading it in German brought too much extra to the book; the translator, Ralph Mannheim, was very good, and very faithful. There were only a few occasional nuances that were lost in English. For instance, the three sages who are called The Deep Thinkers in English are called Die Tief Sinnenden in German. The word "Sinnen" in German is somewhat close to the English word "think", but it more accurately means "to find meaning". Since Yisipu the Fox is the only one of the three who thinks rationally to discover his truths, the broader German word is particularly appropriate, and avoids the potential thematic ambiguity. But foibles like that were fairly uncommon, and not detrimental to appreciation of the story.
One other nuance that got lost in translation was an interesting pun on the author's name that enhances the basic timelessness of the Neverending Story. The author is Michael Ende, and even if he were not placed below the translator Ralph Mannheim on the cover, an English reader would not necessarily associate his name to the Neverending Story, the story without End. In German, the title is Die Unendliche Geschichte [I swear it sounds nicer than its spelling], the story "ohne Ende". Of course, not every German reader would necessarily notice the joke either, but someone clever enough to invent a thousand stories in one book would certainly notice a simple pun, and he left it right there in the title for anyone to stumble over. The book has no end and no author. It simply exists, a story for all time and all people.
That's a big claim for an author to make, especially as the first potential interaction a reader has with his book. Even if it was intended almost wholly as a joke, it is a bold, almost cocky, joke and one has to wonder if it is justified. Ultimately, I think the joke and the Frankfurter Zeitung's assessment of the Neverending Story are justified, because the two halves of the book accurately depict the series of responses a reader and writer have to a work of literature, and can even be taken to represent the relationship of any partaker or creator of a work of fiction.
The first half of the novel, where Bastian steals and begins to read the Neverending Story, chronicles the journey a reader takes as he enters a good book for the first time. With its frequent interjections from Bastian in "the real world" [More on that later], it gives itself an opportunity rare in fiction: the chance to explicitly experiment with how the reader encounters a work of imagination. While it is abundantly clear that the Bastian's theft and flight to the school attic is more than simply a frame to the actual narrative of the book, the story that Bastian reads in the first half of the Neverending Story stands is fairly self-sufficient, and Bastian's concerns are exaggerated versions of the concerns of the typical reader. He struggles with his concern for the time and his ever-growing immersion in the book. He must eat, drink, and go to the bath room, even though he does not want to put the book down. And he gradually begins to identify more and more with the story.
He eventually starts feeling his own impact on the story. Perhaps the most common metaphor used for the joy of reading is that "Books take us to other places and let us experience things we couldn't otherwise experience". We sort of accept this definition, though when he look at it at all literally, it's a load of horseshit. Most metaphors are. Everybody knows that a book has never brought to a different world, and the only experience it involves is turning pages and seeing letters. Bastian, however, has the real deal. He screams, and it echoes through a chasm, startling the hell out of everyone involved. He experiences the Neverending Story in a way we never can. But we don't get jealous and feel out experience with literature cheapened when it's inadequacy is pointed out so blatantly. In fact, we feel the truth of our feeble metaphor even more strongly when it is challenged.
Clearly something else is going on when we appeal to this image of travel, and towards the end of the first half of the book, we are given a possible interpretation of the phenomenon. To reach the Southern Oracle and find the secret of the Childlike Empress's illness [Another benefit to German: Kindliche Kaiserin sounds so much better] Atreju must pass through the Magic Mirror Gate, which reveals his inner self. Most cannot face this stress, but he passes through with ease, because his inner self turns out to be nothing more than a chubby boy reading a book in an attic. Why this is no big stress to a great warrior might confuse us, but we recognize Bastian, and we are given an even more accurate image for why we can become so involved in great books. They obviously don't take us to different places or really give us new experiences, but we can see ourselves reflected in the characters. They resemble us in certain ways, and we can relate with them. Thus, their adventures become our adventures, and reflect back on our lives and experiences. We go on journeys vicariously through them, and they benefit by becoming more than merely a collection of words through their resemblance to us.
[Incidentally, this is why I think so many young girls are so obsessed with Twilight, that harlequin romance with less erotica and more sexism, if that is possible. The main character Bella has no real definable traits, except that she is basically a good girl, with some flaws. I don't think I am exaggerating when I say that almost everybody in the world thinks of themselves as basically good, with some flaws, or, if they have low self-esteem, wishes they could. So when Bella is thrust into situations that seem favorable - people at a new school get to know her and like her, a strong but silent boy is really into her - her vague characterization allows girls to see themselves in her entirely, and to desire the strong emotion and great love affair she is given. Were she more realistic, like any character in the Harry Potter series, the resemblance would be less complete, and she would instead be a distinct person whose life we can experience only partially. Seen as she is, through a glass darkly, her basic shape could literally be anyone, and anyone can have what she has. Or it could just be that people will eat up anything you tell them is popular.]
Once Ende gives us this definition of what it means to be a reader, Bastian literally enters into the story, and we begin to see what it means to be a writer. He is pulled into Fantastica by the Old Man of the Wandering Mountain, who lives in a golden egg and is the writer of the Neverending Story. The scene seems to me one of the richest and most problematic in the novel, but it is getting late and I have miles to go before I sleep. Unfortunately, I think I will have to move more quickly through the rest of the book. When I eventually come in and overhaul everything I have rambled onto this site, I will expand anything that needs it, but until then, you will live with what I give you. [Also, I think this is already my longest post and I am just about half-way through my plan for it. That's what happens when you take a whole semester to read a kid's book.]
Anyway, to bring Bastian into the story, the Kindliche Kaiserin convinces the Old Man to reread it from the very beginning. He is loath to do so, for such a repetition will destroy Fantastica. I am not quite sure what to make of that fear. I would like to think he is saying that self-reference is a sure way to kill a story, but that would just make Mr. Ende the cheekiest Arsch on the planet. What is just as confusing, but I think I can get a grip on, is what happens when he does start to read. The book starts over, from the very beginning. Not simply the 'story', what Bastian has been reading, but the whole book, including the parts that take place in the real world.
This is startling, because it is the first time we realize that the world we thought was so distinct from Fantastica, except when Bastian's emotions bled through, is apparently a part of the same story. It's a mind fuck. It means that "The Neverending Story" is not a story within the novel it is named after, or a novel named after the book it is about. The story and the novel are the same. As you sit reading your book, looking in on Bastian reading his, you are, in fact, reading the same book he is, even if you see a little more. It begs the question, "If his real world is only part of a neverending story, might ours be too?" I don't think that question is definitively answered, but a yes is strongly implied.
Even more concerning for me is the fact that when the Old Man rereads the story, it is clear that the story is, in fact, only the parts about Bastian and Atreju. Whenever I read the book, I assume that the Neverending Story is an all-encompassing book of fate that includes the stories of everyone in Fantastica, but this is wrong. The story follows Bastian and Bastian alone. Everyone else is only read into it as they come in contact with him. This is problematic for me. I want Engywook, and Cairon, and even Gmorg to have their own stories. But of course they can not. No matter how real or broad it seems, a story is never anything more than what the reader encounters upon reading it. And all of this is determined by how the writer writes it.
Ende is a writer, and clearly knows well how writers work, to produce such a good book. In the second half, he gives us something of a window into one possible way to produce fantasy. Bastian is plopped down into Fantastica and given Auryn, the amulet that contains the power of the Kindliche Kaiserin [I can use whichever name I want. Suck it], the power to "Do what you Wish" and influence the world in anyway he can imagine. He primarily uses this power in three ways: by naming objects, by telling stories, and by wishing for things directly.
The proper name for something is absolutely vital to its existence in Fantastica. In fact, the dilemma of the first half of the book, and the reason Bastian is needed, is that the Empress needs a new name, and only a human child can give her one. He sees her only briefly, and decides on the name Moon Child [Or Mondenkind, though one is not really better than the other]. This naming is representative of the way an author creates fantasy by giving accurate names and descriptions to things he can not necessarily describe. When Bastian names the Empress, he has not attempted a complete survey of her powers and attributes, and could probably not really explain exactly why he gave the name. Yet it feels right to him; it expresses in an image everything he feels about her. When he gives it, it becomes right, and the Empress is later described by her name as much as the name was originally chosen to fit that description. Similarly, when Bastian names the beautiful forest of luminous plants Perelin, the Forest of Night, he does not realize that he is relegating it to life at night and death in the morning, but this becomes an essential trait of it.
The fantastic author must likewise have a gift for naming. Not simply for the relatively straightforward of assigning Linnaen nomenclature to his creations, but of giving names and descriptions that explain more than he could give with mere explanation. The author is entirely different from me, the critic. My job is to explain as precisely as possible what I mean [though I may stumble frequently] to avoid confusion, whereas the author, if he wishes to inspire the imagination and give his creations life, need not explain too much. He must simply suggest and give room for his creatures to grow and expand into the space he has given them.
The process of telling true stories is very closely related to the idea of naming. In fact, as I think about it in my droopy-lidded excitement, I realize that the one may even be an extension of the other. It is not enough for a writer to simply give a name to a character; he must also give a life, and it is through stories that he does this. A good, original story is like an imaginative name. It defines an object of fantasy without forcing too much upon it. For instance, when Bastian tells the story of the terrible dragon for Hero Heinrich, he does not explain everything that happens in Heinrich's quest, or even foretell that the princess Oglamar will be captured. He simply gives the story and allows it to develop.
Unfortunately, story-telling is not always as easy as it sounds. In the process of creating a plot and showing the interactions of a bunch of Names, it is easy for unintended consequences to develop. When Bastian thinks up the Acharai to cry the sea of tears around the silver City of Amaranth, he does not realize that he has created an entire race of depressed caterpillars, but it is a logical consequence to his story. The writer must also always be in control of his story, and aware of its possible ramifications. If a story is to be real, everything in it must have actually happened within the world, and the writer must be aware of this.
Of course, to create a novel, and not just a book-length string of images and interesting ideas, the writer must have some idea of where his book is going, and how to finish the stories he creates. This is where the third facet of Auryn's power - the pure Wish - comes into play. As long as Bastian is in Fantastica, he is the writer, able to create as he wishes and explore to his heart's content the world he has dreamed up. But the longer he stays there, and the more he uses his power, the harder it is for him to return to the real world. He runs the risk of drowning under his own imagination, and not being able to leave it. The writer also faces this danger. It is too easy for him to simply create willy-nilly, with neither purpose nor thought of an end. If he does this however, he may create a wonderful playground for himself to explore, but he can not be said to have written a story.
To leave Fantastica, and reemerge into the light of reality [or reburrow into the dark] the writer needs a wish. He need not know what that wish is, but he must have it, and some memory of the outside world to fuel it. There must be a reason for his creation, and he must be working towards some sort of goal. Without this underlying desire for his creation to do something, he can not hope to achieve anything with it, or even bring it to the eyes of anyone else.
So what's the point? Ende seems to have given us a very good schematic for the roles of readers and writers in literature, but why do we need it? If people could content themselves with remaining in the real world, we wouldn't have to worry about figuring out how we interact with books we read, and no one would bother creating them. The trouble is that that is impossible. In The Neverending Story, Fantastica isn't simply a construct of some person's mind. It is a real place that is dependent on the world, just as the world is dependent on it. In less metaphorical terms, people can not help imagining. They do it all the time, to help them deal with the real world, and just because they find it fun. If we do not have a realm of fantasy [I hope it has been clear that throughout this fantasy has not simply meant books with unicorns and wizards. It is anything that has not happened in the real world, anything born of the creative power of the imagination] to let that imagination roam in, it will fester and consume us. When creatures of Fantastica enter the real world they become lies. It is easy to say "Of course they do. They are not real, and are just intended to fool people. Of course they are lies", but they only become lies when they enter our world and are left untended. In their world, they live and love and are beautiful. We need Fantastica and fantasy so we have a place to live our imaginations outside of the real world, so they do not become lies and do harm.
All of that is lovely, and seems true, and we want to believe it, but it is still circular reasoning. Michael Ende's "plea for fantasy's right to exist" is played out in a fantasy world, with fake characters. It could just be a load of heart-wrenching, gut-busting, goofy smile-inducing bullshit. But we don't want it to be, and I think that is exactly how we know it is not. Ende has pulled the ultimate fake-out on our cold, logical hearts. We can't call baloney on the journey he has just described, because it happened to us. This is sort of difficult to describe precisely, because everyone obvious has their own reactions to a book, and I could be basing this entirely on my own journey. I have a few examples that I think will make it clear just what I mean.
The first is the distinction between Real Life and Fantastica that I foreshadowed that I would talk about. In the American version of the book, this distinction is signalled by the use of Italics for RL and straight font [curse my lack of typographical jargon!] for Fantastica. This is nice and effective, though I don't like it as much as the German solution. In the original work, RL is denoted by red ink, and Phantasien by blue-green. This works surprisingly well; both are easy to read, though green is admittedly more so, and it doesn't imply that Fantastica is the "normal" setting of the book and RL is simply a diversion. In both books, however, you quickly learn to identify the setting with the font. You are absorbed into the world of the book. The font gives an easy way to find your bearings and distinguish between locations, just as Bastian must be able to. The dichotomy of Fantastica and RL quickly becomes as real to you as it is to the character of Bastian, even though you experience them as patterns of ink on a page, and he lives in them.
The frequent use of the phrase "But that is another story and will be told another time" to close of the stories of secondary characters is the most concise way in which Ende shows how a writer can create complex and true stories from simple Names or Stories. In the beginning stages of the book, this device seems to broaden the scope of the narrative. It is an apology for the necessary focus of the story on Bastian, and hints at a huge web of interconnected stories that make up the Neverending one. While you probably don't completely picture the whole other story every time one is mentioned, you know that they exist, and can imagine how they occur, even though you are only given a brief summary. You are sure that each one could be written.
Once Bastian is given Auryn and is a 'writer' of stories himself, this device becomes an excuse, a way that Bastian, who is often not a very good creator, closes off consequences that he can not be bothered to handle. When he sends Heinrich off against the dragon, it occurs, and you realize that you are missing out on a whole story. Whereas before it had only been used to suggest an obvious end, now whole plots are becoming 'Other Stories' and you feel that you are missing out. Of course, you probably don't stop to figure all of this out intellectually [I didn't think of it quite like this until just now], but you can feel what is wrong. I don't want to dictate your response too much, but I literally cried out in frustration when Bastian foisted his trusty mule Jicha off into Another Story. It is only when Bastian realizes that he can not control everything precisely, and begins to seek the overriding Wish that will send him back to his world, that these other stories become hopeful again. One of the last is a classic story of renewed life, in which a magpie finds the remnants of his magic belt and flies off with it to his next. Here again we see a simple story that does not need complete explanation, but whose consequences seem right and which accords perfectly with the larger whole.
Well, this has been long [Almost 4,000 words by the time I wrap it up], and I have to get up soon, so I am not sure how to conclude it. If you haven't read the Neverending Story, read it, and don't react like I told you to just because I told you to. Read it, and love it, and then read something else, and see yourself in it, and wish.
Just as a side note, and really not intending to brag, but should I happen to make any quotations, they will be poorly translated from the German by me. You probably noticed that the Frankfurter Allgemeinen Zeitung is not English, and that is because the version that I most recently read was the original German, as practice. It was really neat to see just how it was originally written, but I don't think reading it in German brought too much extra to the book; the translator, Ralph Mannheim, was very good, and very faithful. There were only a few occasional nuances that were lost in English. For instance, the three sages who are called The Deep Thinkers in English are called Die Tief Sinnenden in German. The word "Sinnen" in German is somewhat close to the English word "think", but it more accurately means "to find meaning". Since Yisipu the Fox is the only one of the three who thinks rationally to discover his truths, the broader German word is particularly appropriate, and avoids the potential thematic ambiguity. But foibles like that were fairly uncommon, and not detrimental to appreciation of the story.
One other nuance that got lost in translation was an interesting pun on the author's name that enhances the basic timelessness of the Neverending Story. The author is Michael Ende, and even if he were not placed below the translator Ralph Mannheim on the cover, an English reader would not necessarily associate his name to the Neverending Story, the story without End. In German, the title is Die Unendliche Geschichte [I swear it sounds nicer than its spelling], the story "ohne Ende". Of course, not every German reader would necessarily notice the joke either, but someone clever enough to invent a thousand stories in one book would certainly notice a simple pun, and he left it right there in the title for anyone to stumble over. The book has no end and no author. It simply exists, a story for all time and all people.
That's a big claim for an author to make, especially as the first potential interaction a reader has with his book. Even if it was intended almost wholly as a joke, it is a bold, almost cocky, joke and one has to wonder if it is justified. Ultimately, I think the joke and the Frankfurter Zeitung's assessment of the Neverending Story are justified, because the two halves of the book accurately depict the series of responses a reader and writer have to a work of literature, and can even be taken to represent the relationship of any partaker or creator of a work of fiction.
The first half of the novel, where Bastian steals and begins to read the Neverending Story, chronicles the journey a reader takes as he enters a good book for the first time. With its frequent interjections from Bastian in "the real world" [More on that later], it gives itself an opportunity rare in fiction: the chance to explicitly experiment with how the reader encounters a work of imagination. While it is abundantly clear that the Bastian's theft and flight to the school attic is more than simply a frame to the actual narrative of the book, the story that Bastian reads in the first half of the Neverending Story stands is fairly self-sufficient, and Bastian's concerns are exaggerated versions of the concerns of the typical reader. He struggles with his concern for the time and his ever-growing immersion in the book. He must eat, drink, and go to the bath room, even though he does not want to put the book down. And he gradually begins to identify more and more with the story.
He eventually starts feeling his own impact on the story. Perhaps the most common metaphor used for the joy of reading is that "Books take us to other places and let us experience things we couldn't otherwise experience". We sort of accept this definition, though when he look at it at all literally, it's a load of horseshit. Most metaphors are. Everybody knows that a book has never brought to a different world, and the only experience it involves is turning pages and seeing letters. Bastian, however, has the real deal. He screams, and it echoes through a chasm, startling the hell out of everyone involved. He experiences the Neverending Story in a way we never can. But we don't get jealous and feel out experience with literature cheapened when it's inadequacy is pointed out so blatantly. In fact, we feel the truth of our feeble metaphor even more strongly when it is challenged.
Clearly something else is going on when we appeal to this image of travel, and towards the end of the first half of the book, we are given a possible interpretation of the phenomenon. To reach the Southern Oracle and find the secret of the Childlike Empress's illness [Another benefit to German: Kindliche Kaiserin sounds so much better] Atreju must pass through the Magic Mirror Gate, which reveals his inner self. Most cannot face this stress, but he passes through with ease, because his inner self turns out to be nothing more than a chubby boy reading a book in an attic. Why this is no big stress to a great warrior might confuse us, but we recognize Bastian, and we are given an even more accurate image for why we can become so involved in great books. They obviously don't take us to different places or really give us new experiences, but we can see ourselves reflected in the characters. They resemble us in certain ways, and we can relate with them. Thus, their adventures become our adventures, and reflect back on our lives and experiences. We go on journeys vicariously through them, and they benefit by becoming more than merely a collection of words through their resemblance to us.
[Incidentally, this is why I think so many young girls are so obsessed with Twilight, that harlequin romance with less erotica and more sexism, if that is possible. The main character Bella has no real definable traits, except that she is basically a good girl, with some flaws. I don't think I am exaggerating when I say that almost everybody in the world thinks of themselves as basically good, with some flaws, or, if they have low self-esteem, wishes they could. So when Bella is thrust into situations that seem favorable - people at a new school get to know her and like her, a strong but silent boy is really into her - her vague characterization allows girls to see themselves in her entirely, and to desire the strong emotion and great love affair she is given. Were she more realistic, like any character in the Harry Potter series, the resemblance would be less complete, and she would instead be a distinct person whose life we can experience only partially. Seen as she is, through a glass darkly, her basic shape could literally be anyone, and anyone can have what she has. Or it could just be that people will eat up anything you tell them is popular.]
Once Ende gives us this definition of what it means to be a reader, Bastian literally enters into the story, and we begin to see what it means to be a writer. He is pulled into Fantastica by the Old Man of the Wandering Mountain, who lives in a golden egg and is the writer of the Neverending Story. The scene seems to me one of the richest and most problematic in the novel, but it is getting late and I have miles to go before I sleep. Unfortunately, I think I will have to move more quickly through the rest of the book. When I eventually come in and overhaul everything I have rambled onto this site, I will expand anything that needs it, but until then, you will live with what I give you. [Also, I think this is already my longest post and I am just about half-way through my plan for it. That's what happens when you take a whole semester to read a kid's book.]
Anyway, to bring Bastian into the story, the Kindliche Kaiserin convinces the Old Man to reread it from the very beginning. He is loath to do so, for such a repetition will destroy Fantastica. I am not quite sure what to make of that fear. I would like to think he is saying that self-reference is a sure way to kill a story, but that would just make Mr. Ende the cheekiest Arsch on the planet. What is just as confusing, but I think I can get a grip on, is what happens when he does start to read. The book starts over, from the very beginning. Not simply the 'story', what Bastian has been reading, but the whole book, including the parts that take place in the real world.
This is startling, because it is the first time we realize that the world we thought was so distinct from Fantastica, except when Bastian's emotions bled through, is apparently a part of the same story. It's a mind fuck. It means that "The Neverending Story" is not a story within the novel it is named after, or a novel named after the book it is about. The story and the novel are the same. As you sit reading your book, looking in on Bastian reading his, you are, in fact, reading the same book he is, even if you see a little more. It begs the question, "If his real world is only part of a neverending story, might ours be too?" I don't think that question is definitively answered, but a yes is strongly implied.
Even more concerning for me is the fact that when the Old Man rereads the story, it is clear that the story is, in fact, only the parts about Bastian and Atreju. Whenever I read the book, I assume that the Neverending Story is an all-encompassing book of fate that includes the stories of everyone in Fantastica, but this is wrong. The story follows Bastian and Bastian alone. Everyone else is only read into it as they come in contact with him. This is problematic for me. I want Engywook, and Cairon, and even Gmorg to have their own stories. But of course they can not. No matter how real or broad it seems, a story is never anything more than what the reader encounters upon reading it. And all of this is determined by how the writer writes it.
Ende is a writer, and clearly knows well how writers work, to produce such a good book. In the second half, he gives us something of a window into one possible way to produce fantasy. Bastian is plopped down into Fantastica and given Auryn, the amulet that contains the power of the Kindliche Kaiserin [I can use whichever name I want. Suck it], the power to "Do what you Wish" and influence the world in anyway he can imagine. He primarily uses this power in three ways: by naming objects, by telling stories, and by wishing for things directly.
The proper name for something is absolutely vital to its existence in Fantastica. In fact, the dilemma of the first half of the book, and the reason Bastian is needed, is that the Empress needs a new name, and only a human child can give her one. He sees her only briefly, and decides on the name Moon Child [Or Mondenkind, though one is not really better than the other]. This naming is representative of the way an author creates fantasy by giving accurate names and descriptions to things he can not necessarily describe. When Bastian names the Empress, he has not attempted a complete survey of her powers and attributes, and could probably not really explain exactly why he gave the name. Yet it feels right to him; it expresses in an image everything he feels about her. When he gives it, it becomes right, and the Empress is later described by her name as much as the name was originally chosen to fit that description. Similarly, when Bastian names the beautiful forest of luminous plants Perelin, the Forest of Night, he does not realize that he is relegating it to life at night and death in the morning, but this becomes an essential trait of it.
The fantastic author must likewise have a gift for naming. Not simply for the relatively straightforward of assigning Linnaen nomenclature to his creations, but of giving names and descriptions that explain more than he could give with mere explanation. The author is entirely different from me, the critic. My job is to explain as precisely as possible what I mean [though I may stumble frequently] to avoid confusion, whereas the author, if he wishes to inspire the imagination and give his creations life, need not explain too much. He must simply suggest and give room for his creatures to grow and expand into the space he has given them.
The process of telling true stories is very closely related to the idea of naming. In fact, as I think about it in my droopy-lidded excitement, I realize that the one may even be an extension of the other. It is not enough for a writer to simply give a name to a character; he must also give a life, and it is through stories that he does this. A good, original story is like an imaginative name. It defines an object of fantasy without forcing too much upon it. For instance, when Bastian tells the story of the terrible dragon for Hero Heinrich, he does not explain everything that happens in Heinrich's quest, or even foretell that the princess Oglamar will be captured. He simply gives the story and allows it to develop.
Unfortunately, story-telling is not always as easy as it sounds. In the process of creating a plot and showing the interactions of a bunch of Names, it is easy for unintended consequences to develop. When Bastian thinks up the Acharai to cry the sea of tears around the silver City of Amaranth, he does not realize that he has created an entire race of depressed caterpillars, but it is a logical consequence to his story. The writer must also always be in control of his story, and aware of its possible ramifications. If a story is to be real, everything in it must have actually happened within the world, and the writer must be aware of this.
Of course, to create a novel, and not just a book-length string of images and interesting ideas, the writer must have some idea of where his book is going, and how to finish the stories he creates. This is where the third facet of Auryn's power - the pure Wish - comes into play. As long as Bastian is in Fantastica, he is the writer, able to create as he wishes and explore to his heart's content the world he has dreamed up. But the longer he stays there, and the more he uses his power, the harder it is for him to return to the real world. He runs the risk of drowning under his own imagination, and not being able to leave it. The writer also faces this danger. It is too easy for him to simply create willy-nilly, with neither purpose nor thought of an end. If he does this however, he may create a wonderful playground for himself to explore, but he can not be said to have written a story.
To leave Fantastica, and reemerge into the light of reality [or reburrow into the dark] the writer needs a wish. He need not know what that wish is, but he must have it, and some memory of the outside world to fuel it. There must be a reason for his creation, and he must be working towards some sort of goal. Without this underlying desire for his creation to do something, he can not hope to achieve anything with it, or even bring it to the eyes of anyone else.
So what's the point? Ende seems to have given us a very good schematic for the roles of readers and writers in literature, but why do we need it? If people could content themselves with remaining in the real world, we wouldn't have to worry about figuring out how we interact with books we read, and no one would bother creating them. The trouble is that that is impossible. In The Neverending Story, Fantastica isn't simply a construct of some person's mind. It is a real place that is dependent on the world, just as the world is dependent on it. In less metaphorical terms, people can not help imagining. They do it all the time, to help them deal with the real world, and just because they find it fun. If we do not have a realm of fantasy [I hope it has been clear that throughout this fantasy has not simply meant books with unicorns and wizards. It is anything that has not happened in the real world, anything born of the creative power of the imagination] to let that imagination roam in, it will fester and consume us. When creatures of Fantastica enter the real world they become lies. It is easy to say "Of course they do. They are not real, and are just intended to fool people. Of course they are lies", but they only become lies when they enter our world and are left untended. In their world, they live and love and are beautiful. We need Fantastica and fantasy so we have a place to live our imaginations outside of the real world, so they do not become lies and do harm.
All of that is lovely, and seems true, and we want to believe it, but it is still circular reasoning. Michael Ende's "plea for fantasy's right to exist" is played out in a fantasy world, with fake characters. It could just be a load of heart-wrenching, gut-busting, goofy smile-inducing bullshit. But we don't want it to be, and I think that is exactly how we know it is not. Ende has pulled the ultimate fake-out on our cold, logical hearts. We can't call baloney on the journey he has just described, because it happened to us. This is sort of difficult to describe precisely, because everyone obvious has their own reactions to a book, and I could be basing this entirely on my own journey. I have a few examples that I think will make it clear just what I mean.
The first is the distinction between Real Life and Fantastica that I foreshadowed that I would talk about. In the American version of the book, this distinction is signalled by the use of Italics for RL and straight font [curse my lack of typographical jargon!] for Fantastica. This is nice and effective, though I don't like it as much as the German solution. In the original work, RL is denoted by red ink, and Phantasien by blue-green. This works surprisingly well; both are easy to read, though green is admittedly more so, and it doesn't imply that Fantastica is the "normal" setting of the book and RL is simply a diversion. In both books, however, you quickly learn to identify the setting with the font. You are absorbed into the world of the book. The font gives an easy way to find your bearings and distinguish between locations, just as Bastian must be able to. The dichotomy of Fantastica and RL quickly becomes as real to you as it is to the character of Bastian, even though you experience them as patterns of ink on a page, and he lives in them.
The frequent use of the phrase "But that is another story and will be told another time" to close of the stories of secondary characters is the most concise way in which Ende shows how a writer can create complex and true stories from simple Names or Stories. In the beginning stages of the book, this device seems to broaden the scope of the narrative. It is an apology for the necessary focus of the story on Bastian, and hints at a huge web of interconnected stories that make up the Neverending one. While you probably don't completely picture the whole other story every time one is mentioned, you know that they exist, and can imagine how they occur, even though you are only given a brief summary. You are sure that each one could be written.
Once Bastian is given Auryn and is a 'writer' of stories himself, this device becomes an excuse, a way that Bastian, who is often not a very good creator, closes off consequences that he can not be bothered to handle. When he sends Heinrich off against the dragon, it occurs, and you realize that you are missing out on a whole story. Whereas before it had only been used to suggest an obvious end, now whole plots are becoming 'Other Stories' and you feel that you are missing out. Of course, you probably don't stop to figure all of this out intellectually [I didn't think of it quite like this until just now], but you can feel what is wrong. I don't want to dictate your response too much, but I literally cried out in frustration when Bastian foisted his trusty mule Jicha off into Another Story. It is only when Bastian realizes that he can not control everything precisely, and begins to seek the overriding Wish that will send him back to his world, that these other stories become hopeful again. One of the last is a classic story of renewed life, in which a magpie finds the remnants of his magic belt and flies off with it to his next. Here again we see a simple story that does not need complete explanation, but whose consequences seem right and which accords perfectly with the larger whole.
Well, this has been long [Almost 4,000 words by the time I wrap it up], and I have to get up soon, so I am not sure how to conclude it. If you haven't read the Neverending Story, read it, and don't react like I told you to just because I told you to. Read it, and love it, and then read something else, and see yourself in it, and wish.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Ivory Tower Onanism (Rough)
Again I find myself in this position, sitting down to write something as I know I should be going to bed. Things get bad this late at night. Every homophone is accidentally replaced with a different spelling of itself, earning the hatred of grammar nerds everywhere, which is a great shame, because some of my closest friends are grammar nerds. With luck, the hour will push me to keep things short, as I tell myself that as soon as I finish this I can go bed. Unfortunately, Blogspot is interacting poorly with the Facebook chat with Kieran F(The first personal name mentioned in this blog? I think so) in another tab, so I may not even get that far. Perchance I will simply introduce my topic, go to bed, and return another day to finish it. Perchance it will be tomorrow, but more likely two weeks from now.
Actually, I think I am going to just come back to this whole thing tomorrow. Why, you ask, would I then leave this whole irrelevant introduction lying around when anyone can come upon it and judge it? Well, this whole blog is just an excuse to get me writing, and so I would like to preserve everything I do write, however useless. So this introduction remains. See you later, when I will talk a little about philosophy, and maybe mention another personal name.
Huh. Last night, I thought I was making a cliff-hanger, but with only a line of blank space between where I left off then and where I start now, the suspense doesn't end up being very effective. Anyway, I was talking a while with Sophie K about philosophy, and how generally useless it is. Well, she was talking about how generally useless it is, and I was trying valiantly to defend it. Unfortunately, there wasn't very much I could do.
We had just read an article by Bertrand Russel about the limited proof we have that anything outside our minds really exists. The basic argument was that there is no way we can know that the people and things we see around us are actually there in a physical sense, or if they are just constructions created by (thinking philosophically) our mind or (thinking in science-fiction) a giant computer simulation. She wondered why anyone should be concerned with the reality of outside objects as long as they appear to exist for us. I admitted that there was indeed no way of being certain, though the apparent consistency of the world we experience implied that there seemed to be. I said philosophers generally admitted that we could not be certain of outside reality, and they are usually concerned with what to do in case we are. They want to know how we should think of ourselves and our relationships with others, if those others are not as real as we are.
She said that was all well and good, but repeated her objection. Who cares if everything around us does not exist, as long as we can still interact with it as though it does? There was no good response to that. I tried to argue that we without the presence of other people, we would be lonely and unfulfilled. She said that even if other people were constructions of her subconscious, she could still interact with them as though they were distinct from her, and so she had no reason to be lonely. I asked if sex, the most physical and intimate human sensation, would be as satisfying if she were not actually experiencing with another person, and if, in fact, she had no material body to actually experience it. She said it might not, but she could never know that for sure, and even if she could, the mental stimulation she had when she perceived herself as having sex was everything the physical act could be, so there was no loss.
We were probably missing some deep philosophical nuance in our argument. As I think about it now, I am sure we had some fundamental difference on definition on some point, though I can't put my finger on where. I am also finding objections to the idea that we could be entirely alone and without other people; in what sense are figments of our imagination less real than we are if they have all of the experiences and apparent complexities we do? Regardless of how philosophically rigorous we were being, the conversation made me realize that this sort of philosophy, the staple of all of the Greats - Plato, Descartes, Kant - did not lend as much as its creators might imagine to the everyday average life of most people.
Philosophers tend to think, in my experience, that they have their finger on the pulse of the times, that their theories can explain everything and make things simpler for everyone else. In Martin Heidegger's Being and Time, he explains the ontological priority of his existential analytic of Dasein (I had to)as its ability to provide a firm foundation for all of the other sciences. He said that without the complete understanding of the meaning of Being that he was developing, any investigation of individual beings was incomplete. Heidegger only ever got a third of the way through his project, but I don't think that is why it is not required reading for every new scientist or scholar. It's because despite his sense of his own importance, we really don't need to have a complete theory of ontology before we can begin to investigate the things we see. Scientists have been doing it very well since the Greeks, even without a philosophical framework for what they were describing. Ordinary people can live in a world they don't entirely understand without freaking out. So why does anyone bother to philosophize?
The answer I came up with, and I am probably not the first, is that some people just have to. The great mass of humanity can sleep at night not knowing for sure why they are on this planet, or not being assured that they only believe the sun will rise tomorrow because of habit, not because of any deductive proof that the law of cause and effect will continue to hold. They may have doubts or confusions now and again, but for the most part, people can take the comforts of religion, or their family convictions, or even a constitutional optimism and feel secure. They don't need to doubt their senses, because their senses explain things better than their intellect. In fact, they often tend to distrust rational attempts to explain such things as foolish or unnecessary. Why justify the world when it seems perfectly content to justify itself? You'd have to be an idiot.
The thing is that such idiots exist. There are people who, for one reason or another, just can't rest content with what they have. They are curious, they strive for certainty. They might go a variety of directions. People like Carl Sagan and Richard Feynman fall under this category as much as Schopenhauer and Hegel. They all possess that germ of curiosity that needs something more than what it can see to be secure in its existence. Scientists look more closely outside themselves for strict laws to give order and coherence to their lives, while philosophers are introspective and search themselves for the answers they speak. Nonetheless, they are kindred temperaments and believe as a group that "you've got to stop and think about the complexity, to really get the pleasure" or security.
That explains why they do it, for sure, but it doesn't really explain the point and why anyone but this small caste of people should care. Scientists are obviously useful, because they give provide us technology and ideas that will affect how we live, but what do philosophers really do for us? Who needs 'em anyway?
And I think, the answer is that no one really needs 'em, just like no one really needs painters or composers or all of the other people who make human creativity manifest in the world. It's not necessary, for sure, but it is a uniquely human activity to be able to think rationally about grand questions of reality, and it is by doing so that we assert our consciousness and prove that we are more than simply organic machines that simulate intelligence. You could argue that people are in fact nothing more than bundles of cells that seem to function as something greater than the sum of the interrelationships between their parts, and you would be right as long as everyone believed that. Philosophers seek to justify the human place in the world with logic, and even though they may fail, their efforts are their own justification. Or so we tell ourselves.
Actually, I think I am going to just come back to this whole thing tomorrow. Why, you ask, would I then leave this whole irrelevant introduction lying around when anyone can come upon it and judge it? Well, this whole blog is just an excuse to get me writing, and so I would like to preserve everything I do write, however useless. So this introduction remains. See you later, when I will talk a little about philosophy, and maybe mention another personal name.
Huh. Last night, I thought I was making a cliff-hanger, but with only a line of blank space between where I left off then and where I start now, the suspense doesn't end up being very effective. Anyway, I was talking a while with Sophie K about philosophy, and how generally useless it is. Well, she was talking about how generally useless it is, and I was trying valiantly to defend it. Unfortunately, there wasn't very much I could do.
We had just read an article by Bertrand Russel about the limited proof we have that anything outside our minds really exists. The basic argument was that there is no way we can know that the people and things we see around us are actually there in a physical sense, or if they are just constructions created by (thinking philosophically) our mind or (thinking in science-fiction) a giant computer simulation. She wondered why anyone should be concerned with the reality of outside objects as long as they appear to exist for us. I admitted that there was indeed no way of being certain, though the apparent consistency of the world we experience implied that there seemed to be. I said philosophers generally admitted that we could not be certain of outside reality, and they are usually concerned with what to do in case we are. They want to know how we should think of ourselves and our relationships with others, if those others are not as real as we are.
She said that was all well and good, but repeated her objection. Who cares if everything around us does not exist, as long as we can still interact with it as though it does? There was no good response to that. I tried to argue that we without the presence of other people, we would be lonely and unfulfilled. She said that even if other people were constructions of her subconscious, she could still interact with them as though they were distinct from her, and so she had no reason to be lonely. I asked if sex, the most physical and intimate human sensation, would be as satisfying if she were not actually experiencing with another person, and if, in fact, she had no material body to actually experience it. She said it might not, but she could never know that for sure, and even if she could, the mental stimulation she had when she perceived herself as having sex was everything the physical act could be, so there was no loss.
We were probably missing some deep philosophical nuance in our argument. As I think about it now, I am sure we had some fundamental difference on definition on some point, though I can't put my finger on where. I am also finding objections to the idea that we could be entirely alone and without other people; in what sense are figments of our imagination less real than we are if they have all of the experiences and apparent complexities we do? Regardless of how philosophically rigorous we were being, the conversation made me realize that this sort of philosophy, the staple of all of the Greats - Plato, Descartes, Kant - did not lend as much as its creators might imagine to the everyday average life of most people.
Philosophers tend to think, in my experience, that they have their finger on the pulse of the times, that their theories can explain everything and make things simpler for everyone else. In Martin Heidegger's Being and Time, he explains the ontological priority of his existential analytic of Dasein (I had to)as its ability to provide a firm foundation for all of the other sciences. He said that without the complete understanding of the meaning of Being that he was developing, any investigation of individual beings was incomplete. Heidegger only ever got a third of the way through his project, but I don't think that is why it is not required reading for every new scientist or scholar. It's because despite his sense of his own importance, we really don't need to have a complete theory of ontology before we can begin to investigate the things we see. Scientists have been doing it very well since the Greeks, even without a philosophical framework for what they were describing. Ordinary people can live in a world they don't entirely understand without freaking out. So why does anyone bother to philosophize?
The answer I came up with, and I am probably not the first, is that some people just have to. The great mass of humanity can sleep at night not knowing for sure why they are on this planet, or not being assured that they only believe the sun will rise tomorrow because of habit, not because of any deductive proof that the law of cause and effect will continue to hold. They may have doubts or confusions now and again, but for the most part, people can take the comforts of religion, or their family convictions, or even a constitutional optimism and feel secure. They don't need to doubt their senses, because their senses explain things better than their intellect. In fact, they often tend to distrust rational attempts to explain such things as foolish or unnecessary. Why justify the world when it seems perfectly content to justify itself? You'd have to be an idiot.
The thing is that such idiots exist. There are people who, for one reason or another, just can't rest content with what they have. They are curious, they strive for certainty. They might go a variety of directions. People like Carl Sagan and Richard Feynman fall under this category as much as Schopenhauer and Hegel. They all possess that germ of curiosity that needs something more than what it can see to be secure in its existence. Scientists look more closely outside themselves for strict laws to give order and coherence to their lives, while philosophers are introspective and search themselves for the answers they speak. Nonetheless, they are kindred temperaments and believe as a group that "you've got to stop and think about the complexity, to really get the pleasure" or security.
That explains why they do it, for sure, but it doesn't really explain the point and why anyone but this small caste of people should care. Scientists are obviously useful, because they give provide us technology and ideas that will affect how we live, but what do philosophers really do for us? Who needs 'em anyway?
And I think, the answer is that no one really needs 'em, just like no one really needs painters or composers or all of the other people who make human creativity manifest in the world. It's not necessary, for sure, but it is a uniquely human activity to be able to think rationally about grand questions of reality, and it is by doing so that we assert our consciousness and prove that we are more than simply organic machines that simulate intelligence. You could argue that people are in fact nothing more than bundles of cells that seem to function as something greater than the sum of the interrelationships between their parts, and you would be right as long as everyone believed that. Philosophers seek to justify the human place in the world with logic, and even though they may fail, their efforts are their own justification. Or so we tell ourselves.
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
This is Jedediah Schultz (Rough)
So this is going to be the final piece of my Laramie Triptych. It's been long gestating, probably too long, and this is almost an emergency C-section to just, Get it out! An old joke, but appropriate. A beginning and an end, the ouroboros. Sorry about the unexpected, unnatural blooming of my style tonight, but I just read the poem from Nabokov's Pale Fire. I don't pretend to approach the old boy on any level of talent or intellect or raw sex appeal, but he is infectious.
As an another of my innumerable asides, read Pale Fire. It's incredible. At least, from the first quarter, I assume that it will be, and the first quarter is the poem that is central to the work, the rest is just commentary. Can you imagine that? Writing a book that is primarily commentary on itself? Of course, the commentary is often unrelated, as I understand, and weaves a narrative that only builds fantastically off of the poem, but that is still amazing. It's as though the first act of Hamlet was all there was, and 'To be or not to Be' was just commentary. If the Bible was like that, no one would have heard of the Messiah outside the absurd ramblings of some academicians who pulled the wild tale of an eternal savior out of the good old story of the House of Israel up until the first Babylonian Captivity. The only Babylonian Captivity, excuse me, the second one merely a theory attempting to relate the true history of the old Semites to the sorry case of modern society.
I am rambling. I will come back later, when I am less full of words and muse at you about how strange it must be to have been in the first production of the Laramie Project. To have to stand on stage and taking the character a person you have met, spoken to, befriended, saying words that you heard them say, that might be nestled in a tape recorder in your filing cabinet back home. And then, as though that were not enough to untangle your neurons, you have to turn around and act yourself. It's weird.
Well, coming back to this the next day, I feel as though that little summary said everything I wanted to say. But I will say some more. Did you think I wouldn't.
The premise of the Laramie project is that all of the characters are based on real people, and everything they said is real, and edited as faithfully as possible. I say they are based on real people, because in the end, they are no more real than any other dramatic character. A role in a play is nothing more than the words that comprise it. They may suggest a past and a future, hint at relationships and lives that we never see on stage, but they are fundamentally just a small series of words, and they can't encompass the fantastically complicated totality that is a human being. This makes acting Laramie somewhat easier for companies who don't know the people involved; as long as they are being faithful to the script, they are being as faithful as possible to the people of Laramie.
If you had met the people of Laramie, it would be different. In their first performance, the Tectonics must have faced the dilemma of fidelity. I wonder if they decided to attempt to mimic the people as accurately as possible, or if they prepared their characters as though they had never eaten dinner with them. My guess is that they tried to divorce their performance as much as possible from their experience, or there would be notes in the script - Doc O'Connor tends to breath heavily through his nose, Reggie Fluty has this obnoxious laugh - to help future performances achieve the same thing. That they don't do that implies a different goal for the play, a goal that somewhat contradicts the idea of "telling it true". The only thing the characters of the Laramie Project share with their inspirations are their words, and in that sense they are a bit like Pierre Menard's Don Quixote. The emphasis is therefore placed on those words, and not on the people themselves.
In this way, the Laramie Project asserts the primacy of theater over direct retelling as a way of explaining the world. Despite being about real people, it is a construct, a story. (Sorry I am inarticulate; it's half past twelve, the only time I can drive myself to write) All of the talk of telling it true and accurately representing the town is a bunch of baloney. You are not seeing Wyoming, you are seeing a college theater group's interpretation of Wyoming. Yet somehow, you forget that. You believe that Aaron Kriefels and Jedediah Schultz really are the same person, and that Wyomingites have no accent. And it's still all true. Despite the rampant falsehoods, you are struck, moved. If they had all tried to pull bad accents, or exactly imitated Rulon Stacy's stutter, you would not. I think it's because the words are powerful, and you can't help but react to them. When the actors bring their own lives and feelings to the characters, the words become realer and more human than if they were acting "accurately" for each character. How's that for a paradox?
This next point was supposed to be the one that was mind-boggling, but as I stumbled into that discussion, I realized how crazy it was, and the obvious difficulties of this one sort of fade away. I was wondering how one acts oneself on stage. I am sure there is a character-building process, a way of presenting yourself that is different from simply choosing not to act for the scenes you are in. After all, Greg Pierroti is a character as much as the Dennis Shepherd, and if he went up on stage and simply acted like he was himself hanging out, the dramatic coherency of the play would be ruined. He surely had to learn to portray himself as he appeared when he was giving interviews, but that is simple, I would think. But still, I can't fathom the eeriness of being in the crowd on the first night and seeing your close friends introduced by a narrator as themselves, as though they were playing themselves. I wouldn't be surprised if they had an entirely different experience of the show, one that was more personal, but at the same time much more focused on the form and ironies of the play, rather than its surface message.
Tune in next time, when I stop talking about the Laramie Project, and talk about philosopher! Also, I should be brief, but who knows.
As an another of my innumerable asides, read Pale Fire. It's incredible. At least, from the first quarter, I assume that it will be, and the first quarter is the poem that is central to the work, the rest is just commentary. Can you imagine that? Writing a book that is primarily commentary on itself? Of course, the commentary is often unrelated, as I understand, and weaves a narrative that only builds fantastically off of the poem, but that is still amazing. It's as though the first act of Hamlet was all there was, and 'To be or not to Be' was just commentary. If the Bible was like that, no one would have heard of the Messiah outside the absurd ramblings of some academicians who pulled the wild tale of an eternal savior out of the good old story of the House of Israel up until the first Babylonian Captivity. The only Babylonian Captivity, excuse me, the second one merely a theory attempting to relate the true history of the old Semites to the sorry case of modern society.
I am rambling. I will come back later, when I am less full of words and muse at you about how strange it must be to have been in the first production of the Laramie Project. To have to stand on stage and taking the character a person you have met, spoken to, befriended, saying words that you heard them say, that might be nestled in a tape recorder in your filing cabinet back home. And then, as though that were not enough to untangle your neurons, you have to turn around and act yourself. It's weird.
Well, coming back to this the next day, I feel as though that little summary said everything I wanted to say. But I will say some more. Did you think I wouldn't.
The premise of the Laramie project is that all of the characters are based on real people, and everything they said is real, and edited as faithfully as possible. I say they are based on real people, because in the end, they are no more real than any other dramatic character. A role in a play is nothing more than the words that comprise it. They may suggest a past and a future, hint at relationships and lives that we never see on stage, but they are fundamentally just a small series of words, and they can't encompass the fantastically complicated totality that is a human being. This makes acting Laramie somewhat easier for companies who don't know the people involved; as long as they are being faithful to the script, they are being as faithful as possible to the people of Laramie.
If you had met the people of Laramie, it would be different. In their first performance, the Tectonics must have faced the dilemma of fidelity. I wonder if they decided to attempt to mimic the people as accurately as possible, or if they prepared their characters as though they had never eaten dinner with them. My guess is that they tried to divorce their performance as much as possible from their experience, or there would be notes in the script - Doc O'Connor tends to breath heavily through his nose, Reggie Fluty has this obnoxious laugh - to help future performances achieve the same thing. That they don't do that implies a different goal for the play, a goal that somewhat contradicts the idea of "telling it true". The only thing the characters of the Laramie Project share with their inspirations are their words, and in that sense they are a bit like Pierre Menard's Don Quixote. The emphasis is therefore placed on those words, and not on the people themselves.
In this way, the Laramie Project asserts the primacy of theater over direct retelling as a way of explaining the world. Despite being about real people, it is a construct, a story. (Sorry I am inarticulate; it's half past twelve, the only time I can drive myself to write) All of the talk of telling it true and accurately representing the town is a bunch of baloney. You are not seeing Wyoming, you are seeing a college theater group's interpretation of Wyoming. Yet somehow, you forget that. You believe that Aaron Kriefels and Jedediah Schultz really are the same person, and that Wyomingites have no accent. And it's still all true. Despite the rampant falsehoods, you are struck, moved. If they had all tried to pull bad accents, or exactly imitated Rulon Stacy's stutter, you would not. I think it's because the words are powerful, and you can't help but react to them. When the actors bring their own lives and feelings to the characters, the words become realer and more human than if they were acting "accurately" for each character. How's that for a paradox?
This next point was supposed to be the one that was mind-boggling, but as I stumbled into that discussion, I realized how crazy it was, and the obvious difficulties of this one sort of fade away. I was wondering how one acts oneself on stage. I am sure there is a character-building process, a way of presenting yourself that is different from simply choosing not to act for the scenes you are in. After all, Greg Pierroti is a character as much as the Dennis Shepherd, and if he went up on stage and simply acted like he was himself hanging out, the dramatic coherency of the play would be ruined. He surely had to learn to portray himself as he appeared when he was giving interviews, but that is simple, I would think. But still, I can't fathom the eeriness of being in the crowd on the first night and seeing your close friends introduced by a narrator as themselves, as though they were playing themselves. I wouldn't be surprised if they had an entirely different experience of the show, one that was more personal, but at the same time much more focused on the form and ironies of the play, rather than its surface message.
Tune in next time, when I stop talking about the Laramie Project, and talk about philosopher! Also, I should be brief, but who knows.
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Some of the time it bothers me, but most of the time it don't (Rough)
It is long past time for Part 2 of my series on the Laramie Project. It's been over a month and a half, but I've been far too lazy to do anything with anything, so I have done nothing. I hope to change that, but I am sure I won't.
As you might know if you have read my first, excessively long post about the show, in this installment I plan to talk about the use of humor in the Laramie Project. As you might expect, there is nothing unfunny about hate crime, and the Tectonics seemed to know this when they wrote their play. It is full of funny lines and monologues, and some characters seem almost entirely comedic. They are not always played up, but a good actor can find any number of potential jokes scattered throughout the play. The Theater Guild's production made what seemed to me the strong choice to seize these moments of comic relief to the fullest. Audiences were consistently taken by surprise when what they assumed would be a depressing but enriching experience made them laugh their asses off. It would be impossible to make the Laramie Project a comedy without earning a "Go to Hell, Go Directly to Hell" card, but tackling the humor inherent in the script helps to emphasize the main message of the play, which is not wholly one of sad remembrance, but of renewal.
A significant reason for the success of the humor in Laramie is that it is entirely unforced. None of the characters are so crass as to crack wise while being interviewed about a brutal murder. There is no wit; the comedy is based on the misspeech and foolishness of people. I am sure it must be hard to speak well when you know that anything you say could be put up on a stage in a blue state, twisted out of context, and branded as the words of a homophobic, conservative, hill-billy asshole. Characters are constantly trying to explain themselves, justify themselves, correct their every lapsus lingua, and it's funny. Sheri Anneson has this problem when she is pressed to explain that SoL is "Shit Out of Luck". Sure it's a funny phrase, but the real humor is in her charming unwillingness to have her uncultured figure of speech on the record. The comedy all seems to stem from this sort of unplanned sincerity, whether a character is defending their rough edges or not realizing that they exist (a la Matt Galloway's "Funneling" monologue towards the end). It makes you realize that the characters are real people who have trouble speaking on their feet, not Shakespearean constructs who can quibble on three definitions of a word exquisitely every third line.
Besides this added realism and relatability, the humor has a very real dramatic importance. Comic relief is a phrase that gets thrown around a lot to describe humor in serious works, but it's vague, and often inaccurate. Typically, it is used to imply that comedy relieves the emotional tension of tragedy. Basically, it's the job of the drunken porter to cool you down so you don't try to commit suicide everytime you watch MacBeth. This is often the case, but like every theory ever advanced in the world of the arts, it doesn't explain everything. I have also heard another theory of Comic Relief, taking Relief instead in the sense of Topographic Relief. Comedy enhances tragedy by the emotional contrast. This is another good use of humor, but it still doesn't cover everything. Just off the top of my head, I can see at least two other applications, which I am going to call Comic Tension and Comic Resolution. I'll give an example of each from the Laramie Project, to try to see explain how I see each, then try to wrap up with some sort of a conclusion.
The specifics of the play are understandably being swept from the corridors of my memory by the the custodian of Time (Lu-Tze!), so this is going to be difficult and probably inaccurate. The examples of simple Comic Relief (both types) in the play seem fairly uncommon. I can't think of any clear examples. That type of humor tends to stand by itself, unrelated to the surrounding events, except as contrast, like the Gravedigger Scene in Hamlet. (I don't know why my examples are from Shakespeare). The comedy in Laramie is almost never like this; it is always tailored to directly heighten emotional tension, especially in the beginning or middle, or resolve it, at the end.
A good example of the first sort is Doc O'Connor's monologue in the beginning of the beat entitled "Matthew". He talks about when he first met Matt Shepherd, and contradicts all of the media's descriptions of him because "this man, this man was 5'2'. Maybe 5'1". Doc is a funny character, mostly because he makes no effort to hide his rustic affability, and this monologue is no exception. It seems like it would be a perfect example of humor that decreases tension, but it doesn't. It's a poignant moment [I just want to digress here to point out my weakness for qualifiers. I am way too scared of strong language; I almost put 'sort of' before poignant, for the eight billionth time in this essay], because eulogies aren't usually humorous. You don't expect anyone to have funny things to say about a tragic figure, and since they are positive, they make you feel more strongly for Matthew and the people who cared about him.
Comic Resolution is when comedy is used not as a respite from the emotional tension of sadness, but as its conclusion, as a way to wrap and signal that everything is alright. Their are two good examples in Laramie: Reggie Fluty and Marge Murray's last conversation,and Matt Galloway's last monologue. They function differently, but both fall under this heading. Reggie and Marge's chat reveals that Reggie is HIV-Negative, and ends with them bickering over Reggie's decision to celebrate her health by kissing every member of the police force. It's a happy scene, but what makes it is the contended quarreling of the ending. It's a sign that everything is alright, all is well. The winter of discontent and sorrow has become glorious spring of laughter.
In Galloway's monologue, he talks about how testifying in the trial was good for him, because he is a natural public speaker and talking to a jury is always a challenge for him. It is probably the funniest bit in the play, especially considering that it is rather incongruous with the rest of the denouement. Unlike the rest of the conclusion, which deals with leaving Laramie and looks to the future, the monologue dwells on the past. In doing so, it reveals that even during the trials, the darkest part of the ordeal, people were finding things to be happy about. The human spirit is fundamentally optimistic, it says, and will always find something to laugh about.
And that is the fundamental message in all of the humor in the Laramie Project. People love to laugh, and it helps them cope with hard times. It may not be the only way of healing the wounds, but an ability to not take yourself too seriously and see the duality of laughter and tears helps communities move on. Or something like that; I haven't read it in too long, so I couldn't really get very textual and it's too late for really deep thinking.
Tune in for the final part of my Laramie Trilogy: Performing metatheatricality.
As you might know if you have read my first, excessively long post about the show, in this installment I plan to talk about the use of humor in the Laramie Project. As you might expect, there is nothing unfunny about hate crime, and the Tectonics seemed to know this when they wrote their play. It is full of funny lines and monologues, and some characters seem almost entirely comedic. They are not always played up, but a good actor can find any number of potential jokes scattered throughout the play. The Theater Guild's production made what seemed to me the strong choice to seize these moments of comic relief to the fullest. Audiences were consistently taken by surprise when what they assumed would be a depressing but enriching experience made them laugh their asses off. It would be impossible to make the Laramie Project a comedy without earning a "Go to Hell, Go Directly to Hell" card, but tackling the humor inherent in the script helps to emphasize the main message of the play, which is not wholly one of sad remembrance, but of renewal.
A significant reason for the success of the humor in Laramie is that it is entirely unforced. None of the characters are so crass as to crack wise while being interviewed about a brutal murder. There is no wit; the comedy is based on the misspeech and foolishness of people. I am sure it must be hard to speak well when you know that anything you say could be put up on a stage in a blue state, twisted out of context, and branded as the words of a homophobic, conservative, hill-billy asshole. Characters are constantly trying to explain themselves, justify themselves, correct their every lapsus lingua, and it's funny. Sheri Anneson has this problem when she is pressed to explain that SoL is "Shit Out of Luck". Sure it's a funny phrase, but the real humor is in her charming unwillingness to have her uncultured figure of speech on the record. The comedy all seems to stem from this sort of unplanned sincerity, whether a character is defending their rough edges or not realizing that they exist (a la Matt Galloway's "Funneling" monologue towards the end). It makes you realize that the characters are real people who have trouble speaking on their feet, not Shakespearean constructs who can quibble on three definitions of a word exquisitely every third line.
Besides this added realism and relatability, the humor has a very real dramatic importance. Comic relief is a phrase that gets thrown around a lot to describe humor in serious works, but it's vague, and often inaccurate. Typically, it is used to imply that comedy relieves the emotional tension of tragedy. Basically, it's the job of the drunken porter to cool you down so you don't try to commit suicide everytime you watch MacBeth. This is often the case, but like every theory ever advanced in the world of the arts, it doesn't explain everything. I have also heard another theory of Comic Relief, taking Relief instead in the sense of Topographic Relief. Comedy enhances tragedy by the emotional contrast. This is another good use of humor, but it still doesn't cover everything. Just off the top of my head, I can see at least two other applications, which I am going to call Comic Tension and Comic Resolution. I'll give an example of each from the Laramie Project, to try to see explain how I see each, then try to wrap up with some sort of a conclusion.
The specifics of the play are understandably being swept from the corridors of my memory by the the custodian of Time (Lu-Tze!), so this is going to be difficult and probably inaccurate. The examples of simple Comic Relief (both types) in the play seem fairly uncommon. I can't think of any clear examples. That type of humor tends to stand by itself, unrelated to the surrounding events, except as contrast, like the Gravedigger Scene in Hamlet. (I don't know why my examples are from Shakespeare). The comedy in Laramie is almost never like this; it is always tailored to directly heighten emotional tension, especially in the beginning or middle, or resolve it, at the end.
A good example of the first sort is Doc O'Connor's monologue in the beginning of the beat entitled "Matthew". He talks about when he first met Matt Shepherd, and contradicts all of the media's descriptions of him because "this man, this man was 5'2'. Maybe 5'1". Doc is a funny character, mostly because he makes no effort to hide his rustic affability, and this monologue is no exception. It seems like it would be a perfect example of humor that decreases tension, but it doesn't. It's a poignant moment [I just want to digress here to point out my weakness for qualifiers. I am way too scared of strong language; I almost put 'sort of' before poignant, for the eight billionth time in this essay], because eulogies aren't usually humorous. You don't expect anyone to have funny things to say about a tragic figure, and since they are positive, they make you feel more strongly for Matthew and the people who cared about him.
Comic Resolution is when comedy is used not as a respite from the emotional tension of sadness, but as its conclusion, as a way to wrap and signal that everything is alright. Their are two good examples in Laramie: Reggie Fluty and Marge Murray's last conversation,and Matt Galloway's last monologue. They function differently, but both fall under this heading. Reggie and Marge's chat reveals that Reggie is HIV-Negative, and ends with them bickering over Reggie's decision to celebrate her health by kissing every member of the police force. It's a happy scene, but what makes it is the contended quarreling of the ending. It's a sign that everything is alright, all is well. The winter of discontent and sorrow has become glorious spring of laughter.
In Galloway's monologue, he talks about how testifying in the trial was good for him, because he is a natural public speaker and talking to a jury is always a challenge for him. It is probably the funniest bit in the play, especially considering that it is rather incongruous with the rest of the denouement. Unlike the rest of the conclusion, which deals with leaving Laramie and looks to the future, the monologue dwells on the past. In doing so, it reveals that even during the trials, the darkest part of the ordeal, people were finding things to be happy about. The human spirit is fundamentally optimistic, it says, and will always find something to laugh about.
And that is the fundamental message in all of the humor in the Laramie Project. People love to laugh, and it helps them cope with hard times. It may not be the only way of healing the wounds, but an ability to not take yourself too seriously and see the duality of laughter and tears helps communities move on. Or something like that; I haven't read it in too long, so I couldn't really get very textual and it's too late for really deep thinking.
Tune in for the final part of my Laramie Trilogy: Performing metatheatricality.
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Anuphraxas Bound (Rough)
I can see it in the distance,
a solitary plume rising from the ground
like smoke from a dragon's nostril.
No, wait; no good dragon has only one nostril,
and as I look I see the second
hidden among the grass, just up hill.
No wait, those aren't nostrils, they're too small.
This must be one giant beast, with nostrils more like
caverns than pizzas.
But there are great funnels over them,
collecting the smoke and channeling it
out of the ground so it doesn't fill the tunnels he is chained
in, and kill him.
The gnomes must have made it,
hundreds
and thousands
of years ago, when they found him
and caught him
and bound him in the earth.
The battle raged for days,
killing dozens of gnomes,
but unfortunately, there were always more.
They buried him under their never-ending numbers,
and then under the Earth.
If I were them, I would use his warmth for heat,
and fry eggs on his mammoth sides.
I'm sure they do.
What else is a chained dragon good for?
I suppose he must shed, now and again,
and when their kings meet the goblin chiefs,
they go arrayed in the finest dragon scale plate,
and give terse commands to tall gnomes
(It's not an oxymoron)
with swords and knives of toenail clippings.
The goblins are fierce,
warriors all, but stupid and superstitious.
Their petty steel is no match for dragon dandruff
and they concede the tunnel network
as far east as the river Lethe.
I guess the dragon is a savior,
a chained beast like Atlas
holding up civilization,
but no Odysseus seems likely to come along
and take his burden,
the burden of supporting an entire subterranean world.
But even if he did, Odysseus would certainly trick him when he returned with the golden apples and give the world back and then Atlas would get all mad and try to get back at him but be totally unable, because what can you do when you are holding the world?
I know, the allusion is shaky,
and the analogy unsound.
But still,
it's fine, you get it.
Like Atlas, the chained beast holds up civilization
as they know it, and submits to all of their humiliations.
But the worst thing,
the worst of all,
what he hates,
and really loathes,
are not the chains
or the eggs
or the incessant scale harvesters.
What he really minds
and wishes he could get rid of,
are those damned nose funnels,
because now he can never reach to scratch his itches.
Someday,
he tells himself.
Someday, I am going to sneeze
and they will blow off into space,
and I'll be able to breath at last.
You and I will know that day when it comes.
(I is me not him here)
As we walk down the hill,
we will notice the free flow of steam,
and the conspicuous lack of manhole covers.
You'll say something like,
“Hmm, it must be caused by a unusually strong build-up of steam. I've heard that often occurs during peak heating times like the mid-winter cold flash we are experiencing now. Don't you agree?”
I'll shrug.
“I think it's dragons.”
Of course, knowing myself all too well,
I could be you, and you could be me,
but who cares.
The exchange will occur,
and I (you) will be wrong,
and you (me) will be right,
but really, it doesn't matter.
As long as one day,
walking down the hill,
there are no manhole covers ,
it can be excess steam,
dragons,
alien abduction,
manhole cover thieves,
a savage prank,
a new campus aesthetic,
spontaneous combustion,
the Bermuda Triangle,
Lee Harvey Oswald,
Jack Ruby,
Stairway to Heaven played backwards,
or even just a dream,
as long as you said one thing,
and I said another,
and we talked.
What's it matter if it's an invisible force,
or warped space time,
or gravitrons?
Newton got a snack either way.
((This is the poem that 0330 is referring to, if you have read the previous post and care to know))
a solitary plume rising from the ground
like smoke from a dragon's nostril.
No, wait; no good dragon has only one nostril,
and as I look I see the second
hidden among the grass, just up hill.
No wait, those aren't nostrils, they're too small.
This must be one giant beast, with nostrils more like
caverns than pizzas.
But there are great funnels over them,
collecting the smoke and channeling it
out of the ground so it doesn't fill the tunnels he is chained
in, and kill him.
The gnomes must have made it,
hundreds
and thousands
of years ago, when they found him
and caught him
and bound him in the earth.
The battle raged for days,
killing dozens of gnomes,
but unfortunately, there were always more.
They buried him under their never-ending numbers,
and then under the Earth.
If I were them, I would use his warmth for heat,
and fry eggs on his mammoth sides.
I'm sure they do.
What else is a chained dragon good for?
I suppose he must shed, now and again,
and when their kings meet the goblin chiefs,
they go arrayed in the finest dragon scale plate,
and give terse commands to tall gnomes
(It's not an oxymoron)
with swords and knives of toenail clippings.
The goblins are fierce,
warriors all, but stupid and superstitious.
Their petty steel is no match for dragon dandruff
and they concede the tunnel network
as far east as the river Lethe.
I guess the dragon is a savior,
a chained beast like Atlas
holding up civilization,
but no Odysseus seems likely to come along
and take his burden,
the burden of supporting an entire subterranean world.
But even if he did, Odysseus would certainly trick him when he returned with the golden apples and give the world back and then Atlas would get all mad and try to get back at him but be totally unable, because what can you do when you are holding the world?
I know, the allusion is shaky,
and the analogy unsound.
But still,
it's fine, you get it.
Like Atlas, the chained beast holds up civilization
as they know it, and submits to all of their humiliations.
But the worst thing,
the worst of all,
what he hates,
and really loathes,
are not the chains
or the eggs
or the incessant scale harvesters.
What he really minds
and wishes he could get rid of,
are those damned nose funnels,
because now he can never reach to scratch his itches.
Someday,
he tells himself.
Someday, I am going to sneeze
and they will blow off into space,
and I'll be able to breath at last.
You and I will know that day when it comes.
(I is me not him here)
As we walk down the hill,
we will notice the free flow of steam,
and the conspicuous lack of manhole covers.
You'll say something like,
“Hmm, it must be caused by a unusually strong build-up of steam. I've heard that often occurs during peak heating times like the mid-winter cold flash we are experiencing now. Don't you agree?”
I'll shrug.
“I think it's dragons.”
Of course, knowing myself all too well,
I could be you, and you could be me,
but who cares.
The exchange will occur,
and I (you) will be wrong,
and you (me) will be right,
but really, it doesn't matter.
As long as one day,
walking down the hill,
there are no manhole covers ,
it can be excess steam,
dragons,
alien abduction,
manhole cover thieves,
a savage prank,
a new campus aesthetic,
spontaneous combustion,
the Bermuda Triangle,
Lee Harvey Oswald,
Jack Ruby,
Stairway to Heaven played backwards,
or even just a dream,
as long as you said one thing,
and I said another,
and we talked.
What's it matter if it's an invisible force,
or warped space time,
or gravitrons?
Newton got a snack either way.
((This is the poem that 0330 is referring to, if you have read the previous post and care to know))
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