The sources are questionable but the stories match.
I can’t figure they had time to corroborate and what’s more,
They match a hunch I’ve got.
I’m known for my hunches.
We won’t know for sure unless we bring him in
And there’s enough red tape involved
That we can’t bring him in
Unless we know for sure.
So justice gets flushed and I keep my job.
This is the classic line of modern storytelling. While it’s possible that the storyteller’s protagonist might pervert the formula and sacrifice his job for the greater good, nobody wants to be seen as a weaver of happy endings. Is this sudden shame of happy endings a function of a changing audience or instead of changing perceptions of our audience? I like to think (because I am an optimist at heart) that there is some core of a listening, reading, watching public that desperately wants to hear stories about a greater good. The only problem is that they have been desensitized to happy endings. Their happy ending tolerance was perhaps reached before they were born. Perhaps the men and women of our world entered this great stage of human drama with their quotas already filled. Culturally, we are dead to the idea of happy endings because so many bad stories have been told solely for the sake of a happy ending. “Genocide and famine are loose among our human ranks!” they cry. “Surely you aren’t going to spin us another yarn about the righteous man who gets the girl and carries her into a sunset of peace and full bellies?! We simply cannot stomach it.”
And so, perhaps, they see the lie and recognize the myopic self-deception it represents. Kudos to them for having gained a sense of scope! Of course our protagonists compromise themselves to keep their jobs! Of course they have no faith in the systems that safeguard our lives! The mature character is inevitably a cynical one. The best that can be hoped for is a hero who is stoic, enduring this lack of faith and doing their job as best they can. But deep down, I like to think that our audiences know these stories do not satisfy their hearts. I like to think their hearts are anxious for a story that first of all takes them seriously, with all their pain and heartache, genocide and all. They want stories that acknowledge these things and yet manage to place them within an even broader framework, a metanarrative that projects purpose and possibly hope upon their despair.
If these things are true, then we may have discovered a parable within the storytelling task. The moral of the story is this: that fighting a negative with a false positive only presents a straw-man, something easily beaten and not to be believed. Telling happy stories backfires because too often they are only happy lies. On the other hand, telling sad, gritty tales only gives a half truth. We must tell whole stories so that we might again discriminate between storytellers and mere liars.
What is more, we must also tell those stories well enough to pierce the lethargy of our audiences, so that they might participate along with us in this storytelling task. Without them, of course, we can still tell stories. We can spin amazing stories and think amazing thoughts about the human position here, but without an audience they will still be lies. No matter how hard we work at being truthful in our fantasy and in our art, those things fail to mean much except when they complete the circle and return to community, having been born in the ashes of that fire and returning periodically to reignite therein.
That is what I would like to think, but is it anything more than another false hope? Is my hope in our audience rooted in reality or in make-believe? While I want to maintain a story-telling aesthetic that eschews religious pop-writing on the one hand and existentialist despondency on the other, I must submit myself to the same criticism. The ways in which we engage fellow story-tellers and fellow audience members says something about the resiliency of our own narrative frameworks. To that end, I’m going to turn these thoughts inward for awhile. Feel free to air your own thoughts on the matter.
Bob, I love how you leave your deep thoughts open ended... the true mark of a wise person.
I think you have some really keen observations here. I think to a general extent, the vast majority of people do believe in more than cynicism... hence the enormous recent popularity of Lord of the Rings: a story rooted (at least originally, and I think the films do a fair job of holding this up) in an understanding of a greater good triumphing--though not without extreme danger and difficulty--over evil.
And then there are the arty farties, like me, who, for some unknown reason, are attracted to the darkness, the underbelly of a story. Something that, as you say, doesn't simply cave in to the easy and cliche'd notion of a happy ending.
I sincerely believe that there is a place for both ideas, so long as taken in moderation.
Your cyclical idea of truth in art being grounded in community is a really intriguing and insightful, one I'm going to ponder for a while...
Posted by: KornSt@r at March 14, 2005 05:08 PMAh yes, the persistent question of how to tell entertaining and truthful stories without reverting to cynicism or sappy sentimentality. It should be pointed out that for what ever reason stories about the righteous man getting the girl and carrying her off into the sunset are usually boring and this is why we reject them. Recently I’ve come to the conclusion that many of the stories about the cynical hero trying to find happieness in a chaotic and barren world are just as boring. Existential angst and the ironic hero have become as passé as the idealistic-unrealistic American family of a 1950’s sitcom. What does this mean? Roseanne put to death Leave It To Beaver, but now that the Connors can only be found in reruns on random cable stations and even The Simpsons is running out of material what’s next? The age of irony seems to be ending, so what does this mean for future story tellers and their audience, and how much can we affect what will come next?
Posted by: Justin at March 14, 2005 07:21 PMI liked "Hotel Rwanda"....A horrible tragedy, and really not a happy ending if you think of the overall total death count, and yet hope did pervade the film.
Makes you want to say both "this world sucks" and "this world rocks"--a paradox.
Posted by: funkefreak at March 14, 2005 10:41 PMI've got to see that film. I've heard a lot about it and my HOUSEMATE went to an advance screening with the actual dude who ran the hotel. I missed it. Shucks.
But why do we tell stories? Think about movies, since they seem to carry the storytelling task most often in our culture. I go to movies to think and learn -- is this unusual? Sometimes I go to share an experience with others, but even then, I want to talk with those people about the message and understand with them what the movie says about me and about humanity.
Justin: you made a good point. Both options are boring. As far as what's next for television, I suppose we'll have to resort to more reality miniseries until we figure it out -- good incentive to figure that out sooner rather than later. ;)
Movies I've seen that told a story that said something worth saying (whether they were right or not is another discussion):
House of Sand and Fog
A Series of Unfortunate Events
Lost in Translation
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
...that's it for now.