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artist-issues · 10 months ago

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you're fun to talk to about media so I've got something to ask.

what do you think of this trope where a lie or misconception becomes commonly accepted as truth by the characters in story? especially as a resolution.

example: in the finale of "Kubo and the two strings", the Moon King(main villain) loses his memory, so when he asks who he is, the townspeople lie to him and say he was a kind member of the community, rather than the dictator he really was.

I don't like it. I see a falsehood being widely accepted as a tragedy, and I'm just left imagining what happens if/when the characters find out the truth. I can't really take something as a happy ending when it's.. y'know, fake. I imagine you feel similarly.

but hey, I could have totally missed the point of the ending of KATTS, if you watched it, you might have seen something I didn't.

I haven’t seen Kubo in a really long time; I don’t think I was thinking critically about it the first time I watched it, so my opinion now is an afterthought. I’d have to see it again to be fair!

…But I do seem to remember that the villain is defeated with some importance placed on memory. And the identity of the monkey and that beetle warrior also have to do with the sacredness of memories. So, if that’s the case, then yeah, taking his memory away as a “good resolution” can kind of hamstring the whole theme of the movie. Unless you tilt your head and squint and go, “no, see, if all you have is bad memories, then it’s just as powerful to take those away—the point is, memories have power either way!” But even that feels a little half-baked, gymnastics-brainy.

Basically, I agree with you. A story that resolves with a character, or characters, accepting a lie as truth is always going to be a fumble of the whole story…unless it’s intended to be a tragedy, a cautionary tale. I can think of three where that’s super evident.

1 ) A Streetcar Named Desire

In this movie the main character, Blanche, is lying about who she is, for the whole story. She even has this great symbolism thing with light—she hates bright light, on the surface because she’s vain and doesn’t want anyone to see signs that she’s aging. But under the surface, the character is really an immoral, lust-filled, broken person who knows she can be cruel and isn’t deserving of love. She doesn’t want anyone to know that side of her. She hides it all under vainglory and pride. So she pretends to her sister, Stella, that she’s upright and moral and has simply fallen on hard times. But her sister’s brute of an abusive husband, Stanley, who is always 100% his authentic, awful self, sees through Blanche when she comes to stay with them. In the end, Stanley rapes Blanche and then carelessly shrugs her accusations off.

The main point of this example is that Stella, the wife of the rapist Stanley, has been portrayed the whole movie as sometimes-leaving her abusive husband…but only as far as the apartment above their own, literally right above him, so that she can easily go back to him. And at the end of the movie, when Blanche is being taken to a mental institution because she’s broken-down after being found-out as a fraud, then raped, Stella lets them take her away. And then Stella goes up to the apartment above, where she always “pretends” to leave Stanley. It’s such a halfhearted, lazy way to end a movie that’s all about desire-versus-truth. Because what it implies is that Stella is leaving Stanley for now, like she might believe that he raped her sister…but she’ll eventually go back to him. And in the meantime, Blanche goes off to the mental hospital, with this iconic line “I have always depended upon the kindness of strangers.” By which she means, “strangers don’t know what a two-faced monster I really am, so I can con them into thinking I’m a morally-upright woman fallen on hard times, and they’ll take pity on me—so sure, I’ll go with you, strange doctor I’ve never met.”

The central point of the movie is “as long as nobody looks the truth in the face, everyone can go on getting what they desire.”

Of course, that’s true. But the other truth is that, if Stella accepted what her sister and her husband really are—her sister is broken and her husband is a monster—then she could choose to rise above “animal desire.” She could choose to take care of Blanche, and Blanche would see that “someone seeing who I really am” doesn’t always have to lead to ruin and damnation. Stella could then, also, choose to really leave Stanley, for good, and be at peace, while Stanley’s “desire” would be rewarded with ruin.

But instead the opposite is what happens. Blanche goes away believing, in her broken mind, that her womanly wiles and faking will protect her from further injury, even though they never have—Stanley ends the movie exactly where he began it, screaming for Stella to come back and knowing that she will—and Stella, too, ends the movie going away from Stanley…just for a little while, until animal desire convinces her to just pretend Stanley isn’t really a monster, Blanche must be crazy, except this time, when she goes back, she’ll be carrying a child into that abusive lie.

All characters wholeheartedly embracing hurtful lies so they can keep riding their desires. I hate that movie. You could see it as a cautionary tale. Most don’t. Most see it as a movie with “hot Marlon Brando” who “really loves Stella—all the characters ‘really love each other,’ they just don’t know how to express it healthily!” 🙄

I think the worst part is that the movie behaves as if it is true that every time Blanche reveals her own brokenness or is vulnerable, the world STOMPS on her for it, nobody loves her despite her brokenness. That’s the real mistake this movie makes. It has an opportunity to show unconditional love and it leaves the audience thinking Blanche was right, and there’s no such THING as “unconditional” love, instead.

Anyway.

2) X-Men Origins: The Wolverine

This one is less thematic. But it’s just dumb because the whole movie the main character, Logan, Wolverine, is being taught that “Giving in to Bloodlust Makes You an Animal—Compassion For Those Weaker Than Yourself Makes You Human.”

So in that context, the whole narrative is centered around the exploration of “Who is Logan/Wolverine?”

…Which makes it really stupid that the movie ends with him losing his memory. So…the movie asks “Who Are You?” and right after the character figures it out, he forgets and ends it with the answer: “I don’t know who I am.”

That’s just a waste. That’s silly. It allows you to take the character to real, hearty, coming-of-age, hero-forged-in-fire, a man-born-of-tragedy places…and then just shrug all that stuff off at the end. “Never mind. But it was a fun ride, wasn’t it?”

Especially because they built it all around the dichotomy between Logan and his brother, who’s little more than an animal—and Logan and his wife, who could be an animal, but chooses compassion instead, and reminds him of his choice, too. —and then she dies, and it’s implied that maybe his brother does too, but who cares, cuz he forgets. Who cares? Not Logan. So why should the audience?

I get that they “needed” to do this so that the end of this movie sets up the beginning of the X-Men Movies, which already established that Logan can’t remember “his past.” But like…then don’t make the point of the movie “Who Am I?” just to end on “…Okay, So WHO AM I?”

It’s a fine movie up until that point.

They should’ve made the movie center around “Can’t Change What You’ve Done; But You Can Be Redeemed.” And then show his memory loss around a moment of self-sacrifice. So that it’s still tragic, but at least when he wakes up from the self-sacrificial act, he’s “a new man.” Then later, in the third X-Men movie, when Logan chooses that mutant kid over “learning the secrets of his past,” it all comes full circle, because his “self-sacrifice moment” can stay where the Old Logan died.

Anyway. You didn’t ask me to re-tell X-Men Origins: The Wolverine. But it’s the same basic premise—a movie ends with a character losing their memory, or believing a lie—whatever.

You know, actually, this one isn’t so much “believing a lie” as it is “going back to considering the lie (that he’s an animal) because all the work done to convince him of the truth has been stupidly erased”

3) The Dark Knight

Saved this for last because nobody would read all that if they saw me scratching up the beloved Christopher Nolan Masterpiece.

But The Dark Knight is a perfect example of what you’re actually talking about.

The movie is awesome until the end.

It’s not hard to guess what I’m going to say. Harvey Dent is supposed to be a shining example of a good guy, and the goodness, that Gotham is capable of. The Goodness that will ultimately defeat Evil. And Evil is represented as Chaos.

Bruce sees that and that’s why he’s willing to give everything to make Harvey succeed as the hero Gotham needs. Because if Gotham sees that evil can be conquered by doing things the right way, the orderly way, that will get Gotham out of it’s “Justice is Broken, Vengeance is The Only Form of Justice” cycle.

Then there’s the Joker. He doesn’t believe there’s any such thing as Good—it’s all just Chaos (which is evil.) And his big mission is to prove it. It’s ironic that he twists Harvey’s sense of “justice” around to this viewpoint—where Harvey uses “chance” as just another form of “retribution.”

Anyway. All of that’s interesting.

But the movie both perpetuates a lie and does so by having the characters end believing a lie.

The lie it perpetuates is “The Joker is right, there’s no such thing as Justice or Good—it’s all just chaos, but pretending it’s not can get you through the day.”

That’s the lie it perpetuates!

And how does it do that?

By having the “city of Gotham,” and Bruce himself, believe a lie.

They believe Harvey Dent really was a good guy who died a hero. Bruce believes Rachel died still waiting for him, which symbolized her supposed belief in the good of Bruce and capability of Bruce to let it all go.

And why was it important that they believe those lies? Because the supposed truth is too harsh—that there’s no Good, it’s all Chaos. And if they believe that supposed truth, they’ll all turn out like Harvey or Joker. If Bruce believes Rachel chose Harvey, he’ll supposedly give up on something important in himself.

Okay but the problem with that is you have characters believing a lie because of a truth—that isn’t the truth. It’s the same problem with Streetcar.

The people of Gotham, the worst people of Gotham, aren’t always going to choose evil. There is such a thing as justice and good. And Harvey turning into Two-Face doesn’t change that. The movie could’ve shown that. It started to, with the prisoners on the second boat choosing not to kill the civilians to save themselves.

But it chose not to make that the point of the movie. It chose to make “The Joker was Right, Good is a Comforting Lie, & the Closest You’ll Ever Get to Justice is Vengeance & Chaos” the point of the movie. By having Batman convince the whole city to believe the comforting lie, what you’re saying is, Bruce believes that the truth won’t set Gotham free, only wrap it in chains.

That’s the problem with these movies.

And that’s why I think Captain America: The Winter Soldier licks The Dark Knight hollow every time, and is all-in-all a better movie, hands down. In this continued essay—

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