#that the other protagonist (Richard) is. But it’s not like she’s fridged or killed off or anything so it could be Far worse tbh | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

spiders-hth-is-an-outlier · 4 years ago

Text

Today in Strongly Worded Opinions (That You Didn't Ask For), I'm going to assert that there are too objective ways to measure whether or not a relationship is strong in story terms – by which I mean, unrelated to whether or not readers/viewers personally like the dynamic or the chemistry of the actors (in such cases as there are actors involved).

So for the sake of clarity, be ye advised: this isn't about shipping, fuck it, ship whatever you want idc. Shipping a strong relationship isn't inherently better than shipping a weak one – heck, you could just as easily argue that it's the lazier, less creative route. Also, I don't care? I don't care, it's just fandom. Follow your arrow. This is about ways to discuss whether or not a relationship introduced into a text succeeds or fails as an element of the story – or really as I'm going to prefer calling it, if a given relationship forms a strong or weak story element.

For this I'm presuming that you're creating a relationship between a protagonist and a secondary character introduced as a piece of the protagonist's overall story – protagonist/protagonist relationships aren't really a different situation, but they do have more moving parts, so for simplicity's sake, let's stick with a Main Character (we'll call that M) and a Significant Other (S for short). Also, these relationships by no means have to be romantic; any relationship can be measured as weak or strong in story terms.

Also, I'm going to say everything here as though it were factually true, even though it's just my opinion, which is correct, but if you disagree then it's only my opinion, but I am correct. Ready? Okay!

Strong relationships have story functions; in reality nothing means anything and people just like each other because they do, but fuck reality, it's a huge narrative mess. And my basic premise here is that the story function of a strong relationship falls under one (or more, if you wanna get real fancy) of these three categories:

The relationship can unlock under-explored elements of M's story or character through mirroring or intimacy (often shows up as “friends to lovers”). There is backstory that hasn't been unearthed yet, or some reaction or experience in M's life that could advance the story, and S can serve as a means to get at it. Maybe M and S share a similar trauma or life story; maybe S is the first person M feels able to open up to about something profound and relevant. Maybe part of M's story is a conflict between how they seem to others and how they see themselves or their own potential; maybe S is the person who sees them the way they see themselves...or sees M as the person they're afraid they'll never be. The story goal being met here is giving M a boost toward successful completion of their story arc, so even though there could be conflict, S is fundamentally pulling on the same side as M in the major story conflicts, in such a way that by the end, the reader should feel like M's success is at least in part because of what they gain from their relationship with S.

The relationship can function as a piece of the story's overall conflict, or as a secondary subplot conflict (often shows up as “enemies to lovers”). Traditional romance novel plotting effectively slots the love interest into the role of “antagonist,” because the romance's conflict is generally driven by people not getting what they want from each other until certain win conditions are met. In this kind of relationship, M and S might be actual-facts competitors, or be divided by ideological concerns, or they might be forced into proximity by the plot but clash on some personality level. The arc of this relationship is typically going to be about the M softening up as the relationship develops – if M starts out ruthlessly single-minded, maybe realizing that they're running roughshod over S in the process is part of their character breakthrough; if the story is about M realizing that they've underestimated the complexity of the world around them, maybe coming to recognize S as an equal is how that gets concretized for the reader. Basically this is a story where S presents a problem that M has to solve, and the more central to the narrative solving that problem is, the stronger the relationship is.

The relationship can serve to divide M's goals (often shows up as “love versus duty”). This is a story where M has to accomplish two separate things in order to fulfill their arc, but those two things aren't easily integrated. One of M's goals might be fulfilling a vow, or filial duty, or seeking revenge, and the other goal is some form of protecting or obtaining S. If the story puts M in a position of having to choose, then the relationship is inherently strong; it's providing narrative drive, whether or not S is especially well-developed as an individual character. This one can be tricky, because a very weak relationship can serve a superficially similar purpose, by demonstrating M's devotion to duty or obsessive pursuit of whatever when M rebuffs S to keep them out of harm's way or to avoid distraction or whatever. The difference is that in those superficial cases, the audience is meant to recognize that aw, that's sad, M has really had to Make Sacrifices – but there's really no dramatic tension involved; we know all along that M is going to Make Sacrifices in purusit of the real goal. When this is done seriously with a strong relationship, the audience is meant to feel divided as well; Romeo and Juliet just doesn't work as a story unless the audience likes Juliet and Mercutio, unless they fully identify with the dilemma that Romeo is in when he has to either avenge Mercutio's death or spare Tybalt for Juliet's sake and the sake of their future together. That's a big fucking story moment, and it only works because the audience buys both relationships – Romeo's with Mercutio and with Juliet – as narratively strong, to the point where Romeo's choice is not a forgone conclusion. This one is much easier to get wrong, I think, than the other two are!

What I'm saying here is that a strong relationship isn't really determined by how personally compatible two characters seem to be; a lot of movies that fridge a character's wife, for example, rely on actors convincingly portraying, in a brief window of time, two compatible people who care for each other – I'm thinking of, like, Richard Kimble and his wife in The Fugitive, who I think do sell the idea of a loving and happy marriage, but the relationship itself is a weak one. The story only really needs the bare fact of it – “Kimble had a wife that he loved and then this happened” – to kick off the actual story; the relationship between Kimble and Gerard is a stronger one narratively, because much of the emotional tension of the movie, what makes it more effective than just a series of chase scenes, is the way their mutual respect evolves as they compete against each other, and the story question of “Kimble really needs an ally, is this the right person for him to trust?” It's such a strong relationship that it comes as a huge relief of tension when he does make that gesture of trust and it turns out to be the right choice. The audience is happy that Kimble will be exonerated, but the audience is equally happy that the conflict between these two charcters is over – we didn't like them being at odds because we didn't want either of them to lose! Now, would these two people ever be close friends, let alone come to love each other? No? Yes? Who cares? Kimble loves his wife more, but has a stronger relationship in this story with Gerard. From a writing perspective, it's trivially easy to introduce an S and say “M loves this person,” but it means relatively little. It's harder to introduce an S and say “some part of this story now hinges on how M navigates knowing this person,” but that's kind of what has to happen in order to create a payoff that's worth the effort. A strong relationship provides skeletal structure for the story; it can't be stitched on at the margins.

This is an even tougher sell in something like a television series, where the introduction of S may come in well after the story is underway and the bulk of M's characterization is already in place. That's why introducing a late-season love interest is a notoriously dodgy proposition! To demonstrate weak vs strong relationship in action, I'm going to take an example of what I think was a failed attempt and pitch some ways to doctor it up into a strong relationship: Sam Winchester and Eileen Leahy.

This is objectively a weak relationship. She doesn't materially affect the metaplot of the series, or drive any major choices, or reveal anything about Sam's character. She's just, you know, generally nice and attractive and Sam likes her, which is a fine start, but then the writers just leave her idling in the garage forever. But it didn't have to be that way! Say we wanted to make it a Type 1 relationship: super easy, barely an inconvenience! Eileen is very like Sam, actually, in that she lost her parents as an infant and then had the entire rest of her life shaped by the trauma and the pursuit of revenge. That's amazing. How many other people, even hunters, share that specific experience with Sam Winchester? Sam was physically changed by drinking demon blood in infancy; Eileen was physically changed by being deafened by the banshee or whatever it was in infancy. Even just allowing them to talk about that would have made the relationship stronger. Sam is affected by the fact that there is no Before Time for him; even now that they've long since had their revenge on ol' Yellow Eyes himself, he grapples with the fact that he's forever robbed of any memories of innocence or safety or a life that wasn't lived in the shadow of this killing. Eileen also has had her life's quest for revenge fulfilled, and also has to reckon with the fact that it doesn't actually give her access to the innocence that was stolen from her. Maybe she struggles with that. Maybe Sam can open up to her because she knows what it's like to look back on your child self and feel that however strong you've made yourself, you're never strong enough to protect that child.

What if you want to write something spicier than Sam and Eileen talking about their sad feelings? Okay, let's take a Type 2 story. Eileen has been a lone hunter with a disability all her life; it's fair to guess that even if she can't match Sam's physical strength, the fact that she's survived at all means that she's pretty indomitable. Maybe she's had to be ruthless, even brutal in her hunting style; maybe she has a shoot-first-ask-questions-never approach to hunting that she credits with her very survival, but that Sam finds excessively rash and bloody. Maybe they fight about it. Have her kill some ambiguous, maybe-not-dangerous monstery types, a werewolf or something, and Sam's like, hey, we really can't just-- and Eileen is like, look, I hunt how I hunt, come with me or don't. I mean, this is a retread in some ways of early season conflicts about who to kill and when, but everything in the latter seasons is a retread anyway, so whatever, and it provides something interesting to have Sam deal with this whiplash of how there seem to be two Eileens, the smiley, jocular sweetheart who eats pancakes with him and the one who kills like she's swatting flies. What if he wants one but not the other? It doesn't really work that way, does it? Is this something he can dismiss as a foible, or is this a dealbreaker? The dude is almost forty, if he distances himself from Eileen, how many more hunters does he think he has a chance to meet and marry? If she won't even listen to his concerns seriously, is it really a good relationship anyway, or will Sam's needs always end up taking a backseat to Eileen's?

A Type 3 fix could just come down quite plainly to, what if Eileen is ready to retire? She's had her revenge. She's lived her life on the hunt. Maybe she's done, and maybe she wants Sam to be done with her. Doing this in season 15 would circle Sam back to his season 1 story conflicts in a nice way, I think – why does Sam do this at all, if it's not for revenge any longer? Does he feel personally responsible for every dead person he could've saved but didn't – is that a reasonable boundary, or lack thereof, to set? Is a compromise possible – could he continue to coordinate hunts while also getting out of the field and starting a family, or is that still putting his family in the shadow of too much violence and danger to tolerate? What's Dean going to say? He's pitched a fit in the past when Sam said he wanted out, but he's mellowed with age, hasn't he? Maybe he'll get it now? But maybe Sam also feels guilty and fearful, because he knows Dean will hunt without him, so now he's in more danger because of Sam's choices, if Sam makes this choice. It's a little heteronormative, as story conflicts go, but it's thematically appropriate to Supernatural, and the fact that Eileen isn't speaking out of timidity but out of the same weariness that Sam has so often felt about the whole endless cycle makes it feel a little less “the little lady won't let me go on adventures anymore.” This might not be my pick of the three, but the point is that it makes for a strong conflict, a legitimate divided loyalty for Sam to wrestle with, and one that doesn't have a clear right answer.

Anyway, hopefully that helps illustrate what I mean when I say that the narrative strength of a relationship doesn't have anything to do with how likeable an S character is – Eileen is very likeable! But that doesn't substitute for building her into the fabric of the story in some way. My expectation is that a serious protagonist relationship should bend the story arc in a way that requires response, and if it doesn't, I don't take that relationship particularly seriously. Canon can declare a relationship real by fiat, but it can't automatically declare a relationship meaningful without, you know, making meaning of it.

Oh, and there's not anything really wrong with weak relationships – most M's are going to have several in the story. My point is just that the difference between a weak relationship and a strong one isn't really a matter of taste or preference, but has a functional meaning that can be tested and measured, and if there's argument to be had about it, the argument can take place on evidentiary grounds. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

#apparently i give writing advice now?

26 notes · View notes

tlbodine · 5 years ago

Text

The End of 1960s Horror...

After a few delays, we’re back on track with our jaunt through the horror decades. Last night’s films were two favorites and genuine classics.

First up, Rosemary’s Baby (1968)

youtube

The film, directed by Roman Polanski, is an adaptation of a novel by the same name by Ira Levin (the guy who wrote The Stepford Wives). I’d never read the book, and @comicreliefmorlock had read it but never seen the film, so that made for some interesting compare/contrast.

The big takeaway? The movie is so much sleazier and, well, rapey-er, despite being an extremely faithful adaptation (even down to exact dialogue lines being replicated).

This may have been influenced by the director. It’s hard to watch Rosemary’s Baby now without the film being clouded by knowing that Polanski was charged in 1977 with drugging and raping a 13-year-old (a charge which caused him to flee the country, allowing him to continue making critically acclaimed movies without suffering any particular consequences for his crime). You can read more about that here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Polanski_sexual_abuse_case

It’s also interesting to note that, a year after Rosemary’s Baby came out, Polanski’s pregnant wife and four friends were among the victims of the Manson family murders.

There’s a lot to unpack there.

But let’s get back to the movie. Rosemary’s Baby tells a pretty straightforward story: A pair of newlyweds move into an apartment and develop a relationship with the eccentric elderly couple next door. The husband is a struggling actor who serendipitously gets his big break shortly after meeting the old folks. The wife, raised Catholic and from a large family, is eager to start having children of her own. She succeeds in getting pregnant, but it’s a difficult pregnancy, and through a series of odd events, she becomes convinced that everyone in her life is part of a satanic coven of witches intent to sacrifice her baby.

Ira Levin has always impressed me with his skill at writing about women -- not just writing female characters well (which he does) but deeply understanding the fears and anxieties of womanhood in a way that is frankly surprising from a male writer in the 1960s. That shines through clearly in the film, and I can’t say for certain how much of that was influenced by Polanski -- not having seen any of his other movies, I’m not sure how he handles other source material.

Anxieties explored head-on by the film include:

Spousal rape

Gaslighting (and “hysteria” perhaps)

The loss of bodily autonomy inherent in pregnancy

Woman-as-vessel-for-baby as opposed to “whole individual person”

I could write whole essays about this movie, and I probably will at some point. The primary plot fails to shock or frighten me anymore, of course, but there are still some lingering fridge horrors that are deeply unsettling in the vein of “oh my god can you IMAGINE how it would feel to be her right now.”

Next up, and our final film for the decade, Night of the Living Dead (1968)

youtube

Written and directed by George Romero, Night of the Living Dead was a groundbreaking work for the zombie genre. Drawing clear inspiration from Richard Matheson’s story “I Am Legend,” Living Dead was an original tale that pulled together disparate strands of mythos to create many of the tropes that remain staples of zombie media.

The story centers on an event of possible cosmic origins, with radiation leading the recently deceased to rise and go on a murderous, flesh-eating rampage. Well-dressed corpses shamble about and kill. A group of strangers are stuck defending a house together, one of them is secretly infected, the group tears itself apart with infighting -- you name the zombie apocalypse trope, it’s all here.

One of the really interesting and groundbreaking things of Night of the Living Dead is that it features a black male protagonist. Now, I can’t say for certain that this is the first time in history someone made a movie about a heroic black man, but it’s certainly the earliest in our chronology that we’ve seen. And Ben (played by Duane Jones, an accomplished stage actor) is truly a great character -- resourceful, kind, brave, sometimes sassy and never afraid to stand up for himself.

The role wasn’t written for a black character -- Romero said Jones just gave the best audition -- and the film is all the better for it because it avoids all of the troubling stereotypes that would haunt black people in horror for several more decades.

In my opinion, the movie deserves a spot in history for that reason alone, but even aside from this historically significant casting choice, it’s just a good movie. A bit slow by modern standards, but with plenty of good action and some clever storytelling. Large chunks of it play out almost like a silent film, with the score and visuals doing most of the heavy lifting. The choice to film it in black and white helps to make it seem almost timeless (and likely helped to assuage the concerns of the viewing public, who were still squeamish about gore). A lot of the story is also told through snippets of radio broadcast and second-hand accounts, which adds to the claustrophobia of the main storyline while hinting at a much larger and more devastating event.

And the ending!

I remember watching Night of the Living Dead for the first time when I was in 8th grade. It was on TCM, I think, and I gleefully watched it alone in the dark and was totally blown away by the ending. I won’t ruin it in case you’ve never seen it, somehow, but man I didn’t see it coming, and cynical-preteen me thought it was the coolest shit. I still think it’s a very daring ending.

Incidentally, WOW, the post-Hayes era of filmmaking took off with a bang. A few films ago we could hardly show a married couple kissing, and now we’ve got full nudity (including an appearance from Mia Farrow’s nipples in Rosemary’s Baby), on-screen graphic violence, and “morally corrupt” endings where the bad guys win.

It must have been a wild time, growing up on the films of the 40s and 50s, and then coming of age in the 60s to see how WILDLY DIFFERENT they became in a few short years.

The 1970s are coming, and I am stoked, because we’re entering the era of movies I adore (and which the Morlock has never seen) and I’m so excited to revisit them.

#horror movies #horror by the decade #horror through the decades #zombies #night of the living dead #rosemary's baby #1960s horror

13 notes · View notes

woozapooza · 6 years ago

Text

On male and female deaths on Lost

(I’m sure somewhere in the fandom the following has been pointed out already, but I haven’t seen any posts about it, so I’m writing my own. Keep in mind that I’ve only just started my first-ever rewatch. I checked Lostpedia whenever I was unsure about something, but there could be mistakes in here, although I’m confident that I’m right about the overall pattern I’m observing. This is a critical post, but rest assured Lost is still one of my favorite shows. Sometimes you gotta complain about something you adore. Also, I’m excluding Nikki and Paolo from this post, lol.)

It’s been pointed out that Lost repeatedly uses the “women in refrigerators” trope: with Shannon, with Libby, with Charlotte, and with Juliet. (You could also make an argument for other characters, including Nadia and, if non-love interests count, Alex, but I’m going to focus on members of the main cast.) While thinking about Lost’s many main-cast deaths, another gendered pattern occurred to me: female characters’ deaths tend to be accidents, whereas male characters have more agency over their own deaths. I think this trope (which probably has a name but I don’t know what it is) is very closely connected to women in refrigerators, but I’ll get to the connection at the end. Let’s go through each of the main-cast characters who died and see how they died. Ladies first:

Shannon dies while chasing after Walt’s image. Ana Lucia hears her coming at shoots her out of fear. Ana Lucia could just as well have shot Sayid, who was running after Shannon and calling to her, but she didn’t.

Ana Lucia and Libby both die at Michael’s hand in his quest to save Walt. Ana Lucia dies because she happens to be guarding Ben and Libby dies because she stumbles upon the scene of the crime. If it had been a man guarding Ben, Michael would have shot him, but it wasn’t, and if Hurley had gone back for the blankets instead of Libby, Michael would have shot him, but he didn’t.

Charlotte dies as a complication of time travel, which could just have easily happened to Daniel or Miles, but it didn’t.

Juliet dies because she gets caught in a chain and falls down the shaft that became the Hatch. The chain could just as easily have pulled Sawyer to his death, but it didn’t.

Ilana dies because she mishandles dynamite. This could have happened to any of the men who handled dynamite, but it didn’t (not counting Arzt because he wasn’t a main character).

Finally, Sun dies because the explosion in the submarine caused her to be trapped behind a heavy...I don’t know what it was but the point is she couldn’t get free so she drowned.

Out of the seven main female characters who die, not one of them chooses their death, and only two (Juliet and Sun) have a chance to confront what’s about to happen to them. Both of them use their last moments to tell their men that they love them. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing in itself—after all, Jin also uses his last moments to tell Sun that he loves her—but the point is that there are no women who get cool death speeches about anything else like some of the men do.

Now the gentlemen:

I’m going to break chronological order for a second to start with Jin, as the difference between his and Sun’s deaths illustrates the pattern I’m talking about. It could just as easily have been him who got stuck behind the heavy thingy, leaving Sun to make the choice to die with him, but it wasn’t. Sun’s death is an accident; Jin’s death is a choice that gives the audience our final impression of him.

Going back to season one, Boone could be seen as an exception to the pattern. He dies because Locke told him to check out the plane. He’s “the sacrifice the island demanded” or whatever, but he doesn’t willingly sacrifice himself. Still, he chooses death in the sense that he explicitly absolves Jack of the responsibility to try to keep him alive.

Eko dies facing the smoke monster head-on. He gives ones of the coolest speeches in the show, making peace with his past and bringing his character arc to a close.

Charlie knows well ahead of time that he’s going to die. Desmond offers to go down to the Looking Glass in Charlie’s place, but Charlie takes responsibility for the task. He drowns intentionally, bravely, and at peace with himself, having done something heroic.

Michael dies as a deliberate act of redemption when the bomb explodes on the freighter. He stays behind to die so that Jin, Desmond, and the Oceanic Six can survive.

Locke, as a murder victim, is another possible exception in that he has no agency over his death. It’s never 100% clear why Ben killed Locke as far as I know, but it seems to be at least partly out of jealousy. Locke’s death is definitely anything but accidental or random.

Daniel is shot by Eloise for threatening Richard. This in itself is already pretty far from random. Then there’s the fact that Eloise had spent Daniel’s whole life bringing this moment about. True, it’s a very sudden death, not a death Daniel was able to choose or to face on his own terms. He dies feeling like a pawn. On the other hand, it’s not random or accidental and it explains a lot about Daniel’s life.

Sayid, my darling, beautiful, brave Sayid, dies, like Charlie and Michael, as an act of self-sacrifice and redemption. Before he carries the bomb away from his friends, he makes sure Jack is prepared to be the hero the island needs. Sayid’s death is meaningful on both an external level and an internal level. Not only does he save Jack, Kate, Sawyer, and Hurley, but by doing so he overcomes the “sickness” that had brought out the worst in him, and thus he proves that he was at heart a good man. I have to take a timeout from this post to cry.

Okay, I’m back. Finally, Jack dies of his wounds after fighting the Man in Black and restoring the cork at the center of the island. He willingly sacrifices himself to make sure good triumphs over evil and to make sure the passengers on the Ajira plane make it off the island alive. He dies at peace, with a smile on his face, having fulfilled his destiny. I have to go cry again.

Okay, I’m back again. So, out of nine men who die, only three—Boone, Locke, and Daniel—can really be seen as victims. Of those “victims,” only’s Boone’s death is really random, and he gives the audience closure with a cool death speech. The remaining six know that they have to die in advance, and they face death with great dignity and courage.

So, what have we learned, and how does this connect to the four women in refrigerators? Well, tropes aren’t an exact science, so your mileage may vary on what I’m about to say, but in my opinion, a character is usually only “fridged” when their death isn’t really about them at all. If Libby had died bravely, standing up to Michael and defending Ana-Lucia, and if in doing so she had reached the culmination of previously established character arc, then I wouldn’t consider that an instance of fridging—at least, not when evaluated on its own as opposed to as part of a pattern of women dying and men being sad. Fridging basically means turning a character into a prop that moves the story forward, rather than letting that character embody a story in their own right. Not that none of the women who died had interesting stories. But their deaths weren’t part of those stories; instead, they interrupted those stories. Take Shannon, for instance. She might be the woman whose death comes closest to meaning something other than sadness for a man. After all, she initially comes off as pretty self-centered, but by going after Walt she shows concern for someone else. But her growth just gets cut short when she gets shot. That didn’t have to happen. She could have said some last words to Sayid about how she hoped the rest of the gang would rescue Walt. Or something like “make sure Vincent is taken care of.” But because she doesn’t get to choose her death OR say anything before dying, her significance as a character vanishes and what’s left is a plot development for Sayid (and, to be fair, to a lesser extent Ana-Lucia) to react to. The men’s deaths are about the men one way or another: either they’re targeted by someone else for who they are or for a choice they’ve made (Eko, Locke, Daniel), or they choose death (Boone, Charlie, Michael, Sayid, Jin, Jack). Not one of the women’s deaths is about that woman in either of these ways. In other words, when a man dies, it’s part of his story, and when a woman dies, it terminates her story. In other other words, men are the protagonists of their own deaths and women aren’t. I’m not saying every one of the women’s deaths was objectively bad writing or that every one of the men’s deaths was objectively good writing. I’m just saying the pattern seems glaringly obvious now that I’ve noticed it.

Finally, some statistics: Out of nine women whose actresses had main-cast billing, only two—Kate and Claire—were alive at the end of the show. Out of seventeen men whose actors had main-cast billing, eight—Hurley, Ben, Sawyer, Walt, Miles, Richard, Frank, and Desmond—were alive at the end of the show. So while more individual men (nine, or ten if you count Paolo) than women (seven, or eight if you count Nikki) die, a much larger chunk of the female cast is killed off than the male cast. Women have a 22% survival rate and men have a 47% survival rate. This suggests that the writers are simply more interested in keeping men’s stories going than women’s. Hopefully this is obvious, but I’m not accusing the writers of having some nefarious woman-hating agenda. I doubt they realized what they were doing. I think it stems from subconscious assumptions about men and women that manifest in all sorts of media. It doesn’t make that media irredeemably misogynistic, let alone flat-out irredeemable. It’s just unfortunate.

#x #Lost #Lost show #abc lost #Anna watches tv #Anna watches Lost #I have many thoughts #female characters #male characters

25 notes · View notes