the ramble dump

[Warning: contains spoilers for Lost Seasons 1-5.]

I don't really watch much TV, but there are a few shows over the past few years that have got me hooked, and they're nearly all of the American serial thriller variety. Some of them fell off my radar after they lost their way and got a bit daft; others got daft but then won me over again, or I felt invested enough to keep watching anyway. I may have mentioned 24 once or twice already. The other one that I still watch is Lost.

Lost first showed up in my life in the form of this commercial back in the summer of 2005, which did the job of making it seem all very sexy and intriguing. I think I remembered to tune in every week for about half a season, probably less, at which point it fell out of my life again until I caught up on it sometime after Season 2 had been released. Since then, I've been watching it pretty much as it comes out. The first few episodes of the new season, though--the sixth and last--are still waiting for me.

Like all these long-running shows, juggling with a lot of factors during their production, Lost has its peaks and troughs. The writers have readily admitted to stalling and making some mistakes, but they've generally made a decent job of it and got a bajillion people, including me, hooked on one of the most nonsensical, farfetched stories to ever grace television. Lost has a number of strengths: a large cast of mostly interesting characters in whom they invest a lot of time; an ever-interesting and thorough approach to the narrative; tons of novel ideas; and the tortuous ability to draw out endless, excruciating suspense from the most meagre and infuriating of plot crumbs.

Aside from the stalling, though, and the fact that at least 50% of Lost is either people running through blurry forests or gaping at something while the camera rotates around them with a trumping orchestral accompaniment, the show has a few other bad habits or features; things that have occasionally, or increasingly, hampered the experience for me.

First: the hamhanded subtext. Lost is filled with characters who share the names of famous people--philosophers, scientists, authors, e.g. John Locke, Hume, Faraday, Austen--which I guess is supposed to have some relevance to the story of each of those characters, but it still stinks of pretentiousness. It's not really subtext when it rears its obvious head above the surface and shouts allusions at you, and, if it's not flaunting intellectualism, it certainly strikes me as a pretty cheap way to convey meaning. Fortunately, most of the characters are fleshed out enough to override it.

Second: the abuse of narrative conventions. Lost gets points for being more imaginative than any other show in how structurally to tell a story, but just occasionally it gets carried away. There have been a few dud episodes in which, following an obligatory flashback/present day pattern, they'll take the whole episode to reveal next to nothing about some aspect of a character, allowing only some inchmeal progression of the plot. It's a format that sometimes requires a lot of filler, in other words.

Other times, especially when the format gets more ambitious from the end of Season 3 onwards, they pull some dirty tricks. In the episode 'Ji Yeon', for example, we're deliberately misled into thinking we are watching two strands of the same story, only for the twist at the end to be that they both take place at different times. This is basically the equivalent of witnessing a split-screen phonecall on 24, only for it to be revealed later that we are actually being shown two halves of two different conversations. It's a cheat that makes the wrong kind of show of the format.

Third: everybody talks around in circles. Lost goes out of its way to avoid giving direct answers and the show is always coming up with fresh excuses to be obscure. It's part of the fun trying to guess the motives of all these different characters, but you're pretty much guaranteed not to get a motive that doesn't have some strained reason that it can't be revealed for at least half a season. Looking at some of the characters, you realise that they've pretty much formed out of this resistance to giving answers. This is especially the feeling with the Others, most of whom apparently ask no questions whatsoever. Similarly, we never seem to know what John Locke's thinking and it's not always clear that Locke or the writers do either. Daniel Faraday, the scientist with answers, is most of the time too flustered or preoccupied to properly explain anything in more than breathless rambling. And then there's Benjamin Linus, the compulsive liar; a character who, more than anyone else, seems to be the direct product of the writers' need to evade or obstruct.

Fourth: sometimes it tries too hard to plug itself into the real world. The show's extremely precise dating, geographical locations and the like are all part of the interesting detail of the story. But the apparent attempts to make it feel like it's all taking place in our world--above and beyond other shows that use more evidently fictionalised versions of times and places--doesn't always work. When Ben showed Jack that recording of the football game, for example, and mentions Red Sox and President George W. Bush and all that, it actually pulled me out of it a little bit. Not only did it feel like it was trying too hard, even given the context that Ben was trying to convince Jack too, but it brought my mind back to the world outside the Lost storyline and reminded me of its nature as fiction that way. When my brain's plugged in to the Lost world, it doesn't need or want to be reminded of real life contemporary events. Beliefwise, Lost is just too weird and wacky to come off for the better when it's yanked in the direction of reality like that.

Fifth: sometimes too absorbed in characters? This one is the flipside of one of the things I've always liked about Lost: the fact that it revels in the ambiguities and grey areas of all its characters and--except for some characters--lets us feel them out inside out over the course of several seasons. But sometimes it can be too much, and at this point some of the characters feel a little worn out. Specifically I'm thinking of the drawn-out love square between Jack, Kate, Sawyer and Juliet, and how during Season 5's finale all four of them were flailing around being utterly selfish, whining whingebags over the decision to set off a hydrogen bomb. Yeah, I get it: they all have their personal and conflicted and lesson-learned reasons and changes of heart that are at odds with each other's, to the backdrop of all these confused feelings for each other, and these are things that have got to play out. But my God. I wanted to slap them all. Hydrogen bomb, people!

And sixth: timetravel.

Timetravel is always very messy to deal with, and Faraday's explanations, when they finally come around, don't do much to appease the feeling that the writers have cut themselves loose from all sense in a desperate attempt to bring everything in their centuries-long saga together. Granted, it provides a lot of interesting new ways to spin (or evolve) the show's trademark flashback format and have all these characters from different time periods engage with each other, but if a show like Lost could ever sensibly be said to have jumped the shark, for me it happened with the timetravel.

Before the timetravel, all kinds of weird stuff had happened that you could argue was far more fantastical--the walking dead, smoke monsters, supernatural whisperings and the like. But back then, it could still have been anything. I had no idea how they'd be able to explain any of it in the end, but there was nothing to suggest that they couldn't in a way that I'd find reasonably satisfying. The timetravel felt like a nail in the coffin, though--the first definitive sign that the explanation wasn't going to be any less fantastical than the things we'd already seen.

The first sign of this unwelcome plot device was in Desmond's visions of the future, and of Charlie's death, back in Season 3. Even then, though it seemed kind of clumsily executed and unconvincingly presented, I could have accepted it, just about, as some kind of limited deterministic foresight, explainable in whatever way. But then, step by step, it got more and more outrageous and irretrievable: in Season 4, Desmond doesn't just get visions but his 'mind' actually travels through time; and then in Season 5 the whole island does the same, leaving half the cast in the present and half in the 1970s. Yep. And because I'd taken each of these steps one at a time, I didn't reject it as fast as I might have done otherwise and kept watching, but every time there was a glance exchanged with my Lost buddies and a kind of shoulder-shrugging resignation to the escalating nowayness. Now it just feels like we're watching with curiosity to see how it will manage to get even weirder and finally leap preposterously to its end, rather than watching with much anticipation of a satisfying conclusion.

You might ask if there's any good reason this story can't have a fantastical, supernatural explanation, and I would have to admit a bias there--the outright supernatural is simply less likely to convince me than a more realistic pseudo-scientific one, more so in Lost because they've gone out of their way to remind us that it's our world. Lost has always required some huge, continual suspension of disbelief to keep me going, but that's been part of the fun and the whole tone of the show. My objection to some outright supernatural conclusion is more than that, though. I think it's too easy. The characters can all timetravel and the island can teleport and the dead never die properly and nothing that's happened has necessarily happened and at the end of it an Egyptian deity can claim responsibility for it all and so what? We waited six seasons for that? ...Which is why I'm still hoping that won't happen.

And relating to the point about abusing narrative techniques, I already admitted that timetravel can make things narratively interesting, but you pull too many tricks like that and the narrative starts feeling like inconsequential mush. I'm sure the writers have got it all under control, but the story felt like kind of a mess at the end of Season 5. For not-good reasons, in a lot of ways the white-out of the hydrogen bomb felt like the only sensible way to end it.

The result is that I'm going into Season 6, the last season, with the feeling that I'm a just a little tired of these characters and the perhaps belated realisation that I'm going to have to accept some pulled-out-of-a-hat supernatural conclusion for everything that has happened, all the while asking myself, 'Well, what did you expect?' But there's a part of me that's still awaiting the clever storytelling and moving characterisation that the show has continually shown.

I might not even mind the supernatural if it's worthwhile for the characters and they don't all collapse as conflict-ridden husks. And I expect that on some level I'll enjoy it despite all this and get drawn into the final chapters of this mystery because, if nothing else, those guys sure know how to plot.

But I'll be holding my breath.

Labels: 24, i am the ramblemaster, lost

# posted by Chris @ 3:22 AM 0 comments

Last semester I took a module on playwriting. It probably isn't something I'd have picked had I more of a choice (we had to pick a 'drama' module), but I'm glad that I did it. It was interesting.

As part of our reading for the module, we were given Stuart Spencer's The Playwright's Guidebook, a very useful book that breaks down the challenge of writing a play with a few handy 'tools', under the condition that any or all of these tools can be cast aside if they don't work. If nothing else, it's a book that can help you figure out exactly what it is you're trying to write in the first place. Which is usually a good place to start.

The playwriting module was specifically about theatrical plays; plays that are acted out on a fixed stage rather than radio plays or TV episodes or film scripts. In modern times and culture, the world of the theatre and its audience is pretty small compared to some other media. In the popular mindset, a lot of people assume that the medium has been superseded by film or television in most areas, apart from interactive performances like panto and other such quaint (and usually Shakespearean) experiences. As such, it's not surprising that the first thing Spencer does in his book is try to justify the worthwhileness of the play. He does this by placing it in a spectrum, like so:




The basic idea is that film, or any such screen medium, is based upon our mostly passive experience of images (and sounds) with very little conscious processing required. Prose, on the other hand, necessarily entails a more active process on the part of the recipient and allows more analysis on the part of a narrator within the text itself. By Spencer's own admission, this spectrum is not the whole story. He grants that these are 'propensities' and that both media are able to do other things. And theatre, he seems to say, shares all these propensities.

But I'm not so sure about this spectrum.

First objection: in Spencer's conception of prose, no distinction appears to be made between the author's contemplation and analysis within the text, the reader's less-than-conscious mental intepretation as they are reading, and their contemplation following this interpretation. Spencer dismisses the relevance of the latter to his spectrum in his evaluation of film because it applies to all media, so that can be put aside for prose too. But Spencer is still lumping together two different kinds of 'analysis': the first (A) entailing how the text is engaged in the analysis of some subject, and the second (B) entailing how the reader is engaged in the analysis of the text.

A visceral/analytical gradient makes sense in terms of the latter: at one end, the medium always requires the brain to take an active role in interpretation (because language is used); at the other end, it does not. Spencer himself points out that only a film with no dialogue would be completely visceral; a film with speaking characters would be a little further along the spectrum towards the analytical end because we'd have to interpret what they're saying, but it would still not be like a novel where everything about the fictional world is presented through language.

Does the visceral/analytical gradient make sense when applied to the medium itself, rather than a person's interpretation of it? It would seem to, by Spencer's logic: the camera, the narrative eye of the film, can be pointed at something in a way that is suggestible, but it does not pull apart or evaluate the subject in the way that the narrator of a novel can. Even if a film had a voiceover, this would merely be a voice overlayed; in prose, this analysis exists on the same level--in the language--as everything else that is presented about the fictional world, so it permeates and moulds the fictional world itself. In this case, 'visceral' means, in terms of the role of the narrative eye, to be a direct link with the fictional world without the narrator's interference. Prose has an intrinsic narrating voice, whereas film does not.

It's probably safe to assume that A is always followed by B, as long as there's a recipient around. So what's the point in making the distinction? Well, the kind of analysis involved in B can apply without A, meaning that a medium can require analysis on the part of the recipient courtesy of language, without having that other kind of analysis courtesy of the intrinsic narrator. Like in theatre, for example.

We can call theatre, as a live audiovisual performance, immediate and visceral. The use of characters with speech also gives it an analytical element. But there are differences here: plays (and, for that matter, films with speaking characters) are only 'analytical' in the sense of B, in that the use of language requires an extra layer of active interpretation on the part of the recipient. But this is only the interpretation of the speech of one of the characters--it is not the interpretation of the whole presented world. The physical presence of characters flat-out prevents the world from being constructed entirely of language; their words automatically become either the speech of a character or that of a voiceover--a kind of narrator on top, rather than there being an analysis intrinsic to the narrative. So for all Spencer's discussion of the various ways in which he describes media as either 'analytical' or 'visceral', his 'spectrum' only accounts for this in a more limited sense than he lets on.

It also needs pointing out that Spencer's designation of 'both' does not suggest a gradient. It suggests that prose has some properties, and film has others, and theatre has all of the above. Taking his admission that each medium has its strengths over the others into account, we might say that prose is better for analytical stuff than theatre but that theatre still has some aspects that could be considered analytical, in which case his diagram is not incorrect, albeit only true in a limited sense. But then if theatre is not the best medium for being analytical, and it is not as good as film for the visceral, what exactly is there to commend it?

Spencer is clearly trying to use this 'spectrum' to suggest that theatre gives you the best of both worlds. Evidence, in case you have any reason to doubt this:

The fact remains that theatre is the most vigorous way of telling a story. How could it be otherwise? It is theatre that combines all the best parts of those other media we also enjoy.

A strange conclusion for someone who has pointed out himself the kinds of things that prose and film can do that theatre cannot. The fact that film can hit us with an emotionally charged close-up is surely the best thing about it. The fact that in prose the whole world can be constructed from simmering, bubbling metaphor with an inconceivably subtle interplay between the meanings of every single word is surely the best thing about that. Those are the strengths of these media respectively. Theatre can do neither.

So what's theatre good for? Well, there are a few advantages I'd be tempted to mark out in favour of theatre; 'propensities', as Spencer might describe them, if not necessarily always true. For one, as Spencer points out himself, theatre offers a different kind of immediacy: that of having live actors before you, and potentially an interactive element. Issues of narrative form aside, you don't get that kind of experience in either of the other media. It can offer a much more lucid, insistent encounter than mere images flashing before your eyes.

Secondly, the view of the stage does not have to be like that of the camera; i.e. the eye of the camera is necessarily framed, whereas the eye of the audience is not. Even if the stage has a proscenium arch above, it can be ignored entirely and in my experience plays have used to great effect a kind of fluid fragmentation of the stage in an utterly engrossing way, even with irrelevant props from the last scene still visible. Specific directorial decisions aside, I think the David Glass Ensemble's adaptation of Gormenghast had a much better chance at being successful in the theatre than the BBC's version on TV because, though neither could hope to achieve exactly what Mervyn Peake's prose does in the novel, the stage leant itself to a much more effective translation of the castle's sense of dreamlike fragmentation, abstractness and related psychological despair. As the price of its brand of intense focus, the camera is always finding a view with definitive edges, which Gormenghast does not have.

And thirdly, the biggest lesson I learned from trying to write a play: the theatre encourages a certain kind of discipline where it can be very tempting to get distracted in both film and prose. Character-be-damned spectacle has its place in the arts and the world would be a dull place without it, but it won't work on stage. And there's nothing like the theatre for having two people sit down and talk--though, granted, it'd have to be one hell of a well-written play for me to take that for an hour and a half without shifting in my seat.

There may be more advantages to theatre. I've seen a dozen or so plays by now that I can remember, and tried my hand at playwriting only for a very short time, so my experience is pretty limited. But though Spencer's experience of theatre will vastly outweigh mine, to me he seems to make the same infuriating mistake that so many people seem to make with their medium of choice: he has to insist that this medium is unconditionally the best--even after conceding a hundred different ways that it...well, isn't.

Labels: films, gormenghast, i am the ramblemaster, language, literature, plays, shakespeare

# posted by Chris @ 4:39 PM 2 comments

'The most logical way is to think that the death god exists.'

I recently discovered the Death Note franchise, apparently very popular worldwide, via an interesting tie with the title logo on it that somebody was wearing in a photograph. It's one of many Japanese franchises, it seems, that started out as a manga, received an anime adaptation and made its way to live-action films, soon to be needlessly remade again for a Western audience.

I got hold of the live-action film first, or at least the first part of it (they split it into two), expecting a pretty awful adaptation but feeling, for some reason, in the mood for just that. But though it felt like a TV production at times, mostly in special effects, and though I'd managed to get a horrible dubbed version which made it very hard to take seriously (as dubbing always does), it was better than I expected, and about halfway through the second one, The Last Name (after a switch to subtitles), I realised that I was actually really enjoying it.

The reason for that is genuinely clever writing, and a plot that feels like it really earns all of its twists and developments, without pulling its advancements out of thin air or resorting to the abuse of narrative tricks like misdirection.

The premise of the film is that a college-aged boy, Light Yagami, finds a Death Note dropped by a shinigami--a death god--called Ryuk. The Death Note is a notebook that causes the death of anyone whose name is written inside it as long as the user has the face of that person in mind. It contains a list of written rules specifying the terms and conditions regarding how exactly it can be used, with stuff like time limits, detailing the way a person dies, etc; all kinds of arbitrary rules resembling those of a kid making up a game as he goes along, with the primary purpose of imposing some limitations so the concept can be integrated and doesn't become immediately unwieldy and the story over very quickly.

With this context set, the story then develops into a continually inverted cat-and-mouse game between Light Yagami and the equally intelligent mysterious detective known only as L, who is trying to track him down. Obviously the concept behind the Death Note opens the story up for a lot of big questions about murder, justice, morality and so on, but the battle between these two characters, the ongoing attempts by each to outwit the other, is where this story really finds its grip.

And it works so well because it uses the rules of the Death Note (and one or two others given by the shinigami) to frame it, providing all kinds of stuff for the characters to get around or deduce or to use in imaginative ways. Characters are constantly testing the boundaries and making sacrifices, but always operating strictly by this Death Note logic, however arbitrary that logic might be. It's a what-if scenario that almost invites the viewer to take part, because we're free to try and figure out for ourselves how we might act in each situation and what the next move might be.

The result of all this is that the plot develops with some integrity, consistency and thus believability, becoming wholly immersive even though Light does have an obviously computer-generated shinigami hovering over his shoulder all the time. The story sucks you in anyway, and whatever relevance there is to the obvious big themes of morality and justice comes to arise naturally, making the whole thing much more honest and worthwhile.

This kind of sums up for me, in a sense, the strength of the sort of storytelling that isn't a slave to the kind of realism that demands a world exactly like ours, whether this fictional world logic comes to be the focused object of the plot, like the Death Note or Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics or the Loom of Fate in that ridiculous film Wanted, or whether it functions as a wider truth of the world, like magic in a Tolkien-type fantasy or the existence of anthropomorphic aliens in a space opera. These worlds, these what-if scenarios, are a way of framing our experience that allows us to transcend the literal facts of how things really, physically are in order to focus in different ways on those aspects of experience that make us tell stories in the first place. And this is something all stories do to some extent, by virtue of plotting at all.

Death Note does it well.

Labels: i am the ramblemaster, morality, rabbit-hole theory, tolkien

# posted by Chris @ 6:14 PM 0 comments

[This is part of a convoluted series looking at the Matrix trilogy of films from the perspective of immersive storytelling--where they worked, where they didn't, and how this might have affected their success as films. Fair warning: I am making it my mission to be mind-numbingly specific. This is a complete rewrite of an older, now obliterated Part 2. Part 1 can be found here.]

The Matrix in fact consists of two 'rabbit holes', in the sense of worlds operating by a certain set of rules; one, the Matrix, that exists inside the other, the real world. It is the existence of this 'real world' that allows the Matrix to function in the way it does, namely as a virtual world created in, and accessible from, an actual physical space. The big premise that serves as the reasoning for all the weird and novel stuff we see in the Matrix is precisely this virtuality--the fact that it's not real; but this platform for spectacle would have no justification, no grounding, were this virtuality to be everything that there is, because it would lead to a potential breakdown of everything up to and including the characters themselves and the fact that there is a world presented by the Matrix films at all.

The whole twin-rabbit-hole set-up, however, allows for a lot. To begin with, the virtual realm means that there are no necessary limitations in how different the laws of physics can be, though the Wachowskis choose to have the Matrix such that fairly normal physical rules have been put in place and a certain mentality is required to overcome them. Basically, though, anything that is supposedly defined by the Matrix itself is free to be different.

By this token, it follows that the Matrix and the real world can be very different stylistically, as there's no reason why they have to be the same in this respect either, beyond perhaps requiring things like continuity in the personality of characters that exist in both worlds, so that a wildly disparate style of dialogue, say, would make no sense. In another context, such a difference between the style of two spaces in the same fictional universe might have the result of literalising stylistic aspects, or making them seem like nonsensical changes in the behaviour of that universe, because they would no longer serve as part of its stylistic texture (the interrelation of things that make up precise way that we get a feeling for a world on a stylistic level, and an interrelation that can't function effectively if these things don't remain constant). But the nature of virtuality is that to a great extent it allows for a whole different texture of reality in the Matrix, for as long as this change is applied only to things specific to that virtual world.

Nevertheless, a lot of problems arise in that various stylistic conventions falter for trying to function across the three films in what is arguably a shifting aesthetic context within each of these worlds, a shift that does interfere with stylistic elements.

The Matrix films in general are highly stylised films, and something so stylised is naturally going to bring more attention to itself, above all when it goes wrong. Scenes that take place in the actual Matrix potentially face more difficulties than others by virtue of the fact that, as a stylistic decision in itself, the Matrix world is simply more sharply stylised than the naturalistically presented real world, though both have their problems. The very specific neo-noir approach to the Matrix of the first film has already been mentioned: we are shown what is a very limited range of gritty, urban locales, specifically degenerate areas and bleak corporate spaces, with the ever-present sickly green filter enhancing this feeling of decay very effectively.

But though this is repeated to a large extent in the sequels, it does not carry over completely. Perhaps in part because of the expanded scale of the sequels, though also simply due to the decisions made to use particular locations, we are taken out of this very specific aesthetic and given something that is, in Reloaded especially, somehow cleaner and shinier and comes in flavours more pronounced in their distinction: the modern-industrial look of the freeway and the nuclear power plant, the gothic dungeons, sewers and jarringly grand chateau, the teahouse, the hallway of backdoors, and so on. Some of these locations have their own problems and I'll talk about these later, but the main thing is that, whatever the reasons might be for why such places were used, it creates what can at least be perceived as something of an aesthetic incongruity between the films.

However, something like this expansion of location types is logically surmountable, and something we can get used to, though it may feel very different and to a certain extent replace an experience to which we had become attached, when we realise that we were only ever shown a very small part of a whole world in the first film. Unfortunately, it's not always the case that we can just teach our brains to accept that what we are shown in the first film simply isn't everything, as there are some stylistic factors that prevent this from quite working out because they would appear to contradict the stylistic rules already put in place.

* * *

The first of these entails one of the more predominant stylistic decisions in the films, the use of colour biases: the blue, slightly more natural bias of the real world and the sickly green of the Matrix that has already been mentioned. These colour biases serve as the primary visual way of defining these worlds as different from each other, marking their separation by contributing to the distinctive style and texture of each. These aren't the only two colour biases employed in the first film: we are also shown a number of non-Matrix constructs that are either stark white (the loading program) or yellow-biased (the dojo), but they serve the same purpose of signifying that these are different 'worlds'.

In the sequels, however, the use of such colour gets a little more ambitious and complex, such that the dividing line between these different worlds, created by the distinctive styles of each, is no longer so clear. In fact, it chops things up in a way that prevents such an interpretation of an ontological shift (that is, the interpretation that each 'style' represents a different space of reality) from being possible. Stark white places like Zion Control, Mobil Ave, the Architect's room or the hallway of backdoors are all acceptable for being virtual realms operating outside of the Matrix and therefore free of that decaying environment, and at a push the same reasoning could be given for the yellow-biased chateau or teahouse, both of which might be said to exist as manipulations of the Merovingian and Seraph respectively and as constructs not wholly integrated into the Matrix proper. But the yellow colour is apparently still too busy fulfilling other literal functions to make this work; namely in code-vision, in which Seraph, for example, appears gold, as do Smith-in-Bane and everything else in the real world after Neo goes blind.

Whatever the reasoning behind this is, it is no longer the case that such colour contributes so effectively to the stylistic texture of a specific 'world' because this function is interfered with by its role as something primarily symbolic.

In the first film it could be said that the Matrix was green-biased because it was a decaying place; the real world was more natural because it was real; the loading constructs were white because they were empty (given some continuity with the Matrix through the use of wintery skies); the dojo was golden-yellow because it was just that kind of environment, and constructs that simulated the Matrix were also green-tinted for that reason. There is, obviously, stylistic exaggeration here--we don't have to think that the Matrix is really that green for the characters, and as something stylistic it does not ask us to--but there is nevertheless a natural logic to this exaggeration. Certain aspects of the Matrix environment which are already there are brought out by the use of the colour on a purely visual level, such that the green makes it seem even more decrepit. It also hints at its status as a computer simulation, but, importantly, without this additional meaning overriding its other effects.

In the sequels, however, the decision to use specific colours for certain things is done less sensically when we try to view it in terms of this logic of natural enhancement, and this seems to be because, as mentioned, a primarily symbolic logic is being used instead.

This symbolism mostly takes place within the code-vision, in which different colours appear to represent different kinds of virtual presences inside the Matrix. In the context of code-vision alone, this might be considered perfectly natural. But even if we try to separate the significance of colour bias and colour in code-vision to make sense of what all these different colours mean (which we would seemingly have to do anyway, as they are not entirely consistent; for example, the teahouse appears in green code and non-code Seraph does not remain yellow-biased when he ventures outside of it), there are still times when colour is used blatantly in non-code vision such that it seems clear that some kind of symbolism is intended, overriding the function of stylistic texture. The yellow bias of the Zion rave and sex scenes certainly seem very deliberate in this way, if not inconceivable non-symbolically, and places like the hallway of backdoors and the chateau feature noticeable chunks of green to deliberately remind us that we're still sort of in the Matrix. (The green overlay in the freeway scene also brings attention to itself at times by not fulfilling its intended effect of stylistic exaggeration, but only because they obviously tried to do it over a very blue summer sky, resulting in a not-so-subtle turquoise.)

It also can't be ignored that these biases, being so particular, feel like they're supposed to correlate with the same colours we are shown in code-vision.

The result is a kind of cluttered, confused visual onslaught where, in shifted purpose, such use of colour bias is not the same effective stylistic aid it had been previously. Instead of contributing to the distinctive 'texture' of a world, such use of colour bias as demonstrated in the sequels does precisely the opposite by breaking up and interfering with this distinction. Even if the Wachowskis had meant this process to be deliberate for whatever reason, it does the rabbit holes no good when overly abstract symbolism or literalisation comes to intrude upon something that had had an immersive function.

[to be continued...]

Labels: cyberpunk, i am the ramblemaster, rabbit-hole theory, the matrix

# posted by Chris @ 11:29 PM 0 comments

Warning: the following contains spoilers for 24 Season 7.

JACK BAUER
I can't tell you what to do. I've been wrestling with this one my whole life. I see fifteen people held hostage and...everything else goes out the window. I will do whatever it takes to save them and I mean whatever it takes. I guess maybe I thought...if I save them...I save myself.

RENEE WALKER
Do you regret anything that you did today?

JACK BAUER
No. But then again, I don't work for the FBI.

RENEE WALKER
I don't understand.

JACK BAUER
You took an oath. You made a promise to uphold the law. When you cross that line it always starts with a small step. Before you know it you're running as fast as you can in the wrong direction, just to justify what you started in the first place. These laws were written by much smarter men than me. And in the end I know that these laws have to be more important than the fifteen people on the bus. I know that's right. In my mind, I know that's right. I just don't think my heart could ever have lived with that. I guess the only advice I can give you is...try to make choices that you can live with.

The above exchange, from the final episode of 24 Season 7, book-ends an exploration of Jack Bauer's politics that began with his trial for criminal actions in the season's premiere. I don't really want to get into a debate about the actual politics here, but rather once again look at the way that such politics have been handled by the show in this latest season, whose thematic focus has been a specific response to the controversy surrounding the depiction of its protagonist's dubious actions.

As mentioned, this was done rather bluntly in the first episode by supposedly cutting straight to the chase and placing Bauer in a Senate hearing. I found this scene pretty obnoxious for the way in which it seemed to serve only as an opportunity for some self-righteous, grandstanding obstinance by the character of Jack Bauer, before a committee whose integrity was compromised by an individual, it is stated, with questionable motives. Combined with the introduction of very minor characters whose sole purpose was to give Bauer outpourings of sympathy and to berate the very idea of a trial in the first place, the whole premise felt like something of a bitter joke and a middle finger to the prospect of any genuine exploration.

Fortunately, the season improved. It was by far at its best when it avoided such clumsy handling of politics and went straight for the story, but when it did pause to ponder the actions of Jack Bauer and his associates, we soon learn that Jack isn't as certain about his actions as his public performance at the start would have us believe. The conversation quoted above serves as a kind of thematic epilogue, a welcome moment in which Bauer openly admits to having very human motives that may not always have led to the right decisions, even though he might strongly feel that they do. Though a little stilted and inelegantly inserted, it does allow Jack some room as a character in his own right by openly separating his justification from what appears to be the writers' tentative moral conclusion that the laws should always be upheld, a point that is emphasised by President Taylor's difficult sacrifice in the ending of a parallel storyline.

That both Jack Bauer and Allison Taylor seem to support this conclusion might seem to threaten the morality of the story with too much closure, and yet we see that Taylor is racked with guilt, acknowledging that her decision was at least difficult if not wrong, and Bauer has two clearly conflicting views that never completely resolve, leaving the matter very open to suggestion. In addition to this, Bauer's monologue is directed at Renee Walker, whom at certain points in the story had functioned as an alarmingly easily persuaded advocate of his questionable approach, despite some occasional slapping fits, and yet her anxious recourse to Jack's advice denies her, in this final instance, an easy answer. This resolves the potential problem of her portrayal as some kind of student for whom lessons are learned, a position that could very easily be extended to the audience. We never find out what she decides to do to the creepy, uncooperative bad guy. Thus the writers' moral conclusion remains tentative, never definite. Until next season, at least.

And this, of course, is just how it ends. Throughout the season, Jack has been challenged by good guys and loyal friends who are reluctant to compromise the law and won't abide by his more drastic measures: old pal Bill Buchanan refuses to torture a suspect despite a time-sensitive situation; Jack constantly butts heads with FBI Special Agent in Charge Larry Moss, who replaces the usual role of bureaucratic obstacle as someone who might just have a point; and it's even contrived that Jack gets to pay a visit to Senator Blaine Mayer, the man out for his blood in the earlier trial scene, where we discover that the Senator might not be quite the affront to heroism he was made out to be in his first appearance. The fact that all three of these men wind up dead is, I'm sure, purely incidental. And while in itself the court scene seemed guilty of pretty extreme and disingenuous posturing, the ongoing exploration of the theme renders it merely a starting point, from which some of the caricatures and assumptions are gradually dismantled.

24 remains, in many ways, pretty mindless entertainment, with the primary aim of pushing the plot along from one dramatic setpiece to the next. But its emotional and intellectual core, in its more successful storylines, has always been its investment in character, even if over time it has come to abuse and depend on the fact that we often find ourselves so gripped by the story just to see if a character will make it through the day alive. It's not great that the writers still resort to the hamfisted insertion of clumsy exposition wherever they can find a gap between the action, and there is still a little too much posturing in the kind of speeches we're offered--Jack's confession speech, for example, strikes me as a very deliberate, slightly pompous act by the writers of stepping back from the accusations that have been levelled at them--but it does something, at least, to return the focus to character. And it acknowledges the kind of challenge that has always made the series interesting beyond the excitement of gunfights and explosions--potential that was ignominiously shat upon by the obstinate, closed-book attitude of the season's opening scenes, or so it seemed. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't in it for the instant, visceral gratification as much as anyone else, but it wasn't this alone that got me hooked on the show in the first place, and I'm glad that, however bluntly they've done it, the writers have worked a little harder to treat the day-of-difficult-decisions premise with some of the complexity it deserves.

All in all, I thought the seventh season was pretty good. I get too caught up in my own rants to mention the things that I actually really liked, but there were plenty of them. And at least now a regular injection of hyoscine-pentothal to the brain is not needed to obscure my memory of Season 6.

Labels: 24, i am the ramblemaster, morality

# posted by Chris @ 3:57 PM 0 comments

[Warning: the following contains very minor spoilers for the first two episodes of 24 Season 7.]

I finally got around to watching the two-episode premiere of 24 Season 7. It's pretty good, so far, though it's amazing how different it feels just by giving everything the subtle blue bias of its Washington DC location rather than the old yellow. The story hasn't really got a great pace going yet, but I'm hoping that will be remedied in the next few episodes.

I'd already seen the first fifteen minutes as a bonus feature on the Redemption DVD, so I'd already seen the bit I'd been wincing at since they'd shown bits of it in the trailer: Jack Bauer on trial. In the context of the show's internal history, we'd feel that maybe Jack Bauer should have earned a little more respect by saving the (American) world as many times as he has--which is exactly what the writers are angling for, and might have been something they got away with more comfortably had the show not insisted on being so politically charged.

By that I mean that there's no way that this isn't some kind of pointed response to the controversy about the show's repeated depiction of torture. And it's a bit I knew I was going to dislike, because even in the trailer the Senator conducting the trial is characterised as smug, elaborated on in the actual episode as someone with an agenda who is somehow false in his supposed representation of the American people. Once again, the writers are disingenuously attaching negative personality traits to put down those political views critical of the kind of Jack Bauer Justice that the show continually touts.

The fact is, Jack Bauer is 'above the law' because he exists under fantastical terms. Throughout the show's history, the writers have granted that nearly all of Jack Bauer's hunches be proven correct in all the situations that they have contrived, so much so that even in the earlier seasons it had become a character trait. It's in the same way that torture is always depicted as a failsafe method of extracting the truth, with only one or two exceptions. So when people like US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia try to defend Jack Bauer-like actions in the real world, what they don't seem to realise is how mind-bogglingly unlikely it is that this will be the case with any real person and any real instance where torture might be considered. It seems painfully obvious to say, and yet apparently it still needs saying: any greater-good logic you might want to apply in policy-making is just not validated by the fictional actions of Jack Bauer. The way the world works in 24 is skewed to evoke sympathy and respect for a protagonist who is just as fantastical as any other superhero. And a superhero he is.

So this is why I found the trial scene so obnoxious. Bauer makes it clear that he's willing to have his actions judged by the American people, but it's so obvious that the genuine opinion of 'the people' (as opposed to that represented by the Senator) is assumed to be in his favour, and by extension in favour of the show's politics generally. This is evidenced a short while later by Bauer's conversation with the FBI agent in the car, who says that he believes putting Bauer on trial was 'wrong' and that he's 'not the only one who thinks so'. In the context of Jack Bauer's world alone, where someone like Jack Bauer exists and has done what he's done, it might make sense for us to share the FBI agent's opinion (assuming the trial is as unfair as purported, and not just trying to establish the truth). And in a similar situation in the real world, we might even decide the same. But the writers can't seem to let Bauer just exist as a character who has done a lot of questionable things, whatever his reasons might be for doing so and even if we feel that he is generally a good person. They insist on being Jack Bauer apologists and going out of their way to excuse or even applaud everything he's done. As always, he's made to be completely absolute and unquestionable, and it's not necessary. The writers become exactly like the Senator: guilty of deliberate distortion for the sake of an agenda, and eager to pre-emptively deal moral judgement in place of having 'the people'--in this case, the audience--decide for themselves.

As scenes like the trial demonstrate, 24 is explicitly reacting to outside criticism, to the point where it appears to revel in the controversy, if the Fox website's recent promotion in the form of the 24 Dossier is anything to go by, using it as a selling point. This strikes me as a little perverse, for as long as they're going to be so insistently black-and-white in their treatment of Bauer in the show itself. It's a case of the writers once again failing to address an issue with the integrity it deserves. Whether 24 wants to be taken as displaying real political consciousness, or whether it's supposed to be taken as pure entertainment--which I just don't think is possible, given its subject matter--posturing like this just shouldn't take place.

In his conversation with the aforementioned FBI agent, Bauer says:

It's better that everything comes out in the open. We've done so many secret things over the years. In the name of protecting this country, we've created two worlds: ours and the people we promised to protect. They deserve to know the truth. And they can decide how far they want to let us go.

This is good stuff. It's just a shame that the writers give it so much bias in their insistent arbitration. For as long as they do, the show remains an unsuitable platform or medium for such discussion. In any debate about the show's politics, it has to be acknowledged that there are two worlds here also: Jack Bauer's world and the real world. And the show's creators are only widening the gap when they do what they've done by putting Bauer on such a sham of a trial.

Still...I'm expecting good things this season. Aside from all the above stuff, it's made a promising start.

Update: I just watched episode three, blissfully free of the mangled politics that plagued the first two episodes. And you know what? 24 is awesome.

Labels: 24, i am the ramblemaster, morality

# posted by Chris @ 5:36 PM 0 comments

[Warning: the following contains spoilers great and small for 24 Seasons 1-6, and also Redemption.]

Despite its mangled politics, occasional stink of nationalism, stockpiles of kitschy villains and recent abuse of just about every convention that made it such a gripping show in the first place, 24 remains the best thing on television. When it succeeds, which it often does, it showcases the thriller as an artform: its primary objective is to keep the viewer gripped, immersed in the story from start to finish, through whatever means it has at its disposal. When it's at its best, the creators achieve a kind of fireworks display of cause and effect: cleverly interwoven plot-threads lead to countless perilous situations, small triumphs and unexpected outcomes. We find ourself engaged with characters we can love and hate and, best of all, not really know what to think of with the more complex characters about whom we're constantly trying to make up our minds. Supported by all the cinematic magic of camerawork, split-screen boxes, music and sound effects, reactive character dynamics are played off each other and multiple storylines collide with explosive results--all with the aim of throwing us into the next episode so that we can find out what happens next.

In other words, it makes for stellar entertainment. Pandering to the audience as it does (if it didn't do that to some extent, we'd probably never have reached Season 7), 24 would probably not get many marks from, say, Oscar Wilde for artistic merit, but, pure plot-machine though it may be, true to its genre it delivers the sheer thrill of the story itself. And it is still very much capable of delivering its share of interesting characters whose predicaments, moral or mortal or both, feel worth caring about--even if during its less successful moments the whole show ends up being carried by the presence of Jack Bauer alone.

The show's writers have in the past made public knowledge their lack of planning, which means to a large extent they're making it up as they go along. Sometimes this backfires and we're left, for example, with Kim Bauer stuck in Season 2's infamous cougar trap (amongst other things), the dubious writing off of Season 3's Salazar arc, Marwan's overstayed welcome in Season 4, or, let's be honest, the majority of Season 6--but this making it up as they go along doesn't mean that the show lacks substance or isn't worth investing in. Most of the time, through equal amounts of skill and perhaps happy accident, amongst all the action and technobabble and soap opera that is generated in a standard episode, the writers have an uncanny knack for finding gold.

This ongoing generation of plot can be just as fruitful as it is frustrating; for example, Seasons 3 and 4 both feature heavily contrived storylines with the apparently sole purpose of bringing back old fan favourites: Nina Myers and Sherry Palmer in one; Tony, Michelle and David Palmer in the other. But while, in my view, the second return of Nina and Sherry does nothing but damage their credibility as characters after the decent storylines they had in the previous two seasons (and even in Season 2, Nina's reappearance had the stink of contrivance), the writers' story for reintroducing David Palmer in Season 4 inadvertently gave rise to the majority of Season 5's incredibly compelling story, and one of the most interesting and complex characters in 24 history, in the form of Charles Logan. It's worth noting--to bring Oscar Wilde's points back into play--that it's pretty much never the regurgitation of fan favourites itself that generates the good story, and indeed most missteps in 24 seem to come from being overly attentive to the audience in this way (not dissimilar to the Season 3 stories of Sherry and Nina are the completely arbitrary shock deaths of main characters in Season 6, for example). On the other hand, when the writers are paying more attention to the story than the audience and seem to do a good job of getting a feel for the characters, that's when we get the good stuff. In Logan's case, the high quality of Gregory Itzin's acting is no doubt partly responsible for that character's success, and the same is true of Jean Smart's Martha Logan; but together these characters offer many of the most gripping, believable moments in Season 5 because, whatever the reasons are for why they emerged in the first place, the writers have, so to speak, listened to the needs of the story instead of just going for what the fans want. Their brief reappearance in Season 6 was, tellingly, less convincing.

* * *

What 24 is especially good at is presenting us with those grey areas of morality: putting us in those tense and tortuous dilemmas, forcing the characters to act in various situations and make choices that most people would be horrified to even consider. Where I think it disappoints, however (and somewhat paradoxically), is in sometimes being too black-and-white in then addressing these situations, at times very blatantly appointing itself as the moral arbiter. Jack Bauer himself is the perfect example of this paradox: as the seasons progress, he becomes an increasingly unhinged character, leaving us oggling as he tortures and later massacres his way through all these people to get to where he needs to be; but his conduct is somehow never questionable. One way or another, it's always justified by the writers and there is never any point at which we're meant to view Jack as anything but a morally absolute, heroic character. A 'greater good' logic to the character's motives is not only employed by the writers but endorsed, and however dubious or valid that logic might be, in the end it undermines the talking point of these complex situations by forcing the answer on us. Torture done by Jack Bauer, for example, is meant to be shocking--at least as far as drama is concerned--but it's also meant to be perfectly excusable whenever he does it. The writers are happy to show us all kinds of horrors portrayed by Jack Bauer for the purposes of entertainment--something to 'ooh' and 'aah' at--but they're constantly acting as apologists on his behalf, leading to a very confused sense of morality for the show itself.

In addition to this, the moral arbitration is often done disingenuously: whether it's to Bauer's greater-good imperative or unhinged character that we're supposed to attribute his murder of Marshall Goren in the first episode of Season 2, the act is excused by the fact that Goren is made to be a murderer and a paedophile and, on top of that, smug and unlikeable in every possible way, right down to blowing a dirty little kiss to Michelle. The majority of villains are so single-minded as to be cartoon characters, and we don't feel bad about the hundreds of people Jack mows his way through, because they're rarely given any character or backstory at all. They're evil, mindless goons because they work for the terrorist mastermind, and we don't have to deal with any of the possible reasons why they might have ended up where they are in the first place because they're just henchmen and that's that. This fact is enough to sentence them to death, and we don't even flinch when they go down. In the end, they're really nothing more than terrorist decoration. (Go buy the boxset for the Æon Flux animated series and watch 'Pilot'--it illustrates this point perfectly.)

There are a few occasions where the writers seem unwilling to morally arbitrate because they've offered us a moral complexity that seems too difficult for them to deal with conclusively, and they instead find the easy way out, like introducing a character just to get Stephen Saunders shot dead in Season 3, or having Dina Araz executed off-screen in Season 4, or killing off reformed terrorist Hamri Al-Assad in Season 6--a mistake seeing as he was one of the very few interesting characters in that season. In these cases, the characters are too morally complex to keep on living: they've served their purpose of putting some plotworthy moral complexity on display and then there has to be a way of removing them so the writers are freed from the responsibility of judging definitively in the way they can do so easily with the cartoon goons. Similarly, Mike Novick never has to suffer the true consequences of his role in Lynn Kresge's stairwell plummet because we never find out if she lives or dies. If she did die, Mike's character might be all the more tainted in our view; if she didn't, Mike probably wouldn't be in Seasons 4 and 5. But that particular part of Mike's history is essentially voided: he gets to reappear as if Lynn really is out of the picture, but without ever having to shoulder the responsibility of his complicity in her death.

The show also has the nasty habit of taking political potshots through its characters: Season 4's 'Amnesty Global' representative is a plot complication and therefore a hindrance to the show's righteous, ever-necessary brand of Jack Bauer Justice™; and Redemption's United Nations worker is nothing but a slimy coward. The writers are dutiful enough to balance their portayal of evil cartoon Muslims/Arabs with good cartoon Muslims/Arabs (we get that amazingly cringeworthy dialogue with the Arab shop-owners in Season 4), but one suspects that this has more to do with dodging the fallout of a controversial subject rather than any attempts to seriously address the situation.

As a result of all this, the kind of verbal sparring seen between Karen Hayes and Tom Lennox in Season 6 is just painful--not because it doesn't, in its very simple way, illustrate a potential debate, but because it really has no place in this show. As much as it might be a 'political thriller' and use the War on Terror as its subject matter from Season 2 onwards, the way the writers approach political issues in 24 strikes me as, by and large, irresponsible, and as much as I might agree with Hayes' side of the argument with regards to Lennox's 'detention facilities', I think the show would be better off if it didn't try so awkwardly to align itself at all (especially as, in this particular case, it feels like another very forced, shallow effort to defend itself against claims of political bias). A writer's personal opinion is always going to seep through into his or her work, but the subject matter can be dealt with in a way that's not so heavy-handed. The writers do later redeem themselves a little by balancing Lennox's character, and he ends up being one of the season's better offerings, but it's still clear that we're supposed to get behind Karen Hayes in that debate--an inevitable result of her being portrayed as the more sympathetic character, just like we're always supposed to be on Jack's side. A viewer's sympathies are always manipulated by the way characters are represented, and this makes using them as a platform for two sides of a supposedly objective debate distorting and dishonest.

* * *

When it achieves at least some level of subtlety, 24 demonstrates expertly the virtues of the thriller's structure, the whole plot taking the form of a kind of giant iceberg, or an onion, or whatever metaphor you like for the idea that there's always, always a lot more to the events taking place than we at first suspect--that things are not what they seem, and that any moment the floor can be pulled out from beneath everything we thought we knew. We hitch onto the back of the narrative of multiple characters, all of whom may yet present previously unseen sides to themselves, and follow their stories as in gradual increments all the layers of the plot are peeled back to reveal a new perspective--possibly a whole new onion. And on whatever level we're invested with these characters, be it sympathetically rooting for them or academically detached, we share their multiple experiences as they're left to keep their heads admidst a sense of mounting absurdity, constantly trying to form a picture for ourselves in the plot's continually shifting landscape.

Thus, the recipient is constantly left to mentally parse the way in which further aspects to the plot are revealed. It is the suggestion in these revelations, the implications of these new perspectives on how we view everything else in the story, that make the thriller a valuable tool for exploration of an idea. In this way, the author is repeatedly, deliberately, overturning the audience's assumptions. And this has the potential to extend a long way. Though the author will, of course, always have their own assumptions that will no doubt show up their work, the audience is deliberately prevented from ever absolutely trusting anything that the story says is occurring at any given time, encouraging them to engage in a process of perhaps doubting even those assumptions that were unintentional.

There will obviously always be limits to this: like the author, the viewer cannot be depended on to recognise every single assumption for what it is. But there remains a huge difference between something that presents itself as a moral arbiter and something that merely suggests. 24, along with most other pulpy thrillers, doesn't make the most of its potential for exploration nearly as much as it could: it forsakes the value of ambiguity, the complexity of suggestion, by telling you exactly what you're supposed to think, having the habit of making it very clear where you're supposed to align yourself, with a tendency to stomp the first hints of doubt about an absolute perspective wherever it can and quickly replacing it with another assumption, equally absolute and unquestionable: a character, for example, is usually either good or evil at any given time, else they are treated somehow evasively (see above). At the end of a 24 story, the big picture is supposed to be very clear. At the end of a thriller that's a little less presumptuous, the picture might remain complex and hazy, but in encouraging a more active participation on the part of the recipient, it would be more valuable as an artwork. As a political thriller, 24 has always had the potential to achieve this, and it would not necessarily have lost its grip for it--in fact, its grip would probably have been all the tighter as a result. Unfortunately, ratings have always been the show's primary concern, and ratings are rarely achieved by requiring from the audience anything but the least amount of effort.

I want to add that I'm not against something that offers nothing more than escapism, as I'm sure this has benefits in itself. But the purpose of 24 becomes dubious, if not downright dangerous, because its chosen subject matter necessarily makes it political--it would do even if the creators didn't so explicitly advertise it as 'relevant' in this way--and the writers' treatment of this subject matter, for all the reasons I've mentioned above, prevents the show's politics from being as considered as they should be. There are many times when 24 demonstrates brilliance at the art of immersive storytelling, but despite its conceits of exploring morally and politically difficult situations, more often than not easy answers, morally speaking, are offered in the name of passive entertainment and pushing the story along, turning these in-story dilemmas into something of a cheap thrill.

Labels: 24, aeon flux, i am the ramblemaster, morality

# posted by Chris @ 1:53 AM 0 comments

[Revised 30.06.09.]

MORPHEUS
I imagine, right now, you must be feeling a bit like Alice, tumbling down the rabbit hole?

NEO
You could say that.

MORPHEUS
I can see it in your eyes. You have the look of a man who accepts what he sees because he is expecting to wake up.

When we watch a good film, or read a good book, we are engaged so that we are drawn into the world in which the story is set and remain engrossed right up until the end. The best ones can even have a lingering effect, keeping our minds floating in the memory of its mood, aesthetic or atmosphere even after the experience has finished. Our minds never accept these as actual reality, or as the world we are conscious of during most of our waking hours--not usually, anyway--but as a reality, one that is possible according to the rules defined by the author. It becomes one with which the audience are willing to engage even if they know that it is ultimately just a work of fiction--probably because they know that it's fiction, allowing the suspension of disbelief to play a more conscious role.

Unfortunately for the authors and filmmakers, it's not always an easy thing to get your reader or audience to accept the reality you give them. You have to create a consistent world, in which everything makes sense by its logic and characters don't contradict themselves as characters, and the narrative has to follow through in a logical sort of way. If it doesn't, it can throw off the reader or audience and bring attention to itself in all the wrong ways, and thus the author fails to tell a successful story or to achieve any deeper resonance beyond that, all because they have not been able to establish believability. There are certain things that will trigger this unwanted kind of awareness--something will jar, seem inconsistent, seem fake, and will cause the audience to prematurely 'wake up'.

'Rabbit-hole theory' is the term I'm going to use, taking the analogy from the above quotation, which is from the film The Matrix, to describe the rules that govern the process of immersing the reader or spectator in a believable fiction--making them feel as if they are tumbling down a rabbit hole and into another world, metaphorically speaking--in order to fully engage them with that fictional 'world' as the chosen plane of expression. Like Neo, we will often only accept a fictional world on the basis that it is fiction, knowing that it is a kind of manufactured dream. And yet there are some things that we will simply not accept, that our lucid minds will reject, when such a world is being established. Rabbit-hole theory is about exploring how this works, under the view that there are the smallest of things that can damage a story because they go against certain implicit rules. The more I think about it, the more I've been realising that these rabbit holes can establish themselves, and fail, in an incredible number of different ways.

(Note: this applies to fiction and not meta-fiction, because in meta-fiction the plane of expression lies beyond that 'world', instead requiring that attention is brought to the fact of the fiction itself (the fact that something is fiction) rather than depending on immersion in the world. And indeed, meta-fiction therefore often functions precisely to ruin the rabbit-hole effect.)

Incidentally, I think the Matrix trilogy illustrates rabbit-hole theory perfectly. In my view, the first film works very successfully in drawing in the audience and taking them into a world that is a little topsy-turvy but, for all intents and purposes, utterly engrossing. The sequels, Reloaded and Revolutions, are more complex on just about every level and, in many ways, more interesting than the original, but they are also, I'd argue, not nearly as successful in terms of immersion. I still find much to appreciate about the films because I find a lot to like about what they offer of the Matrix mythos, despite their flaws--but I've been debating with myself over and over again about whether these flaws might prevent the sequels in particular from being good films. I've decided that the sequels are definitely difficult, but I've realised that a lot of these difficulties, and many of my own gripes with the sequels, come just as much from simple rabbit-hole reasons as they do from any other reasons that might be given--including those by fans who attempt to explain away negative reaction with the idea that an intellectual effort is required to understand them (though I'll wager there were a hell of a lot of viewers who just weren't willing to make a necessary effort).

Herein follow some suggestions for what exactly these reasons are.

* * *
Firstly, for all I might talk about creating a believable reality, exhaustive realism is rarely very useful, though a certain level is always required. That level, and the specific aspect of the story to which it must apply, will depend very much on context and genre. The Matrix films are a case in point: in true cyberpunk fashion, many things seem to be the way they are for stylistic reasons. The first film has a distinctly neo-noir feel, with grim, decaying urban locales and a rabbit-hole like closeness to many of the scenes. The redpills all dress in leather and shades and speak with a certain fondness for earthy, four-letter words, and lightning always strikes at very specific moments in the dialogue. All of these stylistic touches may have underlying reasons, ones that might even amount to more than the simple need to conform to genre conventions, look cool or add a bit of drama. The timed lightning, for example, might additionally be a nod to the fact that they're not in the real world (though when it happens, or when characters come out with lines like 'our way or the highway', or when Neo and Agent Smith partake in some Old Western finger-twitching during the subway climax, it's difficult not to suspect that what is being referred to in these tongue-in-cheek homages is simply the Wachowskis' own sense of humour). Whatever these reasons are, however, the Wachowskis have managed to create a satisfying, believable world without requiring it to be completely realistic.

In fact, though the trilogy could be approached on a number of different levels--aesthetically, cinematically, technically, philosophically, allegorically, scientifically, and so on--I would argue that the nature of their world means that there are limits to certain approaches, and approaching it in terms of realism--attempting to go into too much scientific detail, for example--is likely to be a futile endeavour. This is not to say that the science isn't interesting, but complete scientific integrity is not necessary. I once read a comment in which someone said that they never thought much of The Matrix because they couldn't get past the humans-as-batteries idea, having done some mental calculations and concluded that, mathematically, it just couldn't work. But considering this is a film in which the antagonists, the Agents, all dress like conspiracy stereotypes and wear shades even in the dark, I'd be tempted to say that this person may have missed the point--that they didn't 'get it'. It is, of course, their prerogative to have their own criteria for what a decent story requires--but I would argue that it makes no sense to judge a fictional world by such terms of realism alone, especially as this may not have been what the creator set out to achieve in the first place. A film can engage me without causing me to worry over extreme details, because the thing that is engaging me is the specific way that something is being expressed, and this expression does not require complete realism. In fact, too great a degree of realism may even undermine that expression: without the cold uniformity of their outward appearance, the Agents would not present themselves as quite the same recognisably menacing threat.

Consistency is important, however. If the directors have established some level of science, however loosely, they have to stick to it. The audience might allow themselves to accept the rules of a fictional world, but if the creators then stretch, break or abuse these rules, the audience will feel cheated and most likely reject it. The creators can't expect people to accept a world that exists by certain conditions and then keep on expecting them to believe in it after these conditions have been abandoned by the creators themselves. That is why, for example, any purely religious or allegorical explanation for Neo's abilities, such as his transcendence of the rules of the Matrix or, later, his connection to the Source, will be unsatisfying. Some loosely scientific, non-spiritual, non-allegorical explanation has to be provided as well. If a fictional world has already been established based on certain rules, refusal to stick to these rules will cause the whole thing to lose coherence and the world to fall apart.

Even if half the rules of the Matrix world only exist to set the stage for those impressive, insane displays of kung fu, through myriad different methods, and sometimes in spite of realism, the Wachowskis are able to set up for themselves a consistent and incredibly immersive cinematic playground. The Matrix, I think, is a shining example of a story that works brilliantly in this way, existing by its own quirky logic in a manner that is believable enough to be engaging in all the ways that it intends.

Part of it, it has to be said, is the feel of being in a Wonderland. There are a lot of ideas in The Matrix that are, more than anything else, novel, and remain neat ideas even after repeated viewings--for example, walking on walls, having Agents take over bodies in the way that they do, and perceiving the world in bullet time. They're appealing because, aside from their dramatic functions or cinematic qualities, they display imaginative extensions of the concept of a virtual world. It's the small things, too, like Neo literally being 'bugged', or glitches manifesting themselves as déja vu--little riffs on a theme that help to reinforce the nature of the Wonderland.

And it all works because the first film manages to integrate it all; however much philosophy, action, suspense or cyberpunk convention it packs in, it all works in a way that is complementary, with no single aspect wrestling for attention. Each stage of the story slides in seamlessly after the last, building from that initial mystery and suspense and layering on the elements--each scene giving us that little bit more of the Matrix world. It culminates in an extensive, arguably self-indulgent action sequence, but it's a welcome, thrilling climax, bringing with it a resolution to the film's story that is satisfying on many levels.

* * *
Rabbit holes, though, are very intimate things. When they work, the impression that they leave behind is very distinct and specific. The first film gave us a very particular Matrix-feeling, garnered from the very specific way that we related to and engaged with it--so when the Wachowskis came to make the sequels, they were faced with the problem inherent to all sequels: that it wouldn't be the same film again.

For some, then, the Wachowskis may have been damned however they chose to go about the sequels, as even a minor shift in any single aspect that made the first film what it was could prompt disappointment and rejection from many fans. But for others, what may at first feel a little different to the audience is something they can get used to, especially after repeated viewings, if the world is expanded in such a way that any additions, changes in focus or perspective, or even mindbending twists make sense according to the inherent logic of the world as it has been presented so far. The problem with the Matrix sequels was that they proved problematic in this respect in a large number of different ways, and many aspects of their execution served only to bring attention to themselves such that they interfered with this process of engagement.

[Part 2.]

Labels: cyberpunk, dreams, i am the ramblemaster, rabbit-hole theory, science, the matrix

# posted by Chris @ 4:33 PM 0 comments

Those currently trying to access The Aberration Chapter 15 will be faced with this message:

This chapter is currently being revised. It will return, massively improved, sometime soonish.

Anyone who visits this site with any kind of frequency will know that I have a tendency to go back and repeatedly edit the stuff I've already uploaded, usually one or two months after the fact. In the past I've offered various specific, long-winded reasons and excuses for each time I've done this, but I won't go into any specifics about Chapter 15 here. Its sparkly new edition will be posted along with the horrendously delayed 16 in the not-too-distant future.

There will, however, be spoilers for Chapter 14, so watch out for those.

Nearly all of the time, when they're not nitpicks over grammar or general attempts to improve the quality of description, these alterations boil down to something not working with the flow of the narrative. This might relate to how the story progresses from one point to the next, how events transpire, how the characters react to these events or to each other, and how those characters develop as a result of all these other things. It's a partly intuitive process: if an event feels overly contrived, or if a character feels inconsistent with how they usually act, or if anything about the story feels too forced, it sits uncomfortably in the final product. It can result in the story losing some of it's believability.

To some extent, even things like the specific characteristics of the characters themselves are not something that can be dictated in an overly deliberate way. Likewise, smooth transitions from Point A to Point B can't always be meticulously planned out--you can't account for everything until you get to the stage of actually writing it. That's why some of the Starcustard chapters ended up so long: because we set out, roughly, to cover a certain amount of ground in terms of outlined story in each chapter, and ended up requiring a lot more ground than we expected. When you're writing, you have to feel your way through the narrative, follow it a natural way so that it comes to be something you can believe in yourself before you expect the reader to do the same. That's probably why it usually doesn't work as an immersive, believable story when the author sets out to dictate the actions of some character in order to conform to a message that they are trying to convey--when the characters are reduced to functions of an idea or plot point at the expense of...well, character. (Thus: boo, allegory.)

This isn't to say that the writing process has to be something completely out of your control, or something that you have to surrender entirely to your subconscious. It obviously doesn't work like that. Control is, of course, one of the most important things in storytelling. It's about managing to strike a balance, but not a compromise, in attempting to achieve some kind of realism (or, at least, in order to make the experience real enough to be appreciated). But there are certain things that a story, a narrative, needs to be held together--the plot to frame it, the characters to drive it and the cohesion to bring everything together. Big ideas and viewpoints are all well and good, but they need to come from somewhere--they need to be grounded in a believable foundation.

These are things that seem to be true of many novels that I've read or films that I've watched, as well as presenting themselves as something repeatedly confounding when I come to write my own stuff. Hence all the revisions. Chapter 15's main problem was exposition: cramming in too much stuff I felt I needed to explain in order to get past it, at the expense of pacing, believability and narrative sense. To get anything worthwhile from a story, the reader has to be able to experience it in a way that doesn't pull them out of it every time the author feels the need to muscle their way in for some more control. There are times, I have found, when you just have to give in to the narrative--otherwise you start making compromises to the integrity of the narrative that can cause everything to fall apart.

Which brings me to Mike. Mike's fate is currently undecided. For the longest time I've been trying to determine a reason for Mike to be there; trying to feel out a purpose for him in the story. This sounds a lot like reducing him to a function, but in this sense, characters become functions of the narrative--as a part of that narrative--rather than being reduced for the sake of functioning as part of a specific plot point or any motive that might lie behind the story. This doesn't mean denying the fact that characters drive the narrative, but rather that there is an interdependency between the two that develops organically and emerges along with other things such as themes and plot.

In the case of The Aberration, the narrative is already being driven, and moulded, by Master Beef and the plot and ideas that have formed around him. Whereas Beef had always been at the core of the story, even if later themes and character developments had not yet emerged, Mike, like several other characters (including Detective Muse, Sim Hyde and the Microwave) had always sort of been attached to the story for the sake of it. Unlike these others, however, Mike's reasons for creation, and attempts to develop him beyond that, have not leant themselves to enabling his character to be continually relevant, and though over the years I've repeatedly reduced his personal story to fit in with everything else, I've never quite been able to assimilate him completely into the coherent whole. In other words, I don't know what to do with him. While I feel he's worked in a perfectly valid way as a character so far, it's reached the point that the only thing that feels natural to do is to write him out of the story, maybe able to offer one or two more hints at the wider plot on his way out.

It does sound as if he's being judged by his worth to the plot, and to some extent this is true. But as already explained, the Mike's character has to relate to all the other aspects of the whole. The characters drive the story or narrative, which is the sequence of events. The plot--what the story is about--is something that, in this case, has emerged as these characters have been driving the story. Narrative, plot and character have all formed in a mutual sort of way. But Mike has ended up the odd one out. I could invent new story just for the sake of keeping him in the picture, but there's no point in having a character perpetuated in this way. His character, failing to resonate in the same way as the others, would require his own plot, if he was given any plot at all, and his story would be irrelevant.

With regard to killing off characters, a similar thing happened with the character of Mars in the early chapters of Starcustard, though in his case it was more an immediate demand of the world as we'd constructed it, rather than simply having no place for him in the story after that (although we may not have done anyway). In our excitement of plot we'd inadvertently pushed him into a situation that there was simply no way around if we didn't want to contradict everything we had already said.

The character of Mike has suffered rather from a lack of direction, in terms of plot and character. Many of the characters in The Aberration have ended up treading narrative backwater at various points in its history, causing me to re-evaluate and revise repeatedly in order to sustain it (most significantly when it was in its Manifesting Surreal iteration, consisting of mounting absurdity and about to collapse in on itself). As a result, though it's been far from easy, the narrative has begun to form into something that feels at least somewhat coherent. Unfortunately for Mike, for the time being at least, he is no longer a part of it.

As a final note (and a little hint at other things): although on the level of plot Mike's (apparent) death does nothing but remove him as something with no further use, on the level of the narrative--which can incorporate things like, say, meta-commentary--the very necessity of his removal may yet itself function as something more significant in terms of the wider narrative picture. If you follow that, I'll leave you to try and figure it out once you start getting a sense of what that wider picture is. Until then, the important thing, in terms of what this post has been getting at, is that this function operates as a valuable extra feature of the narrative, but does not exist at the expense of narrative integrity as a whole.

Edit 23/07/08: some slight rephrasing due to a confusion between the concepts of 'plot' and 'story/narrative' (I got them the wrong way around).

Labels: i am the ramblemaster, rabbit-hole theory, starcustard, the aberration

# posted by Chris @ 10:23 PM 0 comments

It began, on a popular social networking utility, thus:



Responded Ella '(Je)Snails' Turngroove, rising to the challenge:

'such a work of awesomeness requires a comeback in picture form. and this will be delivered tomorrow, because we were supposed to be elsewhere at 7pm, and it's now 7.34pm and I'm still in a dressing gown. I was supposed to be banking, but I blame [bank name]. If they made their online banking service as fun as [social networking utility], MAYBE less people would be late!

consider it, [bank name]!

picture: tomorrow. unless too hungover to control mouse.'

Two days later, Ella's comeback appeared:



And she elaborated thus:

'yes, funk has no body. it's just a funky head, unimpeded by the unfunkiness of having to lug around a body. there's nothing unfunky about funk! ears and sunglasses are all you need! and a knowledge of funky head-dancing.'

I was moved, touched, emotionally violated in a variety of subtle ways, and prompted to express such feelings that I had:

'If you will: a critique.

Yes, there is a certain clinch of the groovy awesome, undeniable, vivid, apocalyptical. To walk and talk like a treble cleft; indeed, to suffer back problems in name of a curvey spine groove. Superfly, but somehow cautious; self-assured, but not so sure, perhaps, in step. Wobbly. It resonates: TAP. Each echo propounded in the speed-lines of two equals symbols. Equality? No, indeed not. Superiority.

Less fortunate, it would seem, the fatty. Or so an outsider would perceive, but the fatty clearly does not care. Fat beats have taken over. The shaka clap is all that matters, and the fatty is engrossed. Rounded hair or spiky, or both? The medallion, the chain, symbolising scissors. Like dough, but sharp. Sensical? A paradox. A secret. Only the fatty truly knows.

But, bada, and boom, there is triumph above all in the third. BLARING RHYTHMS EMIT, it claims, on the face of it so simple, yet in reality so deep - so profound a statement. A mouth, a snout, a strange birth-mark? Planted are two speakers in what can barely be called the style of an afro, yet what else could it be? Simply nothing. Wanted by all, achieved by none. The next stage of evolution for the disco messiah.'

In her reponse, Turngroove touched aptly upon the very essence of all our endeavour, artistically, as artists, amidst a gushing affirmation:

'how astute of you to notice the wit inherent in fat beats' self-deprecatory pink stylings. I did wonder whether it was too obscure a reference for the average art aficionado, but I tip my hat to you - art clearly flows in the veins! and to question the step of the Groove, while the same appears so assured; to see the wobble behind the paint is to see into the eye of inspiration itself.'

And finally, in conclusive summation, Turngroove ended by invoking a well-known and very relevant mantra:

'Je suis pope lol, indeed! oh yes, indeed.'

Labels: i am the ramblemaster, jesnails

# posted by Chris @ 1:23 PM 0 comments

This whole thing was a disaster! Maybe if he looked into his new costume he would find help. NOOOOOOOOOOOO! It was a fluffy pink bunny costume rented from WarrenWorld Theme Park! The best thing he could do was to take a sharp turn left and go through the girls' bathroom.

It was five years ago this month, I realised, that I wrote the first parts of that Halo parody and put it on that legendary website which had been forged by the minds of two fourteen-year-old geniuses. In personal terms, that's a hell of a long time. Over a quarter of a lifetime ago, in fact. (Fat Man In Tweed proper had its second birthday sometime last week.)

Not only does this mean that the character of Master Beef, conceived by my fourteen-year-old mind, is five years old as well (and I'm still using him); it also means that I've been posting stuff online, under this guise of 'writer', for just as long. And I keep asking myself: why?

The original answer is obvious enough: I'm just playing around. That's what we were doing with Fod, and the myriad other websites that myself and the Artist Formerly Known As Olli created. That's what I've been doing ever since, with the boardfics as well as the websites. Whatever grand schemes I might stumble upon along the way, and however carried away or excited I might get about some big story or idea, in the end I'm doing it because I enjoy it. That doesn't mean I'm treating it trivially -- in fact, I put a lot of work into it, and probably take it all too seriously -- but ultimately this website is a hobby. First and foremost, it's a way to entertain myself, while at the same time being personally meaningful and fulfilling in the same way that any other hobby might be. I get to reap the personal benefits, whatever they may be, of exploring my own thoughts, performing amateurish experiments with the 'craft' of storytelling and nudging together a few other ideas.

The point of this website as an attempt at exploring myself and the world around me is a conclusion I at least sort of arrived at already. But this doesn't explain why I need a website to do it. Couldn't I do all this in private journals? Another obvious answer here which I've already given in previous ramblings is that by putting it online, I get to put it out there for everybody to see. I like to entertain others with this stuff, and maybe some distant reader somewhere will find something interesting about it beyond that, even if it's really not good enough to achieve publication anywhere else. That is the best and worst thing about the internet: you're free to post whatever crap you want.

The other thing about the internet is that you have a certain level of anonymity. Even if I put my name on every page, I remain mostly hidden from view. It's a weird position to take after admitting that I want people to see what I've written, but I'm actually more comfortable with it being read by silent strangers than by my friends, many of whom still don't even know this place exists. It allows me, as a ridiculously self-conscious person, to maintain this illusion of being alone with my thoughts, paradoxically aware that at the same time it's out there to be seen. This is why, on those rare occasions that some random person sends me a friendly message about the site, I find myself slightly unnerved.

Besides these floating few, however, and as much as I get paranoid about plastering my copyright over everything I post, it's probably another self-imposed, happy illusion to imagine that I have much of a readership at all. But Fat Man In Tweed has its benefits anyway. Being able to publish things at all makes me feel more productive, but posting online, specifically all on one website, gives me a focus point for my efforts. As a 'project', it feels more substantive and it gives me a place to bring my thoughts together. With the serial fictions like The Aberration, I get to conduct an ongoing exploration of my own version of ideas (in theory also leaving it there to be considered by others), and then, in areas where I feel like being a little more explicit, I can toddle over to this blog and write about it here, along with all the other stuff I've been thinking about. A lot of my more ponderous, recent blogposts tend to end on something of a triumphant note, not because I've made some important new philosophical discovery, but because I feel like I've been able to work through something on my own and come to at least some sort of conclusion.

Ever since its inception, I've been conscious of Fat Man In Tweed as more of an entity in itself than other website I've worked on. And because of that, it has turned into something else. All this going back and forth and cross-referencing myself could in part just be me dwelling in my own egotism, but the effect of having Fat Man In Tweed as a focus point for all these things, leading to everything sort of bouncing off each other, will hopefully mean that something will eventually begin to resonate in some kind of meaningful way. On a personal level, at least, I'm finding that this is true already, bringing to clearer attention those things that are really preoccupying my mind. The website, it turns out, can function as a nucleus of personal thought in unexpected, interesting, and maybe even useful ways. For all it contains, it's proving to be a worthwhile medium for expression in itself.

Labels: bananas and laxatives, boardfic, excerpts, i am the ramblemaster, the aberration, webtechnical

# posted by Chris @ 11:00 PM 0 comments