the ramble dump
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Rabbit-Hole Theory (Part 1)
[Revised 30.06.09.]
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.]
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
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Snobbery of the Scientists
[Note: this was majorly revised 19/08/08. Before that, it was very unclear and underdeveloped and made quite a few leaps in logic that didn't entirely make sense. I'm kind of hoping that nobody ever saw it, and that this new version is a bit more acceptable.]
I am an English student. English has always been my favourite subject. When my brother trotted off to Manchester to do Physics, we used to butt heads over it all the time. My main argument was that Physics was boring; his was that English, and later Philosophy, were wishy-washy subjects, and that Physics encompassed everything, and that Physics was therefore the most important. I continued to argue that Physics was boring. And it was, back in school.
I know that this was a pretty immature view for me to take of Physics, but I still object to the kind of claims that my brother made. Here at the University of Nottingham, I've been faced with attitudes along similar lines. Certain physicists have declared the study of literature pointless. Clans of scientifically-minded people have tittered and guffawed when they have realised they were in the midst of a Philosophy class. It is massively uncalled for.
The main argument around science-the-subjects versus, specifically, English-the-subject seems to be one of usefulness, and how students of the former are dismissing the latter on the basis of, say, a novel being subjective and fictional and therefore a complete waste of time in spending a degree on. On the other hand, science is supposedly much more sensible and worthwhile because it strives to be objective. Much of physics, for example, is grounded in mathematics and supported by empirical evidence, which gives it the apparent prestige of being pure, solid facts about the universe. Right, so. As it's mostly the physicists I know who seem so rested on their pedestals, I'm going to use them as my main example while I attempt to call such individuals out for being close-minded.
Let's first address the objectivity versus subjectivity deal. Maths, as a form of logic, is extremely useful. Empirical evidence is also valuable, and when this logic is applied to it, we can attempt to construct some pretty coherent theories about the universe. Yes, these theories try to be based on objectivity, but however much they may be supported by validating evidence, how many of these theories contain speculation, educated guesses and offered interpretations of the universe? How far could science get if they didn't? And, pause for thought: how is this so different from literature? By this I mean that both fundamentally require the construction of a narrative based on human observation, whatever logic or specific methodology you may use to support it. The same is true of philosophy, of history, of many other subjects. Both science and literature involve the construction of such narratives from the human perspective: they are, in their different ways, based on human experience--so to begin with, it's worth bearing in mind that science will never be completely objective because we're essentially working from a subjective starting point: our own minds. The evidence may be actually out there, but the whole concept of empirical evidence is that we're verifying its existence based on our own experiences with it--our own observations.
The pursuit of scientific truth, physical truth, is a noble endeavour and has proved to be incredibly useful, but any scientist who really understands his or her subject has to acknowledge the part that subjectivity and storytelling play in the construction of theories, and that establishing 'facts' is always contingent on the reliability of such empirical evidence. I know that rigorous checks can be made to ensure that such evidence is reliable as possible, but science is an ongoing thing and in the meantime, as has been demonstrated countless times, theories of the world can be very coherent and seemingly much supported, but all it takes is the tiniest bit of new evidence to show that what was previously considered fact was actually a not-quite-accurate fiction based on the limits of human perspective up until that point.
This does not, of course, validate the practice of literary analysis in any way. Literature employs no such rigorous scientific methodology, and for whatever part temporary fictions might play in the scientific process, it would be ridiculous to claim that literature is valuable or useful in the same ways as science. But they're different subjects for a reason. Science, as mentioned, strives for objectivity, whereas literature and literary theory do to much less of an extent, if at all--but this is because they're searching for different kinds of meaning. When we come to analyse literature, the entire methodology is different because we're looking for something different--applying to a novel the scientific method, or the quantitative logic of mathematics, may indeed get you nowhere, but makes no sense to require from literature, or any of the arts, scientific meaning. Science can, to an ever-increasing extent, explain the how and the why of the universe. It may explain its origins, our origins, why we act the way we act -- but it can't explain what any of this means to us. That's the realm of the arts and humanities.* This isn't to say that a scientific approach towards literature is always going to be useless--a science fiction novel that speculates the possibility of a future world could be evaluated for likelihood based on our current scientific knowledge. But to insist on a solely scientific approach to literature is...well, missing the point. In Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, for example, it's not the fact that magic corrupts to which we can attribute much meaning, in relation to our own world--it's the suggestion that power does. The meaning in a world of fiction, or a work of art, will always be figurative. It is representative, rather than physical.
And again, the lack of scientifically verifiable truth in these representations does not mean they are academically worthless--even though it's still an illustration rather than anything physically real. To claim that is like dismissing an illustration or a diagram in a physics textbook. It might be a simplified or distorted or exaggerated representation of the universe, but that doesn't mean it's useless. And that's what literary criticism is all about: deciding whether something that the book or poem represents is oversimplified, biased or distorted, or if it does offer us a useful way of looking at something, maybe even encouraging us to look at this thing in a way that we haven't done before. None of it can establish fact, but it can make important suggestions, ones that we can still apply to our own lives in a way that might apply to our view of humanity in general or our own feelings specifically. Science is the discipline for determining the 'truth' of a physical universe--but if you're going to insist on looking for physical truth in a novel or a painting, it's your own fault if you get nothing out of it.
As for my brother's claim (made a couple of years ago now, whether he still believes this or not) that the 'humanities' are, by definition, too limited for focusing only on humanity--can it really be argued anyway that the aims of science don't ultimately come back to ourselves? Even if science, say, sketches out an aim of preserving an animal species, it comes back to issues of our responsibility. It makes no sense to sever the human aspect from the aims of science. If you're going to argue for the 'usefulness' or 'importance' of science, surely you can't be referring to the construction of some abstract realm of knowledge that just sits there. In this case, therefore, the argument against the focus on humanity doesn't really apply.
I do think it's also worth pursuing knowledge for the sake of itself, purely because we find the world around us interesting. That's part of life too, and the arts do it by the moundful. But it remains true that some questions of science -- for example, facts about distant galaxies -- might be considered academically interesting while arguably having no bearing whatsoever on how we live our lives. Not everything has to be about the direct utilitarianism of something, and there are loads of different functions and purposes to all the different subjects that this rant won't have covered -- more than anything else, I do the subject 'English' because I enjoy it -- but my point is that in terms of this direct 'usefulness' or 'importance' that some of my sciency friends seem to argue for, science can't always claim the highground. Literature, the arts, philosophy...they're all about human interpretion of the universe, which makes them, as already argued, in a way not so different from science. But in often being more focused on what is important to us, they are not only, as a whole, just as relevant as the sciences, but I would argue sometimes even more so. Having everything explained in purely technical terms isn't necessarily meaningful or useful, and it definitely isn't all-encompassing.*
And for all those people who think that literary criticism is just about making stuff up: yes, literature and literary theory can be self-indulgent waffle. Art can be pretentious; but science can be quack. The fact that meaning can be subjective in art, and derived from a novel, say, even if it wasn't explicitly intended by the author (and a lot of literary theory examines precisely this idea), does not mean that it can't be meaningful at all. If, however, someone writes an essay and they are consciously making the whole thing up, or trying to be overly academic or obtuse, and if there really is nothing to it, then the practise of literary theory will, or at least should, reject it as the pretentious crap it is.
I'm hoping it's clear enough that I'm not trying to put science down. I mean, I love science. Some of my best friends are scientists. But those of them who seek to dismiss the arts have so far not been able to do so on valid or non-hypocritical grounds. Science isn't more important than the arts and the arts aren't more important than the sciences. They are complementary, and the distinction between them is overexaggerated anyway.* The arts have often been lampooned for their multitude of pretentious twats, and probably with good reason. But I think the snobs among the scientists need to get over themselves too.
* This fat footnote exists just to bring together those three statements that have been asterisk'd. For the first asterisk, in relation to 'what it means to us', here's an example: the study of biology and evolutionary psychology may go a long way to explaining how and why we came to feel an emotion like sympathy, but as soon as you start talking about the implications of this technical explanation on how we are now forced to view ourselves, we're into the area of philosophy. At this point, to reinforce asterisk two, it has then gone beyond a purely technical account. Literature might then come in as somebody's chosen form of expression for such an idea.
As for asterisk three, I would argue that the division between the subjects is partially arbitrary anyway: even between the sciences themselves, physics can only explain so far before it becomes a matter of chemistry, and in turn, biology. In this vast spectrum of human endeavour, the sciences would gradually become social studies, which would in turn become the humanities. The arts can operate as media of expression for all of the above. In any case, each offer very specific areas of study. Even if you argue that chemistry and biology could be counted as subcategories of physics, as an area of academic study -- as 'Physics' -- this is just not true. It stops short or has limited overlap before it becomes something that you are not studying, while the Chemists and Biologists are. Likewise, Literature could not exist without Linguistics, but the study of Linguistics does not encompass Literature. No subject has dominion.
Labels: i am the ramblemaster, literature, science, tolkien
Friday, July 20, 2007
Amelia's Notebooks
The Aberration Chapter 7.
Amelia really does have that many notebooks. I've never seen them myself, but she has mentioned them more than once. She has lots for all different kinds of things and thoughts and ideas. I wonder if you could assemble all the contents of her brain with those notebooks, like a sort of psychological biography with a split personality. I know that the black one is for Starcustard. I am sure at least one of them contains a list of the children she has yet to eat.
She is not here right now, so I can get away with saying these things for at least another eighteen months.
Underneath that Sherlock Holmes reference is a considerable amount of truth. I lack the notebooks of both fictional and factual Amelias, but the same sort of process goes on in my brain when I'm trying to write a story. Things like sciencing and philosophising and most probably detectiving too all require very analytical approaches to be of much use. Storytelling, however, is the opposite. You can get ideas from all over the place, and while they might all share the same theme or have something in common, you're still left with the task of making something coherent out of what is essentially arbitrary. Whatever reason you might have for including something, whether as a plot device or to represent something or just because you thought it'd be cool to throw in, they're still only there because you put them there.1 There is therefore a great deal of Detective Muse's making stuff up as you go along.
As I've mentioned before, The Aberration has been a continuous struggle to try and achieve this. I started off with a couple of Halo parody characters, included a few more things just because I thought they were interesting enough, and then over the years the story has repeatedly run out of steam as I've tried to figure out where to go next or what relation any of it has to anything else. Its current form is very different from its earlier iterations, in which the aim was basically just to fill it with weird things, because I've got stuck and had to go back and change things constantly.
I've finally mapped out something that's a bit more coherent than it used to be, by mentally rearranging and adding to and editing the thing until it's formed something I can actually go somewhere with. But does all this arbitrariness, the fact that everything included is ultimately an arbitrary decision, mean that stories are empty? Well, as tA has shown, there's actually a limit to how arbitrary everything can be before it falls apart. It has to have some coherence, and even if the story works by its own internal logic or requires some suspension of disbelief, the logic still has to be there, and any kind of sustainable logic has to be based at least in part on reality.
Fictional stories are, for the most part, contrived. And creating the illusion that these things aren't arbitrary is all part of the craft. But reality plays its part, and the further a story drifts from it, the less believable it will be. This doesn't mean you can't include fantastical elements in your world's internal logic, and as Holmes points out and Detective Muse echoes in this chapter, improbability is not the same thing as impossibility. But that internal logic needs to be solid.
So where does this leave the meaningfulness of a story, beyond its entertainment value or simple emotional engagement? That internal logic, however sustainable or believable it might be, could still be considered arbitrary. Can you use a story to analyse or demonstrate something? Can you show, say, the personal, social or political consequences of certain circumstances being brought about? Or present a moral lesson or a warning? You can't scientifically analyse a work of fiction any more than you can analyse a dream (albeit a slightly more focused dream). But if the logic behind the story is reasonable enough, you can suggest. You, as the author, can throw light on an alternative interpretation; your interpretation. Conclusions drawn from a writer's own fictional world -- by the writer and reader -- can never be truly objective, but they can offer some balance of thoughts and ideas. In the end, you can't really conclude anything with a story. They can only offer questions. They can offer a new perspective, one that will always be open to criticism but is not necessarily without its worth. That, to me, is part of what it's all about.
And, as in the case of tA, things like fat men in tweed or talking microwaves or a man dressed in a mutated sort of rabbit costume, even if they were included out of complete arbitrariness to start with, can still become something suggestive or figurative in the context of their function in the story. And who knows, maybe there was already some subconscious significance to them.
So Detective Muse has a point, even if Mr Holmes might disagree that it applies in entirely the same way to his profession. Don't diss the improbable, don't diss the ridiculous, and don't be too quick to diss the arbitrary.
1 Which is why allegory can seem so manipulative.
Amelia really does have that many notebooks. I've never seen them myself, but she has mentioned them more than once. She has lots for all different kinds of things and thoughts and ideas. I wonder if you could assemble all the contents of her brain with those notebooks, like a sort of psychological biography with a split personality. I know that the black one is for Starcustard. I am sure at least one of them contains a list of the children she has yet to eat.
She is not here right now, so I can get away with saying these things for at least another eighteen months.
Underneath that Sherlock Holmes reference is a considerable amount of truth. I lack the notebooks of both fictional and factual Amelias, but the same sort of process goes on in my brain when I'm trying to write a story. Things like sciencing and philosophising and most probably detectiving too all require very analytical approaches to be of much use. Storytelling, however, is the opposite. You can get ideas from all over the place, and while they might all share the same theme or have something in common, you're still left with the task of making something coherent out of what is essentially arbitrary. Whatever reason you might have for including something, whether as a plot device or to represent something or just because you thought it'd be cool to throw in, they're still only there because you put them there.1 There is therefore a great deal of Detective Muse's making stuff up as you go along.
As I've mentioned before, The Aberration has been a continuous struggle to try and achieve this. I started off with a couple of Halo parody characters, included a few more things just because I thought they were interesting enough, and then over the years the story has repeatedly run out of steam as I've tried to figure out where to go next or what relation any of it has to anything else. Its current form is very different from its earlier iterations, in which the aim was basically just to fill it with weird things, because I've got stuck and had to go back and change things constantly.
I've finally mapped out something that's a bit more coherent than it used to be, by mentally rearranging and adding to and editing the thing until it's formed something I can actually go somewhere with. But does all this arbitrariness, the fact that everything included is ultimately an arbitrary decision, mean that stories are empty? Well, as tA has shown, there's actually a limit to how arbitrary everything can be before it falls apart. It has to have some coherence, and even if the story works by its own internal logic or requires some suspension of disbelief, the logic still has to be there, and any kind of sustainable logic has to be based at least in part on reality.
Fictional stories are, for the most part, contrived. And creating the illusion that these things aren't arbitrary is all part of the craft. But reality plays its part, and the further a story drifts from it, the less believable it will be. This doesn't mean you can't include fantastical elements in your world's internal logic, and as Holmes points out and Detective Muse echoes in this chapter, improbability is not the same thing as impossibility. But that internal logic needs to be solid.
So where does this leave the meaningfulness of a story, beyond its entertainment value or simple emotional engagement? That internal logic, however sustainable or believable it might be, could still be considered arbitrary. Can you use a story to analyse or demonstrate something? Can you show, say, the personal, social or political consequences of certain circumstances being brought about? Or present a moral lesson or a warning? You can't scientifically analyse a work of fiction any more than you can analyse a dream (albeit a slightly more focused dream). But if the logic behind the story is reasonable enough, you can suggest. You, as the author, can throw light on an alternative interpretation; your interpretation. Conclusions drawn from a writer's own fictional world -- by the writer and reader -- can never be truly objective, but they can offer some balance of thoughts and ideas. In the end, you can't really conclude anything with a story. They can only offer questions. They can offer a new perspective, one that will always be open to criticism but is not necessarily without its worth. That, to me, is part of what it's all about.
And, as in the case of tA, things like fat men in tweed or talking microwaves or a man dressed in a mutated sort of rabbit costume, even if they were included out of complete arbitrariness to start with, can still become something suggestive or figurative in the context of their function in the story. And who knows, maybe there was already some subconscious significance to them.
So Detective Muse has a point, even if Mr Holmes might disagree that it applies in entirely the same way to his profession. Don't diss the improbable, don't diss the ridiculous, and don't be too quick to diss the arbitrary.
1 Which is why allegory can seem so manipulative.
Labels: allegory, fat men in tweed, halo, i am the ramblemaster, science, starcustard, the aberration
Friday, June 22, 2007
Machine Slaves
As part of some extra material I was been emailed by my philosophy teacher for the exam today, I read Oscar Wilde's The Soul of Man Under Socialism. It's full of interesting stuff. I'll probably pick out some other bits some other time, but here's a big fat one to start off with:
To start with, I was surprised to read this just because it strikes me as a before-his-time kind of thing. The Victorians had made significant technological progress (at least so far as inventing the machines, even if, as he mentions, there were huge difficulties implementing the things), but this kind of stuff is the stuff of your modern-day science fiction. Presumably, if he's talking about abolishing human labour, he has to be talking about machines at the stage of automatons, because otherwise you'd still need humans to operate them.
What's really interesting, though, is the bit about the necessity of slaves. Somebody's got to do the work, after all. In all the accounts of moral philosophers that I've studied in any detail--namely Plato, Nietzsche and Aristotle--there's been a class of 'slaves'. They don't always mean it in the strict sense of labour; usually they mean it at least in part as those who are 'slaves' to their desires and instincts and who consequently can't live truly fulfilled lives or whatever. But Plato, at least, explicitly assigns them as the labouring class, and while I don't remember any specific mention of labour in the other accounts, I don't think that either Nietzsche nor Aristotle had menial tasks in mind for their nobles. It's something that, for me, has always sat uncomfortably. The idea of machines doing it instead is an interesting one.
Wilde has the romantic sort of notion that the future of the world depends on this mechanical slavery, because then in their 'delightful leisure' the freed humans will be able to excel and create wonderful things. But are we humans really so progressive? Maybe this view is too optimistic, and maybe most people will just eat themselves into grotesque and slovenly states. I don't think you need to go as far as Wilde does, though. You don't need to claim a utopia as the outcome. I think the important thing is that the choice is there and that people aren't condemned to the life of a machine. If you don't trust in the progressiveness of human nature, or want to give people the sense of responsibility or other moral benefits that come from work, then give everyone a good education to set them on the right path and then give them some work that's meaningful; something actually productive. This is, after all, about abolishing the kind of menial work that goes nowhere: not all work. We don't live in the same regimented class system that Wilde did, but the classes definitely haven't gone away, and if there are some in the middle-classes and above able to leisure their lives away, why shouldn't everyone have the same opportunity?
Anyway, these are just a few cogitations, and I don't know the ins and outs of the economy well enough to know the wider economic effects or just how radical a restructuring it would require, but it's an interesting thought. And something that's already happening in many ways. Maybe one day something like it will be possible.
As long as we don't make the machines too human, of course.
...I cannot help saying that a great deal of nonsense is being written and talked nowadays about the dignity of manual labour. There is nothing necessary dignified about manual labour at all, and most of it is absolutely degrading. It is mentally and morally injurious to man to do anything in which he does not find pleasure, and many forms of labour are quite pleasureless activities, and should be regarded as such. To sweep a slushy crossing for eight hours on a day when the east wind is blowing is a disgusting occupation. To sweep it with mental, moral, or physical dignity seems to me to be impossible. To sweep it with joy would be appalling. Man is made for something better than disturbing dirt. All work of that kind should be done by a machine.
And I have no doubt that it will be so. Up to the present, man has been, to a certain extent, the slave of machinery, and there is something tragic in the fact that as soon as man had invented a machine to do his work he began to starve. This, however, is, of course, the result of our property system and our system of competition. One man owns a machine which does the work of five hundred men. Five hundred men are, in consequence, thrown out of employment, and, having no work to do, become hungry and take to thieving. The one man secures the produce of the machine and keeps it, and has five hundred times as much as he should have, and probably, which is of much more importance, a great deal more than he really wants. Were that machine the property of all, every one would benefit by it. It would be an immense advantage to the community. All unintellectual labour, all monotonous, dull labour, all labour that deals with dreadful things, and involves unpleasant conditions, must be done by machinery. Machinery must work for us in coal mines, and do all sanitary services, and be the stoker of steamers, and clean the streets, and run messages on wet days, and do anything that is tedious or distressing. At present machinery competes against man. Under proper conditions machinery will serve man. There is no doubt at all that this is the future of machinery, and just as trees grow while the country gentleman is asleep, so while Humanity will be amusing itself, or enjoying cultivated leisure which, and not labour, is the aim of man - or making beautiful things, or reading beautiful things, or simply contemplating the world with admiration and delight, machinery will be doing all the necessary and unpleasant work. The fact is, that civilisation requires slaves. The Greeks were quite right there. Unless there are slaves to do the ugly, horrible, uninteresting work, culture and contemplation become almost impossible. Human slavery is wrong, insecure, and demoralising. On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends. And when scientific men are no longer called upon to go down to a depressing East End and distribute bad cocoa and worse blankets to starving people, they will have delightful leisure in which to devise wonderful and marvellous things for their own joy and the joy of every one else. There will be great storages of force for every city, and for every house if required, and this force man will convert into heat, light, or motion, according to his needs. Is this Utopian? A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopias.
To start with, I was surprised to read this just because it strikes me as a before-his-time kind of thing. The Victorians had made significant technological progress (at least so far as inventing the machines, even if, as he mentions, there were huge difficulties implementing the things), but this kind of stuff is the stuff of your modern-day science fiction. Presumably, if he's talking about abolishing human labour, he has to be talking about machines at the stage of automatons, because otherwise you'd still need humans to operate them.
What's really interesting, though, is the bit about the necessity of slaves. Somebody's got to do the work, after all. In all the accounts of moral philosophers that I've studied in any detail--namely Plato, Nietzsche and Aristotle--there's been a class of 'slaves'. They don't always mean it in the strict sense of labour; usually they mean it at least in part as those who are 'slaves' to their desires and instincts and who consequently can't live truly fulfilled lives or whatever. But Plato, at least, explicitly assigns them as the labouring class, and while I don't remember any specific mention of labour in the other accounts, I don't think that either Nietzsche nor Aristotle had menial tasks in mind for their nobles. It's something that, for me, has always sat uncomfortably. The idea of machines doing it instead is an interesting one.
Wilde has the romantic sort of notion that the future of the world depends on this mechanical slavery, because then in their 'delightful leisure' the freed humans will be able to excel and create wonderful things. But are we humans really so progressive? Maybe this view is too optimistic, and maybe most people will just eat themselves into grotesque and slovenly states. I don't think you need to go as far as Wilde does, though. You don't need to claim a utopia as the outcome. I think the important thing is that the choice is there and that people aren't condemned to the life of a machine. If you don't trust in the progressiveness of human nature, or want to give people the sense of responsibility or other moral benefits that come from work, then give everyone a good education to set them on the right path and then give them some work that's meaningful; something actually productive. This is, after all, about abolishing the kind of menial work that goes nowhere: not all work. We don't live in the same regimented class system that Wilde did, but the classes definitely haven't gone away, and if there are some in the middle-classes and above able to leisure their lives away, why shouldn't everyone have the same opportunity?
Anyway, these are just a few cogitations, and I don't know the ins and outs of the economy well enough to know the wider economic effects or just how radical a restructuring it would require, but it's an interesting thought. And something that's already happening in many ways. Maybe one day something like it will be possible.
As long as we don't make the machines too human, of course.
Labels: i am the ramblemaster, morality, oscar wilde, philosophy, science
Saturday, April 21, 2007
The Cyberpunk Aesthetic
Cyberpunk: high tech, low life. That seems to work as a good summary, although I don't know whose summary it is. People living in a society deeply affected by rapid technological development, usually on its underside.
As a political outlook--from what I can tell after having a little look around this thing we call cyberspace--it's a bit dubious. By nature of living in an increasingly technological world, upon which we are becoming ever more dependent, we must be wary of authority and hidden information. Fair enough. We're all digitally recorded in various ways about a gazillion times each day; my school, for example, has a CCTV network that means I'm caught on at least twenty different cameras moving from one end to the other. It's enough to make me paranoid. And whenever anyone says 'If you're doing nothing wrong, you've got nothing to worry about', I always think of 1984.
But then, those who call themselves cyberpunks push for anarchy over democracy as well as totalitarianism, and anarchy for people who have a penchant for shiny weapons is probably something to be wary of. They seem too willing to throw themselves into a technological future where technology and humanity will inevitably (and literally) merge, which as likely as it may be...well, that's got to conflict with any ideals of independence. While you're refusing to submit to the government, you're just submitting yourself, gratuitously, to something else. They shamelessly admit style over substance, and in fact seem to promote it. There's lots of emphasis on attitude and Fighting The Power. Indeedy, it seems more like a teenaged sort of attitude problem in the guise of a political conscience than anything else.
It's hard to tell if they're being serious. Maybe they aren't. Mostly it just seems like people having some obscure kind of fun. Whatever subcultures or so-called cyberpunk manifestos have formed on the internet, though, as a genre, cyberpunk still holds a lot of interest, independent of those trying to make a coherent political outlook out of the genre's features.
Cyberpunk as a genre has a lot of style. It's a grungey sort of style, written with noir elements and an edge that reflects a sense of aesthetics and cool and the fascination of possibilities of the world it writes about, while at the same time reflecting the whole 'low life' thing, the technological chaos, the danger and violence of the lives of characters living on the edge. Dependence on technology and existence of virtual worlds are major themes that have become ever more relevant in recent years, and many cyberpunk novels have already proven to be somewhat prophetic. So for all its distinct style, cyberpunk is also stirring because it's really not that far from being a reality.
While The Matrix trilogy had a little bit of naff and a whole lot of bloated allegory, I still liked it because it had that cyberpunk aesthetic, especially the first film. It had the virtual world; the characters' dependence on technology and machinery; the noir feel; the grungey, gloomy, decaying urban settings; and a sense that the characters were living on the edge, struggling for an existence and finding themselves in violent situations (not that Hollywood would have it any other way).
After taking a renewed interest in the genre, I recently bought William Gibson's Neuromancer, one of the original cyberpunk novels. Its vision of the future is over twenty years old, but still feels very believable. And aside from that, it's just a lot of fun to read. Before long I'll be getting the others in the trilogy.
There's charm and intrigue to the urban decay and perverse technology of cyberpunk, as paradoxical as that sounds. There's a fascination to these worlds that draws you in, both thrilling and disturbing, and the way in which all the questions about what it is to be human are amplified.
As a political outlook--from what I can tell after having a little look around this thing we call cyberspace--it's a bit dubious. By nature of living in an increasingly technological world, upon which we are becoming ever more dependent, we must be wary of authority and hidden information. Fair enough. We're all digitally recorded in various ways about a gazillion times each day; my school, for example, has a CCTV network that means I'm caught on at least twenty different cameras moving from one end to the other. It's enough to make me paranoid. And whenever anyone says 'If you're doing nothing wrong, you've got nothing to worry about', I always think of 1984.
But then, those who call themselves cyberpunks push for anarchy over democracy as well as totalitarianism, and anarchy for people who have a penchant for shiny weapons is probably something to be wary of. They seem too willing to throw themselves into a technological future where technology and humanity will inevitably (and literally) merge, which as likely as it may be...well, that's got to conflict with any ideals of independence. While you're refusing to submit to the government, you're just submitting yourself, gratuitously, to something else. They shamelessly admit style over substance, and in fact seem to promote it. There's lots of emphasis on attitude and Fighting The Power. Indeedy, it seems more like a teenaged sort of attitude problem in the guise of a political conscience than anything else.
It's hard to tell if they're being serious. Maybe they aren't. Mostly it just seems like people having some obscure kind of fun. Whatever subcultures or so-called cyberpunk manifestos have formed on the internet, though, as a genre, cyberpunk still holds a lot of interest, independent of those trying to make a coherent political outlook out of the genre's features.
Cyberpunk as a genre has a lot of style. It's a grungey sort of style, written with noir elements and an edge that reflects a sense of aesthetics and cool and the fascination of possibilities of the world it writes about, while at the same time reflecting the whole 'low life' thing, the technological chaos, the danger and violence of the lives of characters living on the edge. Dependence on technology and existence of virtual worlds are major themes that have become ever more relevant in recent years, and many cyberpunk novels have already proven to be somewhat prophetic. So for all its distinct style, cyberpunk is also stirring because it's really not that far from being a reality.
While The Matrix trilogy had a little bit of naff and a whole lot of bloated allegory, I still liked it because it had that cyberpunk aesthetic, especially the first film. It had the virtual world; the characters' dependence on technology and machinery; the noir feel; the grungey, gloomy, decaying urban settings; and a sense that the characters were living on the edge, struggling for an existence and finding themselves in violent situations (not that Hollywood would have it any other way).
After taking a renewed interest in the genre, I recently bought William Gibson's Neuromancer, one of the original cyberpunk novels. Its vision of the future is over twenty years old, but still feels very believable. And aside from that, it's just a lot of fun to read. Before long I'll be getting the others in the trilogy.
There's charm and intrigue to the urban decay and perverse technology of cyberpunk, as paradoxical as that sounds. There's a fascination to these worlds that draws you in, both thrilling and disturbing, and the way in which all the questions about what it is to be human are amplified.
Labels: cyberpunk, films, i am the ramblemaster, literature, neuromancer, science, the matrix, william gibson
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