the ramble dump
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Taking Them Seriously (But Not Too Seriously): In Defence of Videogames
Videogames! I play them, and happen to think they can be good for more than wiling away your time. But there are still plenty of people who don't. There are some horrific prejudices out there, based on misconceptions I can only try to figure out.
To start with, there's the idea that they are somehow childish, or meant only for children's entertainment. Historically this has been the trend, but at some point in the last couple decades--or, more likely, as a gradual process--things have changed. It strikes me as similar to a lot of people's attitude towards animation, which is often dismissed as just 'cartoons'. But just like animation, there's nothing inherently juvenile about video games. And these days it's more and more the case that games are being targeted at a more mature demographic. It may be the word 'game' that's misleading some people--which brings me on to the next misconception...
That video games, being games, are trivial pursuits meant only for entertainment. In other words, they're a waste of time. Right? Well, not if you hold any value in things like books and films, which I do. Video games can be works of art in the same sense as any other works of art--though obviously not in exactly the same way. To explain how, I'm going to bounce off one of the objections some people tend to have at this point.
There's a feeling floating around out there that interactivity--the direct involvement of the player--results in some compromise of what makes art 'art'. I guess this revolves around the idea that games are constructed for the player and seem to be all about catering to the player's enjoyment, such that it can never count as 'true' artistic expression. In the past I've repeatedly used Oscar Wilde's theories on art as a reference such that they're probably a little worn out by now, but I think the general sentiment--that art is sacrificed as soon as the creator pays too much attention to the recipient--applies here. Only it doesn't, necessarily.
The assumption seems to be that the creators are inevitably pandering to what the player wants, in the process creating something that entertains the player but becomes utterly meaningless because all the 'artistic' elements are slaves to this entertainment. But I don't think this is true. First off, as far as the purpose of videogames is to entertain, it might help to shake off some of the negative connotations of that word--along with its supposed shallowness--if we replace it simply with the idea that these games are designed to engage. Then we can compare them once again to films and books, and we'd have to acknowledge that both these media do the same, albeit in very different ways. All these fictional worlds or stories are constructed so that the recipient is drawn into the experience.
Any way you choose to break down what 'entertainment' actually means--an activity people find either enjoyable or interesting, or a form of escapism--relates back to this as far as videogames are concerned. And let's not forget, as much as it may be a shocking revelation to some, that art does not have to be a chore. We are allowed to enjoy it. More than that, we have to 'enjoy' it--be interested enough in it, connected to it, feeling it on the intended level--for it to work at all.
Relatedly, returning to an artist's consideration of the recipient, it would be daft to say that any of these media are used as if there is no recipient, real or potential. Even the most self-absorbed and egotistical of authors wouldn't write a novel eschewing the very idea of a recipient--it makes no sense. The creation of art isn't just some spontaneous emotional fart; it's the act of putting it out there in the world for people to experience. There's a distinction, then, that has to be made between consciousness of a work of art being received and that work of art being moulded to the desires of the recipient in the way that Wilde meant.
As for interactivity, letting the player move bits of the world about, whether that be using an avatar or the avatar itself, does not qualify as this kind of moulding. Neither does allowing actions that result in changes to the world, because again this possibility has been intended. In other words, limited choice within the context of the gaming world is not the same as letting the player do whatever they want with that world. The rules of the world, and the scope of things that can happen (notwithstanding the exploitation of unintended bugs and glitches), have been put in place by the creators, and the player moving something across a field the designers created does not result in the artistic terms of this world being undermined. Why should it? The designers intended for you to be able to do this. Even if you have multiple options for movement--which you nearly always will, even in a fairly linear game--the designers letting you pick whichever option does not undermine their expressed world because what is being expressed is not dependent on absolutely scripted events, and was never meant to be.
A game designer has as much control as he or she desires. If they really want total control over every move and a completely scripted outcome, then this medium is not appropriate for what they are trying to achieve, and they should make a film or write a book instead.
In theory, then, a game can be built according to whatever terms the designer likes and they don't even have to consider what the player wants, beyond ensuring that everything has been done to maintain the player's engagement on a technical level--just like a badly-written novel or a poorly-made film aren't going to be very effective no matter what the people behind them are trying to present.
In practice, of course, market conditions mean that most games are churned out exactly according to what the designers think people like, and we get a lot of the same unimaginative thing as a result. Wilde probably wouldn't like that too much. But then the same is, again, true for films and books.
And besides this, not every activity in life has to be such a deep experience. Sometimes our brains just like being preoccupied, and we don't have to be enhanced as a person for it to be a worthwhile activity for thirty minutes every day, or a couple of hours every once in a while.*
So I'm under no illusion that all gamers are looking for some profound experience beyond 'beating' the game. But, for as long as we're talking about the art of it, most games use this specific goal-oriented immersion to take us places that transcend the simple act of beating it, and the best games are those that do this the most meaningfully. That's where the art is. I'll talk about this some more when I get on to videogames and story in more detail.
*Games are often deemed a waste of life on this account, but think of sports: there are obviously health benefits to doing sports, but how many people play a particular sport just for the health benefits? The same goes for transferable skills: even if we accepted the (somewhat dubious) claim that football skills, say, are transferable to other areas of our life, as well as the claim that videogames give us no such skills, who can honestly say that they play football primarily for the development of such transferable skills? People play football because they think it's fun.
This is because gaming is there in sports too: you've got your rules, your objectives and your challenges, all contrived and predefined. Of course, the experience is very different from sitting down and playing a videogame, the physicality of it making it different even if health had nothing to do with it (and I'm not saying that videogames could ever replace sports). But it's perfectly acceptable to say you're playing these games for the sake of the game. Everything in moderation, obviously, and addiction is always a possibility with anything like this, but there's no reason why gaming should be such a guilty activity. Five minutes of Pong is probably not going to be a huge experience for you, but it's not going to hurt.
To start with, there's the idea that they are somehow childish, or meant only for children's entertainment. Historically this has been the trend, but at some point in the last couple decades--or, more likely, as a gradual process--things have changed. It strikes me as similar to a lot of people's attitude towards animation, which is often dismissed as just 'cartoons'. But just like animation, there's nothing inherently juvenile about video games. And these days it's more and more the case that games are being targeted at a more mature demographic. It may be the word 'game' that's misleading some people--which brings me on to the next misconception...
That video games, being games, are trivial pursuits meant only for entertainment. In other words, they're a waste of time. Right? Well, not if you hold any value in things like books and films, which I do. Video games can be works of art in the same sense as any other works of art--though obviously not in exactly the same way. To explain how, I'm going to bounce off one of the objections some people tend to have at this point.
There's a feeling floating around out there that interactivity--the direct involvement of the player--results in some compromise of what makes art 'art'. I guess this revolves around the idea that games are constructed for the player and seem to be all about catering to the player's enjoyment, such that it can never count as 'true' artistic expression. In the past I've repeatedly used Oscar Wilde's theories on art as a reference such that they're probably a little worn out by now, but I think the general sentiment--that art is sacrificed as soon as the creator pays too much attention to the recipient--applies here. Only it doesn't, necessarily.
The assumption seems to be that the creators are inevitably pandering to what the player wants, in the process creating something that entertains the player but becomes utterly meaningless because all the 'artistic' elements are slaves to this entertainment. But I don't think this is true. First off, as far as the purpose of videogames is to entertain, it might help to shake off some of the negative connotations of that word--along with its supposed shallowness--if we replace it simply with the idea that these games are designed to engage. Then we can compare them once again to films and books, and we'd have to acknowledge that both these media do the same, albeit in very different ways. All these fictional worlds or stories are constructed so that the recipient is drawn into the experience.
Any way you choose to break down what 'entertainment' actually means--an activity people find either enjoyable or interesting, or a form of escapism--relates back to this as far as videogames are concerned. And let's not forget, as much as it may be a shocking revelation to some, that art does not have to be a chore. We are allowed to enjoy it. More than that, we have to 'enjoy' it--be interested enough in it, connected to it, feeling it on the intended level--for it to work at all.
Relatedly, returning to an artist's consideration of the recipient, it would be daft to say that any of these media are used as if there is no recipient, real or potential. Even the most self-absorbed and egotistical of authors wouldn't write a novel eschewing the very idea of a recipient--it makes no sense. The creation of art isn't just some spontaneous emotional fart; it's the act of putting it out there in the world for people to experience. There's a distinction, then, that has to be made between consciousness of a work of art being received and that work of art being moulded to the desires of the recipient in the way that Wilde meant.
As for interactivity, letting the player move bits of the world about, whether that be using an avatar or the avatar itself, does not qualify as this kind of moulding. Neither does allowing actions that result in changes to the world, because again this possibility has been intended. In other words, limited choice within the context of the gaming world is not the same as letting the player do whatever they want with that world. The rules of the world, and the scope of things that can happen (notwithstanding the exploitation of unintended bugs and glitches), have been put in place by the creators, and the player moving something across a field the designers created does not result in the artistic terms of this world being undermined. Why should it? The designers intended for you to be able to do this. Even if you have multiple options for movement--which you nearly always will, even in a fairly linear game--the designers letting you pick whichever option does not undermine their expressed world because what is being expressed is not dependent on absolutely scripted events, and was never meant to be.
A game designer has as much control as he or she desires. If they really want total control over every move and a completely scripted outcome, then this medium is not appropriate for what they are trying to achieve, and they should make a film or write a book instead.
In theory, then, a game can be built according to whatever terms the designer likes and they don't even have to consider what the player wants, beyond ensuring that everything has been done to maintain the player's engagement on a technical level--just like a badly-written novel or a poorly-made film aren't going to be very effective no matter what the people behind them are trying to present.
In practice, of course, market conditions mean that most games are churned out exactly according to what the designers think people like, and we get a lot of the same unimaginative thing as a result. Wilde probably wouldn't like that too much. But then the same is, again, true for films and books.
And besides this, not every activity in life has to be such a deep experience. Sometimes our brains just like being preoccupied, and we don't have to be enhanced as a person for it to be a worthwhile activity for thirty minutes every day, or a couple of hours every once in a while.*
So I'm under no illusion that all gamers are looking for some profound experience beyond 'beating' the game. But, for as long as we're talking about the art of it, most games use this specific goal-oriented immersion to take us places that transcend the simple act of beating it, and the best games are those that do this the most meaningfully. That's where the art is. I'll talk about this some more when I get on to videogames and story in more detail.
*Games are often deemed a waste of life on this account, but think of sports: there are obviously health benefits to doing sports, but how many people play a particular sport just for the health benefits? The same goes for transferable skills: even if we accepted the (somewhat dubious) claim that football skills, say, are transferable to other areas of our life, as well as the claim that videogames give us no such skills, who can honestly say that they play football primarily for the development of such transferable skills? People play football because they think it's fun.
This is because gaming is there in sports too: you've got your rules, your objectives and your challenges, all contrived and predefined. Of course, the experience is very different from sitting down and playing a videogame, the physicality of it making it different even if health had nothing to do with it (and I'm not saying that videogames could ever replace sports). But it's perfectly acceptable to say you're playing these games for the sake of the game. Everything in moderation, obviously, and addiction is always a possibility with anything like this, but there's no reason why gaming should be such a guilty activity. Five minutes of Pong is probably not going to be a huge experience for you, but it's not going to hurt.
Labels: videogames
Tuesday, February 09, 2010
Previously On Lost
[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
Wednesday, February 03, 2010
The Play's the Thing, Sometimes
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:
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.
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
Sunday, January 31, 2010
The Completist 5: Yeah, I Know...
Something soon. I promise with all my face.
Labels: laziness, strange personal compulsion
Thursday, December 31, 2009
The Completist 4: The Disgrace
Happy new year, all.
Labels: laziness, strange personal compulsion
