Who Is IOZ?: Origins

Thursday, June 04, 2009

Origins

Last night we were discussing the fact that They are evidently making another Sex and the City movie and speculating what the fuck it could possibly be about since Cocoon already happened and shit, and I quite suddenly had what I thought might be the most brilliant idea ever: Sex in the City: Origins, a series of four hastily-sketched and "action"-packed back stories limning how each woman acquired her Abilities. To be fair, Kim Catrall already made Mannequin, so hers will have to be more of an interstitial prequel, less Phantom Menace, more Attack of the Clones.

26 comments:

NutellaonToast said...: I thought all woman were born with the power to be irrational hysterical hypocrites. Are we just going to see four births?; 12:29 PM
Thomas Daulton said...: Ties in with your comments about the new "Star Trek" movie... and "Wolverine" for that matter... seems like Americans' imaginations these days have completely atrophied, and (possibly as a result) we started believing in predestination in order to relieve us of the burden of free will. Yer average entertainment consumer needs to have it spelled out for him exactly why his favorite characters have this or that trait, these specific habits, why they like shirts of this color, so it has to be spelled out as an inescapable consequence of something that happened in their past. (E.g., most everybody reading this can probably tell me precisely why Indiana Jones is afraid of snakes.) Nobody's comfortable with mystery or ambiguity anymore. Perhaps a belief in predestiny is a result of living in the world's premier Empire; I think the Romans said a lot the same things right before the Fall.

(So how's that for a piece of pure unadulterated sociological wanking! "Sex in the City" = Roman Empire. Sometimes I amaze even myself. BLAWG!!!1!); 2:12 PM
Aaron said...: Oh no.; 2:23 PM
Cüneyt said...: "These days"? Tell me, please, about the old days of American invention and thought. Come on; there's always been crap. Even Burroughs was churning out Tarzan books after not too long. Silly, reductionist pop myth has always been popular. Anyone have the balls to take on Star Wars? I don't, at least not yet, but you know it's not like that work is golden, either.

Me, I think it's a matter of the perennial appeal of reductionism, of simple explanations for vastly complex events. "They hate us for our freedom." "Oh, there were bats in the abandoned well that he fell into!" (And I say this as a Batman Begins fan, but that was cheap, I admit.)

So when was work original? Just-so stories have always been popular, it seems. This or that astronomical event explains this or that absurd literary contrivance. Even in a single story, foreshadowing is a representation of destiny, wouldn't you say? You want to bash a certain type of story, but you lead toward the overturning of stories, full stop, and even most history, because almost all causality is an exercise in teleology, in providing a simple answer to the cosmic and mysterious.

And, oh shit, IOZ already covered it.; 2:42 PM
Thomas Daulton said...: Ayup. IOZ already covered it, as I noted in my very first sentence, and here he is covering it again.

Imagine a gang of talented young chefs. Into the kitchen walks J.J. Abrams. To each, he hands a beautiful, golden-brown omelet. Gentlemen and ladies, he says, please make me some unbroken eggs.

Cüneyt, you're snapping at me for agreeing with you. I wasn't talking about overturning all stories everywhere, I was only talking about characters and their origins. You inserted the rest.

Nevertheless I think it's possible to talk about a current trend or fad, without assuming it's never been done before and will never be repeated again. Batman is a great example from the 50's (or was it the 30's?) Mugger kills parents, kid is scared by a bat; ergo kid is destined forever to fight crime and like bats. Yes, reductionism has happened before, and it will happen again.

Still, we can comment that we see a lot of examples recently in pop culture, of taking existing characters and "explaining" (read: reducing) their personalities down to a few dramatic early events. Whereas we can name a lot of pop characters from earlier years who started out as one-note stereotypes and gained complexity during their run. The Shadow from the 1930's radio show, for example, had about six different possible origins, and the audience was left guessing for years about which one, if any, was "true". Admittedly there may be selection bias involved, because cheesy also-rans like "Planet Man" and "Omar, the Wizard of Persia" are not as well-remembered as The Shadow. But then again, Hollywood didn't just spend twelve million dollars making an "Omar, Wizard of Persia" movie. The big-budget blockbusters of today seem, in terms of character development, more and more to resemble the embarrassing flops of yesteryear.

You can cite some examples of character development through mystery and enigma today, but that doesn't necessarily make me into an idiot for asserting an opinion that such mysteries are less common today than they were in the 20th century. I could be an idiot for a variety of other reasons.

And just for good measure, I did label my own post as "wanking", so hey, have fun and rip away!; 4:11 PM
Montag said...: Anyone have the balls to take on Star Wars?

Revenge of the Sith had a shit script. talk about determinism, all Lucas had to do was bridge between ep 2 and ep 4, and he did so in the most linear, uninteresting way possible in terms of plot, and in terms of character arcs, seemed to just say, "fuck it who cares?" the actors distractedly deadpanned their lines in between grunts of exertion as they performed choreographed action sequences stumbling around in front of green screens, and the computer graphics that filled in the background were less realistic than a pixar environment, and only slightly better than a video game cutscene. darth vader, who lucas alleges was the main fucking character of all six movies, (except the three old ones which were about Luke Skywalker you dumb fuck,) darth vader, a character defined by determinism, the prophecy, destiny, comes across not as tragically flawed anti-hero fighting the inexorable tides of fate, but a petulant whiner, (and a dummy,) until about halfway in, when he realizes, "if i'm going to be a dark sith lord by the end of this movie, i'd better give myself to the dark side now," and turned into a scowling undead evildoer. ARE YOU FUCKING THIS UP, DUDE? yes. almost to the point that thousands of words of fan-fic and extended universe retconning may never be able to put vader together again. fuck you george lucas you ruined everything.; 4:51 PM
Montag said...: i should add, that Revenge of the Sith is one of my all time favorite movies. not that i have any choice in the matter.; 4:54 PM
Cüneyt said...: Thomas, I'm sorry; I didn't mean to snap and, in fact, was trying to be jovial.

But, as long as we're clearing things up, I suggest you follow my link. I know you cited another post by IOZ. What I was linking to, in conversation and in code, was his rejection of the life-story as a contradiction in terms, for lives have no story.

And, as you mentioned current prequels' tendencies to reduce all previously-shown, yet-to-happen events to consequences of earlier experience, I thought it worthwhile to say that it's not just origin stories that demonstrate a belief in predestination. Stories, full stop, usually do that, and long have. So is the latest Star Trek any more teleological than the original television program? How are you to say that Batman Begins is any more mystery-destroying than The Godfather, Part Two?

So yes, we're agreeing on a lot of things, but I'm carrying your thought to its logical conclusions. If origin stories drain the pool and illuminate what ought to be left magical and shadowy, is this any more contrived than the many, many stories told throughout time that hold up this or that plot device that, only later, will prove significant? Oh muse, let me sing of the wrath of Achilles...

See, my problem's not with origin stories. It's with the lack of mystery, with the sense of destiny, of inevitability. But then, I'm an absurdist.

But to actually approach this latest post of yours, I don't know how we're on opposite sides, here. I'm not trying to defend the present so much as refute your premise that it is the past that was superior. If it was, it is not, then, as you say, because of a tendency to explain the past through a few obvious events, because old stories had that too. As far as I know, Batman's parents were written as having been murdered as early as 1939. And yes, subsequent stories added to the mythology, but how do you blame the accumulation of all these on the present alone, when it was older generations, ostensibly writing to a deeper audience, that added their share, each after each?

An interesting parallel is the ancient Romans, who invented all kinds of backstories to explain this or that tribe. They'd take the people's name and render it into some legendary ancestor. It's the same, whether it's origin myths that are never written before a people grows self-conscious and thus are always biased, or just-so stories, or these latest, vulgar attempts at same.; 5:04 PM
Cüneyt said...: I'm sorry. I meant 1977's The Star Wars, or rather Star Wars, Episode IV: A New Hope: Special Edition: Die Harder: The Motion Picture.; 5:06 PM
Cüneyt said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 5:06 PM
Thomas Daulton said...: Sweeeet, sweeeet takedown of Revenge of the Sith. But you forgot to include the part where Obi-Wan Kenobi, seeking to hide the infant Luke from his father, decides to hide Luke on his father's home planet, among his father's relatives, using his father's last name. Now there's some destiny for you!

However, I think Cünyet was requesting somebody to take down the earlier 1970-80's Star Wars trilogy... you know, the one that was almost completely ripped off from Kurosawa's Hidden Fortress, except replacing the philosophy and character development with sci-fi gewgaws stolen from cheesy cinema serials that were originally produced for about 1/50,000th the budget. As I mentioned, the big-budget blockbusters of today keep hearkening back to the embarrassing flops of yesteryear. Maybe Star Wars is the demarcation point I should have chosen instead of the change of century mark.; 5:12 PM
Anonymous said...: is it our "destiny" (quoting Lord Vader) to recycle shit that was shitty the first time it was shat into even shittier shit?; 5:23 PM
Thomas Daulton said...: Ahhh, I see Cüneyt and I are talking past each other. I tried to follow your link but for some reason it didn't work for me. But now that you explain it, I do remember that previous IOZ post you cite.

I dunno, it seems we're not disagreeing, but I think we can draw a distinction between ham-handed origin stories, and ham-handed foreshadowing. The flow of time goes in opposite directions. When a hack author uses foreshadowing, there is still the possibility that events might turn out in some unexpected way... nobody except the Left Behind readership enjoys a story where everything is spelled out down to the last turn of the screw and facial tick. When most authors use foreshadowing, there is at least the possibility that events will fulfill the prophesy in a different way than the audience imagines. Half the time with such stories, the whole intent of the author is to herd the audience towards one prediction, and then with a "twist ending" show them that a different event still fulfills the same prophesy in a different way.

On the other hand, "Origin" stories, like IOZ's hypothetical Sex in the City movie, or the latest Trek, start with a foregone conclusion that everybody already knows, and attempt to justify it ex post facto. It's more like validation, like patting the audience on the head and saying "You're so smart because you knew this in advance, but the characters don't".

They might both be crap reductionist pop myth, and have other similarities, but I still think we can draw a distinction and comment on their relative merits... if that's what we feel like doing while sitting at our desks, instead of working. BLAWG!!!1!!; 5:25 PM
Cüneyt said...: Ugh. I must have fucked up. It is this one, to confirm, though you probably get it.

http://whoisioz.blogspot.com/2009/05/om-mani-padme-hum.html; 5:29 PM
Agi said...: The Darth Vader scream at the very end of Sith made the film worth it.; 5:43 PM
Anonymous said...: What would please me most is if the movie began with the Sex and the City ladies getting into a limousine which then promptly explodes.

Then would follow some other movie with other characters.; 6:07 PM
Thomas Daulton said...: Thanks, Cüneyt. Yeah, your thing about the Romans inventing back stories for tribes is quite true and a good counterexample to my assertion that this is recent. On the other hand it plays into my comment that the Romans also talked a lot about predestiny: when you're living in the world's foremost Empire, and everyone is paying you monetary tribute... but you have this nagging suspicion that the whole thing is about to fall into barbarism... it's comforting to tell yourself that predestiny exists. You're at the pinnacle because you are meant to be, a divine hand has guided you here, and some kind of deus ex machina is going to rescue your cushy throne if something happens to go wrong. Ancient Romans and modern Americans might be trending towards simplistic predestination stories for the same reasons.

{Sociological wanking!! BLAWG!!!1!!}

Anyone else sick to death of that "You're THE ONE" trope in escapist fiction? From Neo in "The Matrix", to Will Stanton in the execrable "Dark is Rising" movie (great books though), John Connor in "The Terminator", Wesley Crusher's fate in "Star Trek TNG", through "Highlander - There Can Only Be One", and on and on... half the good guys in the "Star Wars" saga are royalty in one form or another; Han Solo is a lost Corellian prince if you read the novels... it seems like the princes far outnumber the frogs these days. Everybody's royalty. I think that contributes to what IOZ (and I) are complaining about. A notable modern trend (even if it might have happened in stories from past ages.) Making your protagonist into an elite oligarch is a fast, cheap way to impose a linear narrative structure on your character, instead of -- as Cüneyt's link points out -- dealing with human life as a jumble of random events without any inherent purpose or justice.

But enough of that -- the last two Anonymous comments really hit the nail on the head! With a lot less verbiage than me. Signing off.; 6:29 PM
Rowan said...: Thomas, yes, popular science fiction and fantasy is often built around this religious/aristocratic nonsense. SF author David Brin has taken it on, but his story adaptation was The Postman, which isn't competing with Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, or the Matrix for box office cash anytime soon.; 7:05 PM
The Promiscuous Reader said...: Speaking of backstore, there was this guy who went around preaching and healing the sick and raising the dead (also making the little boys go out of their head), and he told them that God was coming soon (oh god! I'm coming!), and it was all happening in Jerusalem.

So he and his best followers went to Jerusalem, and the city leaders turned him over to the Romans, who crucified him. But one of his followers had a vision of him raised from death, and God was still coming soon. So his followers discovered that not only was this guy born to a virgin, he'd been recognized at his birth by foreign potentates as the King of the Jews, and angels sang -- but his whole career, every detail, had been foretold in Scripture! Can you believe it!? So it was all foretold and predestined that all this would happen, ever since before God created the world!!! (And he's still coming! Oh God!)

But, of course, it is also foredestined that the world is going downhill in a handbasket, and all the trends we see in pop cult are signs that it's getting worse, worse, worse, and the end of all things is near. Or something. And God (thank god) isn't coming.; 7:34 PM
The Promiscuous Reader said...: That's backstory. And tomorrow, kiddies, we'll do the story of Abraham, or maybe the creation of the world, both of which foreshadowed and predestined the modern nation of Israel.; 7:42 PM
Peanut said...: And FWIW, Kim Catrall's backstory was laid out in Porky's, not Mannequin.; 7:26 AM
IOZ said...: Peanut Win.; 9:24 AM
Keifus said...: Montag: and it was still far better than Attack of the Clones...; 10:02 AM
Anonymous said...: "Sex and the City" the movie is kind of a "Golden Girls: Origins".; 6:47 PM
g-nome said...: Ooh, ooh, ooh! Do Harry Potter next!; 2:27 PM
Cüneyt said...: And I want to say that I really dig what you're saying, Thomas. This is a heck of a conversation.

The difficulty with your point about comparing us to the Romans is that, no, the Romans didn't write these stories as they stared down the end of their preeminence. They always wrote origin stories, or retold them as they had heard them, and used them to explain why the Germans were so hairy or the Gauls so angry or this or that. They were always fatalistic; most people were and have always been. Rise, height, fall, they were fatalists. Like the Etruscans before them, like the Catholics after them. Let me reiterate; man believes in fate. Now whether he does this to avoid responsibility or make himself special in all the universe is a riddle, but it seems one of those. In any event, stories told from the ending, like arguments made for the sake of their conclusion (rather than the other way, which I prefer) have been around forever.

That said, I see little difference between what you discuss about foregone conclusions in origin stories and various stronger sorts of foreshadowing or, heck, tales where the dead speak about what's already happened to them. Flashbacks, though I loathe them most of the time, are old hat. Hell, what is the Aeneid but an origin story? We know he's going to found Rome, but we go through all the whys and wherefores and look, there's Dido. "Oh," go the audience members. "So that's why we hated Carthage. It was fate," rather than economic rivalry. Don't think we've invented new bullshit in the last few years.

But you know, wait. Somewhere we have turned a corner, because...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkGQAYiBv54

Goddamn it. I give up. You're all right. We have gone too far.; 12:24 PM

Thursday, June 04, 2009

Origins

26 comments:

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