The characters in Beowulf, and in Henry James, and in Joel Schumacher's latest slam-bang movie extravaganza, all participate, with more or less elaborate variations, in archetype.
I guess an era when someone can unironically say that MIT will "try to keep meaning alive," and will "take the next quantum leap in storytelling" needs reminders, no matter how understated, of archetype.
Thanks, MIT! Storytelling has been suffering from a dearth of meaning, and we're glad you're here to Hollywood to show the rest of us rubes how it's done. If only Chaucer had access to the latest film-making technologies, we might still read his work today! Zemeckis certainly improved the story that boring ol' Beowulf by turning it into a video game. And Peter Guber is certainly right when "he blames the audience for the perceived breakdown in narrative quality," because there's nothing an audience hates quite so much as a good story.
It's basically impossible to write about this without getting snarky.
You had me confused there.
ReplyDeleteThe Telegraph article by Sam Keith, I found, essentially agrees with you (I think) that the problem of declining Hollywood audiences is not due to the waning power of story.
It is the NY Times article, which Keith is reporting on, that presents the MIT Medialab initiative on its own terms. You quoted both articles back to back without distinguishing between them.
Meanwhile, even the Times story presents the Sundance guy to balance the panicky shrieks coming out of LA and MIT. Rebutting the tinseltown execs like Guber, Brecher says storytelling is in no danger at all - it's just Hollywood that's in danger.
Snarkily or not, do you think that the atomizing nature of handheld technology and screen-based media is preventing a new generation from learning how to slow down and read from books - and even to watch an uninterrupted feature film that focuses thoughtfully on story rather than on viscerally thrilling special effects? Because I do. So story archetypes may be eternal, but the media for representing them may be changing.
Hollywood, for what it's worth, depends not just on an audience, but a mass audience. I read the Times article about the MIT initiative as saying not that Story is a problem, but that the mass audience for a meaning-rich (i.e., complex) story presented on a big screen for 150 continuous minutes is declining. For smart Hollywood execs like Guber who believe that story-telling is a worthwhile aspect of filmmaking, that is a problem.
Squire,
ReplyDeleteYou asked "do you think that the atomizing nature of handheld technology and screen-based media is preventing a new generation from learning how to slow down and read from books - and even to watch an uninterrupted feature film that focuses thoughtfully on story rather than on viscerally thrilling special effects?"
Buried in that question is the very same bait-and-switch of the project -- the confusion of "movie" with "book" or "storytelling."
Film is itself a new medium, only a brief flash in the pan of storytelling. You can still sit down today and read a book and enjoy it, regardless of whether you use e-mail.
The problem isn't with story, nor the book as a medium, nor film as a medium, nor even the 10-minute YouTube viral video as a medium -- the problem is that too many movies suck. If you disagree with me, I would ask you to watch the Zemeckis Beowulf film, which uses all these wonderful new technologies, and even my 18-21 year-old-students who found the poem boring still found the poem superior.
If they REALLY want to have better stories in these technologies, the path to that end is for filmmakers to read. Instead, they're reversing Eliot's "Tradition and the Individual Talent" here -- arguing that they're so darn talented, it must be the tradition or the audience that's failing.
One quick question -- you didn't find the tone of the NYT piece snarky?