Here’s an interesting little passage I stumbled on recently. See if it chimes for you the way it did for me:
“The formula is one of “near-tragedy”. Four acts of tragic violence and guilt are followed by a fifth act of redemption and innocence regained. “Near-tragedy” is precisely the compromise of an age which [does] not believe in the finality of evil. It represents the desire…….to enjoy the privileges of grandeur and intense feeling associated with tragic drama without paying the full price. This price is the recognition of the fact that there are in the world mysteries of injustice, disasters in excess of guilt, and realities which do constant violence to our moral expectations. The mechanism……allows [the hero] to partake of the excitement of evil without bearing the real cost.”
Has this guy nailed the current malaise in Hollywood mainstream, or what??!!
Well…….
Not as such, no.
In fact, this is a quote from George Steiner’s The Death of Tragedy, which I’m re-reading for the first time in about twenty five years. The book was published in 1961, based on lectures given even earlier, and takes as its subject matter (as you’d probably guess from the title) what has happened to tragic vision in art and literature since the time of Shakespeare. The excerpt in question deals with the abject failure of the Romantics to carry on the Elizabethan/Jacobean torch in their own attempts at tragedy. I’ve taken a couple of liberties with the original here to disguise it – [does] was in fact “did”, the elision in the fourth sentence hides the full phrasing “….the desire of the romantics to enjoy…..”, and in the final sentence “The mechanism of timely remorse or redemption through love – the arch-Wagnerian theme – allows the romantic hero to partake….” It’s not contemporary Hollywood that’s under attack here – Steiner’s talking here mainly about a period from the late eighteenth century and into the nineteenth.
But the cap does fit rather well, doesn’t it.
Anyway, it’s always nice to be reminded that the cultural tectonics you find yourself getting so hot under the collar about are not , in fact, some new and alarming Decay in the State of Things, but more often than not the simple re-iteration of age-old patterns in human behaviour.
What’s of most interest to me, though, re-reading this section of Steiner’s book, is the close parallel in didactics between the Romantics as he describes them and what seems to have happened to Hollywood movie making in the period since the rise of Reagan and, even more intensely, in the last ten years.
According to Steiner, the Romantics insisted on exemplary lessons in their story-telling – the Essential Goodness of Humankind, the Perfectibility of Man, the Redemptive Power of Remorse and Love – despite the corrosively detrimental effect it had on the drama itself, and this was why they failed dismally to produce any decent tragedy to compare with Shakespeare.
Now map that onto mainstream Hollywood’s similarly crass penchant for crowbarring into everything the endlessly recurring themes of:
- the Noble Heroic Male (and latterly Perfect Family Man) who Triumphs over Evil, and goes home to wife and kids/gets the girl, apparently completely unscarred and untroubled by his trials,
- the jeered at/put upon/low-born young No-Hoper (but with a Hidden Talent or Destiny), who Follows His Dreams and Shows Them All,
- Stranded Fatherless (or Father-distant) Masculinity, redeemed at last through hideously unlikely father/son rapprochements,
- and of course, latterly, to a sinister and alarming degree, the implication in the narrative of Gaaahd.
All with, I should add, similarly catastrophic results when it comes to decent story-telling.
In defence of the Romantics, I suppose you can at least say that their aspirations were thoroughly modern and forward-looking for the times, nominally encompassed the whole of humanity, and seemed at the time to have a justified basis in the emerging rationalism of the period. By contrast, the didacticism of contemporary Hollywood strikes me as increasingly paternalistic, parochial and backward-looking.
And that’s a bit of a shame, for the most advanced movie-making machinery on the planet.
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So true, hopefully if it is some sort of cycle, it can pick up its pace and move along. While I can say there have been quite a few movies I’ve enjoyed over the last several years, I haven’t considered any of them ‘great’ by any means. Oh God, I hope they don’t F’ up the Dark Tower, they likely will…
I wonder whether the structure of story-telling that Steiner describes became commonplace because it allows the characters to return to the status-quo, which was what was required for the growing number of serials that were written in the mid to late 19th Century (e.g. Sherlock Holmes).
Star Trek (TOS and TNG)are a perfect examples of people going through all sorts of hellish experiences that by all rights should drive them barking mad, but instead they return to normal for the next episode. Then again, they are heroes, I guess, and it wouldn’t have been so much fun to watch the crew on the Enterprise slowly descend into insanity…but OTOH.. .
Ravs
Your post raised a wry smile here, Richard – and tho’ I 100% concur, doesn’t Hollywood ‘revise’ everything because latter-day attitudes proscribe an ever-increasing number of issues as off-limits, regardless of conjectural settings? As you once said (referring to ‘LoTR’ in an American interview) ‘The quintessential understanding of human nature is to understand that all these things are in all of us. That we’re all capable of committing great evil, it’s just a question of circumstance and how much you let yourself go. […].’
Hollywood’s fears ensure they MUST denature or sanitise; with their eyes fixed on maximum box-office the ‘paternalistic, parochial and backward-looking’ attitude prescribes what we may / may not be permitted to see. Those with the largest investments in contemporary movies are determined to make it all ‘safe’; the tragic hero’s been carefully lost. He has to be a ‘nice guy’. We can’t possibly be allowed to make up our own minds, nor be expected to be grown-up enough to cope with those ‘realities which do constant violence to our moral expectations’ …
Look at the mess made of ‘Dune’ – to quote Aldiss (1986): ‘A sensitive study of power and responsibility, the ambiguity of Paul Atreides’s motives and morality, was reduced (in the film of the book) to the usual power fantasy of goodies & baddies’ – plus ca change, Etc.
BTW, I’m delighted to find your work’s attained ‘respectability’: ‘Beyond Cyberpunk’, eds. Murphy & Vint, Routledge (2010).
I’m afraid, Mr Morgan, you’re to be cited in an academic thesis …
😉
I’m not sure I understand all this effort to prove that Hollywood is “increasingly paternalistic, parochial and backward-looking”. Can you really expect anything else from today american cultural and artistic mainstream? Exceptions are extremely rare, hardly acknowledged and poorly paid…
Moreover, I find it hard to follow Steiner’s reasoning without thinking first of all about all the damages modernity has done to humankind…
Just for fun, (and to put off doing some proper work) I had a look at IMDB’s list of the top 250 SF films and selected, starting with the most popular and going down, the top 10 films between 2000 and 2010. Here’s the list:
1. Inception (2010)
7. WALL-E (2008)
10. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
16. Avatar (2009)
17. District 9 (2009)
18. Donnie Darko (2001)
23. Star Trek (2009)
25. V for Vendetta (2006)
30. Children of Men (2006)
39. The Man from Earth (2007)
Putting them through ‘the Steiner Test’ got me this (YMMV):
3 I’ve not seen: Inception, Eternal Sunshine OTSM or the Man from Earth.
2 In line with Steiner’s view: Avatar, Star Trek.
5 not in line with Steiner’s view: WALL-E (no real evil as such), District 9 (the situation endures in District 10), Donnie Darko (modern Jacobean if ever there was), V for Vendetta (Anti-Hero/Hero dies) and Children of Men (Hero Dies).
So in terms most highly rated SF films by IMDB in the last 10 years the results are encouraging!
As I’m really shirking work now, I had a look at IMDB’s list of the top 10 grossing films in the USA in the last 10 years:
1. Avatar (2009)
3. The Dark Knight (2008)
5. Shrek 2 (2004)
8. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (2006)
9. Toy Story 3 (2010)
10. Spider-Man (2002)
11. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)
12. Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith (2005)
13. Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (2003)
14. Spider-Man 2 (2004)
6 In line with Steiner’s view: Avatar, Dark Knight, Shrek 2, POTC?, Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2.
2 Not in Line: Toy Story 3? (no real evil in it to start with), Star Wars III (Vader dons the black outfit, Padme dies),
1 Uncertain: LOTR (Frodo must leave Middle Earth as the evil of the Ring taints him but everyone else seems unaffected and Sauron’s evil is destroyed forever – yay!)
1 not seen: Transformers.
Ex: Steven Seagall movies: •the Noble Heroic Male (and latterly Perfect Family Man) who Triumphs over Evil, and goes home to wife and kids/gets the girl, apparently completely unscarred and untroubled by his trials,
Ex: Jean Claude VanDamme movies: •the jeered at/put upon/low-born young No-Hoper (but with a Hidden Talent or Destiny), who Follows His Dreams and Shows Them All,
Need examples for the last two points Richard mentions.
@Ravs: How about other genre films besides sf (although sf films usually take the top grossing spots)? I’m thinking of something like Braveheart. I’m enjoying your comments, especially the ST returning to the status quo! I’d think Shatner would love to see the crew descend into insanity!
I’m wondering if the fact that Americans – though not #1 in most things anymore – are #1 in “Confidence” (in some poll or other) has something to do with all the feel good, hero wins, movies and literature that the masses demand. Although the movies are very unrealistic, perhaps they inspire confidence in young people (?).
@Linda P
Hope I’m not misinterpreting you, here! I wonder if the increasing tendency for mainstream Hollywood films to attempt to inspire confidence in the way you suggest is a product of the relative decline that America is under-going.
I’m trying not to read too much into things, but there was a point in the early 1990s when the United States, having “won” the Cold War, probably was in a position where it was powerful enough to do pretty much as it pleased. Of course, this didn’t last and, not for one second to suggest that the US is suddenly going to become a backwater, but we now see a situation where they find that, actually, they aren’t able to act unilaterally. not without consequences anyway. I suppose, looking for recent historical parallels, it’s like this country belatedly realising during the Suez crisis that Britannia most certainly did not rule the waves.
It’s interesting though as it seems (though this could be cognitive bias on my part) that at times (1940/50s, certainly) that when arguably when the US was clearly on the ascendant there were more bleak and morally ambivalent films made in Hollywood. Not so sure about the 1970s – there was a rich strand of paranoid mainstream films made, but one could argue that they were just reflecting some of the crises that decade saw better than the mawkish sentimentality of current Hollywood fare.
It could equally be the case that there were loads of drivelly moralising films made in the 1940s and 1950s, but we don’t get to see them because, as Richard suggests, there are serious consequences for storytelling; whereas the (at the time less popular?) noirish films (say) that were made appear to stand up well because of the tastes of the kind of people that are interested in watching old movies?
I think what I’m driving at is that the making of (and popularity of?) these types of films shows a worrying lack of introspection, if it is an accurate reflection of the mood in America (and I realise that the US is not homogenous, etc).
All that nonsense aside, I second @Linda’s championing of @Ravs’ comment. Anybody here handy with a video camera? We should make a fan-fic version. It would be great.
@Richard Palmer: All this “confidence” in the last generation or two in America is really just narcissism, imo. At least in my neighborhood everything and everybody has to be “positive”, including movies (anyone can be the hero), tv (Ravs reset each episode), church (you will be blessed by gaining wealth), sports (a gold ribbon for every kid), etc. The kids who don’t fit into the “everybody’s a winner” category end up playing video games 24/7. The culture has demanded it. It will be interesting to see if this generation’s tastes change due to economics. We’ve no idea the long-term effect yet.
Natural Selection is not limited to biology, its relevant in business too, I guess. The ‘best’ business models stick around. Survival of the fittest. And the current trend for a ‘type’ of narrative/ story/ character portfolio within a movie seems to be the most likely to make money. The trigger for the next trend will probably be old fashioned boredom on the part of the movie-going public. I suspect the tipping point might be close at hand. My missus and I love gong to the cinema but, this last couple of years, we have been going less and less. Inception was the last movie we went to see. Seems like months ago now…
Mark C
Hollywood could easily set all to right simply by producing Market Forces 🙂
(Though I cringe at the thought of what they could do to it by way of making it palatable to the masses and acceptable for inclusion in a HappyMeal(TM)).
Nicely themed – but not entirely fair on Hollywood.
the Noble Heroic Male (and latterly Perfect Family Man) who Triumphs over Evil, and goes home to wife and kids/gets the girl, apparently completely unscarred and untroubled by his trials – try Shakespeare’s Henry V, Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe. Even Twain’s Huck Finn.
the jeered at/put upon/low-born young No-Hoper (but with a Hidden Talent or Destiny), who Follows His Dreams and Shows Them All. Try Jason of Golden Fleece fame, or Perseus, or Tom Brown and his schooldays, or Oliver Twist. Even Twain’s Huck Finn.
Stranded Fatherless (or Father-distant) Masculinity, redeemed at last through hideously unlikely father/son rapprochements. Try Hercules and dad Zeus. Or Oedipus (though I grant you that’s more of a mother thing).
and of course, latterly, to a sinister and alarming degree, the implication in the narrative of Gaaahd.
Any amount of Norse saga. Any amount of Greek tragedy. Any amount of Elizabethan drama
Could it be that Hollywood is merely filling the same spot entertainment has been occupying since the first time some budding No Hoper with a Talent, following Own Dream, drew a cave painting?
Hi Rob,
It’s not that you can’t find these elements in earlier forms of drama, or indeed in any good drama sometimes, it’s that their repeated, insisted upon and clumsily didactic presence inevitably begins to warp the fabric of good fiction, the same way the Romantics’ insistence on educative lessons in hope for humanity – apparently – did for tragedy.
The point, I think, with Henry V et al is that those aren’t tragic heroes. (Also, as I understand, Henry V is a bit of a gung-ho aberration in Shakespeare’s oeuvre, even within the bounds of his history plays).
As for Gaahd, or gods, it’s not that they don’t feature, it’s what they bring to the landscape. The Greek or Norse gods could give a fuck about humans – they were playing out a series of agendas of their own, were crafty and untrustworthy, were in fact much like the humans they tormented and pushed around the chess-board of the world. And this is an understanding that makes it pretty much unmodified into Elizabethan tragedy – for all Shakey and crew were nominally christian, they informed their fiction with all the cruelty of the ancient world and their imagery with references more to the shifty gods of that world than to any christian benevolent Almighty.
Hollywood, by contrast, these days tends to just throw in the mention of Gaahd as a callow reassurance that He’s up there in his heaven and all is – ultimately – right with the world – see I Am Legend for a particularly nauseous example of this, but it pops up across the board in movies like for example – I kid you not – Schwarzenegger’s Sixth Day and the recent Paranormal Activity. Gaahd is not a player on the stage of contemporary Hollywood fiction, he’s a namecheck, a word from our sponsor, a quick nod to an assumed demographic that, no, hey, the white-picket-fence, church-on-Sundays, perfect-family American Dream is still intact.
The focus of Hollywood isn’t really story telling, it’s creating a product to sell. They’ll never really go for any sort of ending that’s going to piss people off/upset them because they only want people to feel good after so they’ll want to come back.
Just look at the most recent remake of “I Am Legend” and compare it to the book for a perfect example of one of their endings focused on selling their product, next to an ending that was story focused.
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