What Is The Story?
Jan. 27th, 2004 05:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
coalescentFrom the Sunday Times' review of The Time Traveller's Wife:
I first came across this type of citicism (or at least I first noticed it) back when the early episodes of Angel's third season was airing. Angel started life as, basically, a vampire detective series. There would be a client of the week, and via a succession of wacky adentures, Angel would solve their problem. This didn't last. Mutant Enemy, in their infinite wisdom, decided that the format wasn't working; they decided that instead of telling stories about new people every week, they wanted to concentrate on the main chracters. As a result, the second season saw an arc in which Angel questioned his reasons for helping people. A lot of people liked this a great deal, because it was dealing with the principles on which the original format was based. The trouble is, when the arc ended with a re-affirmation of Angel's purpose, the format didn't shift back; it stayed in main-character-focused mode.
That's when you hit season three, in which even the standalone episodes were about the main characters and their choices. So, rather than an episode in which Angel helped a telekinetic girl come to terms with her issues ('Untouched', early S2), you got an episode in which Angel had to decide how far he'd go to save Cordelia ('That Vision Thing', early S3). Early season three took a lot of flak - people didn't like Angel's decisions, and they definitely didn't like the idea of a hinted-at romance between Angel and Cordelia - but one of the most vehement charge was the same one levelled against The Time Traveller's Wife: That the characters had become monstrously self-absorbed. Angel Investigations no longer helped the helpless, they only helped each other.
I just didn't see it. And for a long time, when I tried to defend the show and the characters I twisted myself into all sorts of knots, because I didn't really understand where the criticism was coming from. Angel Investigations was still up and running; therefore, there must be clients. But ah! came the response, we haven't seen them, have we? They're all offscreen. And if they're offscreen, you can't prove that they exist.
And so on.
After a while, I worked it out. People were judging Angel according to the rules it had originally operated by, not according to the new ground rules it had established during season two. The thing that made the format shift so effortless - the fact that the first arc put the rules of the show up for debate - obscured the fact that the rules were being changed.
(I think a similar thing may happen with His Dark Materials. A lot of people I know rate The Amber Spyglass as the worst of the trilogy, and I think one of the reasons for this is simply that it's a very different type of book to Northern Lights. The things that hook a reader in the first book aren't there in the third ook, because it's trying to achieve different things. There are flaws in The Amber Spyglass, certainly, but 'not being Northern Lights' isn't one of them.)
Clearly, when this sort of confusion arises, at some level there has been a failure of storytelling. The writer or writers have failed to carry their audience along with them, and they should be criticised for that failure. What frustrates me, however - and this is where we came in - is that I feel that this type of failure often gets mistaken for another type of failure. Angel's characters were criticised, in effect, for being in the wrong type of show.
Stories, I think, should be analysed on their own terms. If season three Angel had been the original premise of the show, nobody would have had a problem with it - everyone would, I think, just have accepted that the day-to-day work of AI was going on in the background. They may not have liked that fact, but I don't think they'd have denied that it was the case.
And to return to The Time Traveller's Wife, I think there are two specific reasons why the criticism of self-absorption is unjustified. The practical reason is that by that point in the novel it is fairly well-established either that they live i a determined universe, or that they fully believe that they live in a determined universe. They cannot change the future. But there's another reason, to my mind a more important one, which is the thematic reason: The whole point of the novel is to make literal the clichés of love. Henry and Clare are and always have been destined for each other. It's fate. They're meant to be together, literally because they are together.
Certainly, if Niffenegger has not made this point clear to the reader the she has failed and should be criticised - just as the writers of Angel should be criticised for not making it clear that, as far as they were concerned, when it came to direct stories about helping the helpless they had both been there and done that. However, that's not what the Sunday Times review says. It does not say 'Niffenegger has failed in this way, therefore her characters appear self-absorbed,' it says, 'Niffenegger's characters appear self-absorbed, therefore this novel has failed.' That, to me, is putting the cart before the horse; the self-absorption of the characters is a symptom of failure, not the cause of it.
There's a quote I came across somewhere to the effect that criticising Isaac Asimov because his stories lack characterisation is like criticising Jane Austen because her stories lack robots. It's a flippant quote, but it gets the point across: Stories should be considered on their terms, not on your terms. It's very easy to say 'that's not the interesting story in that premise,' and certainly everyone should have their own personal preferences. For the most part, for instance, I'm not a fan of high fantasy. But as with everything, there is good and bad high fantasy, on its own terms; to criticise Tolkien for his lack of space elevators (or more realistically, for short-circuiting Middle-Earth's industrial revolution) would be entertaining, but unproductive. And in the same way, I think that criticising Audrey Niffenegger because she wasn't wriing the novel in which the time-traveller changes society is equally unproductive. Any premise has a hundred different stories within it.
I can't decided whether all this is overly pedantic moaning, or blindingly obvious. More than likely, it's both.
It also occurred to me as I was writing this that I've arrived independently at a version of Mike's Law - the idea that novels like The Master And Margarita should not be judged as speculative fiction because they weren't written as speculative fiction.I say a version of the law because I still don't believe it entirely; it seems to me that the aims of such a book are separate from the methods it uses to achieve those aims, and that analysis along those lines is still an interesting exercise.
The final upshot of all this rumination, though, is that I'm that much closer to having some sort of coherent understanding of (1) what I mean by 'SF' and (2) what I want to achieve when I review something. And I think those have to be good things.
Although the time-travelling device allows the author to examine her central love affair from a fresh perspective, she seems not to have thought through mny of its other implications. […] On the morning of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Henry, knowing what is about to happen, alerts Clare so they can watch it live on television. He even rises early that morning "to listen to the world being normal for a little while longer." At no point does either entertain the notion of a call to the FBI. Does Niffenegger really intend her characters to be this monstrously self-absorbed?I think The Time Traveller's Wife can be fairly criticised in a number of ways, but I don't think this is one of them. It's not fair because it seems to me to be a review of the story the critic is expecting, not a review of the story the book actually tells.
I first came across this type of citicism (or at least I first noticed it) back when the early episodes of Angel's third season was airing. Angel started life as, basically, a vampire detective series. There would be a client of the week, and via a succession of wacky adentures, Angel would solve their problem. This didn't last. Mutant Enemy, in their infinite wisdom, decided that the format wasn't working; they decided that instead of telling stories about new people every week, they wanted to concentrate on the main chracters. As a result, the second season saw an arc in which Angel questioned his reasons for helping people. A lot of people liked this a great deal, because it was dealing with the principles on which the original format was based. The trouble is, when the arc ended with a re-affirmation of Angel's purpose, the format didn't shift back; it stayed in main-character-focused mode.
That's when you hit season three, in which even the standalone episodes were about the main characters and their choices. So, rather than an episode in which Angel helped a telekinetic girl come to terms with her issues ('Untouched', early S2), you got an episode in which Angel had to decide how far he'd go to save Cordelia ('That Vision Thing', early S3). Early season three took a lot of flak - people didn't like Angel's decisions, and they definitely didn't like the idea of a hinted-at romance between Angel and Cordelia - but one of the most vehement charge was the same one levelled against The Time Traveller's Wife: That the characters had become monstrously self-absorbed. Angel Investigations no longer helped the helpless, they only helped each other.
I just didn't see it. And for a long time, when I tried to defend the show and the characters I twisted myself into all sorts of knots, because I didn't really understand where the criticism was coming from. Angel Investigations was still up and running; therefore, there must be clients. But ah! came the response, we haven't seen them, have we? They're all offscreen. And if they're offscreen, you can't prove that they exist.
And so on.
After a while, I worked it out. People were judging Angel according to the rules it had originally operated by, not according to the new ground rules it had established during season two. The thing that made the format shift so effortless - the fact that the first arc put the rules of the show up for debate - obscured the fact that the rules were being changed.
(I think a similar thing may happen with His Dark Materials. A lot of people I know rate The Amber Spyglass as the worst of the trilogy, and I think one of the reasons for this is simply that it's a very different type of book to Northern Lights. The things that hook a reader in the first book aren't there in the third ook, because it's trying to achieve different things. There are flaws in The Amber Spyglass, certainly, but 'not being Northern Lights' isn't one of them.)
Clearly, when this sort of confusion arises, at some level there has been a failure of storytelling. The writer or writers have failed to carry their audience along with them, and they should be criticised for that failure. What frustrates me, however - and this is where we came in - is that I feel that this type of failure often gets mistaken for another type of failure. Angel's characters were criticised, in effect, for being in the wrong type of show.
Stories, I think, should be analysed on their own terms. If season three Angel had been the original premise of the show, nobody would have had a problem with it - everyone would, I think, just have accepted that the day-to-day work of AI was going on in the background. They may not have liked that fact, but I don't think they'd have denied that it was the case.
And to return to The Time Traveller's Wife, I think there are two specific reasons why the criticism of self-absorption is unjustified. The practical reason is that by that point in the novel it is fairly well-established either that they live i a determined universe, or that they fully believe that they live in a determined universe. They cannot change the future. But there's another reason, to my mind a more important one, which is the thematic reason: The whole point of the novel is to make literal the clichés of love. Henry and Clare are and always have been destined for each other. It's fate. They're meant to be together, literally because they are together.
Certainly, if Niffenegger has not made this point clear to the reader the she has failed and should be criticised - just as the writers of Angel should be criticised for not making it clear that, as far as they were concerned, when it came to direct stories about helping the helpless they had both been there and done that. However, that's not what the Sunday Times review says. It does not say 'Niffenegger has failed in this way, therefore her characters appear self-absorbed,' it says, 'Niffenegger's characters appear self-absorbed, therefore this novel has failed.' That, to me, is putting the cart before the horse; the self-absorption of the characters is a symptom of failure, not the cause of it.
There's a quote I came across somewhere to the effect that criticising Isaac Asimov because his stories lack characterisation is like criticising Jane Austen because her stories lack robots. It's a flippant quote, but it gets the point across: Stories should be considered on their terms, not on your terms. It's very easy to say 'that's not the interesting story in that premise,' and certainly everyone should have their own personal preferences. For the most part, for instance, I'm not a fan of high fantasy. But as with everything, there is good and bad high fantasy, on its own terms; to criticise Tolkien for his lack of space elevators (or more realistically, for short-circuiting Middle-Earth's industrial revolution) would be entertaining, but unproductive. And in the same way, I think that criticising Audrey Niffenegger because she wasn't wriing the novel in which the time-traveller changes society is equally unproductive. Any premise has a hundred different stories within it.
I can't decided whether all this is overly pedantic moaning, or blindingly obvious. More than likely, it's both.
It also occurred to me as I was writing this that I've arrived independently at a version of Mike's Law - the idea that novels like The Master And Margarita should not be judged as speculative fiction because they weren't written as speculative fiction.I say a version of the law because I still don't believe it entirely; it seems to me that the aims of such a book are separate from the methods it uses to achieve those aims, and that analysis along those lines is still an interesting exercise.
The final upshot of all this rumination, though, is that I'm that much closer to having some sort of coherent understanding of (1) what I mean by 'SF' and (2) what I want to achieve when I review something. And I think those have to be good things.
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hehehehe
Same could be said of the US and its foreign policy of late, ahem. ;-)
Re: hehehehe
Date: 2004-01-27 09:56 am (UTC)(I need to think about it more, but I'm not entirely certain it's a valid comparison. Possibly more tomorrow.)
Re: hehehehe
Date: 2004-01-27 10:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-01-27 10:20 am (UTC)I seem to recall Armisetad Maupin suggesting that people criticising his novels for having too many gay characters in them were making as meaningful an observation as saying that Dickens' novels have too many poor people in them.
no subject
Date: 2004-01-28 02:43 am (UTC)Angel..
Date: 2004-01-27 11:04 am (UTC)I doubt many people thought Angel saving Cordelia in That Vision Thing was wrong, as an action by the character or as something for the show to be devoting an episode to - that he did it with little or no apparent regard for the consequences of releasing Billy was. Similarly with trying to rescue Connor from Qu'ortoth. I think the charge of self-absorption is entirely justified, the important question is whether you think Angel could or should have acted differently. Myself, I think they got the balance wrong - we should at least have seen Angel considering the question of whether he was going too far.
That the episodes where they actually did do some investigating mostly sucked didn't help either, of course.. :)
Re: Angel..
Date: 2004-01-27 11:37 am (UTC)Re: Angel..
Date: 2004-01-28 02:58 am (UTC)But from the point of view of my thinking here, I find that the interesting thing about S5 is that again we have a shift in the rules, but this time it's much more obvious - in fact, it's explicit. And sure enough, this time around, rather than saying 'the characters are idiots' people are saying 'the writers haven't explained x, y and z therefore the characters look like idiots'.
Re: Angel..
Date: 2004-01-28 05:57 am (UTC)Standalone episodes, yes, but they mainly concerned the major characters...
S3 Heartthrob: Angel dealing with Buffy
TVT: Angel & Cordelia
TOGOM: Gunn's past associates
CN: Angel's wish to be human
Fredless: Fred's family background & integration into the group
Billy: consequences of TVT
S4 Deep Down: arc
Ground State: 60/40 one-off, hunt for Cordelia
THAW: Rescuing Lorne, more on Cordelia
STB: arc
Supersymmetry: Fred's past
StB: I missed this one
This time around we've had 3 episodes in a row with a focus external to the regulars.
I find that the interesting thing about S5 is that again we have a shift in the rules, but this time it's much more obvious - in fact, it's explicit.
This is indeed potentially interesting, but so far what they've done with it has been, as they say, pants.
Re: Angel..
Date: 2004-01-28 02:35 am (UTC)But that's my point - if Angel had been set up as that type of show all along, the audience would have accepted it. By definition, really, because the people who were watching it would be the people who liked it. As it actually happened, the people who were watching S3 were the people who liked S1. They started writing for a different audience without converting the old audience.
(And of course, as it turned out, it was a plot point. We were supposed to disapprove, and sure enough, Angel's short-sightedness lead to the loss of Connor and his being locked in a box at the bottom of the sea.)
Re: Angel..
Date: 2004-01-28 03:14 am (UTC)Now you say that we were supposed to disapprove. Which rather suggests that the people doing the criticising were right, doesn't it?
Re: Angel..
Date: 2004-01-28 03:20 am (UTC)They were, but I think often their reasoning to get to that criticism was wrong.
no subject
Date: 2004-01-27 01:17 pm (UTC)Stories, I think, should be analysed on their own terms. If season three Angel had been the original premise of the show, nobody would have had a problem with it
I agree that stories should be analysed on their own terms, but I disagree that noone would have had a problem with season three of Angel if it had been the original premise of the show. My problem with season three of Angel is that I'm not interested in the characters that much, and don't care a great deal about their choices. What I liked about the earlier series was the 'vampire detective agency' concept. When that stopped being the focus of the show (and I don't think it was ever particularly well realised even when it was the focus) I found I wasn't as interested. It's not that season three wasn't playing by the season one rules - I don't care about that - it's that it was the season one rules that had attracted me to the programme, and with them gone it wasn't quite as interesting for me.
The same kind of thing goes for 'His Dark Materials'. I enjoy linear set-up stories that end on a mysterious note more than I enjoy the kind of multi-layered narrative that's going on in the second two books. So simply as a matter of personal preference to do with the kind of story I like, I'd pick Northern Lights over The Amber Spyglass. (Though as you say, I think there are other problems with the final book that have nothing to do with what you're discussing here.)
no subject
Date: 2004-01-27 01:30 pm (UTC)Yes, I know that's not what you're saying here. You're saying that people shouldn't judge the success of a story on the basis of the premise they have in their own heads, but on the basis of the actual premise of the story. This I agree with. But I thought I'd point out that I think you are allowed to criticise the quality of the premise itself. And in the cases of the examples you've given my reason for preferring the earlier work over the later isn't because the later work doesn't live up to the earlier work's premise, but because I'm comparing the two different premises and think the earlier one is better than the later one.
(Sorry, that was all very long-winded, and possibly not thought out quite as well as it could have been. Hope you can find my point in there somewhere.)
no subject
Date: 2004-01-28 02:42 am (UTC)Oh, absolutely. If something is aiming to be trash then it may very well succeed, but that's not really a great achievement!
no subject
Date: 2004-01-28 02:40 am (UTC)Exactly - that's how I think people should react. I'm just surprised at the number of people who don't react that way, and doubly surprised to see it in a broadsheet paper.
it's that it was the season one rules that had attracted me to the programme, and with them gone it wasn't quite as interesting for me.
See my response to Dan elsethread, but basically, yes. By definition, if they'd started off with the season three rules, the audience would have been one that liked that type of show.
no subject
Date: 2004-01-28 09:50 am (UTC)Very interesting - I had no idea people made such a distinction between the first and last books. Though I suppose it shouldn't really surprise me. If I had to, I'd say The Amber Spyglass was my favourite of the three, because of the sheer delight I got from his spin on the Fall. As a rule, I *do* tend to prefer books that give lots of little sections from different points of view, rather than a single main narrative. I like to know how everyone else sees things :)
(As an aside, that's one of the very few things that keep me reading the Waste of Time. I find the main characters mostly unlikeable and irritating, but I like the many little bits from people we don't know yet).
However, I generally think of HDM as one big book. Because, well, it's one story... And to me, it doesn't seem to radically differ in style or content throughout, so I consider it as a whole (as opposed to Earthsea, for example, where the books have far more obvious boundaries between them).
As applied to Angel, um... I don't think I remember the different seasons in enough detail to comment.
no subject
Date: 2004-01-27 01:32 pm (UTC)*hug*
no subject
Date: 2004-01-28 02:47 am (UTC)I'll see what I can do, but if I don't get around to it today I won't get around to it until next week - in which case it may just be easier for you to post a link. Or nick the wohle thing, whichever works!
no subject
Date: 2004-01-28 04:16 am (UTC)Next week is fine by me. I just like your thoughts and think it might create a bit of discussion on the site. :-)
no subject
Date: 2004-01-27 02:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-01-28 02:46 am (UTC)Well, you already know I disagree with most of that. But characterisation is different to the show premise, when it comes to criticism - characterisation needs to be consistent, so it is fair to compare current form to past form. My point is that you have to make allowances for the fact that the show's rules have changed (there are certain things you just had to accept about AI, and there are certain things you just have to accept about S5), then go on from there.
Austen
Date: 2004-01-28 04:13 am (UTC)Re: Austen
Date: 2004-01-28 04:21 am (UTC)(Thank you, ladies and gentlefolk, I'll be here all week.)
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