“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress relies on the unreasonable man.” ~George Bernard Shaw
“No predicament too twisted for speech— I’m-a just beat.” ~Cecil Otter (“Traveling Dunk Tank”)
Star, Heart and Follow
Many fantastic movies involve a twist ending, but Captain Marvel (2019) is rather special because it opens with a twist beginning. In the movie, Brie Larson’s character Vers (an alien from the planet Kree) arrives on a remote planet named “C-53” in the search of some long- lost plot device. This planet (and here’s the twist—and the spoiler) turns out to be Earth in the year 1995. Once she arrives (in Los Angeles), she needs to find the location of a bar. So what does she do? She gets on the internet. From a place once called an “internet café,” where people using desktops with dial-up modems would type electronic letters and slowly load search results on the pre-Google “Alta Vista.” …Fast-forward to September, 2019 (24 years in the future), when Saturday Night Live created a parody commercial with their regular player Kyle Mooney and guest host David Harbour.1 The commercial was for the “Father–Son Podcasting Microphone.” The premise is that fathers have a hard time talking with their teenage kids, but they can connect more easily through “the comfort and cadence of the podcast structure.” Now: what do these two things have in common? The answer is something called paradigm. “Paradigm” is one of those esoteric words which erudite vocabularians like to use in the form of a sentence. Please forgive me for this in advance, because it really is an interesting idea and it has a place in the pantheon of crucial concepts in this essay series. There is a simple meaning behind the common use of the word: a paradigm is a regular structure or cadence to the way a complex system or process is understood. To simplify this even further: the paradigm is how it’s done. But of course—and this shouldn’t be a twist-beginning by now—I also want to discuss a deeper and more subtle side of the concept. And, as a bonus, I’d like to tie everything in to my aim with Megana. My first encounter with this word came when, in a side conversation, the gorgeous and brilliant TA in my sophomore-year Shakespeare class suggested I should find her in either her favorite Dinkytown coffee shop or at the English department’s in-house print shop if I should find myself with any questions regarding The Merchant of Venice; I was too obtuse and oblivious to realize she was inviting me to invent one.2 The coffee shop was called
1 It’s easily found on YouTube with a search for “David Harbour SNL Father…” P.S., while you’re there, you should watch “Holiday Clothing Ad” (search SNL Macy’s)…funniest thing ever… 2 I will offer that this mythical English grad student’s name was “Emily” because she was named after Dickenson; she was certainly the inspiration for the character of Channy Leigh in The Nashville American. “The Purple Onion” and the print shop was called “Paradigm.” This name was quite clever because at that time the cost of a single-sheet copy was ten cents. Lovesick sophomores aren’t the only group of people who know this term all too well: Hollywood screenwriters have been living under the pall of the paradigm since it was cast like a specter by screenplay guru Syd Field. When Syd Field published Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting in 1979, his great insight was based on the astute observations of hundreds of successful screenplays and the general and almost predictable way they were structured. Syd Field laid it all out as though it was a formula which one could follow. There are, for example, three acts in the screenplay of a box-office success.3 At first the main characters are introduced— the sooner the better.4 Then, within the first twenty minutes of the movie, the “inciting incident” of the plot happens.5 Then there is something called a “plot point:” This is where the stakes get raised when the audience learns a new level of complexity through a dramatic and unexpected event.6 Shortly after this plot point, which usually concludes act 1, we enter the second act of the film, where the driving premise is established and we are aimed at the ending.7 Somewhere near the end of act 2, there is another plot point. This is typically an unexpected reversal of fortune, exposing the main character’s premise-setting lie, for example, or by emphatically establishing the fact that things can’t get any worse.8 By the way, this is the part of the movie when the screenwriter can wave a magic wand and get the trains on the same track.9 This typically ends act 2. Early in act 3, there is one more major plot point before the denouement and conclusion at the end. This act 3 plot point usually raises the conflict in the story to its highest point. This is typically considered the story’s climax.10 Then comes the most important part of a story: the denouement. This term means “untying,” but we all think of it as being the opposite—when all the loose ends of a story get tied up.11 More importantly, this is also the point where the main impetus of the story is satisfied.12 And finally, there is a conclusion; where, in a comedy, there is usually an ironic return to the previous way of life for the main characters.13
3 I will illuminate this with Dumb and Dumber as my example, because Syd Field really doesn’t deserve any better. 4 Lloyd and Harry – Lloyd as a pathetic limo driver, and Harry as a pathetic small business owner (Mutt Cutts). 5 Lloyd discovers that Mary Swanson has left her briefcase in his limo, prompting Lloyd to decide to travel halfway across the country to return it to her. Partly because it’s his duty, but partly because he’s already in love with her. 6 This happens when we learn that Mary intentionally left the briefcase in the limo because it was ransom for her kidnapped husband! Along with this, the kidnappers become convinced that Harry and Lloyd are “professionals.” 7 We expect Harry and Lloyd to encounter the kidnappers and resolve the main conflict in Aspen, Colorado. 8 Harry and Lloyd wind up dead-broke somewhere in Nebraska. Then Lloyd trades Harry’s $20,000 custom- decorated van for a $200 moped. Harry says this great line: “Lloyd…just when I think you can’t get any lower, you go and do something like this…and totally redeem yourself!!!” 9 Just as the dead-broke pair arrive in Aspen, they realize Mary’s suitcase was filled with money…so they use it. 10Lloyd finds out that Harry has secretly been spending time with Mary, setting up a rivalry between Harry and Lloyd. While this is happening, the tension with Mary’s kidnapped husband intensifies, balancing out the slapstick. 11 Harry and Lloyd confront the kidnappers with the help of a mysterious woman whom Harry had met: an undercover F.B.I. agent secretly tracking Harry and Lloyd (note: fireworks are common in the denouement). 12 Mary’s kidnapped husband is rescued, and Lloyd attempts to cash in his heroics for a chance to date her. 13 As Lloyd and Harry are hitchhiking back home, they are offered a position on the crew of the Swedish Bikini Team (this was the heyday of misogynistic beer commercials). They misconstrue the offer to get on the bus, turn it down, and happily continue on their oblivious way back to Rhode Island.
Paradigm is similar to language in that it can convey a central cadence of the beginning, middle and end of an idea. Without a structure to reason, our ideas would seem to be caret initio et fine.14 It should come as no surprise to know there are paradigms to be found in every field of social organization, from art to science.15 And these matter not only because they help us make sense of the world, but they also dictate to us the way in which the world makes sense. This might not seem like a major distinction, but it is. Consider the framing of the following question:
“During the sinking of the Titanic, should the 1st class passengers have been given a chance to board the lifeboats before the 5th class passengers?”
and compare it to this alternate phrasing:
“During the sinking of the Titanic, the 1st class passengers were boarded on lifeboats before the 5th class passengers: was this a human rights violation?”
Now surely there are major differences in these two questions, and both seem to be loaded with a different incoming perspective. It’s important to recognize how, regardless of whether one of these questions is better, both ask the same fundamental question. These two questions are still strikingly similar, and they presuppose plenty about the way we try to arrive at better moral systems only through revisionist debate – entirely due to our presiding ontological paradigm and the rock it is built upon (logocentrism and our reigning ideology).16 But this last overbearing statement can be left as an aside as I pose a third way of phrasing the question—as something which offers improvement, and as something which looks forward rather than back:
“During the sinking of a ship, 1 child + 1 parent should be loaded on lifeboats first: is there a more reasonable approach?”
14 From the Latin, caret initio et fine means something lacks a beginning and an end—implying that it’s aimless. 15 In fact, to really get a sense of this concept, look to the incredibly influential 20th century philosopher Thomas Kuhn. He applied this idea to an analysis of science where he defined paradigm as a “disciplinary matrix,” or world view. He also described the “Paradigm shift,” where there are sudden breakthroughs when the way scientists adopt a fundamentally and radically different approach to scientific problems. The quintessential example of a paradigm shift is when one looks at a black-and-white picture of one vase and suddenly sees two faces. 16 “Logocentrism” is a major problem in a language-based ontology (like ours). If something cannot be put into words, then it seems as though it isn’t an idea. And what matters most about the word is who gets to say it. Whether or not those were constructive examples, one can clearly see why it matters. This method of framing and understanding the world around us is happening all the time, in effortless ways—sometimes by accident, sometimes on purpose, and sometimes, as we will soon see, for comedic effect. I believe the Roman orator Cicero put it best when he said: “If truth were self-evident, eloquence would be unnecessary.” Surely, this is true. As communicators, we have a chance to take control and present our ideas and present them in an eloquent, and therefore more palatable, fashion. This is done through the special cadence and rhythm of various methods and tricks in communication. Consider the rhetorical device of alliteration. It’s the simple sound- agreement at the beginning of consecutive words. It doesn’t seem like it should be such a big deal, but alliteration has a special rhyming effect which somehow conveys that what is said is well-thought-out and therefore probably true. Alliteration reminds me of a line from the movie Broadcast News (1987) where Albert Brooks’s character Aaron is jealously watching his rival, William Hurt’s character Tom, during an important national news broadcast from home. Tom uses the phrase “military might,” which causes Aaron to burst out sarcastically: “Oh-hoh! A lot of alliteration from anxious anchors placed in powerful posts!” This happens to be a fantastic movie, by the way, and it goes right along with the theme of this essay. Of course people in news broadcasting are going to care an awful lot about paradigms in thinking and communication, and in oratorical tricks and methods which convey a sense of eloquence. It is their business! This is because they are strictly in the business of knowing things others don’t—the news. There is a difficult gap which needs to be bridged in a situation where you transform an audience or a person from someone who doesn’t know something into someone who does. Even harder: for this person to be affected by the new information. This is the essence of another line in the movie, which is an exchange between the president of the broadcasting company and the main female character of the movie, Jane, played by Holly Hunter. They are at a party when a major news story breaks involving a military conflict in Libya (or aggression by the Libyans). The president, Paul, makes a decision but Jane adamantly disagrees with him. Then Paul says to her sarcastically, “It must be nice to always believe you know better, to always think you’re the smartest person in the room.” And Jane’s response is direct, honest and rueful: “No. It’s awful.” And she’s right: it is.17 The key to persuasion is knowing where the fringes are between a self-evident truth and a truer truth which demands enough eloquence to express it. The best place to find these fringes, I believe, is in comedy. Comedy thrives on premise of a joke, the irony of the expected vs. what happens and the timing of the action by the performers. If one looks closely, comedy centers on a special kind of conflict, that of frustration, and it generates humor through the catharsis of this frustration. To see this in full effect, view an episode of Seinfeld, Friends or The Office. And when much of the frustration is derived from a withheld gratification, another major source is that of miscommunication or the struggle to communicate. Consider again my two introductory
17 This happens to be one of my all-time favorite movie quotes. And if you’ve ever wondered about the personality of my wife Holly, she is a lot like Holly Hunter in this movie, and maybe half like Teri Garr in Mr. Mom. If there’s one thing to know about Holly—math degree, English minor, great sense of humor, bright eyes—it’s that she’s a wonderful mother. examples. In the Saturday Night Live commercial, they are literally offering an amusing solution to a communication barrier—the ironic idea of having a father and son hosting a podcast. And in the case of Vers in my Captain Marvel example, she is trying to solve a problem which we, 25 years later, could solve in a ten-second google search on our phones.18 Good comedians are charismatic communicators who use eloquence, structure and timing to explore the fringes of the expected and unexpected. This is why news broadcasting is evolving towards serious current-event comedians like Seth Myers, John Oliver, Michael Che, Collin Jost, Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart—they are informing us on serious issues through their specially-honed methods of eloquence and humor. So here is my question: if comedy explores the fringes of the sensible world, is it possible to present an outside-the-paradigm concept, even from within the paradigm? This is a curious question. Can one use language to explain non- linguistic concepts? Or use water to explain air to a fish? And if so, are there any benefits to this sort of exercise? If there is going to be a glimpse of something just beyond what is normally understandable, perhaps the place to look is in some strange or avant-garde attempts at comedy. Consider a skit from The Kids in the Hall authored and presented by Kevin McDonald called “The Middle.”19 He opens with a seated monologue, presenting to the studio audience only the middle of a skit. Just a middle—surely this is beyond the reach of our paradigm of what’s expected. And to be sure, the middle of his skit is absurd. But as a whole, the skit is funny (at least to me). So why isn’t this “middle of a skit” pure nonsense? Because: the bigger skit actually includes Kevin’s monologue introduction and his debriefing afterwards. Therefore, this meta-skit actually does have a beginning, middle and end. There is something so intriguing about Kevin McDonald’s little lemma of absurdity. Is there a way to present a middle of a skit so it’s actually funny? I wonder. Because it genuinely must not make sense. The best way to grasp an elusive concept, I find, is to encounter it in its most basic and rudimentary forms. So to see outside the paradigm, I will offer a glimpse at something truly baffling which I saw on a game-developing program called “Scratch.” And by the way, even videogames, as my eight-year-old reminded me this morning, are structured on a distinct paradigm. Will told me games from the 80s and 90s all had points and high scores and lots of “game-overs” because they were created with arcades in mind. It was his big brother, Henry, who taught him this. So yes: there was a paradigm shift in the realm of videogames which changed from a short-term score challenge to a long-term quest for completion.20
18 By the way, there is a very subtle demonstration of paradigm within this premise itself. Why? Because, in 1995, if a person wanted to find a bar, they wouldn’t do an internet search—they would look in the Yellow Pages. An observer from 2019 wouldn’t think twice about this, though, because a web search is the best solution they is. 19 The skit “The Middle” is in Season 1, episode 17. It’s available on YouTube. 20 Scratch is a web-based computer programming clinic offered for free by M.I.T.. It is special and I recommend it to everyone. Scratch teaches early programming skills to young users—such as my boys Henry and Will—by letting them program their own apps and games. The best feature in Scratch is that other users post both their games and the background code. This way a user can not only get ideas from others, but see how to do it themselves. Here is the part I want to share, and it relates to Kevin McDonald’s skit: I saw something that was called a “game,” but for the life of me, I cannot figure out why. Even Ludwig Wittgenstein would be blown away by the use of that word in this context. And forgive me, because I do not remember any of the pertinent details about who made it or even what it was called—those details are perdido. But here is a walk-through explanation of the game which was made by a young (presumably young) Scratch user somewhere else in the world:
Click “start.” The user is presented with a title screen. This fades to an all-white background with a square, white floor and two white walls in the background. Cut to a full-body shot of a stick-person, standing still with no clear motivation. He stands there. He is a ‘he’ because otherwise the stick-figure would have been drawn with two swooping lines depicting longer hair. Just then, another stick person arrives. He is a ‘he’ because he has a mustache. He also has a hat. We see the first guy again, just standing there, looking at the second guy with a hat, and when we cut to the second guy again, we see he suddenly has a gun. Then the screen goes blank. There is a ubiquitous sound of a gunshot. Then it cuts to the first guy, who is standing and holding a gun of his own. We cut again to the guy in the hat, who is now lying on the ground (his stick-person image has been turned 90 degrees) and there’s a puddle of red around him. It cuts to the first guy again as his eyes are replaced by dollar signs while the sound of a ringing cash-register chimes. Finally, the game brings us to an all white screen with the following message: “Star heart and follow!”
That’s it: that’s the game. Seeing this Scratch project was a bit of a revelation for me. The boys couldn’t understand why I thought it was so funny. There are deep-seeded understandings of the paradigm in everything about this. An expectation for a constant, continuous, ubiquitous observer, for one thing. This is what prompts us to aim everything we do for an audience and gauge our success on an audience response. The need for a gratifying outcome involving personal gain—think of those dollar signs in the shooter’s eyes. Why did he kill the mustachioed fellow? Do we even know?21 And of course: “Star, heart and follow.” This is not to say one way is right and another is wrong. The most efficient way is determined in most respects by our environment: this is the basic reason for how we cope and plan for a life in the world we are given. But looking down to the roots of who we are and what we are attempting to do as a species, we can learn and perhaps decide where we will be heading in the future. Imagine having control over an outlook which has throughout history been predetermined. It has proven out time and time again throughout history that the world around us shapes how we perceive it. Both the Mesopotamians and the Egyptians were visited by regular floods on their respective rivers, but since the Nile had a gentle and predictable overflowing,
21 “And the lonely voice of youth cries: ‘What is truth?’ “ --Johnny Cash depositing a rich layer of soil, while the Tigris and Euphrates would flood with only erratic devastation, tearing away crops weeks before harvest; it was the Egyptians who envisaged the cycle of life as one of regular, joyous renewal and rebirth while those in Mesopotamia saw life, death and all of existence as a pointless road to inevitable ruin. The ever-present connection between the sea and the people of Greece led them to devise a worldview aimed at seafaring, travel, trade and exploration; it was a world of hard-lined boundaries of jungle in the south, desert in the north, mountains, mountains and more mountains to the west which inspired the ancient Chinese to develop a firm sense of isolationism; and it is the unknown reality of the conditions and circumstances of Tlön which led the people of Uqbar to see the world as one unshackled by the necessity for an ontological sense of continuity and persistence.22 In some strange way, the land and its people are connected through its most efficient concept of what there is: confirmed, of course, by a people’s shared sense or paradigm of the most efficient interpretation. So this concept stands as a fundamental pillar throughout the creation and expression of my fictional world of Megana: the basic question of what could there be? It is fun just to have a chance to wonder and to explore. This goes along with another fundamental aspect, which is a respect for the right we all have to see things from our own perspectives; to do our best with the world we are given. This freedom is worth seeking. So if all personal breakthroughs begin with a change in beliefs, then what can lead each of us to feel a Sapere Aude realization that things could be different? Or to ask: what other worlds are possible?
Kevin Umhoefer April 4th, 2020 Star, heart and follow! Thank you
22 Tlön is the region briefly elucidated in the Jorge Luis Borges short story called “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius.”