Star, Heart and Follow Many Fantastic Movies Involve a Twist
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“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.