Content killed art.
It’sAGundam
Hello again, Dwellers. Back in the saddle for getting things up to speed. Full disclosure, a broken A/C unit caused some havoc on the planned schedule for writing, but I suppose such is life. I’m not going to take that L to heart, L though it was. We take those and move on.
Anyway, as the missus is out of town this Mother’s Day, I took it upon myself to spend it the best way I knew how – giving myself 21 tasks to complete and buckling down to do them. This article, in fact, is the bookend to that list. Many a load of laundry have run, rooms are cleaned, dishes done, meals prepped, etc. An added benefit to this home prep day was taking the opportunity to catch up on some media I’ve been meaning to get around to. Yes, I’m one of those “I’ll just add it to my list” Neflix people who ultimately have something totally untenable and frustrating to look at. But, every so often I get a day like today when I have things to complete that don’t actually require thought so I can enjoy some stories.
Or, rather, I can put something on and hope I enjoy it. I’ve not had a great track record lately, and running into marginal or outright bad shows / movies is rough when the time is so scarce. Thankfully, today wasn’t one of those days. I watched the first few episodes of Silent Sea, a Korean Netflix drama/horror/suspense show set in not-so-far future on a fallen moon base. I’m not going to bother with any sort of review since it’s still early, but so far, it’s been decent. Hasn’t blown me out of the water, no, but I’m invested enough that I’m looking forward to seeing where it goes.
This isn’t about Silent Sea, per se, but something more fundamental. An oldie but goodie, the Idiot Plot. An Idiot Plot is just what it sounds like – a story that only takes place and/or only continues because the people involved are all idiots. Not intentionally, no, that would be fine. In the Idiot Plot, you can see things happening on the screen and just ask yourself, “but why wouldn’t they just do X?” and it all falls apart. There are countless examples of this and I’m sure many of you can name a half dozen without pausing.
A few of my favorites from recent years are the ENTIRE Jurassic World franchise. Practically everything is kicked off by idiocy or allowed to continue from it. If you up your suspension of disbelief to buy the fact that they needed to create a genetically modified, bulletproof, camouflaging T-Raptor because the general public is bored of seeing dinosaurs at the only place in the world they exist, then the premise is fine. Hey, you might even say, isn’t that just part of the whole Military Industrial Complex plot? Sure, fine. Remember when it suddenly vanishes, though, and they think it climbed out of the top of the cage? And then proceed to just go in there and look around when they have a whole team designated to track them with implants? A team which, within like 5 minutes of screen time verifies that it is, in fact, in the cage still, causing the mayhem which ultimately lets it out? Or, how about the second movie, where they’ve somehow invented a laser which imprints a target on people to send raptors after them? How this works after the laser is no longer on that person is beyond me, but ignoring that, what the hell is the military use of this? If you can paint somebody with a laser you can just, you know, shoot them. Not send a much slower, larger, living creature after them to be killed before it does anything. Or, now in the third movie, what sort of braindead idea is it to genetically modify locusts to eat everything except the thing you make and think there’d be no impact or way of pointing that back at you?
And, after that wall of text, let’s not even get me STARTED on the new Star Wars content. I could go on for days.
But, that’s the thing, isn’t it. That’s the word of du jour. Content. So much of what’s being churned out today from whatever IPs are being “mined” (Thanks, Bob Iger, for that one) is nothing but content. Flashy with no substance, made to appease people with low attention spans who are just after the next cool moment. Better have your allocated number of actions scenes per episode. Better not let an emotional beat hit too long. Don’t worry about the ramifications of actions from earlier seasons, episodes, or even scenes. Just keep moving. Keep making. Produce.
Tom, you say to yourself, the hell does this have to do with Silent Sea? Well, there’s a moment between two of the protagonists that requires a little bit of setup. I’ll do my best not to spoil much in case you want to give it a watch. The captain of this expedition is there just following orders. He doesn’t know much as to what happened in this place, knows that this is being willingly withheld from him, and he’s being relied on to carry out the mission despite that. He also knows one of the chief scientists is there under ulterior, personal motives. He doesn’t trust her because of that. There’s a scene where she sneaks off to learn more on her personal goals, defying his order when he’s not around. During this, she witnesses one of the other crew members get killed by something she can’t identify, and as she’s standing over his body the captain comes in.
Now, modern storytelling trope brained as I am, I just instinctively expected this scene to be an excuse to generate more interpersonal drama. It would be used to add more tension between the team when we, as the audience, now fully understand there’s something worse going on here. I expected that because that’s what so many stories would do. It’s easy. Easy, and lazy. And one of those things you would look at and say – but, wait, aren’t there cameras around? Or, wait, wouldn’t the doctor know that this guy’s injuries couldn’t possibly have been done by this lady?
And, by God, that’s exactly what someone on that writing team asked his or herself. The captain questions her, but only briefly, then demands the examiner check the body and takes the bodycam from the suspected scientist, reviews it with her and the other people there, and just like that, everyone is aware that things aren’t what they seem. Instead of fomenting fake drama, this is used as a unifier. Captain By-The-Books now understands the lack of information he got isn’t something he can ignore, and immediately shifts from a “we’re here for the job” to “it’s time to survive” mentality, and things progress in a way that makes sense for this crew isolated on the moon.
That scene was so refreshing, so unexpected despite its obvious nature, that it immediately made me question how warped storytelling has been of late. How prone to taking the easiest route. I’ve been kind of railing against myself for taking so damn long on a lot of my outlining and new work, but the vast majority of that time has been precisely on trying to prevent this sort of thing. I don’t want easy ways. I don’t want to churn out Content. I don’t think I could handle being tied to making Idiot Plots, so I have to accept that it takes a little more to get things right.
All in service of the Story.
A little post-script here, but I wrote this article a good few hours ago only to have my youngest then cut his finger open and have us go to the ER to get that handled. Typical Mother’s Day activities. He takes after me so well.
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