With Courage, You Don't Need A Reputation

Today we went to see Gone With The Wind in a real theater. (Not a movie palace, unfortunately, just a multiplex that shows a few art films and classics in off hours - and the print was badly digitized, so that the shadows were oddly posterized and sometimes kinda freaky looking.) It was a great, if very long, experience. Four hours, but so full of great moments (and great quotes like the title of this post) you hardly notice it.

In watching it, several thoughts occurred to me in relation to the posts I've made in the last few days:

1. Inescapable Context.

Context for something Gone With The Wind is inescapable. There is no putting a lollipop around anything in it. We just can't escape what we know about that movie, especially if you are at least fifty years old.

Today, when the audience saw this....


Everybody in the whole audience chuckled because they were thinking of this....


For those of you who might be too young to remember: The Carol Burnet Show did wonderful satires of old movies, and the most classic one was "Went With The Wind." The curtain rod dress was one of the THE classic moments in TV history. For blurry video of the entire sketch (which is in two nine-minute parts) "Went With the Wind" Part1 and Part 2 (the part with the dress happens a minute or two into Part 2.) And here is a one and a half minute clip of just the famous entrance.

The other contextual issue is the political incorrectness of this tale of the South (especially in the moments when it tries to be more correct and just makes the moment worse).

2. Scarlet Overhears People Saying Nasty Things About Her.

Scarlet O'Hara, of course, is one of the classic unrepentant jerks of cinema. But she's also one of the most famously appealing ones. And right there, early on, what happens but ... she overhears a number ladies talking about her. It isn't used the same way as the clip I played the other day, but I had to smile after the post I wrote on Tuesday.

The big technique they use to make the story and Scarlet appealing is illustrated in that bit though: As Scarlet listens to the angry, mean (and accurate) things the other ladies say, Melanie defends her. Melanie is the sweetest and nicest person in the world, and thus hated by Scarlet, but she never gives up on Scarlet. Melanie's deluded faith shames Scarlet and keeps her somewhat in check throughout the movie.

In some ways, I think Scarlet is the object of the movie rather than the protagonist, the real conflict is between Melanie's unfailing faith in her, and Rhett's fond cynicism about her. Or perhaps between Scarlet and those two forces which keep her in check.

3. Jerking the Tears

One other kind of technique (not related to making jerks appealing) in Gone With The Wind was when they veiled tragedy so we could get closer to it. Sure, a lot of that movie was quite blunt about the horrors or war. (I swear they violated some Hays commission rules about display of bodies, for instance.) But one of the most affecting scenes is a scene we don't see, but only hear about. When Bonny Blue dies, they cut away, and we don't see the effect on Rhett. Instead, Mammy tells the story of what happened to Melanie. It's a major tear jerker.

I was once told by a writing instructor that the best way to get the audience to cry is to not let your characters cry. Bring them up to the edge of crying, give them every reason, but have them hold back and the audience will cry for them. After seeing this scene, I think that it can work just as well - or even better - to have other characters weep for them.

Tomorrow I'll be talking about Alpha Readers.

Yesterday's Clip, Context and Speculation

Regarding yesterday's post and video clip: there was a reason I didn't talk about the third scene in that clip. I think that's a scene that really needs context.

But, of course, my Alpha Reader (who is the el primo Elephant-in-the-Room spotter of all time) zeroed in on that part, and we had an interesting discussion about cliches, interpretations and what will and won't attract the reader.

Alpha Reader reported her reaction to the last scene thusly (and I am paraphrasing to heighten the drama): "Oh shoot, he's moving closer. They're not going to use the old forceful kiss cliche, are they? Nooooooo! They did! Crap!"

The thing that bothered her most, though, seemed to be not the use of the cliche, but that the end of the scene seemed artificially staged to set up that dramatic turn.

She could be absolutely right. In the absense of context (and sometimes even with context) you can't tell if something is stupid staging, or a mistake or a completely intentional clue to the real truth.

So I went back and looked at the clip again, and tried to figure out why that ending didn't seem particularly artificial to me.

In the absense of context, we bring context with us, and part of that context is genre expectations. Since a mystery overlaps with nearly every kind of story out there - from mainstream, to romance, to horror - it's not easy to tell out of context what to expect.

So which genre? Two people sniping at each other, getting closer, and then a sudden kiss. Most commonly used in romance or women's fiction. How the woman reacts determines which - will she make a passionate and false denial or will she be offended and frightened and shoot him or call her lawyer? (Third cliche option is men's action adventure, in which case she'd fall straight into bed with him - but he wouldn't back off and ask timidly if she's going to report him, so I think that's out of the picture.)

In either case, she should have reacted before the kiss - she should have either moved closer because of her own passion, or fended him off when he invaded her space. She shouldn't have waited like an obedient actor for him to hit his mark so the dramatic turn could be accomplished.

Either that bit was bad staging, or an oversight... or they weren't actually going for that cliche. Maybe it wasn't romance or women's fiction. There is a third possibility.

It could be Noir.

It could be that the woman didn't react because she doesn't care. She's playing a game, and though it went differently than she expected, she doesn't take the result personally. She could be evil, although I just interpret her as a well-armored cynic who expects her sparring partner to be as sophisticated and armored as she is.

I think this because her behavior is consistent. Her reaction to the kiss is very much like her reaction to when he barges into her sitting room. She points out his legal situation, but she doesn't actually take action.

After the kiss, he has to ask if she's going to report him. She says yes, but she's not reaching for the phone. I get this odd vibe off of her. The look on her face mirrors the one earlier in the scene when he has that odd spell of weakness. There was this "whoops, I think I went too far" look. She's not thinking about his misjudgment, she's thinking about her own.

And given that, here is why I think the staging of the end of that scene was intentional and not a violation of character:

(begin wild speculation) I don't think the kiss was romantic or even necessarily sexual. When he says he doesn't know why he did it, he's not just in denial about being attracted to her. I think the trigger was something else.

Everything she says and does draws blood, and he can't seem to even scratch her armor. He tries everything in the policeman's third-degree handbook to push her outside her comfort zone, and he just can't do it. The questions about the condoms lead to her to smirking derision. Raising his voice just gets calm reasonable answers. He ends up debating with her rather than questioning her. He finally invades her physical space, getting right up in her face like they're in an interrogation room... and that has no effect on her at all. Instead, she invades his psychological space. So in frustration he escalates the invasion of her space to physical contact. He could have physically threatened her, but he's an old-fashioned guy and that's not what you do to girls. And besides, he is attracted to her, and the decision was spontaneous.

And she didn't react because none of it was personal: not the kiss, the physical contact, or the shouting. She's well armored against that. The only thing that seems to affect her is his inability to handle the game. He's just not as sophisticated as she is. (end wild speculation)

I think the thing that actually intrigues me here is her: What is her motivation? Is she just playing games but still sympathetic, or is she evil, or is she playing some more desperate game where it won't matter if she is sympathetic or not?

She may be Barbara Stanwyck, or she may be Lauren Bacall, but which ever flavor she is, she looks like a femme fatale to me.

Anyway, the writing lesson learned: The audience will notice if you manipulate your characters for convenience. But if you have a solid reason for creating an apparent anomaly in the character, you must use context to set up a pattern so you don't pop the audience out of the story.

We'll see if my wild speculation fits once I've seen the whole story, which will probably be next week.

(And check out on context in tomorrow's post about my viewing of Gone With The Wind in a real theater. "With Courage, You Don't Need a Reputation.")

Close-up on Character Technique - the Sympathetic Jerk

This post will examine a couple of scene fragments taken intentionally out of context. Therefore if you've read the book or seen the TV show, do not be alarmed to see that the characters and storyline are interpreted wrong. This is not about the story, but about the technique and its effect on the audience. Therefore I'm taking isolated scenes I found on YouTube, and analyzing them without benefit of having seen the whole thing or reading the book.

(See yesterday's post to understand why I think this is a good idea.)

The clip is from the BBC adaptation of The Ice House by Minette Warner. Daniel Craig plays the sidekick detective, and it appears this was put together by one of his fans, so it's chopped up and disjointed. It consists of approximately three scenes, and it's the first two I'm mainly going to talk about - first four minutes.

Skip watching it if you are offended by frank insults and sexual references. (It is a gritty police procedural.) I'll explain enough so you can follow anyway.



In Scene One, we meet Detective Sergeant McLoughlan, obnoxious sidekick. A common type in a police procedural, there to provide opposition, represent social attitudes like bigotry and power, and maybe to play "bad cop" to make another cop look better. Without our knowing anything except what is said in the first scene, he seems to represent the attitude of the whole town toward the women.

The first technique in making him more sympathetic than most is right there in that first scene: He didn't actually start the fight. He just didn't sufficiently cover his discomfort in shaking hands with the first two women, so that the third called him on it. At which point he revealed he wasn't ashamed of his arrogance or bigotry.

Scene Two, though, is more interesting, as the Detective Sergeant happens upon an open door and overhears two of the women talking... and he realizes they are talking about him.

They're not saying nice things. They are things he could handle if said to his face, but they're not saying it to his face. They don't know he's there, which should make them vulnerable, but in this case it makes him vulnerable. He's eavesdropping, and can't make an obnoxious reply. Not without making an awkward entrance that puts him at a disadvantage.

Which is The Key Technique in gaining empathy. We all cringe at being in an awkward spot. Alfred Hitchcock used this to great effect: he would force the viewer to empathize with the most evil villains by putting his villains in a spot. Even though you have no sympathy for the killer, even though you'd be cheering for him to be caught, you'd still tense up for him when the key he absolutely needs to escape would fall down behind the dresser just as the cops were coming down the hall. You can't help but think "Oh no! What's he gonna do?"

This is called empathy - you feel for the character's situation even if you don't care about the character. If you have that, you don't actually need sympathy.

But you can also take the empathy deeper by showing how the character deals with the awkward spot. We all want to be able to deal with awkwardness well ourselves. We pull away from people who don't deal with it well, we stay with people who do.

In the old silent and post-silent comedies, the moustache-twirling villain would get a pie in the face and either he would stand there gawping like a fish, or he would not recognize that he had lost his dignity, and he would declaim about what an outrage it was. We do not feel sympathy, and we stop empathizing with him fast. We are happy to see him get hit by more pies.

That is an alternative to sympathy. You can make him less sympathetic and then give him everything he deserves. But once we stop empathizing or sympathizing, the only think interesting about him is his comeuppance. So those kinds of characters need to stay in the background, or they need to become comic relief and get what's coming to them regularly.

While there is certainly a pie-in-the-face pleasure to dealing with Detective Sergeant MacCloughlan - at least if you are sympathizing with the women who want to wipe that smirk off his face - he does prove himself to less of a twit than he seems. You can see he would like to storm in and declaim like Sig Ruman (the heavy in many great Marx Brother's flicks), but instead he decides not to make a pie-target of himself, and he goes back out so he can make a proper entrance and have an official leg to stand on.

Which is partly effective, except when his suspect tells him a bald-faced lie, and he can't admit that he knows it's a lie. He's stuck. But he's got just enough Sig Ruman in him that he can't slink away defeated. So he barges in to catch her in the lie, except it's too late....

Every mistake me makes, he recovers and moves on (to the next mistake, unfortunately). By the end of the second scene it's pretty clear he's outclassed, and the thing that makes it work is because he knows it - but he's still on his feet.

And that's really the third technique: You can't help but like a fighter. Fighters are vulnerable. They take punches. They stagger. Sometimes they go down for the count, but until that happens, they keep going. (Although if you watch the final scene, he's definitely staggering and possibly down for the count by the end of that one.)

So in recap: Step One is to be fair to the jerk - let others take some blame too. Step two is to put him in a situation we can empathize with, and Step Three is to give him some gumption.

I'm not real fond of Minette Warner's other stories. They are much much too gruesome for me. (I don't mind dark, I do mind creepy.) However, on the basis of seeing this out-of-context clip I looked up some reviews. The Ice House does not appear to be gruesome as the other stories, and that it appears Detective Sergeant McLoughlin is not a secondary character in a minor subplot, but rather has a nice long learning curve ahead of him. So I went to the trouble of getting my hands on the video on eBay. I'll let you know if it turns out to interesting or gruesome or what....

(In the meantime, my alpha reader had some reactions to the clip. Read a follow up post on context and speculation.)

Characterization Technique - Lollipops and Context

When you look at a a photograph, even a black and white photograph, it can be very hard to tell relative brightness and darkness. If you put a gray object against black, it will look lighter than the very same object set against white. It's worse with color.

In the old days, before Photoshop's sampling tool (eyedropper), we had a little tool we called a "lollipop." It was a circle of cardboard on a stick, with a hole in the middle. The cardboard was medium neutral gray. When you lay it over a photograph, you can isolate a spot from the nearby colors. And when you do that, you're often surprised at what you see.

Context changes everything. In a photograph of a face, the shadows may look like dark brown or gray, and yet when you try to replicate it in a painting, those colors look flat. Hold a lollipop up to the area, though, and you can see that the shadows are much richer than you thought - full of purples and blues, and sometimes even reds or greens.

In context of the whole photograph, you can't see just what technique created that vibrant shadow. When you isolate the shadow, though, you can see it and learn from it.

You have the same problem when trying to study characterization. Our image of a character depends on the overall context. Any story is a flood of information. And yes, taken as a whole it can be useful to study. For instance a recent post on Show Some Character discussed Dr. House, of House M.D., as an example of an interesting jerk. It's a good posting and gives a good overview of how such a jerk can be a popular character.

But House is a very complicated character and there has been six seasons of development to look at. It's hard to even find individual examples of technique in that show, because so many of the examples will depend on the knowledge we have of the characters and situation. For instance, one of House's great qualities is his ability to surprise us... but most of his surprises are based on the fact that we already know a lot about him and have expectations.

And once you know the character it's really hard to pretend you don't. It's hard to get a "lollipop" into your brain and block out what you know, so you can see things in isolation. Sometimes, though, it happens by accident.

The other day I came across a YouTube video made by some fan of Daniel Craig. She had cut together some choppy scenes from a subplot of an old TV show. The show is not available in the US at the moment, and though it was based on a book, I happened to hate the author's other books, so I never read it.

So the scenes were presented to me utterly without context. I could see nothing except was what presented to me in the hole of that lollipop. Cool.

Even better was that I was intrigued by what I saw and I looked up more about the TV show and book, and found that I might like it. That led me on a quest to find a Region 2 version of the video. Double cool. This is exactly that we want our small out-of-context details to do. We want people who happen to pick up a book and glance at a page to be interested in investigating further.

So even though the clip probably misled me about the character and story (just as seeing purple would never make you think of skin tone), the technique in that clip was interesting and worth study.

Tomorrow, I'm going to post a link to the clip, and analyze the effect of three basic character techniques on making a different kind of jerk character into someone sympathetic.