Has storytelling become more opaque?
August 15th, 2021 by Roger Darlington
I recently wrote a blog posting suggesting that it had.
Now I’ve just read a fascinating book called “The Science Of Storytelling” by Will Storr (2019) in which there is a sentence that I think supports my view that serious storytelling has become more opaque or challenging:
“Expert readers understand that the patterns of change they’ll encounter in art-house movies and literary or experimental fiction will be enigmatic and subtle, the causes and effects so ambiguous that they become a wonderful puzzle that stays with them months and even years after reading.”
You can read my review of Storr’s book here.
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
A review of “The Science Of Storytelling” by Will Storr (2019)
August 15th, 2021 by Roger Darlington
I love being told stories (my favourite genre is the cinema and I reckon I’ve viewed around 3,000 films) and I enjoy writing short stories (I’ve produced 31 self-published under the title “The Rooms In My Mind”), so I found this a fascinating book which should help me both to analyse and to create stories.
The central thesis of the work is that all effective storytelling taps into the deep neurological thinking which the first humans evolved on the savannah and Storr supports his proposition with multiple references to academic research. So we like heroes and villains, we look for selfless and evil behaviours, we obsess about status and morality, and we expect cause and effect. As Storr puts it: Good stories are explorations of the human condition”.
For Storr, the essence of storytelling is the explanation of the model of the world or the theory of control held by the protagonist and the highlighting of what he calls “the scared flaw” in the model, before the story examines the challenge to that model and the capacity or otherwise of the protagonist to change the model. So the questions most stories ask are: Who is this person?” and “Are we brave enough to change?”.
Typically, therefore, a story will begin with “a moment of unexpected change”. Storr talks of the classic three-part story: crisis, struggle, resolution. But he devotes much more time to what he describes as “the standard five-act structure”:
- Act I: This is me and it’s not working
- Act II: Is there another way?
- Act III: There is. I have transformed.
- Act IV: But can I handle the pain of change?
- Act V: Who am I going to be
To illustrate his arguments, Storr references many well-known acts of storytelling, especially films and novels, and it helped that I’m familiar with most of these works. The films that he mentions most often are “Citizen Kane” (which many critics believe is the best ever made), “The Godfather” (which seems to be Storr’s favourite), and “Lawrence Of Arabia” (which is my own favourite). Among the novels that he quotes are “The Remains Of The Day”, “Gone Girl” and “Mrs Dalloway”.
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
A review the new movie “The Suicide Squad”
August 13th, 2021 by Roger Darlington
I’ve enjoyed many, many superhero movies and I’m sure I’ll delight in a few more, but some of them are becoming a bit ridiculous and this is one of them. Following the original “Suicide Squad” (2016) and the spin-off “Birds Of Prey” (2020), now we have a kind of reboot of the first movie with another eclectic list of tough-guy characters, over-the top-violence, fouled-mouthed tirades and a thumping soundtrack (I saw it in IMAX).
As with the first two films, the best in the team is Harley Quinn played by the wonderful Margot Robbie. The characters portrayed by Idris Elba and John Cena have a certain charisma, but other characters – notably Polka-Dot Man who sees his detested mother in the faces of all his enemies and T.D.K. who has detachable limbs – are just plain silly. Worst of all is the main opponent, a giant starfish that has the ability to spit out smaller starfish which cling to the faces of people like the face-hugger in “Alien”. This is the least evil-looking villain since the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man in the 1984 version of “Ghostbusters”.
Writer and director James Gunn of “Guardians Of The Galaxy” fame clearly had a lot of fun with this blood-spurting, body-ripping, head-exploding orgy of violence and mayhem and some of it is entertaining and funny, but overall this is a limp addition to the often-sparkling superhero genre.
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
How diverse is the United States now?
August 13th, 2021 by Roger Darlington
America’s white population has declined for the first time, while US metro areas were responsible for almost all of the country’s population growth, according to groundbreaking data released on Thursday by the US Census Bureau.
The rapid diversifying of the US was among the most notable findings of the census. Nationwide, the number of people who identified as white fell by 8.6%, which means 58% of Americans now identify as solely white, a drop from 2010 when they made up 63.7% of the population.
Meanwhile, there was significant growth among minority groups over the last decade. The Hispanic or Latino population grew by 23%, while the Asian population surged by more than 35%. The Black population also increased by more than 5.6%.
“The US population is much more multiracial and much more racially and ethnically diverse than we have measured in the past,” said Nicholas Jones, a Census Bureau official.
Posted in American current affairs | Comments (0)
A review of the 2017 film “Downsizing”
August 5th, 2021 by Roger Darlington
I had thought that this was one kind of movie but it turned out to be a rather different one altogether. I had imagined – based largely on the trailer – that it was some kind of romantic comedy starring Matt Damon and Kristen Wiig, both of which I enjoy as actors.
At first, my expectations were essentially fulfilled: here was a fun tale of a married couple of limited financial means who seek to save the planet and expand their lifestyle by undergoing a radical scientific technique that makes them truly tiny. But, about a third of the way in, the movie dramatically changes take and becomes a more serious consideration of personal relationships and human survival.
Responsibility for this switch in direction and tone – and for the flop at the box office – is down to co-writer and director Alexander Payne who has previously had both commercial and critical success with the likes of “Sideways” and “The Descendants”.
In my view, Matt Damon and Christoph Waltz are miscast, while (spoiler alert) Kristen Wiig is sadly under-utilised and Hong Chau is not given the billing she deserves. So, in short (see what I did there?), this is an interesting effort to do something a little different that falls rather flat.
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
A review of “The Secret Body” by Daniel M Davis (2021)
August 4th, 2021 by Roger Darlington
There is a certain irony that, a year and a half into the global pandemic when I finally fell foul of the coronavirus and had to self-isolate, top of my reading list was this book with the sub-title “How the new science of the human body is changing the way we live”. Although the author is professor of immunology at the University of Manchester, I had thought this was a popular science book, but it’s hard going for someone (like me) who has never had any lesson in biology and the 538 endnotes are very much for medical readers.
What any reader cannot fail to take away, however, is the conclusion that “we are at the cusp of a revolutionary time in virtually every aspect of human biology”. It is striking how so many of the discoveries described came from collaboration between scientists from different disciplines and how frequently the spark was a chance conversation at a conference (you don’t get this from virtual events).
The six chapters look respectively at the individual cell, the embryo, the body’s organs and systems, the brain, the microbiome, and the genome. Above all, what we learn is that everything is immeasurably more complicated than was once thought.
Take the brain. A human brain is made up of 86 billion neurons. Those neurons are connected by around 100 trillion synapses, each allowing messages to move from one cell to another. Neurons are not even the most common type of brain cell which are in fact glial cells which do all sorts of things including forming and adapting neural connections. There are around 100 billion glial cells.
I find these figures mind-boggling. Yet there are scientists trying to create a wiring map for the brain that shows which neurons are connected to which other neurons. A new word has been made up for such a concept – one of many new words to me in this fascinating book: the connectome. Remember where you heard it first.
Posted in Science & technology | Comments (0)
Some people say that we live in a new age of identity politics. But what is identity and why has it become more complicated?
August 1st, 2021 by Roger Darlington
The question of identity has troubled humans throughout the 200,000 history of humankind. Just who are we and what makes us different from other humans and how important are those differences?
In evolutionary terms, for most of human history, identity has been a relatively simple matter. But, since the age of civilisations emerged some 5,000 years ago, it has become more and more complicated.
In this short essay, I have endeavoured to explain why identity has become more complicated, why it is influencing politics, and how we should respond to the identity debate.
Posted in Cultural issues, World current affairs | Comments (0)
A review of the 2017 film “Beast”
August 1st, 2021 by Roger Darlington
If you were thinking of having a holiday on the English Channel island of Jersey, you might want to avoid this psychological thriller which is set on the island. In his first feature film, writer and director Michael Pearce – who grew up on the island – offers the viewer some glorious local scenery but parades a set of characters who, in their different ways, are comprehensively unpleasant.
The lead character is Moll, a deeply damaged 27-year-old who lives with her family in the genteel part of the island. Jessica Buckley is quite mesmerising in this complex role. She befriends Pascal, a working-class local with good looks and a history that are both roguish. Johnny Flynn fits the role well.
The trouble is that there is a serial killer on the loose and, perhaps not unreasonably, Pascal is a suspect. So Moll is playing with fire, but she is not exactly an innocent herself. We fear that this is not going to end well and we are right – but the ending is unlikely to be the one you expect in this dark and gripping tale.
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
Does anyone still seriously doubt that the climate is changing?
July 22nd, 2021 by Roger Darlington
This is the latest Weatherwatch from the “Guardian” newspaper:
A deluge of rain has inundated parts of western Germany and Belgium over the past week, caused by a slow-moving low pressure system that led to catastrophic flooding. Several rainfall records were smashed, including Mannheim in south-west Germany, which usually receives 70mm (2.7in) in an average July, but recorded more than 150mm of rain in 24 hours, most of which fell in about 12 hours.
In the southern hemisphere, New Zealand’s South Island has also been reeling in the aftermath of heavy rains. More than 800mm fell in the southern Alps in just a few days, owing to a tropical low in the Indian Ocean, which caused alpine rivers to swell and burst their banks.
The highest temperature ever reliably recorded anywhere on Earth was broken on 9 July, with a staggering reading of 54.4C (130F) in Death Valley. This was followed by the hottest night in North American history, with a minimum temperature of 42C. While Death Valley is no stranger to intense heat, it is not alone in experiencing these unprecedented conditions. After the hottest June on record in the US, Canada also broke its all-time temperature record as the month came to a close, with 49.6C, shattering the highest temperature ever recorded north of 50N latitude.
Posted in Environment | Comments (0)
Have you ever heard of a place called Arthurdale?
July 21st, 2021 by Roger Darlington
I hadn’t – but I’ve been watching the excellent 2014 PBS America television series “The Roosevelts” and I was fascinated by the reference to the experiment in community living called Arthurdale.
The Wikipedia page on the subject states:
Arthurdale is an unincorporated community in Preston County, West Virginia, United States. It was built in 1933, at the height of the Depression as a social experiment to provide opportunities for unemployed local miners and farmers. Arthurdale was undertaken by the short-lived Subsistence Homesteads Divisionand with the personal involvement of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who used her influence to win government approval for the scheme.
The aim was to encourage self-sufficiency, and reduce dependence on both market forces and welfare provision. The experiment failed through a clash of ideologies. There was a strong emphasis on accommodating those most in need. Yet there also had to be qualifications to ensure that the community would be self-governed in a professional manner. The entrepreneurial community spirit never took hold, and the project is remembered by some as a classic failure, though some of its original residents have contradicted this narrative.
Arthurdale is now classed as a historic district, with over 100 of the original buildings still standing, and a New Deal Museum.
Posted in History | Comments (0)