The case of the vanishing plot
(“Alarums and Excursions” is a Shakespearian stage direction
used frequently during battle scenes. The phrase indicates a call for
a good deal of noise and lots of actors running back and forth across
the stage.)
In yesteryear’s popular Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche by Bruce
Feirstein and Lee Lorenz the authors prefaced their brief tome by lamenting
the loss of epic themes in popular entertainment. They observed that
older movies showed John Wayne, Erroll Flynn, and Kirk Douglas taking
on the armies and navies of empires and conquering them. They then pointed
out that the hit of their day depicted Meryl Streep and Dustin Hoffman
battling over control of a six year old.
Local Adelphia subscribers recently had their basic package upgraded
and we now get a greater variety of channels including Turner Classic
Movies, Bravo, Ovation, and Hallmark. I was always a great fan of the
hour long black and white Perry Masons of the early 60s and Hallmark
is showing two episodes a day Monday through Friday. I TIVO them and
they work for my dramatic sensibilities the way Bach does for my musical
ones. Both restore my sense of order, though Bach does so at a more cosmic
level.
Even though mathematician Douglas Hofstader eloquently admires the role
of recursion in Bach’s compositions, the composer’s intricate
variations and permutations always lead to a resolution. Similarly, the
archetypal dramatic rhythm which progresses from exposition to complication,
through crisis, climax, catastrophe, and ultimately to resolution is
both satisfying and soothing. It has been so for thousands of years as
anthropologist Victor Turner has remarked.
Raymond Burr’s solid and stolid Mason (much more strait-laced than
Gardner’s original character) isn’t a bit flashy but does
possess the clear sight needed to penetrate the murk of confusions and
obfuscations created by the various suspects. Reason and good feeling
always head off toward the sunset hand in hand in the last short scene.
I find it interesting that the contemporary alliance of existentialism,
moral relativism, and post-modernism have contrived to make the Perry
Mason series seem terribly old-fashioned and out-of-step. The idea of
simply telling a story seems hopelessly quaint and passé. And
yet...
And yet the huge box office successes still are the films which tell
the timeless archetypal stories: The Passion of the Christ, Lord
of the Rings, the Harry Potter series, and even Finding
Nemo. Each of these
films embraces one of the timeless quests.
And what to make of the popularity of the violent action films? The plots
are not intricate and the violence is extreme and often improbable, but
the films do tell stories which have a beginning, a middle, and an end.
Their resolutions satisfy the human need for order and stability.
Camus once said that intellectualism consists of “a mind watching
itself.” Other and far less complimentary words also sum up that
sort of activity. I submit that in the longer run plots will maintain
their historical primacy. Drama is the imitation of action, as Aristotle
observed. It is not the imitation of reaction, recursion, or smartass
mind games. Those often constitute extremely useful tools, but they are
sizzle not steak.
The cinema’s currently lauded intellectual entrepreneurs seem to
be selling only the sizzle and leaving the steak for the Eastwoods and
Gibsons
Book of the Month
Michael Barone’s Hard America, Soft America (Crown
Forum, 2004) describes the consequences of living in a society which
coddles its young and then thrusts them into a hard world which competes.
Barone declares, “We
seem to produce incompetent eighteen-year-olds but remarkably competent
thirty-year-olds....How do I explain this phenomenon? Because from ages
six to eighteen Americans live mostly in what I call Soft America – the
parts of our country where there is little competition and accountability.
But from ages eighteen to thirty Americans live mostly in Hard America—the
parts of American life subject to competition and accountability. Soft
America coddles.....Hard America plays for keeps.”
Barone is a senior writer with U.S. News & World Report and the principal
coauthor of the biannual Almanac of American Politics. Though not about
politics, in this new book he still provides an historical context for
his thesis, a context which includes economics, the testimony of literature,
and educational philosophy. He concludes that “while we act reasonably
in keeping parts of America Soft, we depend for our prosperity and our
advancement and our existence on the parts of America that are Hard.” He
asserts, “September 11 has made us understand better that Soft
America lives off Hard America.”
In Hard America, Soft America Barone has articulated a perspective which
sharpens our vision and our understanding of the dichotomous society
in which we function - or don’t.
Quotations of the Month
“The moment the idea is admitted into society that
property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a
force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.
If ‘Thou
shalt not covet’ and ‘Thou shalt not steal’ were
not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in
every society before it can be civilized or made free.”—John
Adams
“[I]f the public are bound to yield obedience to laws to which
they cannot give their approbation, they are slaves to those who make
such laws and enforce them.”—Candidus
Bill Lannon is Co-Founder and Associate Publisher of the Midcoast
Review. Contact him at <wlannon@
gwi.net>.