Oh, contradictions. Let me tell you a story.
Like so many people, I went through a sort of awakening in early high school when my brain unthawed — I read The Catcher in the Rye, watched Fight Club, kissed a boy, and realized that life wasn’t just about having crushes, counting calories, isolating variables, and coming up with alternate Monopoly cash denominations.
Sure, all of that is important (no really, it is — without the meaningless shit we’d all go insane), but ages 14 and 15 are when I started thinking about the meaning of life and all that crap. Questions I continue to ponder. Whatever.
So, in short, the subsequent years featured a lot of J.D. Salinger and Chuck Palahniuk, Wes Anderson and P.T. Anderson, and some terrible writing on my part. Story-wise, I developed an almost criminal distaste for plot — all that mattered were stylistic elements (but not cinematography — who cares?) and scattered insights.
An example: A lot of people hate one of my favorite movies, Adaptation, because it has a crazy ending. It makes sense in some sort of meta-context, I think, but that doesn’t matter — the point is, when people used to tell me “I liked it until the end…” I’d sort of politely smile and nod, but I couldn’t really relate. Because, for me, Adaptation became one of my favorite movies within its first twenty minutes. It didn’t matter how it ended. The neuroticism, the voiceover — I could tell right from the beginning that this was a movie for me.
I’ve never quite gotten over my aversion to plots, at least not when I’m trying to create shit on my own. But that’s another post, I suppose.
Right now, I want to discuss how, around ages 19 and 20, I began a strange journey from movies and books filled with, as Adaptation would say, “that sprawling New Yorker shit,” to, well, JJ Abrams. And Stephen King. In other words: to plot.
I could write a whole post about Stephen King. And I will. But suffice it to say that King, Abrams, and Abrams’ people (the Lost writers, etc. — all heavily influenced by S.K.) create stories, where things happen. Vampires seize a New England town (pre-Twilight, obv.). Universes collide. Characters travel through time.
So, why do I like this stuff? I think there are two reasons:
First, I’ll be generous. To myself. King/Abrams stuff (I like other people too, but I’m just going to focus on these two) aren’t really about shit like vampires and parallel universes. They’re about characters.
I mean, come on, wouldn’t it kind of be the best thing ever to wake up stranded on a desert island? Or to find most of the world decimated by a superflu? (A la The Stand.) Sure, the lack of running water and/or valued friends and family members would be a bummer, but just think what kind of awesome personality traits might emerge. Maybe I, Ebony, a selfish cunt, would actually become a hero when faced with giant polar bears and smoke monsters. And squalor. Stranger things have happened.
So basically, Abrams & King are all about putting ordinary, flawed individuals in extraordinary situations and circumstances and exploring the possibilities. For example, one of my favorite King books, Pet Sematary (terribly written at parts, by the way) and Lost and Fringe have all covered the Shit Fathers Do To Protect Their Sons storyline, which, at its core, is just a reapplication of the old monkey’s paw tale (“be careful what you wish for”).
That’s my legit reason for loving these guys. Illegitimately, I think their stories also pretty compelling. I hate straight action (cars blowing up, fight scenes, etc.) but I love select elements of mystery, horror, and sci-fi. And, fuck, I love being genuinely surprised with what comes next. With shows like Lost, sure, I’m in the trenches with the other fans coming up with theories, but for most movies and books I simply sit back and take in the twists and turns as they come.
This is too long, so… in conclusion: For the past while I’ve been straddling the worlds of plotless insights and graceless plots, dreaming of creating a super-hybrid of my own someday. Or just keeping the two realms separate. Either way, it’s kind of weird.
ebony + irony. 