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Utility/Truth
Jul. 1st, 2019 05:57 pmThis article really clicked with me. Not only because of its central message, but because of its specific commentary on a twitter story by sixthformpoet. Unlike Whyman, the author of the article linked above, I had no prior knowledge of sixthformpoet (henceforth SFP) except as a usernamification of the title of my fourth favourite song by Bricolage, a band who released one album in 2008 and then disappeared off the face of the earth. So, I went into SFP's thread with an open mind. It was clearly storytelling, with no real intention of passing as reality - to date, I don't believe the author has made any statement regarding its veracity. I read the first part of the story out of context, some days before I discovered there existed a second and third.
Whyman describes the SFP twitter story as "a bad, pastoral romantic comedy set in a world where suffering only exists to make the good people look good." This, to my mind, is an accurate assessment. I enjoyed the first part of the story - there's certainly an element of this sentiment present, but it's counterbalanced by black comedy and a tight circular plot. There's also a sort of twee cleverness to its exploration of coincidence, which feels as though it could have been lifted from Midsomer Murders, a sometime indulgence of mine. And, most importantly, there is a sense of "wouldn't this be hilarious if it were real" - not quite analogous to Herzog's "ecstatic truth," as mentioned by Whyman, but certainly adjacent. I think, had I only read the first part, my opinion of the story overall would've remained charitable.
I probably should have known better; clever writing has seldom been delivered in the form of a thread on twitter. (Jennifer Egan's Black Box is a notable exception.) When I discovered parts two and three to SFP's story, I was left with a bad taste in my mouth. I don't see the need for these additions to the story: apart from anything else, they dilute the efficacy of the first of part's ending. The final twist that brings it all back around doesn't just stick the landing, it falls flat like a wet rag. One of my personal storytelling sins is when a story keeps going after its natural ending. Another is the use of characters as props for the protagonist's morality. (Which you will have heard ad nauseam if you've ever talked to me about Harry Potter.) This is something that SFP's story does in a most egregious manner.
In part one, we're introduced to the protagonist's wife. In part two, we meet the protagonist's unusually altruistic children, a heartwarming homeless man, and a suicidal woman whose depression is played for laughs. The way SFP encourages us to laugh at a suicide attempt is certainly the more morally objectionable faux-pas in the story, but I want to focus on the homeless man, John, as an example of particularly bad character writing and storytelling. John's homelessness, as a feature of his character, exists not to invite discourse on the existence of homelessness in an affluent society, but rather to bolster the moral superiority of the protagonist's children, and by implication the protagonist himself. Not only are there negative amounts of ecstatic truth in the way the children give up their Disneyland savings to John, but there's also a bad aftertaste to the whole idea: as Whyman says, John's suffering is being used to make the "good" people look better.
This is a very utilitarian concept of character writing. It's my belief that a character should never solely exist to reveal something about the protagonist - this should be an incidental function. When a character's only function is to reveal a detail about the protagonist, they become a prop. A prop in fiction can be anything, but is most commonly some kind of inanimate object - unsurprisingly. Consider, for example, a character who wears a pair of ratty sneakers to a swanky party. The sneakers are a prop which reveal a detail about the character's personality. The same thing could be accomplished by the character, this time well-dressed, inviting an outspoken date to the party. In both cases, the character is thumbing their nose at the establishment. However, in one of these cases, there is a secondary character who exists to bolster a detail of the main character's personality. They are not a character in their own right. This is not an objectively bad thing but, unless you're Ayn Rand, you probably think it sucks most of the time.
Through this lens, we can view John the homelesss man as a prop, rather than a character. His main function in the story is to make the protagonist's children look like saints. At no point do we receive any comment on his personhood or his suffering through homelessness. He is reduced to a Dickensian reminder of the importance of charity, with none of the biting social commentary you occasionally find nestled in Dickens' writing. There's a subjective moral fault in showing the protagonist's children's goodness through their interaction with someone else's hardship. There is also a literary fault: it's lazy shorthand for actual characterisation. Okay, look, I know it's just a thread on twitter, and you may well say it's not that deep. But I'm holding it to the same standard as any short story, if not in literary style then in content. And it's precisely because this is a thread on twitter that these flaws shine through: we are able to look at a story in raw outline form, without any interesting language to distract us from the shoddy shortcuts that the author uses to show us what a good person their protagonist is.
With SFP's story, we have a perfect example of the raw bones of a bad story. The laziness and turpitude is a central facet of it: there would be no plot without the children and John. Perhaps in a case like this it would be better there were no story at all.
Whyman describes the SFP twitter story as "a bad, pastoral romantic comedy set in a world where suffering only exists to make the good people look good." This, to my mind, is an accurate assessment. I enjoyed the first part of the story - there's certainly an element of this sentiment present, but it's counterbalanced by black comedy and a tight circular plot. There's also a sort of twee cleverness to its exploration of coincidence, which feels as though it could have been lifted from Midsomer Murders, a sometime indulgence of mine. And, most importantly, there is a sense of "wouldn't this be hilarious if it were real" - not quite analogous to Herzog's "ecstatic truth," as mentioned by Whyman, but certainly adjacent. I think, had I only read the first part, my opinion of the story overall would've remained charitable.
I probably should have known better; clever writing has seldom been delivered in the form of a thread on twitter. (Jennifer Egan's Black Box is a notable exception.) When I discovered parts two and three to SFP's story, I was left with a bad taste in my mouth. I don't see the need for these additions to the story: apart from anything else, they dilute the efficacy of the first of part's ending. The final twist that brings it all back around doesn't just stick the landing, it falls flat like a wet rag. One of my personal storytelling sins is when a story keeps going after its natural ending. Another is the use of characters as props for the protagonist's morality. (Which you will have heard ad nauseam if you've ever talked to me about Harry Potter.) This is something that SFP's story does in a most egregious manner.
In part one, we're introduced to the protagonist's wife. In part two, we meet the protagonist's unusually altruistic children, a heartwarming homeless man, and a suicidal woman whose depression is played for laughs. The way SFP encourages us to laugh at a suicide attempt is certainly the more morally objectionable faux-pas in the story, but I want to focus on the homeless man, John, as an example of particularly bad character writing and storytelling. John's homelessness, as a feature of his character, exists not to invite discourse on the existence of homelessness in an affluent society, but rather to bolster the moral superiority of the protagonist's children, and by implication the protagonist himself. Not only are there negative amounts of ecstatic truth in the way the children give up their Disneyland savings to John, but there's also a bad aftertaste to the whole idea: as Whyman says, John's suffering is being used to make the "good" people look better.
This is a very utilitarian concept of character writing. It's my belief that a character should never solely exist to reveal something about the protagonist - this should be an incidental function. When a character's only function is to reveal a detail about the protagonist, they become a prop. A prop in fiction can be anything, but is most commonly some kind of inanimate object - unsurprisingly. Consider, for example, a character who wears a pair of ratty sneakers to a swanky party. The sneakers are a prop which reveal a detail about the character's personality. The same thing could be accomplished by the character, this time well-dressed, inviting an outspoken date to the party. In both cases, the character is thumbing their nose at the establishment. However, in one of these cases, there is a secondary character who exists to bolster a detail of the main character's personality. They are not a character in their own right. This is not an objectively bad thing but, unless you're Ayn Rand, you probably think it sucks most of the time.
Through this lens, we can view John the homelesss man as a prop, rather than a character. His main function in the story is to make the protagonist's children look like saints. At no point do we receive any comment on his personhood or his suffering through homelessness. He is reduced to a Dickensian reminder of the importance of charity, with none of the biting social commentary you occasionally find nestled in Dickens' writing. There's a subjective moral fault in showing the protagonist's children's goodness through their interaction with someone else's hardship. There is also a literary fault: it's lazy shorthand for actual characterisation. Okay, look, I know it's just a thread on twitter, and you may well say it's not that deep. But I'm holding it to the same standard as any short story, if not in literary style then in content. And it's precisely because this is a thread on twitter that these flaws shine through: we are able to look at a story in raw outline form, without any interesting language to distract us from the shoddy shortcuts that the author uses to show us what a good person their protagonist is.
With SFP's story, we have a perfect example of the raw bones of a bad story. The laziness and turpitude is a central facet of it: there would be no plot without the children and John. Perhaps in a case like this it would be better there were no story at all.
