Snakes in the Grass - 26th April 2010
22nd May 2010
One of my most favourite people came to stay for the weekend and on Saturday we walked in South Kent for about 7 miles, enjoying the first properly warm sunshine of the year. There was a grass snake (Natrix natrix) also enjoying the sunshine, and we had to wait for a couple of seconds for it to move before we could continue on our path to Staple, past the un-pruned apple trees, as wild as big beards, and the one-handed clock.
Over the weekend my friend and I discussed various books we’ve read lately that we would both describe as needlessly gruesome. This got me thinking about how to theorise ‘needlessly gruesome’. I’ve known for years that I simply don't like what I see as ‘cheap’ scenes in books and films where some character – a child, an animal, or, of course, a woman – is first defined by the plot as ‘weak’ and then killed, raped, tortured or whatever, or otherwise escapes through pure chance. I wondered for years why, since this kind of thing can be said to be ‘realistic’, it rarely works in fictional plots (and is certainly not pleasurable to read). Life can be pretty violent and awful – so are those of us who don't want to read all the gory details just stupid-happy escapists or is there more to it than that?
On a very basic level, fictional plots are about changes in fortune, where an agent travels from one state to another because of the choices he or she makes. It’s pretty simple as a description of plot, but it comes straight from Aristotle and I think it’s useful. Just as every written text in English is made from only 26 characters, so every story is made when an agent’s changes in fortune over time are dramatised. Millions of wonderful things can be done with this simple ‘formula’.
The key here is agency: characters in fiction have choices, and it is their choices that lead to their changes in fortune. It might not be like real life exactly, but it gives us a version of real life that we can understand.
It can also be very subtle. The wonderful film Lourdes, which I saw recently, uses a change of fortune – indeed, a miracle – to have a very deep dialogue with its viewer about the nature of change, and miracles, and whether a character ‘deserves’ something or not. In a sense you need to know something of the formula of narrative in order to get the most out of the film – you need to understand what it is asking of you.
