Most people of the so-called developed nations will eventually come across something in a piece of creative work (to avoid the contention as to what art really is) that will take them out of the viewing experience; this will occur when two conditions are met: one, if they have already got so into it that they have stopped bothering with the minor details and mostly go along with it; and two, if something happens which seems implausible or out of place, so much in fact that, even if a suggestion is made to explain it, it won't satisfy the viewer.
Just what will jar anyone out of the impression of believability does not fall along the same lines for every individual; and even the medium will have a different impact, because conditioning will affect what expectations one has and how they differ from what they are presented with.
One example that springs to mind is space battles: it has practically become the butt of most jokes in regards to Hollywood films that such scenes feature sound effects such as those we'd normally expect from an explosion, even though we would most likely hear nothing (except if there was, for instance, a thin atmosphere or something like that, instead of true deep space); and there is nothing wrong with the fact that people are aware of that... The downside, however, is that, having become a trop, people almost expect it nowadays. You rarely hear a person wish that a space battle was silent. Contrast that to the reception (at least amongst the enthusiasts) of the silent space scenes in the film Gravity.
But there still is an aspect to that same trope that the average person will overlook — the visuals: in the absence of an atmosphere, in the thinness of the near-vacuum space conditions, explosions would not be the flashy, fiery displays people are used to. What we'd see, instead, would be a very rapid, but extremely brilliant flash; a momentary puff that would almost immediately end, only to be followed by extremely fast-moving debris. This is almost universally unseen in space cinema, but much more importantly, nobody expects it: our conditioning is so thorough that, despite the fact that, if you truly think about it, normal explosions make no sense in space, we just don't think about it.
Historical arms, armour, dress and customs are further examples, albeit much more esoteric; the details which can be of import to the general public, however, are not few. For instance, armour and dress is invariably butchered, a most interesting case being the film Braveheart, which is notorious for its inaccuracy amongst certain circles for all sorts of reasons: William Wallace is shown wearing brigandine armour (essentially, a leather vest that has metal plates riveted with metal plates), but we generally know that such armour would not be right at the time, most importantly because it would go with a helmet. Kilts also weren't usual at the time, nor was it for the British soldiers to wear uniforms, but that at least serves the function of allowing the viewers to directly distinguish which side soldiers belong to, so it's at least acceptable in a way.
And yet there are other issues with the film that are far more important: primae noctis mostly likely didn't exist, and the legends behind William Wallace's actions do not support them on that idea; that makes the inclusion of primae noctis, the victimization and subsequent fridging of William Wallace's wife more than a little problematic. Why is it that Hollywood assumes that a man will do nothing for his kith or country when they are ravaged by whom he might consider an enemy, only to change his mind when his kin is affected, especially women? You can literally count on your fingers the number of legends and myths which are based off of the killing of a man's male relatives.
But perhaps the most damning of all circumstances is when the concept of fantasy enters the playing field; in this context, I use “fantasy” not in the sense of the genre, but the theme of introducing some elements which border on the preternatural and supernatural (whether either or both, really). It is the case more often than not that people will defend something glaringly problematic with the statement that it is but a fantasy and should thus be allowed to go as the creator may please.
That is not always fine and well, even though I, myself, am more than a little inclined to make way for a creator's intent. For instance, while science suggests that there is a tendency for men to have greater upper body strength than women on average and in maximum numbers, in fantasy I would expect the breaking of that “rule,” rather than its exaggeration! As in, if fantasy allows for creative extension, I would rather expect the author to present the strongest women being equally strong to the strongest men, not the strongest men being unrealistically stronger than women.
A glaring example of this sort of essentialist fantasy is evinced in the contrast between the Hulk and She-Hulk (which goes far beyond the naming convention): Hulk is more commonly presented as a raging, brutish and mostly unthinking machine of destruction when he loses his temper, who had to go through years of character development to become more of the thinking, smart person he is in his normal persona; while She-Hulk has more of an outraged, stereotypically hysteric reaction and retained most of her intellectual capacity. In other words: stereotypes of the man who has lost it completely, compared to those of the woman who is having a fit.
Some, as mentioned earlier, defend that with the notion that that, being a fantasy, does not have to conform to certain standards; and, if anything, that gives me pause — and for good reason. I have honestly had some difficulty bothering too much with comics, primarily because they usually rely heavily on pseudoscientific, “tenuous terminology” (as one article aptly puts it) and technobabble, besides what issues I've had with their publication practices and storytelling. But, in the end, this is exactly what seems to be the problem in this case: comics are very cavalier about realism, treating it with wanton disregard when it doesn't suit their needs, while falling back on it to defend darker, more sinister themes on their pages; otherwise, comics seem to be realistic only in the sense that they don't present us with Münchhausen-like tall tales at every opportunity — more in the sense that they'd rather present us with a setting with which they can relate to at least to some degree. You can easily tell that they'd rather do so, after all, because whenever they try to present a truly bizarre world that bends or breaks our expectations of reality completely, they fail spectacularly to give any semblance of a setting that one could believe exists.
So it seems that “realism” is usually not heeded; rather, most calls to realism are made only to defend the choices the creators made. And while we should appreciate that creators also have limitations, it's not unreasonable to expect them to appreciate their capacity to overcome their mistakes: far too often the relationship between creator and content is that the creator creates content which is not to the best of their abilities; and the creator is unwilling to perform better than they do. So the question becomes more blunt: should we (the consumers) invest our resources on content made by creators who are either not capable or not willing to do any better?
No comments:
Post a Comment