\nThe bigger the star, the closer their big scene is to the end of the film.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
This rule isn’t always followed, of course, but it’s typically our expectation<\/i>, so we notice \u2014 even if not consciously \u2014 where it’s not and are genuinely surprised when it’s explicitly<\/i> not followed (cf. Seagal and Executive Decision<\/i>). A meta-level flaw in the structure of the film of The Silence of the Lambs<\/i> is that Anthony Hopkins’ performance as Hannibal Lector so dominates those scenes of the film that he’s in that we genuinely expect him to reappear as part of the conclusion \u2014 which he does not, except in the epilogue, to deliver an ill-advised punchline. This expectation is motivated by nothing within the film’s narrative; it comes only from the meta-level expectations we’ve learned about film as a narrative medium.<\/p>\n
A curious and paradoxical effect can occur when we sometimes fail to distinguish between those narrative expectations we have based on our knowledge of how the real world works, and meta-level narrative expectations based on the stories we’ve seen so often they’ve become internalised. We react with an irrational impatience or disbelief when a character seems to be unaware of what sort of story they’re in<\/i>, and what its rules are. The teenage girl creeping up to the dark house seems oblivious to the fact that she’s in a slasher flick. She later turns away from the prone body of her vanquished assailant, apparently unaware that he’s obviously<\/i> not quite dead yet, despite the fact that they never are<\/i>.<\/p>\n
A more concrete example. Tony Gilroy’s estimable Michael Clayton<\/i> turns on an entrapment scene in which our hero wears a wire while drawing his corporate enemy \u2014 by now way out of her depth \u2014 into revealing all. Gilroy stages the scene perfectly: it’s Clayton’s last throw, and he’s fully aware of the risk and the low likelihood of success; Karen Crowder, his nemesis, is close to a breakdown, and not thinking clearly. Despite the fact that the motivation for the scene \u2014 and its outcome \u2014 is sound, it nevertheless drew criticism for being implausible. Such criticism \u2014 that Crowder would never fall for such an old trick \u2014 is instructively muddled. On a superficial level it assumes merely that the viewer doesn’t buy Gilroy’s careful exposition of the characters’ motivations. But the crucial muddling is between the viewer’s real-world and meta-level expectations. The entrapment scene isn’t intrinsically<\/i> implausible; nor is it implausible within the world of characters and events that Gilroy has constructed. It’s only implausible if the viewer expects not only that the characters are familiar with the \u2014 somewhat clich\u00e9d \u2014 narrative device of entrapment by someone wearing a wire, but also that the characters are aware that they’re in that sort of narrative<\/i>. It’s a droll, comedic observation that fictional characters don’t inhabit worlds in which they themselves exist as fictional characters \u2014 James Bond isn’t aware of the James Bond character, for example \u2014 but that’s not quite the point here. For the scene to be implausible, it wouldn’t be enough for Crowder to be aware of the entrapment clich\u00e9 in (her world’s) fiction; she’d have to be aware of that clich\u00e9 and<\/i> believe herself to be in<\/i> a work of (her world’s) fiction. In our real lives we don’t (usually!) bring our meta-level expectations about fictional narratives with us as we assess what’s likely to happen. Yet there is, at least for some viewers, a dissatisfaction which manifests itself in claims of implausibility when fictional<\/i> characters fail to do exactly that.<\/p>\n
An unfortunate conclusion might be drawn here. It is entirely possible that narrative devices can be so overused that they more or less permanently breach the line between how we perceive stories and how we perceive the real world. Such devices are then rendered practically unusable in stories, not because of any actual real-world implausibility, but because we can no longer suspend our disbelief that the characters aren’t aware of them. At that point we fail to distinguish between the real world and the story world.<\/p>\n
Most of the above is scene-setting for a discussion of a remarkable aspect of Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Never Let Me Go<\/i> \u2014 and its recent film adaptation, written by Alex Garland. The response to both novel and film by their readers\/viewers \u2014 as even a casual glance through feedback at Amazon and the IMDb shows \u2014 pivots to a large degree on a single question: and not so much how the question is answered, as whether the question is asked at all<\/i>. Ishiguro’s story of cloned children raised to provide spare parts for “normal” humans is, on a superficial level, a familiar one. A recent comparison is with the sound and fury of Michael Bay’s film The Island<\/i>; an older comparison \u2014 not involving cloning, but with a congruent dark secret \u2014 is the 1976 film Logan’s Run<\/i> (somewhat modified from an earlier novel). Both The Island<\/i> and Logan’s Run<\/i> involve a BIG REVEAL of the fact that life isn’t what it has hitherto seemed; a protracted chase sequence, at the end of which the protagonists manage to escape their pre-arranged fate; and a conclusion in which the facade is smashed, and tyranny is destroyed.<\/p>\n
Never Let Me Go<\/i> has radically different intentions. Ishiguro’s goal is to set up a world in which clones reared as organ donors know, and accept, their fate \u2014 more or less \u2014 and then to explore the nature of such a life, and such a death. He very conspicuously is uninterested in being distracted from his task by either the lure of the dizzying plot twist, or getting stuck in fastidiously accounting for the mechanics by which the clone world is managed and secured. Exposition is gradual and open to the reader, much as it appears to be to the clones themselves as growing children. There are no great secrets. By barely even touching upon methods of enforcement<\/i> of the system of clone rearing and organ “donation”, Ishiguro permits himself the freedom to take them for granted, and to focus on the emotional and interpersonal, rather than the mechanical and schematic. He also, paradoxically, perhaps implies to the reader something even more terrible than we could ever be actually shown: a reason that we’re not<\/i> shown a system of enforcement might be that it is so complete, so draconian, so assumed<\/i>, that escape is never even considered. (Garland’s screenplay actually breaks this silence by showing \u2014 albeit gently, and in passing \u2014 the older clones wearing electronic tags by which they log their movements. This very mention of the idea of a security system raises the issue, and might be seen as a distraction from the purity of Ishiguro’s focus. It is perhaps a more knowing, pre-emptive nod to the requirements of the medium of film.)<\/p>\n
Notwithstanding Ishiguro’s clear design and interests, and that which he takes to be axiomatic, many readers\/viewers seem compelled to ask: Why don’t they run?<\/i><\/p>\n
That is, why don’t the clones of Never Let Me Go<\/i> do everything they can to escape their fate \u2014 like the protagonists of The Island<\/i> and Logan’s Run<\/i>? This is the question which appears to comprehensively divide readers\/viewers of the story: whether the question is even asked, and whether a satisfactory answer is found.<\/p>\n
It’s worth taking a moment to consider the question at face value. Why don’t<\/i> the clones run? They’re perfectly aware of a world outside of their own, and would seem to be indistinguishable from non-clones; blending in is at least an option worth considering. The facile answer \u2014 but also in a real sense the correct<\/i> answer \u2014 is that the clones don’t run because Ishiguro doesn’t want them to<\/i>. They’re his characters, and he’s just not interested in that sort of story. As readers\/viewers, that might be enough for us. We might also ask whether Ishiguro has created a world in which the clones not running is plausible<\/i>. Although he’s not interested in spending much time constructing systems and mechanisms of enforcement, he does hint here and there at how it’s achieved. At Hailsham, the school \u2014 somewhat isolated, we’re led to understand \u2014 where the clones spend their formative years, rumours of vague but violent things happening to those who stray out of bounds circulate among the students. Later, once the clones have been granted a measure of autonomy of movement, Ishiguro shows how their extreme social ignorance and clumsiness serve to reinforce their awareness of separation and differentness. It’s clear to them that they don’t belong, and quite likely couldn’t pass<\/i>. It’s notable that the enforcement mechanisms Ishiguro does refer to are non-technological. To the extent that Never Let Me Go<\/i> is science fiction (and it’s hard to argue that it isn’t), it’s science fiction which doesn’t much care about technology; the system of electronic tagging is Garland’s addition for the film adaptation – or at least credited to him.<\/p>\n
It should not be overlooked that the protagonists of Never Let Me Go<\/i> do in fact attempt to break free from their situation. Following a series of rumours, which seem to be passed down as a kind of false folk-memory among the clones, they seek out those in charge of their school \u2014 long-since closed \u2014 to apply for a “deferral” in their schedule of organ donations, which they have been led to believe is available to clones who can prove that they are truly in love. This attempt, of course, pathetically naive and misguided as it is, and conducted within<\/i> the system they belong to, rather than to escape from that system, merely reinforces that the clones cannot genuinely conceive of any other possible life for themselves. The failure of the application for a deferral \u2014 because no such contingency has ever existed \u2014 essentially constitutes the end of the narrative, and the end of their lives.<\/p>\n
Given, then, that Ishiguro’s intentions and interests are clear, and that he describes a coherent but alternate reality in which clones are raised in such a way that thoughts of true escape simply do not occur to them<\/i> \u2014 and, crucially, the first-person narrator is herself one of the clones, so we’re not required to infer how they think \u2014 why is the question of why the clones don’t run nevertheless so significant for so many readers\/viewers? It’s even an issue for some top-of-the-range critics, such as Peter Bradshaw in the Guardian<\/i><\/a>:<\/p>\n\nMichael Bay’s The Island, however ridiculous, did feature people who raged against the truth when it was revealed to them, and tried to escape. This never seems to occur to Ruth or Kathy or Tommy[…]\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Faced with the undeniable fact that it genuinely doesn’t<\/i> occur to the characters, the reader\/viewer can react in one of two ways: they can accept Ishiguro’s axiomatic “what if”, and proceed from there to the internally-logical conclusion that he draws; or, they can simply refuse to accept the axiom, and consequently refuse to accept the conclusion. It will come as no surprise when I claim that different meta-processing of the story (and of stories generally) is the key here; specifically, whether the reader\/viewer’s meta-processing allows<\/i> acceptance of a fictional world \u2014 no matter how well imagined, no matter how sound the internal motivation \u2014 in which clones created as organ donors are aware of this situation and do not attempt to escape it.<\/p>\n
I’m going to suggest two aspects of a reader\/viewer’s meta-processing that might be significant here \u2014 with no claim that other aspects might not also play a part. The first aspect is the extent to which the first act of Never Let Me Go<\/i> causes the retrieval for the reader\/viewer of other, (superficially-) similar stories, which process then creates the expectation that this is that sort of story<\/i>. This might well begin even before the story itself is processed, of course, as the reader\/viewer reads reviews and sees promotional material. Besides The Island<\/i> and Logan’s Run<\/i>, there are many other examples in popular film alone of a protagonist discovering \u2014 or being shown \u2014 that they have been living in a deceptive or illusionary world, and then seeking escape: The Truman Show<\/i>, John Carpenter’s They Live<\/i>, Total Recall<\/i>, The Matrix<\/i>. Particularly<\/i> if Never Let Me Go<\/i> is approached as science fiction \u2014 and the central premise of cloning makes this likely \u2014 the stories most liable to be retrieved as part of the meta-processing which involves predicting how this story will pan out are those in which a protagonist does in fact triumph against the powers of deception and illusion. To be sure, there are those readers\/viewers for whom the discovery that this isn’t<\/i> one of those stories is itself a pleasurable experience – confounding the conventions of genre clich\u00e9 has its own merits. But for many, perhaps most, that same discovery has the bitter flavour of betrayal.<\/p>\n
A second aspect of meta-processing relevant here is the extent to which the reader\/viewer seeks\/wishes to identify<\/i> with the protagonists. Such identification transforms questions and expectations about what the protagonists will\/should do, into idiosyncratic assessments of what the reader\/viewer would do in their place \u2014 or, at the very least, emotionally-invested hopes<\/i> that the protagonists behave in this<\/i> way, or make that<\/i> choice. With regard to the latter, it would be a strange reader indeed who hoped that the protagonists would die on the operating table after donating one organ too many. But more or less any<\/i> identification with fictional characters is based on a muddling of real-world and story-world expectations, and a simple refusal to take seriously the author’s intentions. In the case of Never Let Me Go<\/i>, it is likely to make the story more or less unacceptable.<\/p>\n
It might further be argued that the plain, unremitting sadness of Never Let Me Go<\/i> \u2014 its theme of the failure to escape \u2014 makes the story unacceptable to many, for whom the purpose of fiction is itself escapism. This would be too simplistic, I think. The story is certainly tragedy, but so is James Cameron’s Titanic<\/i>, and a more dreamily romantic story than that could scarcely be found. The essence of the tragedy in Never Let Me Go<\/i> is that the protagonists (by design) lack the resources to even think about running. Jack might drown as the ship sinks, but he tries<\/i>, and he dies saving Rose.<\/p>\n
A better comparison might be with the knowing advance of First World War infantrymen to their deaths \u2014 the whole exercise suffused with the rigidity of class and status that marks Ishiguro’s work. Dignity and nobility in the face of madness are qualities Ishiguro’s clones do possess, and it could hardly be argued that the clones do not likewise go willingly to their deaths in the service of others. Why, then, is a story of First World War heroism acceptable<\/i>, in a way that Never Let Me Go<\/i> might not be to many readers? The difference, of course, is the inevitability of a historical account, which anchors the tragedy, and resists the creation of competing expectations. If it were a story of tragic history, Never Let Me Go<\/i> would play quite differently. As fiction, it remains vulnerable to the many and varied expectations, needs and desires we bring to it, so it’s a different story for each of us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[Many spoilers ahead, so caveat lector.] Among many other factors \u2014 financial, emotional, psychological \u2014 the theoretical factor that drove my work towards a PhD (in automatic story generation) off that Thelma and Louise cliff was the growing realisation not just that meta-level processing by readers\/viewers of a story is, if anything, a greater part … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-narrative"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/northgare.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/northgare.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/northgare.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/northgare.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/northgare.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/northgare.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":764,"href":"http:\/\/northgare.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7\/revisions\/764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/northgare.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/northgare.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/northgare.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}