A failure of imagination

This is from a year or two ago, but I only found it now, so tough.

Tim O’Brien, writing in The Atlantic, has an eminently worth-reading article on the trouble of producing successful creative fiction and the degree to which imagination – however broadly figured – plays a part in that process.  When stories fail (and they often do), the problem, he writes, is almost always a lack of imagination rather than a lack of verisimilitude or plausible characterization.  He provides an example of a failed child’s bedtime story that… well, just try to immerse yourself in this:

Batman weighed 188 pounds. His hair was black. His complexion was fair. Young Batman grew up in Sioux City, Iowa, where he spent an unhappy and decidedly disturbed childhood. His grandfather was well known in town as the man who had invented the machine that lays down lane stripes on highways all across America. Batman’s mother was an insomniac. She could sew pretty well. She loved a good pork chop. Batman’s father, by contrast, preferred seafood. The church Batman attended was made of limestone. His school was a brick structure. The family car was an Oldsmobile.

As contrived as that is, it’s not so far from some of the positive examples I’ve seen provided in creative writing manuals.  Anyway, the way in which O’Brien takes the basic contents of that muddle above and fleshes it out into a story that’s actually delightful to read is, well, delightful.  I won’t spoil it here.  You’ll have to see for yourself.

Shifting touchstones

Every year, the indefatigable compilers of the Mindset List release their findings for the edification, amusement and general horror of those adults who labour in the academy.  This year’s is out, and what it tells us about the incoming Class of ’14 is as interesting as ever.  In part:

- Most of them have never worn a wristwatch or used a phone with a cord.

- Most of them do not (and moreover cannot) write in cursive.

- The internet has always existed for them.

- From their point of view, far from being enemies, the Russians and the Americans have always lived together in outer space.

- Clint Eastwood is more familiar to them as a director than as an actor.

- 9/11 occurred while they were in the fourth or fifth grade rather than in high school (as it was for me).

All of which is interesting enough in its own right, I guess, but it can certainly be helpful when it comes to tailoring one’s cultural allusions while teaching.  The last of those intrigues me a great deal; I asked my students last year what they remembered about the day, and I was surprised to find that their memories of it were much less vivid than my own, and that many of them had passed through the day without knowing anything had happened at all.

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (2010)

On paper it seemed like it couldn’t fail: take a directorial rising star, fresh off of two of the most understated and pleasing comedies of the past ten years, add a great cast of character actors, and adapt some fun, eccentric, yet oddly-serious material that’s been pleasing comic fans left and right since the first page of the first issue.  On paper it seemed like it couldn’t fail; on the big screen, though, it does.

What Scott Pilgrim gives us is instead a veritable triple-threat of disappointment: Edgar Wright has directed a film in which can be found none of the things that made his previous classics (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz) so excellent; the cast (including Michael Cera, Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Kieran Culkin) carry themselves as though they were caricatures of everything one sometimes finds annoying about them; and, most distressing of all, the compelling substance of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s original works has been stripped from the thing – utterly stripped – in favour of flashy and substanceless style.  Mere style cannot carry a film, and it barely even gets Scott Pilgrim off the ground.

I have never before wanted so badly to like something and then been so utterly vexed by it.  This has been a pretty awful evening.  (5/10)