I was talking to my friend regarding the latest episode of my favorite TV show ever (no prizes for guessing) and she was mulling to me on how she can’t keep up with anything and everything that is happening to the show.
She was; forgive the obvious pun, LOST.
Of course LOST sits as a exaggerated example as one of the most convoluted storylines in television history, but it really made me wonder if our modern generation’s attention span too limited to actually inspire off anything significant?
We seem to need our entertainment and media to spell out everything for us.
We do it so unconsciously don’t we? First-world upbringing and the high pace of life rarely lets us take a breather from the automaton of our schedules. As a result, we find it so hard to pull away to imagine, wonder and sometimes just sit and listen to a well-written story.
We’ve become too “grown-up” for our good.
Roald Dahl often managed to weave this into his children stories; a young protagonist with often villainous adult figures, speckled generously with dark and macabre humor. Maybe beneath it all he was trying to speak to the inner child in us only adults would understand.
But it seems more and more apparent that with our modern generation, we simply just can’t wait.
With our modern Youtube sensibilities, I have my doubts that legends like Shakespeare or even Alfred Hitchcock would thrive in this era. We would never come to ponder the poetic tragedy that is Macbeth. Or that the horrific realization that Norman Bates and his Mama are one and the same.
Hence the advent of explosion-porn such as Transformers 2 and the 3 hour long tech demo called Avatar. The only way the studios are gonna keep you in your theater seat the entire time is to bleed your eyes with effects. And its escalating! From boom-a-minute flicks now comes boom-a-second movies with no plot development whatsoever!
My point is; let the storyteller tell the story. Let him weave the plot for you.
Again let me bring you back to the example of LOST, the main gripe of haters is the long drawn out story over so many episodes. However, they are missing the main point. I think the producers want to build consistent mythos into the show and also a continuity within. That gives room for character and plot development over the series. The writers are by no means infallible, but the I believe their work is still head and shoulders way above the rest.
I think journeys are as important as the goal.
It’s just that now, we’re just so myopic that we just want to find out what happens in the end. Bruce Willis character is a ghost. The bloke from “A Beautiful Mind” has imaginary friends. Detective Caruso solves the case. Jack Bauer is badass. But what happened to the story leading up to this moment? We have have no regard for pacing in our stories anymore. Everything has to be solved within a half-hour episode for us. 60 minutes tops.
If anything; if it doesn’t fit our 140-character tweet limit, we probably don’t have the time to see through it all.
And we’re also strangely nit-picky despite our viewing habits, if any thread is not resolved explicitly by episode’s end, it is deemed a plot hole and its bad writing! While there are cases of sloppy scribes, some threads are intentionally left open-ended. Call it creative liberty or what-have-you, maybe the intention is for the viewer to come to their own conclusions. It wouldn’t hurt to use some imaginary power eh?
Speaking of imagination… I need to get to do some writing now.
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