...then it would be manic-depressive. Up and down. Positive and negative. I cannot make up my mind about a book that so far (three chapters left, from eighteen) has made me want to apply it's wisdom and at other times throw it out of a window, perhaps after writing "YOU'RE WORLD VIEW IS SO VERY NARROW" all over the cover in angry black crayon. With so little left to go, I think I'll wait until I've finished it to do a more in-depth analysis.
Sometimes I can't help but wonder how I'd read the book if I was coming to it with no story writing experience - all doe eyed and full of wonder. Not that I'm a hard-bitten, cynical, chain smoking writer, whose shirt collar is permenantly bent out of shape and speech pattern is locked in"Sardonic" mode*...but I do know that the way I read stories has certainly been affected in some negative ways by my study of them.
A quick and easy example is the most common filmic use of allusion**, wherein the writer cannot be arsed to properly devlop a charactor or concept so that the audience is shown what s/he wants them to see...thus they name a character after something they came across elsewhere, hypertext linking you - in a fashion - to something which they hope you read as well.
A pretty straightforward example, used by Fields in his flabbergasting book, is how the main villain of Chinatown - a man behind a major conspiracy to do with manipulating Los Angeles water supply - is named Noah Cross.
Now, I liked the movie as a whole...but the thing is that having spent so much time analysing stories both in school and of my own volition, this slapped me across the face with as much laziness and absurdity as if you were to call him "Watery McBiblical". Particularly since I know full well that someone doesn't have to have even read the entirety of a Wikipedia article on most subjects in order to be able to allude to them (as they can rely on the viewer's knowledge to fill in the gaps).
Feh!
You have been reading...
SCRIPTIN' FANCY-LIKE: OLIVER DOES NOT CARE FOR ALLUSION IN FILM, PARTICULARLY ALLUSION TO PRIOR WORKS VIA THE NAME OF A CHARACTER OR PLACE. OKAY?
*Yet!
**Oh dear, it all comes full circle...
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In that case, you may want to steer clear of Children of Men. I thought it was a pretty good flick, truth be told, but the 'Okay this is an analogy to the world right now you guys!' shtick got old.
They borrowed, almost literally, images from Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, Iraq, Israel, Palestine, the Warsaw Ghetto, and so on. It's all crammed in there. The least subtle was the main characters passing an almost naked dark-skinned fellow with a black hood being forced to stand on a wooden crate with his arms stretched out.
Hmmm.
On the plus side, the concept is fairly cool (sort of like Y: The Last Man), and I cannot argue that the world would probably react the way it had been presented in the film (and much of what had happened in the twenty year gap is never explained, which is a point in the favour of the screenwriters and director). Plus, it's all shot in London?
Mind you, if you have seen the film, I am wasting my breath! The breath of my fingers.
In other news:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v446/spyderbaby/flp04.jpg
Damn! The entire link dun fit.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/
v446/spyderbaby/flp04.jpg
There we go.
I ain't seen it, thus you mildly thickened your fingertip callouses in vain!
I have to admit, I probably should have mentioned that I have a far greater tolerance for visual allusion as well as allusion to current events. What really grinds my gears is allusion to prior works within the names of characters, places, vehicles, musical instruments etc.
Shakespeare could have called Hamlet "Chuck" for all the "Hamlet-ness" it gave him, you know? What made Hamlet HAMLET was how he was characterized etc.
But fast forward a few centuries and maybe some hack doesn't feel like making the effort to properly forshadow that his character is going to go insane and try to kill his father-in-law. Bing bang boom, the character is either named Hamlet, nicknamed Hamlet, he has a dog called Polonius....I don't know, I'm tired but I hope I've refined my point?
DIDN'T mildly thickin your fingertip callouses in vain.
Also you and your purty PICT-OORS
HIRO PROTAGONIST
To be fair, at least that was satire/comedy/something.
I might have been a little hard on the film, because even if the analogies are blatant the issues are pertinent and to a large extent they haven't been adequately dealt with! Besides, the film has Michael Caine, who inevitably threatens to outshine his co-stars.
WE WANT BONES
WE WANT MEAT
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