https://twitter.com/walterkirn/status/1647145349944066048
I can’t stop thinking about this statement. It is such a simple, trenchant distillation of why so many stories fail to achieve any emotional resonance I can’t believe I didn’t think of it first. It also underscores why we have to pay attention to who is creating our culture’s stories in the first place.
You might find Kirn’s focus on creative writing to be a bit banal, too pop-culture-oriented, but let’s face it: in the absence of any sort of meaningful high culture, pop culture is all we’ve got. And Kirn’s diagnosis of the problem goes beyond the written word and into film, television, and probably even comic books and video games (two mediums I am about 25 years out of date on).1
For far too long, our culture has been created by maladaptive weirdoes. Manhood has been defined by your choice of misandrist viragos or creepy dorks lacking even an angstrom of firsthand experience with traditional masculinity. The ugly girls and the freaks shoved into lockers are the ones writing about heroism and what it means to be a man. This sounds mean, but I’m using extreme language2 to make a point. Long gone are the square-jawed men and intrepid women who lived interesting lives that created your culture. Instead, it’s mostly trust-fund babies with viewpoints perfectly in line with those in the upper echelons of government and business. The kind of people who support whatever current thing3 the man on TV tells him to. Is it any wonder why stories focus less on the consequences of actions and the consequences of thinking the wrong things?
Years ago while teaching creative writing to grad students I noticed a new kind of short story that was not about deep conflicts but differences of opinion. One character would have the right opinions on some issue, another the wrong ones. Bad things would happen to the person with the wrong ones. The end. Boring is not the word.
This change has happened relatively recently. A few weeks back, I watched School of Rock (2003), Jack Black’s comedy vehicle/celebration of Boomer rock with kids doing adult things—you know, that kind of movie. And yet, the movie didn’t have the kids doing anything super-vulgar, and actually had a heart.
Take a look at the date, though: 2003. We’re just a few years past 9-11, and also after what author Brian Niemeier calls “Cultural Ground Zero,” the period where “the culture ‘froze’ before melting into a stagnant puddle.” Brian dates this to 1997, which is fair. 2003 is 20 years ago, making me feel old, but other than the absence of cell phones and the Internet as important plot points, the movie could have been made today.
Visually, at least. There are other things, though, that date School of Rock in a way that show how much the culture has actually changed since then:
Race isn’t a thing in the movie, e.g., the white characters, and white men especially, aren’t constantly beclowned by sassy minorities. Everybody is friends and is treated equally regardless of race.4 Depending on your age you might not remember, but pre-2008, there was actually a very real and palpable sense that we had moved past race. And now look at us.
Jack Black’s character, Dewey Finn, is an overgrown manchild, yet he actually learns and grows, and isn’t a completely stupid, irredeemable clown who needs a strong woman/harridan to whip him into shape.
Speaking of harridans, Dewey’s best friend/roommate, Ned Schneebly, played by Michael White (more on him later), whose identity Dewey steals to substitute teach at the prestigious Horace Green prep school, has a girlfriend played by everyone's favorite rhymes-with-a-baseball-move,5 Sarah Silverman. Silverman plays the only thing she can, a shrill and screechy harpy, who constantly criticizes Dewey for being a loser and Ned for being weak. The sad thing is that Silverman's character is actually right about Dewey, at least in the beginning of the movie.
However, by the end of the movie (spoiler), Ned chooses Dewey. A bros-before-hoes6 sighting that you would never, ever see in a movie made post-2016.
Fun footnote: Actor Lucas Babin, who played Spider,7 the guitarist who replaced Dewey in his own band, is now a Republican District Attorney in Texas who made waves in 2021 for indicting Netflix over the Cuties controversy. Netflix then sued Babin. What a country!
So you could say School of Rock was less “politically correct” than movies made now would be (us old guys used to call wokeness “political correctness”). Even by 2003, rock and roll was over as an important cultural force, but the movie still holds up. One thing that bothered me about it was that Dewey doesn’t face any real consequences for his action, which are essentially tantamount to exploiting children and taking them to a rock club without their parents’ permission. This is not cool. But comedy, am I right?
Actions . . . consequences . . . what am I, some sort of Bible-thumper?
Well, yes. But I also recognize what makes stories compelling, and like Walter Kirn, it is not characters who hold the proper opinions having good stuff happen to them and characters who hold the improper opinions having bad stuff happen to them. It is the unfolding drama of the results of choices made by characters, flawed characters, characters put into difficult situations, characters who make us say, “What would I do in this scenario?” That is what puts butts in seats to watch a movie or TV show, or settle in with a several hundred page book.
Remember what I said about Michael White? Not only did White play Ned Schneebly in School of Rock, he wrote the movie. Want to know what else he wrote?
Every right-winger’s inexplicably favorite show, The White Lotus.8
I have never seen this show, but it has been called “right-wing” art by many for reasons I generally disagree with, but I think fans of the show are on to something. I have not seen this show myself, but what I’ve been told by fans is that people get what they deserve.
Isn’t this sad where the consequences of a character’s actions are enough to make a show seem like it’s right-wing?
I disagree with this. I think that such depictions of, you know, reality, make a show not-left-wing, but not necessarily right-wing.9 It’s a fine distinction but I think it holds up.
Is Michael White a crypto-MAGAt? I doubt it; I mean, just look at him.10 Okay, that was mean. But come on--nobody on the political right makes it as far as White has in the entertainment industry for a variety of reasons I will refrain from going into now. But the most probable reason he's attained such a lofty position is because--drumroll please--White seems to understand both human nature and good storytelling.
Both of these things tend to skew things a certain direction, and that’s a direction I would call “not political.” Unless, of course, you subscribe to the viewpoint that things have gotten so wild in the United States that everything—movies, the food you eat, the blogs you read, me typing these words—is political. If that is the case, then may God have mercy on us all.
And so we return to Kirn’s point. Stories where bad things happen to people who hold the wrong opinions are boring and lame—think American Beauty. Stories where you can see the “twist” coming before the previews are even over: the “homophobe” is secretly gay, the pious Christian is a secret hypocrite/murderer/both,11 girls always beat boys, etc.
The point isn’t to make the cringe, lame conservative version of these tropes and have a flaming homosexual be a mass-murdering atheist who must be stopped by brave Ronald Reagan devotees who love the free market and guns and fight evil while spouting Ayn Rand quotes. The point is to make stories true to life. The problem is, those who get into these businesses tend to be some of the most sheltered, manipulated, and out-of-touch among us. Spiritually dead, historically illiterate, and purely hedonistic. I don’t know what Michael White did to stay out of this mental trap, but more power to him, even if The White Lotus sounds like kind of a gross show.
-Alexander
What little exposure I’ve had to American comic books since the year 2000 or so has given me the impression that they are totally lost.
Also, Spandrell’s idea of bio-Leninism (see https://spandrell.com/2017/11/14/biological-leninism) which can be boiled down into, and I wish I remembered who it is I’m paraphrasing, the point in which a society is run by freaks who make being normal illegal.
Honestly, all the kids in this movie are super-cute and very talented, and are also all in their 30s now. Sadly, Kevin Clark who played drummer Freddy Jones was killed in 2021 when he was hit by a car while riding his bicycle in Chicago.
A football move, too, now that I think about it.
This is what we called choosing your friends over your girlfriends back in the day. Yes, it’s embarrassing and trashy. No, I’m not going to apologize for being a young man once.
As they do for singer Lana Del Rey, for some reason people on the right side of the political spectrum go ga-ga over this show.
I’ve also been informed that in one season of The White Lotus the gay characters are the villains, which truly blew my mind. That is a big no-no pop culture shibboleth: the only acceptable villains are supposed to be straight white males.
Even leftist non-Christian actor Riann Wilson sees this: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11853185/Former-star-Office-Rainn-Wilson-says-theres-anti-Christian-bias-Hollywood.html
Alexander,
Mystery Grove wrote a similar kind of tweet. Communism is about weird people who make it a crime to be normal and steal your stuff (i'm paraphrasing)
The bad thing happening to bad people who hold bad opinion is infantile moralism. A complete shallowness about the human condition stemming from an unmerited religious smugness. They're the good(tm) and everyone else not like them are bad (tm)and require the latter to do bad things to the latter because their conscience compels them. Narcissistic abusers.
University is the death of artistic inspiration. It takes a lot of effort, as a student, to keep the Muses' voice within you while you've to go through this environment. You can make good art only by staying away or by finding a way to avoid being spiritually engulfed by it.
So yeah: don't expect anything decent from (most) grad students.