I like movies and TV shows that earn your trust and make you believe what is, by definition, contrived.
Yes, all movies and tv shows are contrived.
As I tell my writing students when they resist a good plot point in their work because they fear it will come off as artificial:
What you really fear is that it will seem contrived.
Meaning every writer’s, or liar’s, job is to massage a moment to the point where it seems perfectly believable for the person in the moment they’re in.
This has worked for me as a writer, and as a college professor, for most of my adult life.
But what do you do when the actual events in the world seem too ludicrous to be true in the reality you’ve lived in for all of your life?
And what effect will that have on you and all others falling under the dreaded monicker of content creators (Note: Ugh, I hate that term, it preemptively makes us all sound like we’re A.I. assembly-line worker bees, which I suppose is the point) going forward?
Is there no action a person or character takes that could be deemed too outlandish? Will there be no plot point out of the bounds of logic?
Can an American POTUS publicly attack the sitting Pope – the leader of approximately 1.3 billion Catholics – as “a tool of the radical left,” “weak on crime,” and “disgraceful” as he simultaneously posts a picture of himself as Jesus healing the sick to millions of his followers on social media?
What about a U.S. Secretary of Defense holding a worship service at the Pentagon (Note: Normally we could stop there) where he quotes what professes to be a bible verse from Ezekiel 25:17 that is actually A SPEECH WRITTEN BY director-screenwriter Quentin Tarantino to mimic a bible verse delivered by a fictional hitman played by Samuel L. Jackson in the 1994 breakout hit, Pulp Fiction???
The answers are being rewritten even as I write, and every time one awakes to another bizarre rant from [Fill in the world “leader” (ahem) of your choice].
This week I went to an actual movie theatre to see The Drama, a sort of oddball mélange of rom-com, pathos, suspense and cross-cutting frenzy fueled by the star power of Zendaya and Robert Pattinson.
Playing a Gen Z meet-cute couple about to be married and thus subject to a few nervous drunken nights with friends, the film essentially poses the bizarre question: What would Mr. Pattinson’s character do if this fantasy gal he was in love with, nee Zendaya’s character, admitted that she almost did a school shooting when she was a teenager?
She DID NOT DO IT, mind you. She just thought about it and planned a little of it until logic and goodwill won her over.
Yes, it’s concerning, but… would it cause you as Mr. Pattinson (Note: You wish!) to melt down to the point where you __________, or prompt more than a few friends or co-workers to advise you to call the police and have her arrested for something she never did years ago?
:upscale()/2016/05/09/890/n/1922398/6ae75f8f69ee4c37_14.gif)
Call me crazy, but I had some issue with that.
On the other hand, I didn’t grow up with school shooting drills or in a time when being gunned en masse in junior high school was a possibility. (Note: The worst it got for me was being jabbed by several long sharp knitting needles going up the stairs to class by several very tough girls in school that I avoided at all costs).
As for the students I sent to see The Drama, some agreed with me but many didn’t at all have an issue with it. Nor, obviously, did, Z or RPatz, who signed on to do the script. Nor did many filmgoers, as $110 million worldwide at the box-office proves.
Or does it?
Maybe it was simply RPatz & Z they wanted to see. And who could blame them? They seem cooler and hotter than any one of us will ever be in whatever they do onscreen, which is part of what makes them movie stars in the first place.
Not every TV show has to be as believable as the E.R. workers in The Pitt, or create as convincing of an earned alternate reality the innies and outies are given in Severance.
And certainly we don’t require everything to be as smart, dense and grounded in the actual politics of its day as Oppenheimer. The well-reviewed and well-attended response to the campy and luxuriously contrived Barbie, which went on to create that beloved Barbenheimer effect in the summer of 2023 is evidence of that.
A quaint time three years ago when there was something for everyone.
Not the current, creeping, heat-seeking reality of almost everything for just a few.
Charlie and Emma’s Wedding Video (From “The Drama”)
notes from a chair 