Don't Make Them Work!

In response to Jemimah's complains yesterday, Prof. Leeper admitted that some of these films require the viewer to "work" to stay with them. The mindset that this is okay flies in the face of everything I was taught in school.

When writing stories or essays in school, I was always taught to make it very easy for the reader to become absorbed in the piece. Not in those exact words, but I think that's a pretty accurate description of what a "clincher" is supposed to do. I had to say something in the very first sentence that would hook the reader. Make them laugh, shock them, make them question, do something to give them a reason to keep reading. Speeches were the same way. I had about 30 seconds to convince the audience that the next five minutes would be interesting to listen to. I was never specifically told to apply this strategy to movies, but I assume I would have been if I asked the same people.

But at some point it occurred to me that A LOT of beloved, classic literature shows astonishing disregard for the reader's limited patience. The same curriculum that taught me to write captivating introductions also had me read books by a lot of very poor role models. I've found the introductions to many books extremely dull, and needlessly long. It may be several chapters before things get interesting, and even then the author will take her sweet time in getting to the next point of interest. You really have to "work" to get into a lot of old books. Even when the story's pretty much over, they make you work longer still to see each plot thread through to its conclusion. So I wondered, how did all these slow books become so popular? Why are we expected today to start with excitement, laughs, or questions right away when the old masters took their time setting things up?

And now I'm been seeing the same thing with short films. They're interesting if you stick with them, but the first few seconds wouldn't make most people want to keep watching. You have to choose to stick with it. You have to take a risk, actually. What if it doesn't get better, and you find that you've just wasted ten minutes?

I've actually found that if I compare old mainstream movies to new mainstream movies, they show the same pattern that I've seen with books. Older movies are slower. (I mean who thought it was a good idea to put the credits at the beginning of movies?) For example, I noticed that Frozen is only a little longer than Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, but Frozen fills in the time with a more complex story, while Snow White has a very simple story and fills in the time with lots of gags that do little or nothing to advance the plot. Even some movies that are critically acclaimed today have slow beginnings.

I love WALL-E! Epecially the last two thirds of it.

Is it just that the old masters didn't have to worry about competition whereas the market today is so over-saturated that writers and filmmakers have to start with a bang, or something else dopamine-inducing, in order to get people's attention? Or were our forefathers just more patient than we are?

Well, I think those question just answered themselves, so here's another one: do I want to make stuff that's easy to get engaged in or hard to get engaged in? Or is there a place for both? Or should I not worry about it and just structure my work in whatever way seems appropriate?