Sunday Morning! Stranger Things and Suspiria
This week has been a bit hectic, but I did get time to read Ian McEwan’s novel Saturday and watch the remake of Suspiria by Luca Guadagnino. Like many of you, I assume, I’ve also been watching the recent episodes of Stranger Things with my girlfriend. Oh, and I also read the novel Eighty-Sixed by David Feinberg. So, maybe it’s been less hectic than I think…
At any rate, there were a few topics that came to mind, while consuming all of this fiction, and I’d like to sketch a few brief notes, particularly about story structure and the use of pastiche. These notes will be briefer than usual because I have no firm or developed thoughts on either topic; more like embryonic thoughtlets. I’ll also skip the novels for another time.
On pastiche: I think this is the right word for fiction like Stranger Things. The program is often said to deal out heavy servings of “nostalgia”, but I think it goes beyond that. There are visual and musical references from the 1980s laced throughout the episodes, which certainly evoke nostalgia. But the production design, score, scripting, and even the mise-en-scene and framing are all meant to call to mind films from the era. It is made to look as much like a 1980s horror/sci-fi film as possible with more updated special effects.
The remake of Suspiria (2018) similarly tries to evoke films of the 1970s with the crash zooms that Quentin Tarantino also likes to use and period appropriate clothing and set design. In both Stranger Things and Suspiria, the use of CG images spoils the illusion a bit; neither one could have really been made in the 70s or 80s. But there’s also an interesting sort of distancing that goes on when an artist uses pastiche. I think it’s because they’re drawing not from the real world of memory, but from the fictional world of past media. At its worst, this can feel like a mix tape of pieces of other movies that were likely less referential, if not more original. Stranger Things tries to avoid this problem by also drawing on genuine nostalgia for adolescence. Suspiria takes a more eclectic approach in drawing as much on the historical-political events of 1977, the year that the original film was released, as it does on the film itself- which the director apparently had not seen in years before shooting the remake.
At its best, pastiche can be playful and knowing. At its worst, a pastiche is like looking into the mind of an isolated child whose view of the world came entirely from movies and television. Even worse, pastiche can draw from so many sources, that its story becomes a mess. Which brings us to…
On Story Structure: I learned something fairly important on this topic by watching Suspiria. The original film was set in a dance school run by a coven of witches, ostensibly in Freiberg, Germany, but seemingly as isolated as a fairy tale castle. The remake places the school in divided Berlin, so that the Berlin Wall runs in front of the building. It takes place in an atmosphere of Baader-Meinhof political violence. There are also subplots about the Menonites and the Holocaust and German guilt. And a subplot about Jungian psychoanalysis. And a police investigation that goes nowhere. And Tilda Swinton playing three characters. And a twist ending.
Apparently, the story was structured as an “epic”, in which there is one central plotline and four or five subplots that all, in some way, echo the main plotline. So, imagine the trunk of a tree with shoots of ivy snaking around it. If the viewer were to miss how the subplots echo the main story, the dialogue pretty much spells it out, which seems bad writing. Also, it’s not clear whether or not these subplots add very much to the film, aside from panning out the running time. Whether or not viewers liked the film seems to boil down to how superfluous they found the historical/political elements that were added. Some felt the remake was a brilliant and impressionistic take on the late 70s era, while others felt it was unfocused and lost much in translation.
I had no problem with the individual elements but still found the film to be an utter trainwreck. But, I think I now have a rough rule-of-thumb for subplots: can you imagine the story being substantially different were they to be edited out? If the subplots were removed from Suspiria, I can’t see the story being any weaker or any stronger. For the most part, they’re just sort of there, hanging out. They don’t enhance the story, nor do they diminish it significantly. But, they’re not necessary either way.
There is a well-known line by E.M. Forster that a story is “The King died and then the Queen died”, while a plot is “The King died and then the Queen died from grief.” Clearly, however, good storytelling also has quite a bit to do with story structure. The original Suspiria and its remake have the same basic plot. But the effect is lost in the retelling.
So, what are YOU watching, reading, playing, pondering, or creating this weekend?
So, still in the middle of a rereading of Ellroy’s LA quartet and Underground USA series. And while at times the writing itself can feel self-indulgent, it truly is a transcendent work. Only not in a way of lifting you up, but of forcing you to move away from easy interpretations of recent history. There are no good guys here, no viewpoint characters who can, nudge-nudge and wink-wink away violence, racism and all that was entailed in the containment philosophy of policing that were prevalent at the time. And this is one of the great failures of modern storytelling of past era’s. We want to look at the cars and clothes and all that was pretty of a time period, but we want to be protected by modern morals and opinions of all things political and cultural. Ellroy gives no respite.
I am curious what you think about Saturday, as I was deeply disappointed with it. As was my wife. I felt that he refused to take the story where it logically went, and Boomer Fantasy copped out on it. I haven’t read anything by him since.Report
I guess wasn’t deeply disappointed, just regular disappointed. Stories in which successful, middle-aged, Men of Reason are confronted by their own potential for violence and come to mildly question the Enlightenment as a result are a bit overdone and, yeah, there was a point where I thought “Well, that de-escalated really quickly.” The writing wasn’t spectacular either. So, I probably won’t come back to him either.Report
Another thing about Saturday- not to pile on here- is it bordered on what I call “show your work” writing, wherein the novelist will learn everything they can about some arcane subject in order to flesh out their characters, and then, in the course of that, let the reader know everything they’ve learned. (It’s pretty common among MLA writers, I find.) McEwan obviously had to do quite a bit of research about neurosurgery for a novel on a neurosurgeon, but it came right up to the line of one-more-passage-on-this-and-I’m-done-reading.Report
For me, the biggest mistake in Stranger Things was their ridiculous portrayal of ham radio. It was never anything like CB radio, very few kids are ever licensed, and they conduct themselves as adults on the air. It’s boring and technical. That got worse in season 3.
*** small spoilers ***
One of the kids comes back from camp with what he says is the most powerful ham radio ever. They haul it up to the highest hill in town so he can talk to his girlfriend in Utah. It’s a vacuum tube set but they leave off the enclosure, which is a huge no-no. They set up a large antenna that looks like a random Christmas tree made out of antenna scrap. They didn’t bring a generator to power the rig, and then leave the unenclosed radio and all the equipment sitting outside, on the ground, but somehow ready for use later. Then he started hollering for Suzy over and over, as if that’s how anyone makes contact.
The ham radio elements should never have been written in, and for me they knocked a star or two off my rating.Report
Stranger Things is enjoyable but seems a somewhat Reaganite show. Since I grew up in a very non-Republican area, my political memories are different and it’s weird seeing Cold War era tropes about evil Communist played straight.Report
It’s like they didn’t even know that the USSR wasn’t real Communism! Seriously, if you’ve never read the collected letters of Leon Trotsky, you have been missing out. His “Literature and Revolution” really opened my eyes to a lot of things and I think that anybody who hasn’t read it shouldn’t be talking about Communism at all.Report
I grew up an hour outside DC, so my memories are of being told that, in the event of a nuclear war, we’d be fried- and that there was a 50/50 chance of a nuclear war. I was young enough that me and my friends thought it would be like Road Warrior and we’d have great adventures. So it was okay for us.Report
I went to a high school six miles off the end of the main runway at SAC headquarters. Everyone recognized Looking Glass when we were in the takeoff pattern. Quite a few Air Force brats in my class. Everyone knew we were likely toast if a full nuclear exchange happened. But the thinking bandied about by all of the brats’ parents was that such an exchange was very unlikely.Report
Much as I love the Coen brothers (a lot), their movies are all about other movies. I’d call it good pastiche, since they generally have clever and funny takes on their source material, but it’s pastiche nonetheless.Report
Right, I guess that’s what you’d call The Hudsucker Proxy and Hail Caesar! both of which I love. I think what makes it really good pastiche for me is they bring in their own little obsessions about fate and morality and it never feels like you’re just watching parts of other movies.
It might be clear here that I’m not what you’d call a huge fan of Quentin Tarantino’s output past Jackie Brown.Report
Also Miller’s Crossing, which I love. It’s not about people; it’s about crime ficton, in particular Hammett’s The Glass Key.
I just finished watching The Hateful Eight, and am wondering why I bothered. (Well, because I thought Samuel L. Jackson and Walton Goggins would be a fun pairing. Perhaps, in a different film.)Report