Upsetting People is Not Revolutionary

Well, The Joker just hit theatres, and honestly, I'm not sure whether I'm going to see it.

Art by Michelle Browne.

Quite a few cultural critics I admire and respect have panned it, still others have said it was boring and unambitious - and frankly, it's no secret that I'm not the biggest fan of comics, for a variety of reasons. I'm curious, sure, but based on what I've heard from various podcasts and Youtube shows, as well as friends' chatter and Twitter, it's basically a dumbed-down Taxi Driver or Fight Club, without realising that those movies were critical of the main character's perception of the world.

Of course, there's also the problem that the director, Todd Phillips, talked about "triggering people" dismissively in some interviews, and both he and Warner Brothers seem to want to have it both ways - to upset people, to flirt with inciting violence, and to insist that it's just art, which cannot be censored (and that criticism is the same as censorship...which it isn't, by the way.) Phillips also complains about "woke culture" with the sort of embittered smugness that generally demarcates other failing comedians - such as Dave Chappelle, Louis C.K, Jerry Seinfeld, and other men who have mistaken their own prestige for talent.

Joaquin Phoenix, the twee, breathy method acting star, also seems to have made the same mistake. "I wasn't comfortable while making the film," he insisted. But while I really loved his acting and the movie Her in general, I can't help rolling my eyes at this take.

Upsetting people is not art

There's this idea in art and cultural commentary, and particularly in the zeitgeist, that because art is supposed to evoke emotion, evoking emotion constitutes art in and of itself. Quite frankly, stepping in a dog turd and breaking one's ankle also elicits emotion, but it generally isn't considered an artistic performance. Now, if said event is filmed and uploaded to Youtube, is it art then? Academics and Smart Internet People are ready and waiting to explain both how it is, and isn't art.

The thing is, the Joker movie isn't an unfortunate or hilarious accident. Great effort went into it, as well as a hefty budget and substantial promotional energy. This isn't some accidental, daring indie darling coming out of nowhere. It is very much commerce in the trappings of art. Now, can that still be art? Sure. But let's call a card a card, shall we?

Art qua art? Try Art qua money. 

This movie has an agenda...and above else, that's making money. The controversy over it - which, as much as I hate it, I am writing about and therefore contributing to - basically functions as a marketing push.

Rather, we should express how terribly bored we are about the whole thing, and we shouldn't fund the damned enterprise. Go see it in the cheap seats, or undertake alternative measures to see it, if you absolutely must. Or, do what I sometimes do when I want to hear about content but not suffer through it, and read, watch, or listen to a bunch of different thinkpieces about it.

But honestly, there's nothing more to say about this virulent, nasty, boring movie. What I'd rather talk about is the central premise - that upsetting people is somehow artistically virtuous.

Good art makes people think too

There's sort of a corollary to the whole "If people are upset, they'll think!" argument, and that is that happiness is an opiod, something that dulls the senses. That's as absurd as it is untrue. First of all, happiness and contentment are not the enemy, and in a world such as ours, rife with inequality, we ought not treat them as such cheap currency. They're rare, and they ought to be treasured. That's not to say that we should lull ourselves into thinking everything is all right - but that's not what happiness is about.

Rather, happiness comes from change, achievement, new experiences, and appreciating what we have. And good art - say, the book series beginning with A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle - will certainly do this. Yes, those books make me happy, but they also fill me with wonder and admiration. Art that makes us happy also makes us connected to others, and might even encourage us to make art ourselves, try to be good at something, or try something new.

A friend of mine is really into Lois Bujold's Vorkosagian series, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Robin Hobb's Assassin's Apprentice trilogy. Some of those books are hard on the heart, sure, but nobody who's advocating for happy art is saying it needs to be, say, forced positivity art or pablum. And, sure, all these writers are ladies - but that doesn't mean men can't (or don't!) write nurturing, empathetic books with characters who are more than angry, lost boys. Not to mention that the most recent Hugo and other fantasy and writing awards are really showing a wonderful sea change - Mary Robinette Kowal, for instance, or The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet or Space Opera being fine examples. As far as empathetic male writers, I must always recommend Zig Zag Claybourne's The Brothers Jetstream, Ari Marmell's Mick Oberon series, or Chuck Wendig's writing. 

And yeah, we do need to give empathy and kindness to these lost boys who relate to these movies - but the way to do that isn't to enable their bad habits. It's to give them a better world, access to therapy and medication if needed, and fight toxic mental habits. That's what the rest of us have to do - but the good news is? It works.

***

Michelle Browne is a sci fi/fantasy writer and editor. She lives in Lethbridge, AB with her partner-in-crime and Max the cat. Her days revolve around freelance editing, knitting, jewelry, and learning too much. She is currently working on other people's manuscripts, the next books in her series, and drinking as much tea as humanly possible.

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D%&$ It, Bioware, I Was Using That Heart: Mass Effect Revisited

Hello hello!

So, my turbulent and ultimately ill-fated love affair with the Mass Effect trilogy is pretty well known at this point. In case you missed all that, you can find info here, here, and here. There are

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

 about the first three games at all six of those links, by the way. I've written about this series a lot, and one of the reasons I love Farscape so much is that it gave me what I was hoping for from Mass Effect, but without the most tragic backstory ever written.

Well, the release of the fourth game in the franchise has been revealed at--where else?--the San Diego Comic Con. I waited with baited breath as I clicked on the link, hoping for a reveal of the future of the universe.

 Source: Cheezburger.

The next game is going to happen concurrently with the events of the last one, ME3. You know, that game. The one that ruined a company's reputation, earned EA the "Worst Company of the Year" award in 2012, and was universally hailed as a clusterphuque of earthshaking proportions. The original ending was so universally hated, they ended up revamping it with extended narration and explanations of the consequences. More on the extended endings in a minute. But all the phuquerie that resulted from that terrible, cliched, tropey, backstabbing of an ending happened because gamers felt betrayed. I was even one of them, and I shed my tears with the rest. But why? And why did I get a bad case of feels when I finally watched the extended cuts today?

What went wrong?

I'll try to keep this short because it's been discussed elsewhere. The problems with the ending boil down to five things.

First, the ending felt too simplistic compared to the complex and multilayered games that preceded it. The endings of the first two games were heavily reliant on previous actions, with Mass Effect 2's ending being the best example of that. Perhaps all the storylines they had going ended up collapsing on their own weight, but I think most of us expected some sort of large final battle where the results were determined by resources and alliances accrued and accumulated during the rest of the games. That isn't what happened. Like, at all.

Second, Shepard dies unnecessarily...or lives, if you (possibly) sacrifice all Geth and Synthetic life. I'm not restating that blog post about why hero death is a stupid and borderline unhealthy trope, but here's another link to it.

Third, the Starchild is a stupid and unnecessary brat with terrible voice acting and worse writing. The Illusive Man, a Geth, EDI herself, a Keeper (you know, those plot device bugs who were never used for anything in spite of substantial build-up in the first games?), or even, why not, the Rachni Queen, would all have been better choices. Sure, you have the little weird kid running around in Shep's head through the first half of the game, but freaky children are a stupid cliche at best, and it didn't belong in this game. Add in all the stuff about madness in the excellent DLCs for the series and you have a sinister perspective on the little brat--who, we are somehow supposed to believe, is some kind of peaceful and neutral force. You choose the McGuffin or you epic-fail. I actually love the new fourth ending, but the last time I saw an ending this hamstrung was at a sex show involving bondage and oral pleasure. At least with the "refusal" option, the stupid storytelling bit at the end makes sense.

Fourth, your team crash lands on a random planet for no particular reason. Why? Why did this happen? Why did they get sucked into a portal? Sure, the extended endings fix that up a bit, but why does this even occur?

Fifth, that stupid damn storyteller ending. I love Synthesis, and I can stand Destroy because Shepard lives, but Control always felt evil to me. And yet all three of these end with a stupid cutscene after the credits that even Buzz Aldrin's cameo couldn't save. The Starchild voice actor returns (shudder) and an old man tells him he might go to the stars...in a way that implies all knowledge of space travel has been lost. That blatantly contradicts two of the three endings, and worse, the "tell me another story about the Shepard" bit teases us with the false promise of another game about our protagonist. You know, the game they promised they'd never make. This storytelling ending actually makes sense for the Refusal ending, which was the most coherent, but the fact that they left it in the extended endings felt like a slap in the face.

This is basically how I feel about the whole thing. 

Why are we rehashing all this?

Oh, there's a reason. The new game will be set at the end of the third. Are they going to retcon the ending? How will they deal with the incredible fame of Shepard's character if your character is just some scrub? Are you going to have somehow never heard of the most famous person in the galaxy, a.k.a. Space Jesus? It's going to focus on the multiplayer side of things, sure, but this feels like a stall for time. My partner called it a money-grab, and not the real sequel, and added, "unless I'm absolutely wrong, you can completely ignore this game." Did I mention that they explicitly promised the next game would be set in the far future?

Okay, fine; how could you possibly fix it?

Just abandoning the series--which would actually be wise--probably isn't a viable option. A jump backwards in time would have solved a lot of their problems, and quite a few fans have been hoping for something set during the human-Turian First Contact War. Jumping drastically far forward into the future would also be an option.

What I'd love to happen, as much as I will weep angry tears over the impossibility of it, would be a proper exploration of the Synthesis ending. The extended version hints that a golden age was dawning, but change is scary. There's plenty of conflict you could mine from the sudden friendliness of the Reapers, the ancient technologies gifted to the unprepared galaxy, the fact that all races and species have the possible opportunity to be immortal, and the equalization forced on everyone. Diplomacy games! New wars! Playing as a Reaper! Dealing with grieving! New conflict rising as unknown or rare civilizations are encountered! Religious conflict! All the ingredients of amazing story potentials are right there, and there is no way we'll get to play with those toys.

Synthesis in a nutshell. 

The lesson in all of this is that creating a series is hard, and kind of dangerous. It's hard to please fans at the best of times, but the more complicated your world gets and the more plot devices and plotlines you pile on, the easier it is to screw them up. Terry Goodkind's The Sword of Truth series is the only one even close to Mass Effect in terms of McGuffin implosions, and that was a mess too. The lesson is that introducing endless plot mechanics and shiny toys is a bad idea. And sometimes, you just have to pretend something didn't happen and move forward with the story instead of trying to fix an old problem that's basically unrepairable. Writing is not always fun and it's rarely "easy", but at least we can learn from the failures of others.

*****

Thanks for dropping by the nest once again. Don't miss any of the phuquerie. Find Michelle on Twitter, Facebook, and on Tumblr, and find her work on Amazon. Check back on the blog to see when one of the irregular posts has careened onto your feed. This is the one and only SciFiMagpie, over and out!