The Martian, and thoughts about story
Oct. 6th, 2015 04:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lydyI've seen The Martian twice, now. The book is on my coffee table, and will be read very soon. I purely loved it. I thought it was funny, moving, and joyful. I've been thinking about the reviews I've read that call it "shallow". I would argue that it is not shallow, it is focused.
All fiction is, in some sense, focused. It chooses which pieces of story to tell in order to create the desired effect. Even slice-of-life pieces are deliberately choosing to tell pieces of experience that are not normally featured in fiction, and to not tell pieces of story that are usually the focus. Me, I don't like slice-of-life, but I get that it is interesting to a lot of people. And so I am unsurprised that The Martian isn't everyone's cup of tea. It is focusing on types of experiences and emotions that are not normally foregrounded. That doesn't make it shallow.
What it does so very well is it foregrounds the way geeks approach a lot of life. It's not that geeks don't have the Big Emotions. But very, very frequently, they deflect or denigrate them, and move on to the next thing. They have a strong tendency to work the problem, rather than sit with the emotion. And I object to the description of The Martian as shallow, or emotionally unfulfilling, because it rejects the emotional landscape of many people I know and love, and pretends that life is all about the Big Deal Emotions. It insists that only certain stories are truly interesting.
Some little time ago, I read a very interesting critique of 2001: A Space Odyssey, which is one of my favorite movies. (I've lost the link, I apologize for arguing in absentia with the writer.) The critique was very frustrating, but also very interesting. The second half, which concentrated on Hal and his dilemma, was fascinating and insightful. Hal's problems revolve about sense of identity, the role of truth in our perceptions of ourselves and relationships with others, and the pressures of self-actualization in an environment where building an authentic relationship is impossible. In fact, very human concerns, and about the Big Deal Emotions. In some ways, an oddly traditional story.
The first half of the critique, though, was intensely frustrating. The writer interpreted the beginning as the monolith giving the proto-humans violence. To which I instantly thought, "No, that's wrong." The violence is already there, implicit. The proto-humans eat meat, and are in conflict with another tribe over water rights. The violence is part of human nature. What the monolith gives is technology. 2001 is a meditation on technology. What it is, how it interacts with human nature. The writer makes a point that the bone, flung into the sky, becomes an orbiting nuclear bomb installation. Yep, yep it does. But the point is not that it has enabled us to kill, but rather that it has made us able to do it with terrifying efficiency. It also posits that this change in capability changes our essential nature. But the movie doesn't posit that we were an idyllic, peaceful species.
Throughout the first half of the critique, he describes the various details of space travel, and insists that all those details emphasize the fact that man does not belong in space, that technology has taken us too far, that we live in terror and fear. And scenes that he describes as emphasizing the isolation and being about dehumanization were all scenes that filled me with wonder and joy. They were scenes that made my heart leap, filled me with longing. I was not seeing what he was seeing.
There were two things going on, I think. The first is that detail in mimetic fiction functions very differently than detail in science fiction, and if you don't understand that, you are likely to go down a rat hole. In mimetic fiction, it is unnecessary to describe the sound of wind in the trees, or the way milk spills from a glass in a one-gravity field. The only reason to describe these things is to evoke something else. It can be an attempt to evoke a sense-memory, or as a form of pacing, probably a way to signal an emotional state. It's never there because it's necessary for the reader to understand. These are shared experiences. And so the level of detail in an science fiction work can be weird for someone who understands mimetic fiction. They assume emotional content to descriptions that isn't there. Not that the loving detail of a strange world, or micro-gravity, has no emotional content. But it has different emotional content. There's a sense of the wonder of the strange which, I think, at least this person missed.
The other thing which is probably going on, and this insight comes from Patrick Nielsen Hayden, is that there is a somewhat 19th century classic view of what stories are for and about. What stories are valid. And a certain amount of science fiction falls outside that. We are interested the Big Deal stuff: pair-bonding, children, family, isolation, connection. But we are interested in other things, as well. The classic story is a man struggling to actualize himself, while in conflict. Man against man, man against nature, man against himself. And man, are there a lot of those stories in the world. Many of which I love.
*caution, occasional spoilers ahead*
In many ways, The Martian is the absolute classic "man against nature" story. Indeed, Andy Weir stated in a talk that the reason he used the sandstorm to create the conflict, even though he knew that it was not scientifically accurate, was because he wanted to tell the classic "man against nature" story, and he wanted nature to get the first punch. But the rest of the story actually deviates from the template. Mark Watney does not learn things about himself. He does not self-actualize. He isn't particularly introspective. And he doesn't do it all by himself. The story is also about the way the rest of the world responds to his plight. It's not a story about the big deal tight emotional bonds that we build with blood-kin and sex partners, it's a story about the looser ties that we build with our work mates and the people we interact with on a daily basis, and the strangers with whom we share our humanity but not much else. And it's those ties, that network, that eventually comes into play and saves the day. I love the fact that Watney doesn't want to live because of some beloved back home. He just, you know, wants to live. People do.
There are so many pitch-perfect notes. When the crew is back in touch with Watney for the first time, there's no heart-felt anything, really. It's not that there's no emotion. These people care, deeply. But the actual communication is deflecting and humorous. Yeah, we left you behind because we don't like you, things are better without you, we do have to do your chores, but you're just a botanist and it's not like that's a real science. So absolutely perfect. I know that conversation. All the stuff, the guilt and anger and concern, there's no point to talking about it. How on earth do you apologize for making a perfectly reasonable decision which is very likely to kill someone you care about? How do you talk about this huge thing, when you all know everything that there is to say, and none of it will change anything? Tell a joke, and go on to the next thing. There's no problem to solve, and nothing to forgive, so you go on to the next thing. Which is making the connection, making it clear that you care, without burdening either side with a bunch of emotions that really can't be resolved just then. You go on to the next thing.
So much of The Martian was just going on to the next thing. And I love that. Because life, life is mostly going on to the next thing. I knew ten minutes in I was going to love this movie, because when Watney wakes up, what he does is he stumbles into the Hab, deals with the icky medical stuff, and utters a heart-felt "fuck" and never, once, asks, "Where is everybody." No angst about how it is he comes to be alone, or anger at being abandoned. He knows what happened. It's perfectly obvious, right away. And shouting at the clouds won't help. So he does the next thing.
There's a lot of fiction about our tightly held bonds. About lovers and families and children and the ways in which these are vital. And I don't mean to say that they aren't. A great deal of who we are is who and how we love. But there's very little fiction about the rest of it. The ways in which we are where we work, the ways in which moving through daily life marks us for good or ill. Are we nice to our barista? Do we make a point of knowing their name, or are we content to be pleasant and polite, or are we distancing and rude? This is not unimportant. As Neil Rest often says, "Daily life is where you spend most of your time." And, oddly, The Martian is about daily life. It is daily life writ large, with life-threatening problems at every turn. But it is also a circumstance in which most of the things that we normally consider to be important to the story are not important here. The thing that's really important is the work.
I think that some of the reviewers are not seeing the sheer, dizzying joy of it all. The utter triumph of being able to say, "I am the best botanist on this entire planet." Does Watney feel isolated and alone? Yep, and it's there. But his arrogant amusement at his predicament is also a huge survival skill. Watney is the right guy for this problem, and the joy I get from watching him deal with shit is a real joy. And I resent the idea that this is somehow a lesser joy because it doesn't relate to one of the officially sanctioned Big Deal Emotions. I think one of the things that delights me about this movie is, whisper the word, representation. It's not often that I see that emotional landscape depicted accurately, with joy and care. It's not my emotional landscape, but it is the landscape of several people I love dearly. And it's one that's almost never seen.
One of my favorite bits in the movie is when the mission specialist who has been watching the satellite footage is talking to the mission director. Just a bit earlier, Watney has explained that, due to various international laws, Mars counts as international waters, and he is leaving to commandeer another vessel, which makes him a space pirate. The Mission director asks the specialist how Mark is doing, and she says, "He's asked us to call him Captain Blondebeard." "Well, that makes sense, if you realize that Mars is --" "Yes, he explained all that."
I love that. It's shared culture, and man, how many times have you held up your hand and said, "Yep, I got the joke already." At least in my social circles, that's a pretty common experience. We like weird, referential jokes, and we tend to explain them to death. They got that exactly right.
This was not a shallow movie. This was a focused movie. This was a movie about emotions and relationships often not foregrounded, and they got it right.
All fiction is, in some sense, focused. It chooses which pieces of story to tell in order to create the desired effect. Even slice-of-life pieces are deliberately choosing to tell pieces of experience that are not normally featured in fiction, and to not tell pieces of story that are usually the focus. Me, I don't like slice-of-life, but I get that it is interesting to a lot of people. And so I am unsurprised that The Martian isn't everyone's cup of tea. It is focusing on types of experiences and emotions that are not normally foregrounded. That doesn't make it shallow.
What it does so very well is it foregrounds the way geeks approach a lot of life. It's not that geeks don't have the Big Emotions. But very, very frequently, they deflect or denigrate them, and move on to the next thing. They have a strong tendency to work the problem, rather than sit with the emotion. And I object to the description of The Martian as shallow, or emotionally unfulfilling, because it rejects the emotional landscape of many people I know and love, and pretends that life is all about the Big Deal Emotions. It insists that only certain stories are truly interesting.
Some little time ago, I read a very interesting critique of 2001: A Space Odyssey, which is one of my favorite movies. (I've lost the link, I apologize for arguing in absentia with the writer.) The critique was very frustrating, but also very interesting. The second half, which concentrated on Hal and his dilemma, was fascinating and insightful. Hal's problems revolve about sense of identity, the role of truth in our perceptions of ourselves and relationships with others, and the pressures of self-actualization in an environment where building an authentic relationship is impossible. In fact, very human concerns, and about the Big Deal Emotions. In some ways, an oddly traditional story.
The first half of the critique, though, was intensely frustrating. The writer interpreted the beginning as the monolith giving the proto-humans violence. To which I instantly thought, "No, that's wrong." The violence is already there, implicit. The proto-humans eat meat, and are in conflict with another tribe over water rights. The violence is part of human nature. What the monolith gives is technology. 2001 is a meditation on technology. What it is, how it interacts with human nature. The writer makes a point that the bone, flung into the sky, becomes an orbiting nuclear bomb installation. Yep, yep it does. But the point is not that it has enabled us to kill, but rather that it has made us able to do it with terrifying efficiency. It also posits that this change in capability changes our essential nature. But the movie doesn't posit that we were an idyllic, peaceful species.
Throughout the first half of the critique, he describes the various details of space travel, and insists that all those details emphasize the fact that man does not belong in space, that technology has taken us too far, that we live in terror and fear. And scenes that he describes as emphasizing the isolation and being about dehumanization were all scenes that filled me with wonder and joy. They were scenes that made my heart leap, filled me with longing. I was not seeing what he was seeing.
There were two things going on, I think. The first is that detail in mimetic fiction functions very differently than detail in science fiction, and if you don't understand that, you are likely to go down a rat hole. In mimetic fiction, it is unnecessary to describe the sound of wind in the trees, or the way milk spills from a glass in a one-gravity field. The only reason to describe these things is to evoke something else. It can be an attempt to evoke a sense-memory, or as a form of pacing, probably a way to signal an emotional state. It's never there because it's necessary for the reader to understand. These are shared experiences. And so the level of detail in an science fiction work can be weird for someone who understands mimetic fiction. They assume emotional content to descriptions that isn't there. Not that the loving detail of a strange world, or micro-gravity, has no emotional content. But it has different emotional content. There's a sense of the wonder of the strange which, I think, at least this person missed.
The other thing which is probably going on, and this insight comes from Patrick Nielsen Hayden, is that there is a somewhat 19th century classic view of what stories are for and about. What stories are valid. And a certain amount of science fiction falls outside that. We are interested the Big Deal stuff: pair-bonding, children, family, isolation, connection. But we are interested in other things, as well. The classic story is a man struggling to actualize himself, while in conflict. Man against man, man against nature, man against himself. And man, are there a lot of those stories in the world. Many of which I love.
*caution, occasional spoilers ahead*
In many ways, The Martian is the absolute classic "man against nature" story. Indeed, Andy Weir stated in a talk that the reason he used the sandstorm to create the conflict, even though he knew that it was not scientifically accurate, was because he wanted to tell the classic "man against nature" story, and he wanted nature to get the first punch. But the rest of the story actually deviates from the template. Mark Watney does not learn things about himself. He does not self-actualize. He isn't particularly introspective. And he doesn't do it all by himself. The story is also about the way the rest of the world responds to his plight. It's not a story about the big deal tight emotional bonds that we build with blood-kin and sex partners, it's a story about the looser ties that we build with our work mates and the people we interact with on a daily basis, and the strangers with whom we share our humanity but not much else. And it's those ties, that network, that eventually comes into play and saves the day. I love the fact that Watney doesn't want to live because of some beloved back home. He just, you know, wants to live. People do.
There are so many pitch-perfect notes. When the crew is back in touch with Watney for the first time, there's no heart-felt anything, really. It's not that there's no emotion. These people care, deeply. But the actual communication is deflecting and humorous. Yeah, we left you behind because we don't like you, things are better without you, we do have to do your chores, but you're just a botanist and it's not like that's a real science. So absolutely perfect. I know that conversation. All the stuff, the guilt and anger and concern, there's no point to talking about it. How on earth do you apologize for making a perfectly reasonable decision which is very likely to kill someone you care about? How do you talk about this huge thing, when you all know everything that there is to say, and none of it will change anything? Tell a joke, and go on to the next thing. There's no problem to solve, and nothing to forgive, so you go on to the next thing. Which is making the connection, making it clear that you care, without burdening either side with a bunch of emotions that really can't be resolved just then. You go on to the next thing.
So much of The Martian was just going on to the next thing. And I love that. Because life, life is mostly going on to the next thing. I knew ten minutes in I was going to love this movie, because when Watney wakes up, what he does is he stumbles into the Hab, deals with the icky medical stuff, and utters a heart-felt "fuck" and never, once, asks, "Where is everybody." No angst about how it is he comes to be alone, or anger at being abandoned. He knows what happened. It's perfectly obvious, right away. And shouting at the clouds won't help. So he does the next thing.
There's a lot of fiction about our tightly held bonds. About lovers and families and children and the ways in which these are vital. And I don't mean to say that they aren't. A great deal of who we are is who and how we love. But there's very little fiction about the rest of it. The ways in which we are where we work, the ways in which moving through daily life marks us for good or ill. Are we nice to our barista? Do we make a point of knowing their name, or are we content to be pleasant and polite, or are we distancing and rude? This is not unimportant. As Neil Rest often says, "Daily life is where you spend most of your time." And, oddly, The Martian is about daily life. It is daily life writ large, with life-threatening problems at every turn. But it is also a circumstance in which most of the things that we normally consider to be important to the story are not important here. The thing that's really important is the work.
I think that some of the reviewers are not seeing the sheer, dizzying joy of it all. The utter triumph of being able to say, "I am the best botanist on this entire planet." Does Watney feel isolated and alone? Yep, and it's there. But his arrogant amusement at his predicament is also a huge survival skill. Watney is the right guy for this problem, and the joy I get from watching him deal with shit is a real joy. And I resent the idea that this is somehow a lesser joy because it doesn't relate to one of the officially sanctioned Big Deal Emotions. I think one of the things that delights me about this movie is, whisper the word, representation. It's not often that I see that emotional landscape depicted accurately, with joy and care. It's not my emotional landscape, but it is the landscape of several people I love dearly. And it's one that's almost never seen.
One of my favorite bits in the movie is when the mission specialist who has been watching the satellite footage is talking to the mission director. Just a bit earlier, Watney has explained that, due to various international laws, Mars counts as international waters, and he is leaving to commandeer another vessel, which makes him a space pirate. The Mission director asks the specialist how Mark is doing, and she says, "He's asked us to call him Captain Blondebeard." "Well, that makes sense, if you realize that Mars is --" "Yes, he explained all that."
I love that. It's shared culture, and man, how many times have you held up your hand and said, "Yep, I got the joke already." At least in my social circles, that's a pretty common experience. We like weird, referential jokes, and we tend to explain them to death. They got that exactly right.
This was not a shallow movie. This was a focused movie. This was a movie about emotions and relationships often not foregrounded, and they got it right.
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WoW!
Date: 2015-10-06 11:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-10-06 03:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-10-07 03:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-10-06 05:23 pm (UTC)Captain Blondbeard?
Now I have to go see this.
Thanks
no subject
Date: 2015-10-09 03:00 pm (UTC)Also, I think that I should marry Drew Goddard and have his babies. Just sayin'.
no subject
Date: 2015-10-08 01:40 pm (UTC)Excellent indeed.
The quote above should read, "Well, that makes sense, if you realize that under maritime law..." And that's one of the main points of the movie: Watney can depend on people a dozen light-minutes away to be at least as brilliant and focused as he is.
no subject
Date: 2015-10-09 02:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-10-08 01:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-01-28 06:33 pm (UTC)