"Star Wars is a lightsaber, western as a genre is a silhouette of a cowboy on horseback, and Sleepy Hollow is a headless horseman with pumpkin head in hand. I do not resent the loss of meaning in something that becomes oft referenced, however I do hate that such a special story has lost its meaning in our culture to the point that many people, like myself, believed they had experienced it when they actually hadn’t."
Agreed, and to expand on my own thoughts, the reduction of stories to mere symbols cheapens the inherent value of the writing, and worse, leads to prejudice against the story or even entire genres or subsection of literature solely based on these symbols. "I don't like sci-fi because it's all spaceships and quark drives", for example, demonstrates only ignorance. A genre is nothing more than a setting for a story, which is more malleable than the conventions of genre or subsection can constrain. Does a Western seem more Western because it has a heart of gold whore and a sheriff who begrudgingly lets the outlaws go around because he can't handle them alone? Of course, but it is not the only necessity in a Western, and not even a necessity at that. A story is what you design, and the wrapper is always personal choice done to enhance or highlight greater aspects, or sometimes to dull or hide them. We forget this sometimes, and I consider it a net loss for writing.
Agree but I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing to meme/turn into a logo common aspects, more of an inevitability as people seek shorthands to communicate. The big problem is like you highlight is that people read the logo/compressed meme AS the genre.
Definitely can see it with Star Wars where more and more the light saber fights became the focus. I guess people just have to manually reset themselves to push back against the trend
"Star Wars is a lightsaber, western as a genre is a silhouette of a cowboy on horseback, and Sleepy Hollow is a headless horseman with pumpkin head in hand. I do not resent the loss of meaning in something that becomes oft referenced, however I do hate that such a special story has lost its meaning in our culture to the point that many people, like myself, believed they had experienced it when they actually hadn’t."
Agreed, and to expand on my own thoughts, the reduction of stories to mere symbols cheapens the inherent value of the writing, and worse, leads to prejudice against the story or even entire genres or subsection of literature solely based on these symbols. "I don't like sci-fi because it's all spaceships and quark drives", for example, demonstrates only ignorance. A genre is nothing more than a setting for a story, which is more malleable than the conventions of genre or subsection can constrain. Does a Western seem more Western because it has a heart of gold whore and a sheriff who begrudgingly lets the outlaws go around because he can't handle them alone? Of course, but it is not the only necessity in a Western, and not even a necessity at that. A story is what you design, and the wrapper is always personal choice done to enhance or highlight greater aspects, or sometimes to dull or hide them. We forget this sometimes, and I consider it a net loss for writing.
Agree but I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing to meme/turn into a logo common aspects, more of an inevitability as people seek shorthands to communicate. The big problem is like you highlight is that people read the logo/compressed meme AS the genre.
Definitely can see it with Star Wars where more and more the light saber fights became the focus. I guess people just have to manually reset themselves to push back against the trend
This is an excellent essay. Neal Postman, who I brought up on the pod with Dudley, talks about exactly this phenomenon
Thank you and opening a tab to listen to that later!
Excellent essay.
Despite having read the original, back in the prior century, I had completely forgotten the original version. Thank you for the refresher.
Thanks for reading!