in praise of maximalism

[kindkit]

I've just stayed up late watching the first four episodes of Colditz, a 1970s British WWII drama about POWs in a supposedly escape-proof German camp.

I wish they still made TV shows like this--shows that actually take their time telling a story, that gradually establish characterization and relationships, that use subtlety and implication instead of info-dumps and obvious "this is the Message" speeches, that have dialogue written for intelligent adults instead of hyperactive 14-year-olds. I'd trade all the CGI in the world for better-crafted storytelling. It makes me sad to think of all the kinds of stories that we'll never see on TV again because they're just not fast enough or simple enough for the 21st century. And I don't just mean complex historical dramas; I mean things like the best episodes of Blake's 7 or classic Doctor Who. Imagine, for example, subsidiary characters having dialogue that just developed their characters and didn't advance the main plot. That used to happen! You never see it even on good TV anymore, because Plot is God and writers stuff as much plot into 45-60 minutes as they possibly can.

I'm tired of streamlining and breakneck pacing and so-called intensity. I want digressions, pauses, subplots and b-arcs, moments that are allowed to exist for their own sake (which is to say for the characters' sake, or the worldbuilding's sake). I want nonessential details, nonfunctional creativity, the things that makes a story feel alive instead of built, organic instead of mechanical. I want . . . copiousness, I guess you could call it.

This is part of the reason I love fanfic, I suppose. But you used to get more of it in the source text, too.

Comments

[lilacsigil]

It's strange, because just as TV went for Plot Is God, comics went for "decompressed storytelling". (My icon is from Bendis and Maleev's run on Daredevil, which was pretty much the epitome of this). Reading comics from the early 90s, for example, there's plots crammed into one issue that would take three issues now; comics from the mid-80s and earlier are even more crowded. People talk about this as writer laziness, being too slow and putting too much emphasis on character rather than plot. But I (usually) like it very much.

[kindkit]

Sounds good to me. If only there wasn't also the "let's have a massive crisis in our universe and drag all the titles in and try to force readers to buy everything in order to understand what the fuck is going on" thing, which seems to have become more prevalent at the same time. I'm still mad about X-Factor, which started out as a great character-driven oddball of a comic about a mutant detective agency, then got sucked into Marvel's M-Day stuff and then into the Civil War stuff, and (from what I hear, as I stopped reading) has never recovered its own identity.

[alixtii]

Myself? I want denouements, stories which, once the major crisis has passed, are allowed to linger on for a bit before ending.

But yes, I want all the things you mentioned too!

[kindkit]

denouements

Yes, that too. And consequences.

[oursin]

Yeah - compare/contrast the leisurely 13 hour-long episodes 1974 version of South Riding with the breakneck recent 3 episode 'mini-series' which cut out pretty much everything that wasn't Sara/Carne Rooooomance. Ugh. And similar thoughts occurred to me when watching Manhunt (1971), about three individuals forced to work together to try and escape France during the Occupation, and the depth of characters who maybe appeared for a single episode, and the moral complexity and ambiguity all round.

[kindkit]

which cut out pretty much everything that wasn't Sara/Carne Rooooomance

Oh, ick. That's another thing I hate in modern TV and commercial films--the way that a (heterosexual, of course) romance has to be major factor in every story. (Also, the fact that this is defended as the only way to have female characters!) For me, the older, less romance-centered stories have a great advantage, which is that even though there aren't any characters identified as queer, it's often possible to read some characters as queer. Whereas modern stories generally take that possibility away without giving any actually canonically queer characters in return.