narrative expectations
Jul. 20th, 2005 11:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennySo ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
heres_luck has been watching Gilmore Girls, and I have been watching as well, in a sort of desultory in-and-out fashion. I like the show fine--it's entertaining and clever--but it doesn't trip any of my triggers.
Anyway, last night I wandered through the living room just as one character said to another, "Let me get my sweater," and turned toward the closet. And I thought, Oh no! No, don't open the closet!
But she did. And got her sweater. And they went out.
This moment encapsulates both (a.) why Gilmore Girls is never going to get much more than mild interest from me and (b.) a useful thought about narrative expectations, which I'm going toinflict on share with y'all.
Narrative expectations are the things that a reader/viewer expects to have happen in a particular story. In a romance, you expect the two main characters to fall in love. In a mystery, you expect a crime to be solved. In the kind of TV shows I like, you expect the innocent action of opening a closet to have terrible consequences, like a demon, or a corpse.
My narrative expectations are formed from immersion in science fiction, fantasy, horror, and mystery. They are completely inappropriate to a show like Gilmore Girls, which while it has a very gentle element of fantasy (or, at least, that's my opinion of the town of Stars Hollow), never departs from what we might call Newtonian realism. The characters may be fanciful; the world never is. And because it is a very gentle show, people don't murder other people and shove them in dorm-room closets. It's just not the sort of thing that happens.
Assuming competence on both sides, incompatible narrative expectations are the most likely reason for an audience and story to part ways. An audience that is disappointed in its expectations is unlikely to keep reading or watching.* On the other hand, if a story can confound its audience's expectations--transcend them or defy them or trample them gleefully into the mud--the audience is likely to be enthralled. (A very small example, from the teaser for "Welcome to the Hellmouth" (Buffy the Vampire Slayer 1.1): our narrative expectation is that the two teenage kids who've broken into the high school to make out are going to get chomped by something nasty. This expectation is reinforced by the girl's nervousness, and then utterly upended when she herself turns out to be the something nasty.) Narrative expectations are based on narrative conventions--on things that customarily happen in a certain type of story--and therefore we are very comfortable with stories that fulfill our expectations. But we are delighted by stories that one-up them, stories that surprise us.
Like most things in story-telling, it's a high-wire act.
---
*I should add that blame does not necessarily accrue to the story. It may be that the audience has brought the wrong set of expectations to the table, like my knee-jerk reaction to opening closets. My warped narrative sensibilities are not Gilmore Girls' fault.
heres_luck has been watching Gilmore Girls, and I have been watching as well, in a sort of desultory in-and-out fashion. I like the show fine--it's entertaining and clever--but it doesn't trip any of my triggers.Anyway, last night I wandered through the living room just as one character said to another, "Let me get my sweater," and turned toward the closet. And I thought, Oh no! No, don't open the closet!
But she did. And got her sweater. And they went out.
This moment encapsulates both (a.) why Gilmore Girls is never going to get much more than mild interest from me and (b.) a useful thought about narrative expectations, which I'm going to
Narrative expectations are the things that a reader/viewer expects to have happen in a particular story. In a romance, you expect the two main characters to fall in love. In a mystery, you expect a crime to be solved. In the kind of TV shows I like, you expect the innocent action of opening a closet to have terrible consequences, like a demon, or a corpse.
My narrative expectations are formed from immersion in science fiction, fantasy, horror, and mystery. They are completely inappropriate to a show like Gilmore Girls, which while it has a very gentle element of fantasy (or, at least, that's my opinion of the town of Stars Hollow), never departs from what we might call Newtonian realism. The characters may be fanciful; the world never is. And because it is a very gentle show, people don't murder other people and shove them in dorm-room closets. It's just not the sort of thing that happens.
Assuming competence on both sides, incompatible narrative expectations are the most likely reason for an audience and story to part ways. An audience that is disappointed in its expectations is unlikely to keep reading or watching.* On the other hand, if a story can confound its audience's expectations--transcend them or defy them or trample them gleefully into the mud--the audience is likely to be enthralled. (A very small example, from the teaser for "Welcome to the Hellmouth" (Buffy the Vampire Slayer 1.1): our narrative expectation is that the two teenage kids who've broken into the high school to make out are going to get chomped by something nasty. This expectation is reinforced by the girl's nervousness, and then utterly upended when she herself turns out to be the something nasty.) Narrative expectations are based on narrative conventions--on things that customarily happen in a certain type of story--and therefore we are very comfortable with stories that fulfill our expectations. But we are delighted by stories that one-up them, stories that surprise us.
Like most things in story-telling, it's a high-wire act.
---
*I should add that blame does not necessarily accrue to the story. It may be that the audience has brought the wrong set of expectations to the table, like my knee-jerk reaction to opening closets. My warped narrative sensibilities are not Gilmore Girls' fault.
