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You've got to let your protagonists bleed: Star Wars, Elfen Lied, and melodrama.
You've probably heard it a million times: You've got to let your characters get hurt! If they are invulnerable, there is no tension. There is no humanity. You miss out on all these great chances for character development.
Elfen Lied is an anime that loves to hurt.
In the first eight minutes, we're treated to a splendorous gorefest involving the brutal dismemberment of 23 guards, and also the beheading of the tropetastic clumsy girl who does her best.
Then the girl -- who get a sense should be our protagonist, what with appearing in the OP and whatnot -- takes an anti-tank missile to the head.
And here is the aftermath:
She wakes up on a beach reverted to some infantile state of mind and capable of saying only "nyu"1 and is found by a pair of yuppie cousins, our other protagonists. The 23 men, who were thrown at her with reckless abandon despite obviously not being able to make a difference, are never mourned. They are mentioned only to excite the bounty hunter who subsequently go after our naked protagonist.
1 I'd like to mention that from a linguistic standpoint, "nyuu" is a pretty damn weird choice for the only thing an infantile (Japanese) character to be able to say.
In other words, people were killed and no one really cares. A girl takes a huge round to the head and turns from a psychopathic murderer into an adorable naked loli. (In other words, her condition was improved.)
What is an injury supposed to mean if it causes no lasting harm?
Meet Mayu. She's repeatedly molested by her dickhead stepfather. When she tries to tell her mom, she gets bitchslapped for stealing her man. I think that's pretty strong evidence that there have been problems in this family for a very long time.
So, she decides to run away.
That's all there is to it.
That's literally the very next shot.
And for a tiny bit, Elfen Lied is actually effective. For a few minutes we get shots of Mayu living as a runaway. It's all moody shots of streets and signs. No one says a thing. And it's momentarily touching.
And then there are some cliched hijinks with the ocean, a stray dog, and a classist lady or something, and I could rant about that but that's another problem entirely. In any case, the yuppie cousins grab her back to thehome for naked lolis mansion,
which she apparently doesn't mind in the least, and then subsequently weeps all over them in gratefulness.
Then she goes to school and everything's better.
According to Wikipedia, her only major role in the series from here on out is making friends with one of the outcast psychic lolis. Mayu never lashes out against a single person who hasn't been directly cruel to her. (And neither does the main character who's supposed to be ~so bitter~. EDIT: Never mind, she does do quite a bit of slaying of innocents.)
So, in summary:
- Girl grows up with Neglectful Mother
- Said Mother brings sexually abusive stepfather into the house
- ... and does nothing to stop it
- ... and blames Girl for it
- Girl runs away, and no one bothers to stop her.
- Girl suffers on the streets a bit
- Yuppie Cousins take her in
- Girl is overwhelmed with kindness and becomes happy
And everything is glorious from there on out. All that was needed to heal Mayu's lifelong battering was a nice pair of yuppie cousins to take her in and feed her cake.
Overall this subplot has been meaningful for the sake of a small group of protagonists: the yuppie cousins. It shows their Charity and Kindness, especially compared to the rest of humanity.
What I'm saying is, they brought in sexual abuse for the shock value and to make their protagonists look good. That's not "deep"; that's not "addressing the issue"; that's crass and dismissive. Sexual abuse, as is murder, should be important precisely because its effects are profound and long-lasting. The impression you get from Elfen Lied is quite the opposite.
And in my opinion, when a ton of terrible things happen but none of it matters -- that is the essence of melodrama.
Anyway, I promised you Star Wars.
Star Wars needs to make its case for the Empire being Bad. It shrugs its shoulders on several chances to do this subtly: Luke's family despite lip service about needing this and that seems to own a lot of land, and lives in a rather large abode that looks quite clean and well-serviced by droids. Luke's biggest worry in life seems to be getting into the pilot academy. If the Empire has been oppressing the people, he doesn't really seem to care at this point.
But the Empire's bad, okay? Look at what they did to Luke's family.
And they even blew up a planet. Against the terms of their bargain with Leia, we must add.
Wow, the Empire's pretty evil!
But why is razing a house and burning its inhabitants a bad thing? Why is blowing up an entire planet a bad thing? "It's self-evident," you might say, and that's what the directors are hoping you'd say. These things are self-evidently bad, just like mass murder and sexual abuse. And to some extent it works, and it toys with your feelings for about half a minute. But for all appearances, no one actually seems to care.
Luke's reaction, after a little makeshift pyre: "welp, nothing left for me here, let's adventure! I wanna be like my dad!"
And as for the planet? Leia struggles a little when they're charging the laser,
but the scene ends with a shot of the planet exploding.
No reaction shot.
The next and only reference to the annihilation of this planet is Han Solo remarking that the planet doesn't seem to exist anymore, and the passengers of his ship sharing a brief moment of silence.
So, Leia's entire home planet is destroyed, and neither she nor anyone else sheds a tear. There were presumably people on that planet -- Leia's friends, people who helped raised her. Places she lived as a child, places where she had important memories. Hell, we're talking about a planet here. The magnitude of what she's just lost is off the charts. But Star Wars would like you not to dwell on that, because Leia's backstory and friends at home aren't really what's important. Having your parents brutally murdered while you were derping around outside isn't important. The evilness of the Empire is the important thing here.
For the most part, things improve in V, probably in part because George Lucas was no longer the developer. Characters had personality beyond one or two notes. The hierarchy within the Empire had some contour to it. Some of our trope-guided expectations were subverted, such as with Yoda.
What's bizarre is when Luke is laid down by something and when he isn't.
At the beginning of the movie, Luke gets dragged into some alien polar bear den, uses the Force to slay it, and then runs out of the cave like a dumbass.
As a result ofbeing a dumbass getting stranded in the blizzard, he has to be rescued by an unusually brave Han Solo, who saves him by stuffing him into a carcass. This is, to my recollection, the first and only time Luke is helpless. And for what?
So that he can pick up a quest to the next plot point, that's what.
On the other hand, let's look at Luke's injury at the very climax of the movie.
This was one thing that I hadn't been spoiled on. I was honestly surprised when Luke had his arm chopped off! Unfortunately, that moment was ruined because about ten seconds later, I thought to myself, "There's no way they're going to let him go without a fully functional arm for very long."
Less than fifteen minutes later, I was proven right.
What a missed opportunity. Luke was physically and spiritually wounded in that battle. His spiritual wounds remain and form the basis of the tension throughout the third movie. What will he do about his father? -- and so on.
So why heal a major wound so quickly? Why strap a prosthesis on him in time for the celebration, and never make mention of it again? Why doesn't he carry any bodily scars from that encounter? (Or from any other encounter, for that matter. But particularly this one.)
Why not let him feel some awkwardness with his new hand, having to re-adjust to using it, wielding a sword with it, anything? It would have melded well with the idea that Luke is getting used to adjusting his view of his life and his father. Or if you don't want it to be symbolic/important, if there were a single instance in the third movie where, say, his prosthetic arm got splattered with something and malfunctioned for a scene or two, that might have redeemed V's dismissal of its own climax.
But no, it doesn't matter that Luke gets hurt. The only struggle of his that matters is that he will have to Face His Father!!
Eyes on the plot, kids.
Earlier I mentioned that mismatching a cause with an effect can be dismissive of weighty issues. More than that, with any kind of mismatch, even coming from less controversial events like blowing up a planet, there's a cost to storytelling. When you say, "The impact of this on the characters isn't really important. Here, look at how this advances the plot," you're giving up the chance to connect with your audience, to make things matter, to make the characters have a soul -- in short, to make your story anything beyond your plot.
George Lucas seems to be the sort of storyteller who thinks all of his ideas are so goddamn exciting, you should shut up and listen about how Luke fights the Empire, it's gonna be epic!In other words, he's like an excitable self-published fifteen-year-old. It's a bit mystifying that Star Wars is such a centerpiece of pop culture. I'd make a jab about how taste must have been in the early 80s, but then, we have Twilight.
The thing is, there is very little you can do to make a plot inherently exciting all by itself. Every plot is made of parts that have already been used and re-used, and people over the age of sixteen are generally quite familiar with these cliches. It is generally not the plot that makes a story meaningful, and I don't think GL gets that. He's busy bouncing off the walls about how these guys are evil and these guys are gonna fight them and it's gonna be awesome. In the meantime, he sacrifices what actually make a story stand out: the world is but a backdrop and the characters are but devices, and nothing ever happens that you're really supposed to care about.
It's not merely about letting them get hurt. Letting them take blows is easy. Letting them wince is easy.
It's about letting them bleed. Letting them deal with the things that hurt them, one way or another.
And it's about letting them scar.
Because if it never mattered to them, if they don't carry it around, how much is it supposed to matter to us?
Elfen Lied is an anime that loves to hurt.
In the first eight minutes, we're treated to a splendorous gorefest involving the brutal dismemberment of 23 guards, and also the beheading of the tropetastic clumsy girl who does her best.
Then the girl -- who get a sense should be our protagonist, what with appearing in the OP and whatnot -- takes an anti-tank missile to the head.
And here is the aftermath:
She wakes up on a beach reverted to some infantile state of mind and capable of saying only "nyu"1 and is found by a pair of yuppie cousins, our other protagonists. The 23 men, who were thrown at her with reckless abandon despite obviously not being able to make a difference, are never mourned. They are mentioned only to excite the bounty hunter who subsequently go after our naked protagonist.
1 I'd like to mention that from a linguistic standpoint, "nyuu" is a pretty damn weird choice for the only thing an infantile (Japanese) character to be able to say.
In other words, people were killed and no one really cares. A girl takes a huge round to the head and turns from a psychopathic murderer into an adorable naked loli. (In other words, her condition was improved.)
What is an injury supposed to mean if it causes no lasting harm?
Meet Mayu. She's repeatedly molested by her dickhead stepfather. When she tries to tell her mom, she gets bitchslapped for stealing her man. I think that's pretty strong evidence that there have been problems in this family for a very long time.
So, she decides to run away.
That's all there is to it.
That's literally the very next shot.
And for a tiny bit, Elfen Lied is actually effective. For a few minutes we get shots of Mayu living as a runaway. It's all moody shots of streets and signs. No one says a thing. And it's momentarily touching.
And then there are some cliched hijinks with the ocean, a stray dog, and a classist lady or something, and I could rant about that but that's another problem entirely. In any case, the yuppie cousins grab her back to the
which she apparently doesn't mind in the least, and then subsequently weeps all over them in gratefulness.
Then she goes to school and everything's better.
According to Wikipedia, her only major role in the series from here on out is making friends with one of the outcast psychic lolis. Mayu never lashes out against a single person who hasn't been directly cruel to her. (
So, in summary:
- Girl grows up with Neglectful Mother
- Said Mother brings sexually abusive stepfather into the house
- ... and does nothing to stop it
- ... and blames Girl for it
- Girl runs away, and no one bothers to stop her.
- Girl suffers on the streets a bit
- Yuppie Cousins take her in
- Girl is overwhelmed with kindness and becomes happy
And everything is glorious from there on out. All that was needed to heal Mayu's lifelong battering was a nice pair of yuppie cousins to take her in and feed her cake.
Overall this subplot has been meaningful for the sake of a small group of protagonists: the yuppie cousins. It shows their Charity and Kindness, especially compared to the rest of humanity.
What I'm saying is, they brought in sexual abuse for the shock value and to make their protagonists look good. That's not "deep"; that's not "addressing the issue"; that's crass and dismissive. Sexual abuse, as is murder, should be important precisely because its effects are profound and long-lasting. The impression you get from Elfen Lied is quite the opposite.
And in my opinion, when a ton of terrible things happen but none of it matters -- that is the essence of melodrama.
Anyway, I promised you Star Wars.
Star Wars needs to make its case for the Empire being Bad. It shrugs its shoulders on several chances to do this subtly: Luke's family despite lip service about needing this and that seems to own a lot of land, and lives in a rather large abode that looks quite clean and well-serviced by droids. Luke's biggest worry in life seems to be getting into the pilot academy. If the Empire has been oppressing the people, he doesn't really seem to care at this point.
But the Empire's bad, okay? Look at what they did to Luke's family.
And they even blew up a planet. Against the terms of their bargain with Leia, we must add.
Wow, the Empire's pretty evil!
But why is razing a house and burning its inhabitants a bad thing? Why is blowing up an entire planet a bad thing? "It's self-evident," you might say, and that's what the directors are hoping you'd say. These things are self-evidently bad, just like mass murder and sexual abuse. And to some extent it works, and it toys with your feelings for about half a minute. But for all appearances, no one actually seems to care.
Luke's reaction, after a little makeshift pyre: "welp, nothing left for me here, let's adventure! I wanna be like my dad!"
And as for the planet? Leia struggles a little when they're charging the laser,
but the scene ends with a shot of the planet exploding.
No reaction shot.
The next and only reference to the annihilation of this planet is Han Solo remarking that the planet doesn't seem to exist anymore, and the passengers of his ship sharing a brief moment of silence.
So, Leia's entire home planet is destroyed, and neither she nor anyone else sheds a tear. There were presumably people on that planet -- Leia's friends, people who helped raised her. Places she lived as a child, places where she had important memories. Hell, we're talking about a planet here. The magnitude of what she's just lost is off the charts. But Star Wars would like you not to dwell on that, because Leia's backstory and friends at home aren't really what's important. Having your parents brutally murdered while you were derping around outside isn't important. The evilness of the Empire is the important thing here.
For the most part, things improve in V, probably in part because George Lucas was no longer the developer. Characters had personality beyond one or two notes. The hierarchy within the Empire had some contour to it. Some of our trope-guided expectations were subverted, such as with Yoda.
What's bizarre is when Luke is laid down by something and when he isn't.
At the beginning of the movie, Luke gets dragged into some alien polar bear den, uses the Force to slay it, and then runs out of the cave like a dumbass.
As a result of
So that he can pick up a quest to the next plot point, that's what.
On the other hand, let's look at Luke's injury at the very climax of the movie.
This was one thing that I hadn't been spoiled on. I was honestly surprised when Luke had his arm chopped off! Unfortunately, that moment was ruined because about ten seconds later, I thought to myself, "There's no way they're going to let him go without a fully functional arm for very long."
Less than fifteen minutes later, I was proven right.
What a missed opportunity. Luke was physically and spiritually wounded in that battle. His spiritual wounds remain and form the basis of the tension throughout the third movie. What will he do about his father? -- and so on.
So why heal a major wound so quickly? Why strap a prosthesis on him in time for the celebration, and never make mention of it again? Why doesn't he carry any bodily scars from that encounter? (Or from any other encounter, for that matter. But particularly this one.)
Why not let him feel some awkwardness with his new hand, having to re-adjust to using it, wielding a sword with it, anything? It would have melded well with the idea that Luke is getting used to adjusting his view of his life and his father. Or if you don't want it to be symbolic/important, if there were a single instance in the third movie where, say, his prosthetic arm got splattered with something and malfunctioned for a scene or two, that might have redeemed V's dismissal of its own climax.
But no, it doesn't matter that Luke gets hurt. The only struggle of his that matters is that he will have to Face His Father!!
Eyes on the plot, kids.
Earlier I mentioned that mismatching a cause with an effect can be dismissive of weighty issues. More than that, with any kind of mismatch, even coming from less controversial events like blowing up a planet, there's a cost to storytelling. When you say, "The impact of this on the characters isn't really important. Here, look at how this advances the plot," you're giving up the chance to connect with your audience, to make things matter, to make the characters have a soul -- in short, to make your story anything beyond your plot.
George Lucas seems to be the sort of storyteller who thinks all of his ideas are so goddamn exciting, you should shut up and listen about how Luke fights the Empire, it's gonna be epic!
The thing is, there is very little you can do to make a plot inherently exciting all by itself. Every plot is made of parts that have already been used and re-used, and people over the age of sixteen are generally quite familiar with these cliches. It is generally not the plot that makes a story meaningful, and I don't think GL gets that. He's busy bouncing off the walls about how these guys are evil and these guys are gonna fight them and it's gonna be awesome. In the meantime, he sacrifices what actually make a story stand out: the world is but a backdrop and the characters are but devices, and nothing ever happens that you're really supposed to care about.
It's not merely about letting them get hurt. Letting them take blows is easy. Letting them wince is easy.
It's about letting them bleed. Letting them deal with the things that hurt them, one way or another.
And it's about letting them scar.
Because if it never mattered to them, if they don't carry it around, how much is it supposed to matter to us?