lessons and morals and storytelling and whatever this subject should be . . .

yesterday, between 4pm and 1ish am, I read Animal Farm.

the book (fantastic, naturally) is irrelevent to most of this post, but the first 30 pages, is.

it got me runnin over in my head a certain sort of book, because for the first 30 pages it seemed like it WAS this sort of book. lets see if anyone is on the same page as me.

Farenheit 451: i have yet to read it in its entirety. i was reading it in 8th grade. i was at about page 14oish-somethinerother when an English teacher and some girl in my class who was oddly mature(brain and body) for her age noticed i was reading it.

"thats a good book" the english teacher said.

"i'm fairly pretentious in my intellect, for my age" the girl said.

"how are you liking it?" the English teacher quipped. i'm not sure if 'quipped' is the right word here, and she probably phrased more oldlier, but i'm not worried about either of those.

So, Naturally, I reply, "oh, its alright, i guess, doesn't seem like there's much to it, the point is, stupid."

and the way that english teacher looked at me, and by 'me' i mean 'away from me and at her papers and teacherly junk' was priceless, i tellya.

"oh," she said, her opinion of me dwindling, "obviously your not understanding the message."

"i was somewhere on the english teachers side but no one knows or cares the specificities of my involvement. . ."

the rest of it was only implied in the sentence, but more-than-fairly likely it was in both of their thoroughly intellectual (and/or intelligent) well-read brains. it was the notion that Ray Bradbury's Farenheit 451 is a classic, and anyone whom cannot appreciate it, or disagrees with it, is clearly immature intellectually, and they need to grow up.

Hmm, i thought to myself, thats just stupid.

and i put the book down and haven't picked it up since.

At the time, whilst reading it, i started to ask myself, the points you ask yourself when absorbing any work of fiction. the points and their results for Ray Bradury's Faranheit 451 are as follows. my memory should be pretty good of these points,

STORY- fairly boring, almost lame. not halfwaypoint yet, though.

CHARACTERS- nothin special. not yet anyway. boring.

WORLD- future-society. ok, the man outlawed reading, its frowned upon by society.

MESSAGE- (in this case, extends from 'world') reading is a wonderful thing, and rebellion against this societical bullhooey is a good thing. reading is good. societies that say 'no reading' are bad. would you like a cookie?

thanks, Ray, for a second i thought that maybe the world really would be a better place if a whole class of blue-collar warriors' sole purpose was finding and torching every piece of read ever written. if it wasn't for you, Ray, in your infinite literary wit enlightening me/us, there would be no way for us to know that this society is in fact BAD.

understand, THIS is why my opinions stood where they did at the time.

clarification, i fully realize i did not (yet) finish the book and it might be a very different thing when i do. also, you can see why i brushed off the english teacher and the abnormally mature girl in my class and didn't take them seriously, maybe some would say i should have. but the way it stood at the time, any reaction other than my own would have been kinda naive.

For the record, i dig Ray Bradbury a great deal. his short stories are A+ and i got a lot of diggin for something wicked this way comes.

Johnathan Livingston Seagull: this one much much less people heard of. in fact, i'd be surprised if anyone in the history of the universe other than myself and the other 2 in this narrative have even heard of it.

it must of been about the 5th grade er so. i was a total bookworm at the time, before i started becomin a rockstar, you see, and one particular summer (i think it was summer) afternoon or something i was bookless.

"Dad, what book should i read"

"how about this one forya. its called Johnathan Livingston Seagull"

and he handed me this paperback. It said "Jonathan Livinston Seagull" on it. it was the kind of paperback that had seen more than anyone whose lived a thousand lifetimes had seen. the kind that you look at the price tag and they say '$1.70' and you say 'damn, they used to sell paperbacks like that' and apparantley they did. when your reading them, theres something inherently cool about opening up something and releasing molecules back into the atmosphere that had been shut up in a book since the last time it was opened, which was over several thousand years ago. The kind of paperback that is falling apart if its good, and almost falling apart if its not as good. The kind of paperback that makes you realize that scotch tape from a generation past was more high quality and efficient than that of your own generation, because the Scotch Tape of the previous generation can repair it more solidly with less tape. The Kind of Paperback whose pages are a shade of yellow you have never seen before in all your lifely explorations of the spectrum.

I really really hope you know this kind of paperback, because they truly are the only things worth reading.

This one, surprisingly enough, was well past the 'almost' stages and was 'falling apart', as if it were any good.

so, being 'That kind of paperback' which meant it would be an enjoyable read no matter what it was reading, recomended, lack of any other book, and most importantly, really short, I Read It.

i think it was 2, maybe 3 sittings. It was about a Seagull. the Seagull's name was Johnathan Livinston. he lived in a tribe of Seagulls. in this tribe, all the other Seagulls were boring and by the book and only flew in the same patterns. but Johnathan Livinston, he was so painfully cool. he was an artist. He longed to think outside of the box, he longed to fly in new, different patterns.

basically, The novella had zero going for it in the zeroiest sense of the word, except for a statement/lesson/commentary on -not rebellion, but- 'pseudo-rebellion', thinking outside the box, and possibly/probably interpreted/intended to be about 'art' (but what is art other than 'pseudo-rebellion' and thinking outside the box smashed in to a little bit of old-fashioned home-grown balls-to-the-wall bohemianism, eh?)

in any event, it wasted my time.

"so, son, what did you think of that book"

"well, to be honest withya, dad, i thought it was kinda boring. and pointless. and a waste of my time." The way it was phrased is quite very approximate, i don't really remember my dialogical stylings back then, but i'm pretty sure it wasn't as well-said, since part of the point of the post is that at the time i could wrap my brain around the idea, but i couldn't quite wrap a sentence around it.

Anyway, the disapointment in his face was heartbreaking. he thought i was ready. he thought i was ready to appreciate such a beautiful statement about pseudo-rebellion and outsidetheboxicism. apparantly he was wrong. ":("

Later, a similar conversation with my aunt became a similar response, though with her it was phrased much more like the English teacher.

anyone on the same page as me?

whats a story where the story is secondary to a primary lesson when said primary lesson is something that goes without saying?

that part was bolded.

i've seen or read stories that the lesson/purpose/moral took 8000 times more importance than the story, characters, etc., but the ones that do it right are lessons that don't go without saying i.e. ones that actually need to be bothered to be taught. also, in these cases, it much more shortwinded about it, 90% of the ones that come to mind are short stories.

and now i bring up WALL-E.

Wall-e is a good good movie. many many levels. but man, if it was only good on the most surfacey of these levels, no one would have cared a bit. thats because most people when appreciating works of fiction have trouble citing 'quality' when there is no 'depth' n such. Those people are stupid. i hate them. its a quite similar vein to the way my english teacher wrote off my not digging faranheit to me being young and not good at reading.

in the case of Sandman vs. Watchmen, Sandman is in my opinion, Better, whilst Watchmen is considered by most/everyone in the history of reading to be the deepest of the bunch. in most circles that i've seen, they consider Watchmen to be better than Sandman (though of course Watchmen is much more widely known.) this leads me to believe that a good deal of people think depth and quality is a direct relationship. i thouroughly disagree. immense quality CAN exist without any depth, and i'm sure somewhere out there, there is a layered piece of garbage.

the first group, one particular example comes to mind, the films of paul verhoeven, but the latter kind i can't seem to think of one, but i promise you, its gotta be out there somewhere.

anyway so Wall-e. lets givit that breakdown from earlier, shallwe.

STORY- golden. a healthy dose of originality, which in sci-fi may be tougher than it seems.

CHARACTERS- fantastic. beautiful, relatable, (i'm quite close to using the phrase 'adorable', but not quite there.), felt really, and a well-crafted/well-written relationship. all this despite being robots. of the future.

VISUALS- fantastic. golden. A+. worth 90% of the price of admission alone. (needless to say the other 10% is more than accounted for.)

PLOT- well paced, developed good, felt believable actually, despite being, yaknow. . . also, apply the phrase 'breathes well' to everyone one of those.

That right there is everything i need. you give me those 4 points, and i will buy it on bluray and watch it a thousand times. hellyeah to you, Wall-e, and the rest of pixar (naturally).

my problem is, a great deal of the more-than-kids-animated-movie recognition it got, would not be the case without all the-

DEEPS and MORALS- really high-brow stuff, here. i sincerely write that, difficult maybe for you to believe, but i mean it. too much to go into explainin here, but i don't think its really necassary. also, directly relating to my problem with Farenheit, the quote-unquote "Moral" was like, the quintessential of all quintessential goes without sayingsness.

and so. it got more recognition and critical mumbo-jumbo than virtually any animated film in the history of drawing-stuff-and-making-it-move. but i guarantee you it wouldn't have been half if not for that 5th category i posted.

Cint Eastwood's last Western picture: Unforgiven. 1992ersomething. quite very deep, quite very good, and the last 15 minutes has some of the baddest 'bad motherfarmerisms' i've ever seen.
"you wouldn't shoot me, i'm unarmed"
"anyone who'd decorate his establishment with my friend should know better to arm himelf"

"you just shot 5 unarmed men!"
" . . .(swig of whiskey) yeah."

These (2 in particular, but there were many more) bad motherfarmerisms are just a part of some very sophisticated, very intelligent-and/or-intellecual, very deep, very social-commentarial, etc. depthities and layerings about the expression of violence in american entertainment, and all that mumbo jumbo. i certainly have this appreciation, it absolutely necassary that we take a step back and deeply show for commentarial purposes a perspective of violence that questions its very entertainment-and/or-surface value, what with all the balls-to-the-wall/no-consequences perspective on it we get in the films of our species. the last sentence was long and kinda boring, but i had to put it in there to show that "i'm not just saying that" er whatever, i could go more, but i made the point er whatever. . .

anyway, why shouldn't we allow ourselves to step back, ignore the deeper junk, and appreciate those bad-motherfarmerisms for their surface value if we so choose? sometimes i feel like i am supposed to not do this, for artful pretensious high-brow film appreciation purposes. eff-yall.



yeah, so, the point of this? oh, i dunno, i'm just sayin i guess . .. people annoy me when they take the lessons and layers to be worth more than the rest of everything else about the work of storytelling-or-whatever. people get so hyped up worrying about the abyssmal value of a lesson or something like that they tend to forget the surface value. .. ..
i don't like it. people are stupid. luckily, for me, i don't really care that this makes people think that i don't know how to appreciate deeper junk at times, cuz if i did (care about other peoples opinions of me) i'd be in quite a pickle.