*I apologize for the cursing. When I am passionate I have a tendency to curse more.
Why in the hell is Deconstruction so Popular? TO break things down. Instead of building them up. I think part of it is:
- The Heroic Ideal is outdated to Hollowwood, so that's what most try to produce, the opposite: the flawed, the un-heroic, the mundane. We have to make them "SUPER RELATABLE" guys!
- The Idea that "readers can only relate to things like them." BULLSHIT. If that was the case, I wouldn't have read 90% of the books and comics I've enjoyed. Let alone movies.
- The Bandwagon Effect: OH THIS ITEM DID SUPER WELL! LET COPY PASTE IT! But you don't have the skill to pull it off. Or the reader can tell you are phoning it in for the money.
- Apparently its a "very literary" to do all this: Here or Here
- Which this reader doesn't care about somethings LITERARY value. Is the fucking book fun? If it makes me think, ok! Bonus. But 9 times out of 10, me give money to be entertained. Not lectured or deconstructed b/c its so prevalent.
Hello Darkness my Old Friend, come to deconstruct again! You want to be so literary! To get that BIG HOLLOWWOOD money! WHO cares about adventure and fun? No one, go to sleep reading these dead fancy LITERARY treeeeeees! Behold the sounds of bored readers!
Ahem.
Quoted from 2nd Link:
Deconstruction is one (controversial) literary theory amongst many: Russian Formalism, Structuralism, Marxism, Feminism, Jungian, Freudian, Reception Theory, ... . Actually, Deconstruction is more a way of reading than a theory of literature, and it aims to show how texts deconstruct or contradict themselves. Instead of showing how everything fits together in a hierarchical structure, as other approaches tend to do, deconstruction tries to show how texts unravel themselves, particularly showing how the privileged item in a binary pair can be reversed and subverted.
Deconstruction
is actually a way of reading any text and thereby exposing the
instability of meaning which the text tries to cover up. At the basic
level this instability results from the endless chain of meanings which a
word is capable of generating all throughout the existence of that
word: its archaic meanings, its modern connotations and denotations, and
ever changing implications in changing (con)texts. Apart from
semantics, it also takes one into other aspects of meaning-construction,
like phonetics, syntax, grammar,etc. In short, it reveals how the text
is always already internally conflicted, and is far from the serenity of
any definite meaning.
In
a novel, one could try and show how perspectives and ideologies clash;
how the authorial voice is unable to contain the paradoxical and
contradictory flow of meanings generated by the events, circumscribed as
it is by its own ideological suppositions; etc.
Well shit! No wonder TOR is fucking boring. Besides Weber's Safehold stuff.
In its own corrupted way nowadays, deconstruct stuff is littered throughout woke scold land. Or by people who just want to jump on "this looks popular" band wagon. Kinda like LIT RPG stuff. If something looks like its short term gold, everyone wants a piece of that pie. Never mind that half these writers look like they are doing it to mostly cash in rather then feeding a passion balanced with wanting a paycheck.
Frank Herbert doesn't write about happy things. Its a pattern in all his books. But he pulls it off well. It doesn't mean I want to read deconstruction constantly. OR read these subjects constantly. We all can't be a Herbert, A Moore, A Tolkien, A King, or even Bastard Santa GRRM. We have to be ourselves when we write. Otherwise it comes off as copying ideas without really understanding them.
Its why I wish more would mix their passion with a payday rather then pure payday. Pulp Rev balances this I think. You can tell they care but they also are aiming to be paid. That's alright. Because you can tell that passion is the heart of it.
You want to know something that feels literary but is fun/entertaining/makes you think: Sanction
Back to Deconstruction:
- It looks at the dirt, not the sky.
- It looks at the muck, not the virtue.
- It has no wonder, just depression.
- Want to feel like crap? Read knockoffs that try to mimic Dune or Watchmen but go the route of parody, a mere shell. The "expanded" universe of Dune will do this. Can I have Bill Gates level money for my books now? Now in Production for Hollowwood! Coming Spring of 2021! OH NO THEATERS LEFT? Oops!
Deconstruction is STD and ST: Picard and look how fracking well they are doing. Like a nail in a coffin. And people pay for the privilege of death. They hang onto it like a Titanic. I understand it so well. I was that way for Star Wars and others.
Ill go back to B5 for a moment: IT constructs and deconstructs, it brings its characters down but lifts them up also. IT DOESN'T KEEP THEM IN THE DIRT PERPETUALLY! There's still light at the end of the tunnel. Hollowwood has forgotten this. In its quest to purely make a buck, it forgot its heart. Its dead and shriveled.
Also going to mention: Suneater/Sollan Empire
You wont get this sort of stuff with pure Deconstruction:
All these characters had classic heroic arcs that brought them to a better place. For the most part. The rise of the others served as a contrast to the darkness that a certain Mimbari and Centuri found themselves in.
I gotta say: Babylon 5 is how I judge most space opera. If you are in B5 range, you are in good company book or comic wise.
Like the SHOW vs TELL stuff. If you have too much of one element, it drowns out all the flavors in your text, show, book, comic ect. It's why I can't stand most ID/Misery Fiction. Because it relies on only one flavor: A club. To get its point across.
This Show: IT builds and tears down things. IT repairs relationships. I can only hope I'll be half as effective as JMS was with these stories.
Pure Deconstruction doesn't convey the same impact. It hollows out everything it touches. It makes me feel like: Was this even worth reading?
No comments:
Post a Comment