The Emerald’s estimated readership is around 10,000. So for the 9,950 of you who didn’t make it to the Cultural Forum’s Queer Film Festival this weekend, you didn’t miss much.
The documentaries were fine. Predictable, but fine. The few films with a narrative thrust were disappointing. As I tried to stay awake during “The Raspberry Reich” — basically a hard-core porno with tongue-in-cheek neo-Communist overtones — I tried to figure out why I had been so bored through the films I’d seen so far.
To begin with, the guy-on-guy action was hardly the best I’ve seen. But it takes more than mediocre man-love to completely ruin a movie for me. The main problem, I think, is not with these particular movies, but with any narrative film that focuses more on the message than the story.
Films with a “message,” more often than not, sag under the weight of their own self-importance. They substitute clichés and tired platitudes for the subtle craft of quality storytelling.
Human beings are storytelling creatures. No known civilization has existed without storytelling. Storytelling exists where the stodgy empirical concepts of nonfiction, facts and science are nowhere to be found.
Deep meaning often comes as a natural byproduct of a good story. Unfortunately, a good story rarely comes from a starting place with meaning. Yet so many of these movies begin with a message and then tell a story, as if it was an afterthought.
When a film is really moving, the audience member discovers his or her own meaning of the story, inspired by the layers of meaning buried by the filmmakers, often subconsciously. Skillful filmmakers start with the story and let it lead to the message. When filmmakers start with a message and then come up with a story to fit, the story often suffers.
Moreover, since the message is so explicit, the audience is robbed of the joy of personal interpretation. As such, some audience members will be unable to connect with the message while others will feel their intelligence is being insulted. Too often, message movies only end up resonating with people who were already tuned to a particular message and fail to appeal to any sort of wider audience — preaching to the proverbial choir.
And this goes for all message movies across all agendas, not just those I saw this weekend.
The Mormons have terrible message movies. Take, for instance: “The Book of Mormon Movie, Volume I,” “The RM,” and “Charly.” These are but a few of the LDS movies that occasionally show at CinemaWorld at Valley River. I have yet to be impressed by one.
The Protestants have terrible message movies. Take, for instance, the “Left Behind” movies starring Kirk Cameron, any Focus on the Family production, and that “Apocalypse” movie with Mr. T.
And from the Catholic camp comes the granddaddy of all message movies that suck: Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of The Christ.”
The same holds for other forms of storytelling, not just movies.
J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” is one of the most over-analyzed novels ever written. In his foreword to the second edition, he makes clear that his epic is not a giant, complicated allegory. He didn’t start with a message about drugs, nuclear energy, the environment or the military industrial complex. He started with a story that seized his soul and stirred his imagination. Then he wrote it carefully and faithfully to the spirit of adventure that had come upon him. Classics are rarely written with the idea that they will become classics. They are thrilling tales first, and works of great cultural import second.
This is one of the reasons why I think “The Vagina Monologues” is a wretched play (for more on this, see “Vagina Monologues Misspeaks,” ODE, Feb. 15). In reaction to the column I wrote on the subject, some have called for my resignation as president of the vagina fan club. However, since differing tastes in theater is neither a high crime nor a misdemeanor, I shall serve out the remainder of my term as president.
The same goes for my term as secretary-treasurer of the guy-on-guy action fan club.
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