So what if it’s inaccurate? It’s just a story!

“Whiplash”. Of course it’s a story. Storytellers and filmmakers do their best to make their stories plausible and emotionally convincing. That’s why the concept of “dramatic license” exists. But just as the possession of a driver’s license doesn’t give you permission to drive recklessly, this kind of license has responsibilities, too. Veteran jazz drummer Peter Erskine recently spoke out on the film and condemned it as a gross misrepresentation of jazz musicians and the experience of making music in groups.

J.K. Simmons in "Whiplash"

Oedipus, call your mother.

“Whiplash” is a remake of every military indoctrination film: it’s “An Officer And A Gentleman” with a bandleader instead of a drill sergeant. The dramatic mainspring of the movie actually has nothing to do with music; the big band is merely the setting for the clash of wills between the recruit/drummer and the drill sergeant/bandleader. The same story has been retold, in fiction and on screen, in offices, restaurant kitchens and other settings.

Louis Gosset, Richard Gere

They gonna remake this? No WAY, sailor.

The story, of course, has even deeper roots: it’s a father/son confrontation. The libraries and film vaults are full to bursting with examples. Mr. Oedipus, please call your mother.

There’s nothing wrong with retelling a good story in a new setting, or even a new telling of the same story in the same setting as before. But unless a writer creates a fantasy out of whole cloth, like Tolkien, he or she bases the tale on some recognizable milieu. The writer is at liberty to represent the real-world setting however he or she wants to, but the further the representation departs from reality, the greater the strain to credulity. That’s why Deus ex Machina endings don’t satisfy anyone – except, again, in fantasy (and opera, where you can get away with anything, as Anna Russell said, as long as you sing it). (Russell’s famous remark comes at the 4:00 mark in this clip.)

This doesn’t matter to everybody. Some people don’t care if a story is realistic if it’s otherwise satisfying. There are some genres where this matters less than others. For instance, I don’t think too many people worry about the precise historical accuracy of a romantic comedy, as long as the characters in, say, a Jane Austen novel aren’t driving Ferraris. But films which purport to represent the real world suffer if they stray too far from reality. Some members of the audience are prepared to forgive anything if it’s “just a story”. But some aren’t. I’m not.

Benedict Cumberbatch

True story? Sorry, that’s encrypted.

For instance, I thought “The Imitation Game” was a brilliantly made and compelling story. However, I’m put off by the fact that it grossly misrepresents the historical record in many ways: first, by presenting Turing’s breakthrough as a solo effort. Without the critically important work of three Polish cryptographers before the outbreak of the war, he likely never would have made his key discoveries. Second, one of Turing’s colleagues is depicted as a Russian agent and Turing is showing as leaving him in place at the request of the head of MI6. Complete fabrication. Third, Turing is identified as gay but paralytically shy. In fact, while he was discreet, he was anything but restrained. All this is a matter of record from the very biography on which the film is based, “Alan Turing: The Enigma” by Andrew Hodges. The filmmakers simply used the parts they thought would make a good story, discarded the rest and otherwise invented to suit their purposes. I think the film suffers for it.

Peter Erskine

The drummer begs to differ.

How much all this matters is obviously a matter of debate. A film like “Imitation Game” which is held out as a true story probably has less leeway than a fictional retelling of the Oedipal conflict. The makers of “Whiplash” wanted to tell a story chock-full of compelling and truthful emotional power. That they did, but, as Peter Erskine tells us, they did at considerable cost to verisimilitude. That a film may be well-made and entertaining does not excuse it from being criticized for its underlying inaccuracy.

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Goodbye, Sony Store

Sony_store_MTL

Sony is closing its retail stores in Canada,

Sad news, but not surprising. I could never figure out why Sony had retail stores in the first place, at least in Ontario. Their products are extensively available at retail, and if they’ve lost ground to Samsung and other manufacturers, it hasn’t been because of inadequate presence at retail. Sony lost ground because it was out-innovated.

The first time I saw the iPod, I knew there had been a changing of the guard. Innovative, clever features, beautiful design: I would have said “Sony” in a heartbeat. But it was Apple. From that point on, Sony’s sure touch for design and features evaporated. It has become a me-too company with undistinguished products and very little that’s exciting or new. They introduced a $1,200 (US) dedicated portable music player at CES this year. Gee, that’ll sell in quantity. Everybody wants a single-purpose portable device, right?

Sony’s stores were attractive, but with inventory drawn from TV, computers, cameras, ebooks, videogames, radios and everything in the Sony world, they were too much and too little all at the same time. In an era of big box electronic retailers and online superstores with next-day delivery, Sony was horribly out of step with present realities. And you could always find the same products for less money elsewhere – so you went into the Sony store to see the products, play with them and get your questions answered before buying them for much less on line. It’s called “showrooming” and it’s killing bookstores, too.

I’m not surprised in the least that they’re getting out of retail. Only Apple knows how to do this right.

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Why were Victorian Novels Multi-Volume?

I’ve been reading Victorian novels of late: Trollope, Dickens, James, Thackeray (and these thoughts were awakened by a passage in Victoria Glendenning’s biography of Trollope, which I’ve also been reading). I’ve known for a long time that the books of that era – novels, histories, accounts of travel and exploration – were almost always long, and published in multiple volumes. Victorian biographies, in fact, came to be known as “three-deckers” as they invariably appeared as three volumes.

Why so long? Why multi-volume? The first question is easy: mass literacy, inexpensive large-edition printing and no serious competition in that era for the audience’s attention. Novels were respectable, and respectability was all. I had always assumed that multi-volume books were simply a manifestation of cheap printing and abundant reading time amongst the middle classes. Turns out there was another, more incentively determined reason.

multivol

I’ve been reading Victorian novels of late: Trollope, Dickens, James, Thackeray (and these thoughts were awakened by a passage in Victoria Glendenning’s biography of Trollope, which I’ve also been reading). I’ve known for a long time that the books of that era – novels, histories, accounts of travel and exploration – were almost always long, and published in multiple volumes. Victorian biographies, in fact, came to be known as “three-deckers” as they invariably appeared as three volumes.

Why so long? Why multi-volume? The first question is easy: mass literacy, inexpensive large-edition printing and no serious competition in that era for the audience’s attention. Novels were respectable, and respectability was all. I had always assumed that multi-volume books were simply a manifestation of cheap printing and abundant reading time amongst the middle classes. Turns out there was another, more incentively determined reason.

While literacy was widespread and novels were very popular, books were an expensive indulgence. Large personal libraries were found largely in the homes of the aristocracy and upper ranks. Public libraries were in their infancy and were not, at that time, state-financed amenities for the free use of the public. Commercial lending libraries were, as a result, hugely popular, especially in the major cities.

The leading “subscription library” was that of Charles Mudie. He rented out books not by the title, but by the volume. He did so much business with publishers and placed such large advance orders, that when he said he wanted multi-volume works, they delivered, and Mudie garnered correspondingly greater rental income.

“The cost of novels in the Victorian era was such that most middle-class English people could not afford to purchase novels privately, so lending libraries like “Mudie’s” had a strong influence over publishers and authors.His demands that fiction novels be suited to the middle class family controlled the morality, subject and scope of the novel for fifty years. The rise of the three-volume novel can be directly attributed to this influence, and Mudie’s refusal to stock “immoral” books, such as, George Moore’s A Modern Lover (1883), A Mummers Wife (1885) and A Drama in Muslin (1886), also had an effect on the direction of Victorian literature.” (Wikipedia)

So, there you go: the course of our literary heritage was determined in part by rental rates. Another supply, demand and incentive story comes from Mudie: he stocked hundreds of thousands of books, including 500 copies of the first edition of Darwin’s The Origin of Species. Its rapid dissemination among the reading public may have been due as much to the book’s distribution by Mudie as its controversial nature.

Somebody could write a thesis about this stuff.

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