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Oct. 28th, 2016 01:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
proximoceptionWalking Dead 7.1 FAQ:
Why such a traumatically graphic handling? To draw attention to the difference between realistic and pop-culturized violence, mostly as an analogy for the difference between how you process violence done to Us vs. violence done to Them. (See my 6.16 posts for much more detail.)
Why draw it out so long? Because not doing so is part of that pop processing, that dismissal of Them.
Why show us those flashes of people dying who won't? Because Rick is thinking about who might be killed if he doesn't comply, or who might even be anyway given his total lack of control in this new situation. He's learning the helpless horror of the victimized and of those who love them. His legitimate fear is that it will never stop till all are dead.
Why trick us about who will die? Because any surprise in the direction of how bad it will be gives us a nearer (not near, just nearer) to how bad the real thing is, and to how shattering it is that there is no real Us protection beyond our hitherto happy chance and the complacency it's fostered.
Why the endless scene with the axe and zombies? Plotwise, because Negan wants to both show Rick that he must now do anything asked of him and remind him of the fate of the last man who didn't comply: all his friends were killed, he was psychologically tortured and then hanged. Thematically, Rick's failure to find safety when jumping onto the hanged man - since when the smoke clears zombies are everywhere - symbolizes how Rick had lost his last chance earlier by letting the man die. This was due to the narrowing of his sympathies to a highly restricted definition of Us, which lost him the possible help of someone who knew about Negan's people's ways and had been hauled about by them all day, so might have known how to avoid the trap. More generally, that decision represented the various ways Rick had alienated others' potential help or sourred Negan's revenge by holding some lives much cheaper than others, reducing the strength of Alexandria, of his core group (which had splintered into several easily-captured ones and twos because of decisions he had made), of his alliance with Hilltop etc. He's up there with the hanged man because this is his own noose.
Why the slow lingering on Negan and his bizarre, cornball sadism? Because Negan's is the power now - the time is his, the focus has been wrested by him, and his main objective, much more than neutralizing troublesomely unbendable members of the conquered group, is for them to all come around to believing that this is so. Thematically, it's to rub the viewer's face in how inappropriate our notions of a "cool" homicidal villain are, the sort of figure whose freedom from morality we tend to enjoy vicariously on some level - e.g. Nicholson's Joker, Ledger's, among hundreds of other famous examples. The realer the violence, the realer its doer - thus the less acceptable and the more merely, unadmirably sick jocularity, quips, getting dressed up, naming a weapon etc. become. The need to kill the villain also becomes reduced, paradoxically, as the act of violence is much larger than the committer of it, and revenge only doubles that dwarfing. Nothing about an absolute loss is redressed by the removal of its cause. While the comic book issue the episode's based on may have been making a similar point (I have no idea), the fact that some readers of it had come away thinking Negan or his violence were on some level awesome clearly served as a warning to the show's writers, who decided to use the difference in reality levels between drawings and video to suggest how loathesome and, in Arendt's sense, banal such a figure would come across to witnesses in the real world.
Why would I believe that the sort of serious argument you're imputing is really behind this episode, rather than mere pandering to people's darkest fears or wishes, or mere ante-upping, or sadistic designs on the audience? Well, for one thing it's hard to imagine this episode would have been viewed by AMC as a worthwhile business risk - it's clearly something that was fought for, and by a creative team that already has plenty of money anyway. And if sating desires is behind this ... well, look around. Anyone seem particularly happy? They didn't accidentally go too far, they quite knowingly went way too far. Well past where most of us particularly want depictions of our fears to be taken, and even further past anywhere we'd actually desire to go (again, the vast majority of us). If it's a plea for attention it's not one for "good" attention, for immediate praise, since no one could think many fans wouldn't come away angry, many newcomers repulsed, many critics morally indignant. It's the deliberate simulation of a traumatic experience at a level never before attempted on television (and, given the necessary difference in what characters can be to us over different running times, probably not in film either). It's basically experimental art, provocation. It'll get the show talked about, but it already was. Massive miscalculations of audience tolerance have happened before, but if this is one it's occurring near the peak of success of one of the most profitable television shows ever. Some sort of message would be sought as cover/pretext for a shock event, anyway. There's pretty much an explicit one at the end, where everyone's aghast and barely able to stand and gradually pull the selves together to carry on. But that message doesn't account for the shock events themselves, just the aftermath, as it would have fit much less vivid depictions of violence and loss. I kind of doubt a film crew and cast could have even been held together to produce a horrorshow so lengthy and detailed unless some shared sense of a purpose greater than being paid bound them, sensed if not articulate. Past that I can only refer back to 6.16 again. The details connect, were sweated over. Think back to the scene where some of Negan's people are first met by some of Rick's - note the parallels to these events. Likewise think about the arc of the most prominent victim in the last season. Of the oictures he saw in the Zero Dark 30 episode. Of his own actions just prior. Of what he said just before being captured.
Why was there a cliffhanger? Because prior to trying to suggest what actual violence done to you and yours can be like the show decided it needed to ceremonially convert the audience into a character, joining 3rd and 1st person. It wanted us to both think of ourselves as the one chosen to be killed and contemplate the specific difficulties we have truly imagining that. (See my 6.16 posts for the long version.) Attention was brought to the show, it's true, but many other gimmicks could have more reliably and positively done that.
Why would they assume anyone would want to watch this or keep watching the show after stuff like this had been put on its possibility menu? That I couldn't tell you. Plenty of more pleasant alternatives are available, even among tendentious catharses. Infinitely more pleasant, even. We may have a responsibility, like Tyreese, to not look away from the worst evils done in this world, but we don't owe that to artistic depictions of them.
Why such a traumatically graphic handling? To draw attention to the difference between realistic and pop-culturized violence, mostly as an analogy for the difference between how you process violence done to Us vs. violence done to Them. (See my 6.16 posts for much more detail.)
Why draw it out so long? Because not doing so is part of that pop processing, that dismissal of Them.
Why show us those flashes of people dying who won't? Because Rick is thinking about who might be killed if he doesn't comply, or who might even be anyway given his total lack of control in this new situation. He's learning the helpless horror of the victimized and of those who love them. His legitimate fear is that it will never stop till all are dead.
Why trick us about who will die? Because any surprise in the direction of how bad it will be gives us a nearer (not near, just nearer) to how bad the real thing is, and to how shattering it is that there is no real Us protection beyond our hitherto happy chance and the complacency it's fostered.
Why the endless scene with the axe and zombies? Plotwise, because Negan wants to both show Rick that he must now do anything asked of him and remind him of the fate of the last man who didn't comply: all his friends were killed, he was psychologically tortured and then hanged. Thematically, Rick's failure to find safety when jumping onto the hanged man - since when the smoke clears zombies are everywhere - symbolizes how Rick had lost his last chance earlier by letting the man die. This was due to the narrowing of his sympathies to a highly restricted definition of Us, which lost him the possible help of someone who knew about Negan's people's ways and had been hauled about by them all day, so might have known how to avoid the trap. More generally, that decision represented the various ways Rick had alienated others' potential help or sourred Negan's revenge by holding some lives much cheaper than others, reducing the strength of Alexandria, of his core group (which had splintered into several easily-captured ones and twos because of decisions he had made), of his alliance with Hilltop etc. He's up there with the hanged man because this is his own noose.
Why the slow lingering on Negan and his bizarre, cornball sadism? Because Negan's is the power now - the time is his, the focus has been wrested by him, and his main objective, much more than neutralizing troublesomely unbendable members of the conquered group, is for them to all come around to believing that this is so. Thematically, it's to rub the viewer's face in how inappropriate our notions of a "cool" homicidal villain are, the sort of figure whose freedom from morality we tend to enjoy vicariously on some level - e.g. Nicholson's Joker, Ledger's, among hundreds of other famous examples. The realer the violence, the realer its doer - thus the less acceptable and the more merely, unadmirably sick jocularity, quips, getting dressed up, naming a weapon etc. become. The need to kill the villain also becomes reduced, paradoxically, as the act of violence is much larger than the committer of it, and revenge only doubles that dwarfing. Nothing about an absolute loss is redressed by the removal of its cause. While the comic book issue the episode's based on may have been making a similar point (I have no idea), the fact that some readers of it had come away thinking Negan or his violence were on some level awesome clearly served as a warning to the show's writers, who decided to use the difference in reality levels between drawings and video to suggest how loathesome and, in Arendt's sense, banal such a figure would come across to witnesses in the real world.
Why would I believe that the sort of serious argument you're imputing is really behind this episode, rather than mere pandering to people's darkest fears or wishes, or mere ante-upping, or sadistic designs on the audience? Well, for one thing it's hard to imagine this episode would have been viewed by AMC as a worthwhile business risk - it's clearly something that was fought for, and by a creative team that already has plenty of money anyway. And if sating desires is behind this ... well, look around. Anyone seem particularly happy? They didn't accidentally go too far, they quite knowingly went way too far. Well past where most of us particularly want depictions of our fears to be taken, and even further past anywhere we'd actually desire to go (again, the vast majority of us). If it's a plea for attention it's not one for "good" attention, for immediate praise, since no one could think many fans wouldn't come away angry, many newcomers repulsed, many critics morally indignant. It's the deliberate simulation of a traumatic experience at a level never before attempted on television (and, given the necessary difference in what characters can be to us over different running times, probably not in film either). It's basically experimental art, provocation. It'll get the show talked about, but it already was. Massive miscalculations of audience tolerance have happened before, but if this is one it's occurring near the peak of success of one of the most profitable television shows ever. Some sort of message would be sought as cover/pretext for a shock event, anyway. There's pretty much an explicit one at the end, where everyone's aghast and barely able to stand and gradually pull the selves together to carry on. But that message doesn't account for the shock events themselves, just the aftermath, as it would have fit much less vivid depictions of violence and loss. I kind of doubt a film crew and cast could have even been held together to produce a horrorshow so lengthy and detailed unless some shared sense of a purpose greater than being paid bound them, sensed if not articulate. Past that I can only refer back to 6.16 again. The details connect, were sweated over. Think back to the scene where some of Negan's people are first met by some of Rick's - note the parallels to these events. Likewise think about the arc of the most prominent victim in the last season. Of the oictures he saw in the Zero Dark 30 episode. Of his own actions just prior. Of what he said just before being captured.
Why was there a cliffhanger? Because prior to trying to suggest what actual violence done to you and yours can be like the show decided it needed to ceremonially convert the audience into a character, joining 3rd and 1st person. It wanted us to both think of ourselves as the one chosen to be killed and contemplate the specific difficulties we have truly imagining that. (See my 6.16 posts for the long version.) Attention was brought to the show, it's true, but many other gimmicks could have more reliably and positively done that.
Why would they assume anyone would want to watch this or keep watching the show after stuff like this had been put on its possibility menu? That I couldn't tell you. Plenty of more pleasant alternatives are available, even among tendentious catharses. Infinitely more pleasant, even. We may have a responsibility, like Tyreese, to not look away from the worst evils done in this world, but we don't owe that to artistic depictions of them.
