Sunday, March 13, 2011

NFL Lockout

I became interested in baseball some time around 1996, meaning that as a fan, I am entirely a product of the post strike League.  As a result, there were times when I struggled to understand why fans much older than me expressed such negative emotions when thinking about the strike, and I especially couldn't believe that it would sour some people on baseball entirely.  As I grew older, I began to understand them a little more, at least on principle. Now, I know exactly how they feel.  I'm not sure what will happen with the current NFL lockout fiasco, but it has already question whether I'll come back to the game.

The gut reaction among many is that there is no reason why a bunch of millionaires can't figure out how to share their millions (actually billions) at a time when many people's financial outlooks are grim. I understand this sentiment, and agree with it to a certain extent, though I think it is important to remember that not every player is making massive, multi-million dollar wages.

Personally, my gut anger stems from the same issue which bothered me all last season - that the NFL is devious and hypocritical in regards to its treatment of concussions and their concern for overall player health.  There are a lot of measures the League could be taking to better protect players, and most of them are things which still aren't in effect.  Not to mention that no matter how much marketing money they spend to promote their initiative, it is impossible to ignore just how much big hits are celebrated by commentators and fans (keep in mind that those commentators tend to tow the party line for the League, in case of any future coaching positions). I used to scoff at anyone who considered football to be a bloodsport, but it is getting harder to ignore not only how violent it is, but just how much that violence is celebrated.  How many other sports leave former players with such a strong potential to be a husk of a body?  The first one to come to my mind is boxing, and it too has been the subject of huge controversy over the decades.  But unlike boxing, football is the nation's most popular sport.  Any calls for real change will be drowned out by cheering spectators. 

Deep down inside, the NFL knows that people like the carnage.  They know that the players have been trained to deliver it with greater and greater force over the years.  They've gone down this path, and they know there's no chance of trying to reverse it.  Players will get more and more protective gear, and rather than keeping them safe, it'll convince them that they can get away with more powerful hits. We have already seen many old players who, regardless of the money they made, are in shambles thanks to all the hits and concussions they suffered.  We already know the League never gave two shits about their retirement, and I shudder to think as to how some of today's current stars might look in thirty years.  Even with millions of dollars (which, again, they don't all have), there's only so much medicine can do to help a person with a broken body. 

But it isn't just the players who are treated like garbage.  Fans too have been slowly and systematically screwed over by the NFL.  The blackout rules exist to try and get people to go to the stadium if they want to see the game. At the same time that ticket prices continue to rise, and homefield advantage dissolves as stadiums are instead filled with people who treat a football game as a place to be seen.  If your team isn't blacked out, you might be able to see them on TV, but if all you have is basic cable, who knows what you'll get.  Thanks to the League's TV deals, someone like me, just a 25 minute drive from the DC metro, can't be certain that the Redskins will be on TV (and as a Giants fan, I gave up on seeing the game every week).  Of course, you could spring for a pricey NFL package, which can (and probably will) get even pricier over time.  Or you could go to the bar, where you can't hear yourself think, let alone hear any of the calls on the field.  With all of today's wonderful technology, I think it is actually getting harder to watch football.  The League certainly wants my time money, but they also want to demand how I give it to them. 

So if everyone is being treated like shit, when can we expect the tables to turn? I  have no idea.  Because despite everything the NFL has done, they still have everyone feeding out of their hand.  They could screw over the next season royally, and people will still come back.  Baseball didn't die from its strike, and I imagine that football will take little, if any, damage.  And on top of all of this, I haven't forgotten that if the sport does go away, a lot more people are going to be jobless.

It really has become a fucking circus.  I don't look forward to the end result.

To me, the lockout says so many things, not just about football, but the current cultural climate in general. 

Friday, March 04, 2011

In Media Res

(Note - this post was inspired by the latest anime news network podcast, and the responses it garnered in the ANN forums.  Apologies on the lack of quality.)

In Media Res is a storytelling technique as old as storytelling itself.  Such longetivity suggests that it is also an effective technique, which I would agree with.  It also means that it can and will be used improperly. 

I'm no literary scholar, but in my experience, the best stories which start In Media Res are the ones which aren't largely hindered by it.  To put it another way, you shouldn't be confused as to what is happening now because you're missing out on events that happened before.  A little bit of explanation, and you should be on your way.  Later on, the story can fill in some of the gaps, to add more weight or depth to a character or conflict, but in the meantime it should still stand on its own two feet.  If you ever read an excerpt from the Iliad or The Aenid back in high school, your textbook probably spent a few sentences explaining what you missed out on.  With that alone, you can gleam a hell of a lot from the passages you're actually given to read.  That, to me, is good use of In Media Res.

As for more modern examples, there are quite a few, but for the sake of this post's main topic I'm actually going to use a video game - Dragon Quest 8.  When the game begins, the hero and his companion are escorting a goblin in a horse drawn cart.  We quickly learn that the goblin is a king, and the horse his daughter, and that the hero is trying to help lift the curse which was placed on the two by a court jester in possession of a magic staff.  It isn't until much later in the game that we discover how the curse was placed on them, or how the jester turned evil, but until that point, these details don't matter.  The information we are given is more than enough to justify the quest, and the back story is filled in only after we've been with the characters long enough for those details to have any sort of impact.  Dragon Quest 8 isn't a complex story, but in terms of using In Media Res, we don't lose anything by starting in the middle, and the flashbacks to the past actually sweeten the pot.

In contrast, I consider it bad use of the technique when the reader/viewer is ignorant of critical information as a result of starting in the middle.  There will be references to events, characters, terminologies, or important events which the viewer has no clue about, even though they need to in order to comprehend the story.  The viewer ends up having to wait for the flashbacks and exposition to kick in in order to piece it all together.  A entire rereading/viewing may even be in order. 

I'm not going to say that this latter method has no merit, but it isn't easy to do well.  There's a difference between sprinkling in a little mystery to keep us on edge, and creating something purposefully obtuse.  Unfortunately, this method is used extensively in anime (and anime inspired games), and while the fans on a whole have no problem with it, I think it leads to shitty storytelling more often than not.  I know it is tacky to slam others, but I think that for a lot of anime fans, the appeal lies in the fact that they believe that if a show takes them a lot of time to decipher, then it must be complex and deep, and that their ability to decode it is an indicator of their intelligence.  In other words, it is more proof that Western anime fandom is fuelled by ego more than anything.  These people don't seem to comprehend the possibility that the confusion is the result of bad writing and plotting.

But allow me to turn away from attacks and focus on why I prefer the other, more clearer method of In Media Res.  I don't think you can really analyze and appreciate the depth of a story until you understand, at the most basic level, what it is about.  In order to really appreciate a dialogue exchange, you need to know why it is taking place.  In order to be shocked at a character's actions, you need to know something about them.  There's this pervading sensibility among otaku that a story is only good if you have to put it together like a puzzle.  I think it is this same sensibility which causes them to assume that anyone who says they "simply want to be entertained" by media is a plebe  looking for mindless distraction.  To use another tired example (sorry), Shakespeare's plays aren't terribly confusing, but watching one of his plays being performed by skilled actors is still dammed entertaining, because they generate so much excitement and emotion.  That's still entertainment, and it is far from mindless. 

I guess, for me, there's a difference between a work that rewards you for paying attention, and one which plays games and rewards me for putting up with it.  I like when a work makes me think, but a good one will make me want to think, because I am already interested in what I see, and want to dig deeper.  It shouldn't make me have to think because that's the only way I'll get anything out of it.  I don't need my ego stroked, nor do I want to stroke the author's.

TL:DR - I wish fucking anime fans would stop throwing around literary devices to excuse bad shows, and actually ponder whether the show used any of them effectively.