The other night I watched the Todd Solondz movie “Storytelling” (2001). Solondz is a master of cringe-inducement, and suicide would be preferable to living in his fictional universe, where human communication is impossible and all earnest actions and beliefs are punished, and a character’s self-pity always leads to more abuse. In my opinion, his movies are horror films operating with fears far deeper than the commonplace physical violence and gore in the slasher genre. Paranoia, insecurity, awareness that people we trust may suffer psychological disorders or lead lives much darker than what we know– these things stay with you after the movies end, because in real life there are no villains to dispatch (and even when there are, someone else feels differently about them, and anyway, it’s illegal to do anything about that). The second segment of Storytelling, with a nod to Visconti’s “Bellissima” (1951) gets at our collective fear of the disparity between who we think we are and how other people see us, a fear that can only be overcome by conformity, hermitage, or willful disregard. The villain in these movies is a cold, indifferent society. Removed from facing the repercussions of their derision– that is, the dejected face of Scooby in “Non-Fiction” watching himself on-screen, or deluded Anna Magnani’s tears for her daughter’s debut in “Bellissima”– the audiences howl with laughter at their failures. Both movies have become rather prescient in their own way, in 2010, when everyone wants to be a star and gleefully subjects themselves to commented mockery on Youtube, blog posts, etc. Who has final say on our identity– ourselves, the people around us, or people we can’t even see?
“Storytelling” is a masterpiece of irony, both within its own constructed universe, and in its secondary role as Todd Solondz’s own defiant statement about his own work, directed at the critics hostile to its predecessors. Said predecessors, “Welcome to the Dollhouse” and “Happiness” are more unsettling than “Storytelling” but somewhat less intellectual. The movies have mixed reviews, much to Solondz’s credit. There seems an army of people who simply don’t get it. (I’m not sure I “get” the first two either, but I haven’t seen them in years.) “Storytelling” seems to be even more baffling in the various amateur reviews I’ve read. Common among all the reviews is a complete failure to read any aspect of the film beyond the relationship of Solondz to his critics, which 10 years later is surely the least relevant aspect of it. It is his tightest and most interesting film on its own merits.
A few words here about the first “short story” of the two in Storytelling, the segment titled “Fiction”.
MOVIE SPOILERS AHEAD! The story concerns Vi (Selma Blair), a student in an writing workshop (apparently a mix of grads and undergrads). The teacher is an award winning African-American writer (Nobel, Pulitzer, Nat’l Book Award, I forget which and it doesn’t really matter). She winds up being manipulated (or allowing herself to be manipulated) by this writer into somewhat brutal sex, then writes the experience as a story it and shares it with the class. The class responds in a mostly inane, knee-jerk manner, and she is roundly critiqued as a racist, as a shock writer, etc., and finally, at the end of her rope, she cries out that it’s what really happened.
Most of us who have been through many writing workshops have had this experience (the “it really happened” experience, not sex with the prof). It’s always a little frustrating, since what really happened is irrelevant once the story is in someone else’s hands, and Mr. Scott rightly says so, albeit for self-service: “once you start writing, it all becomes fiction.” It may in some cases be cathartic for the writer, but it rarely succeeds in the fiction workshop. The writer is crippled by his or her inability to overcome the audience’s preconceived critical approaches: stereotypes can’t be true, and unusual events are unbelievable. (Is it any wonder that MFA fiction is so often criticized for being watered-down?) Thankfully, critics aren’t the only readers– in a non-workshop environment, readers tend to maintain their suspension of disbelief to a much greater extent, since they won’t be called upon to find a story’s flaws or perceived violations of accepted protocol. … I touched upon some of this in my own short story “The Power of Fiction” which used to be online and currently seems to have vanished for now.
What is actually more interesting to me in Storytelling is the teacher character, Mr. Scott (Robert Wisdom), a shameless cad who uses his lofty position to exploit his students. They see in him a gatekeeper (“Do you think I have potential as a writer?” “No.” “Thank you for being honest.”) — as if he is the only person capable of making such a judgment. His one credible act is to dismiss the first student’s story for the shit that it is– his unwillingness to sugar-coat his response for the student with cerebral palsy, as his students do, can be read as cold blood or aesthetic integrity. In either case, the students seek his approval (particularly his student parrot Catherine, played by Aleksa Palladino) and believe his every word. How does he command the students? Simple, by playing the stock character of a writer. He says very little, but he says it all with authority and finality. He always has the last word. He is neatly groomed and dresses in a sport coat. He does not answer personal questions and does not care about their praise. There are no chinks in his armor. He never mentions himself actually writing. He has deigned to teach college courses by some holy beneficence, one imagines the students must think, not to pay the bills for his mediocre apartment and earthly existence. Solondz and Wisdom make Mr. Scott a deeply satirical character through his exact personification of what everyone– both the students in the movie and the viewing audience– expects a writer to be. When Mr. Scott fucks Vi, Vi is still buying into the perception of his importance instead of the reality that he’s no better than any other guy in the bar who might have taken her home. She allows him to command her not because he has done anything seductive (quite the opposite), and not because she’s horny, but because she has invested so much in the ultimately false belief that a successful writer is privileged to know a higher truth than other individuals know. (The racial element is beside that point, in my opinion, although not irrelevant to the story on its surface– it’s just another way to reveal the hypocrisy and superficiality of the other students, most of whom have also slept with Mr. Scott.)
Writers do spend a lot of time thinking. It’s a commonplace in composition instruction that “writing is thinking”, and I think that saying is valid, though excessively reductive. But writers being thinkers does not mean that their thinking takes them anyplace important. The thoughts may strip away some illusions (I’m sort of trying to do that here, as a matter of fact), but it won’t create answers to deep questions. In reality, writing is accomplished by sitting and working and reworking, using a computer, typewriter, pen, dictaphone, whatever. Writing, however successfully (and regardless of the aesthetic quality), does not make the writer more privileged to some higher truth. A reader can believe, reject, overlook, or ignore the message of what is written. The dramatic and aesthetic elements of the story are the most outwardly significant, and those things are a mix of innate creativity, teachable technical skills, observation, and practice. Good fiction engrosses us with its drama and captures our emotions with human love for characters. What makes fiction good is also what makes much of life very interesting (fiction is rarely more interesting than life itself, but it’s a relief to witness a character’s problems without having to deal with them personally). The writer is an illusionist, which is to say, a practitioner of tricks.
Notice that none of that has anything to do with a writer’s image or personal life. Writing is not accomplished by wearing a sport coat and saying everything like it is the most important thing ever said. It always annoys me to see the genius writer trope, so common in movies (and also in a great “Seinfeld”), acted out in real life. I know a few fiction writers and poets, some famous, some not. They are very fun people with terrific wit and a lust for life and they eat and drink and screw and take shits. But many of them are also guilty of perpetuating the writer trope to strangers (e.g. reading and panel audiences, interviewers, even Facebook friends, etc.): the religious pronouncements about writing, the quiet monkish behavior, the tweed sportcoat with the leather patches. Essentially, in these situations, these vivacious people downplay their vivacity and play the part of writers. They stand on stage and read slowly in front of their adoring fans. They show only signs of taking themselves and their work extremely seriously. Fair enough, writing is hard work, but once you’ve been backstage, so to speak, it’s hard to see the show the same way. Is the authority of the writer really contingent on how well they can act? Obviously the answer is yes, and if the writer stood up there in a bikini and started juggling before reading he or she would lose all credibility– but that’s sad. Mr. Scott’s behavior perfectly reveals the layers of bullshit that hold up this concept of writerly authority. (And my friends wonder why I have such an abiding respect for Thomas Pynchon as both a writer and a secretive individual.) I see these behaviors as self-parody, but apparently the spell works, because so many people buy in.
(Publishing/marketing has a hand in this too, of course. Ever wondered why author photos are always black-and-white on color-printed book jackets? Or for that matter, why there’s ever an author photo at all? Ever seen an author photo that looks anything like a candid shot? The perception you’re granted of the writer is tightly controlled. I don’t believe that’s a deep insight– it is what marketing is about. But it is curious. Jump cut to Salieri in “Amadeus”, so disgusted by the disparity of Mozart’s genius and Mozart’s complete lack of self control.)
I look good in a sportcoat… Everyone does. I shouldn’t single them out (or blazers or whatever). That’s not the point.
What the point is is that I don’t have access to any magical truth that’s unavailable to laypersons, and neither does any other writer. This form of authority is illusory– or should I say, a collective delusion.
Bringing it back to “Storytelling”, and this is important: at Mr. Scott’s apartment, Vi finds nude photos of various other girls her age (including Catherine and, I think, some of the other girls in her class, even the prissy ones). Vi’s disgusted, but she still does what Mr. Scott commands. And it’s not because she’s worried about grade blackmail– he’s already said she has no potential as a writer. She does it because she has bought into what she believes he represents. That’s the net effect of the delusion. “Fiction” is superficially about writing and critics (and Todd Solondz), but for me it’s about authority, and how we collectively suspend our own sensibilities in its apparent presence.
Solondz gets it… You might even say he’s an authority on it.
(As a side note, Robert Wisdom plays badass cop “Bunny” Colvin, founder of Hamsterdam, in “The Wire”. I think he’s a terrific actor. As another side note, my favorite professors and writers have never been guilty of the above sins… I hope that reluctance isn’t holding back their careers.)
