Barbie

In The Wizard of Oz (1939), Glenda, the Good Witch of the North, tells Dorothy at the end of the film that it had been within her power to go home to Auntie Em’s farm in Kansas at any time, simply by clicking the heels of her ruby shoes thrice together. At the end of Barbie (2023), Ruth, who created the Barbie and Ken dolls, tells the traditional Barbie that she can become human herself simply by choosing to feel, and thus to live. The Witch and Ruth occupy similar roles, as do Dorothy and Barbie. But whereas Dorothy is trying to get back to the home she had known and now appreciates from faraway Oz, Barbie is trying to get to what she was made for—something qualitatively different than not being alive. Barbie’s plight is existential, and she discovers that the root of her identity transcends the feminist agenda. As home transcends ideology, what a person is made for transcends even home. Put another way, home is ultimately in being who one really is, hence being transcends location.

Many people who see Barbie undoubtedly fixate on the battle of the sexes between the Barbies and Ken, but I submit that as ideologically titillating as that ideological fix is, the tension between the humans and the dolls is more fundamental. The CEO of Mattel is motivated to close the opening that Barbie had opened between the land of the dolls and the “real” world. Indeed, Barbie does not view herself as real precisely because she cannot feel and is thus not alive. Being something that people pay for is to be of less reality than is someone who is alive and can feel, and thus be happy. To be—i.e., to exist—as what she was made for is not a simple matter with an easy answer for the traditional Barbie, unlike the other dolls. It is only after she has won the battle of the sexes in Barbieland that she goes beyond her gender identity as a woman to focus on discovering her more fundamental identity. It is only at that point that the film becomes sentimental.

In a kind, motherly tone that resembles that of Glenda, the Good Witch of the North, Ruth reveals to Barbie that it is no surprise that the doll is not sure whether she had been made to be a doll or human because Ruth made her open-ended, unlike the other dolls. We too are open-ended, though not with the extent of open-ended freedom of an uncircumscribed horizon that Sartre supposes in his existentialism. Even for an atheist, a person’s upbringing and the culture in which a person is raised detract from complete openness and thus freedom in one’s choices. One’s biology too constrains freedom; aging teaches us this vital lesson. To Barbie, biology is definitely salient in her decision to become human; once she has willed herself to become human and is in Los Angeles, she heads to a gynecologist, for, unlike human women, female dolls do not have vaginas.  Being human rather than a doll involves more than having feeling.

In “being made for” something, it is natural to think in terms of the purpose for which a person was created. Theists believe that a Creator instills in everyone a purpose. In the film, Ruth, a human being, created Barbie and left the doll’s purpose open-ended because Ruth “put some of” her own daughter in that Barbie. Having a purpose, however, can also be viewed as a human construction used to give an ex post facto meaning to what a person (or doll) has discovered to be one’s essence. Hence Sartre claimed that existence precedes essence.

I submit that a person’s biological, psychological, and spiritual makeup gets at what a person “is made for.” Einstein’s brain was “made for” physics—meaning that his brain was particularly well-suited to thinking (e.g. thought experiments) in that field. In coming up with his theories of relativity, he may have said to himself, I was made to do this. “Purpose” could be thought about later, for the aptitude of his mind in particular for physics above all other fields is the key here.

Being a writer was among the last things I thought I was made for, given that the neurological mechanism that fuses both eyes on the same object has never been operative in my brain. Even being a scholar has seemed like something I was not made for. Even if a love for words, ideas, and reasoning reveals what I was made for—in terms of happiness even more than ability—I have wondered whether I have never seen the passion I was made for; such a passion, such as a person says to oneself, I can’t believe someone is paying me to do this, presumably does not suffer from any biological impediments, and so excellence as well as happiness cohere. If only a Glenda or Ruth would say to me that the answer has been right in front of me all along and all I need to do is recognize it—to see it.  In the process in which my brain will die, perhaps I’ll hallucinate a benevolent figure comforting me that I had indeed been made for thinking and writing after all and that my handicap actually made them so. For now, I must admit to wondering if there isn’t something else, something more intrinsic to me, hence the thing I was “made for.” But I am guilty here of reducing essence to function—of thinking about whether there is something I am better at than writing and research because of how I am biologically, psychologically, and spiritually constituted, or “made.”

Barbie decides what she really is. She has transcended functionality by convincing the other female dolls that their innate functions do not reduce to serving Ken dolls. Once she has solved that problem, she finds that she is still in a quandary—still unsettled—for what she was made for goes beyond functions. Beyond even discovering what your passion is lies discovering who you are. Barbie and The Wizard of Oz converge in the mantra that a person is never at home until one is comfortable in one’s own skin. Interestingly, the camera immediately goes to a close-up of Barbie’s now-perspiring skin on her upper chest to show that she has decided to become human. That she had lost the ability to float down to her car and that she had become flat-footed indicate that being a doll was no longer working out for her—meaning that she was really made to become human. Her freedom was circumscribed in that she really couldn’t return to being a doll (whereas Dorothy could return back to the farm in The Wizard of Oz). To be fully alive, and thus happy, is what each of us were “made for,” whether by God or that of the natural sciences. This may turn out to be a false-dichotomy.

To be fully alive is to relish feeling as an end in itself. Rather than keeping up with the Jones, being fully alive is to be at home in one’s own skin. This is more fundamental, and thus more important than discovering the skills at which one excels and one’s proper role in society. Barbie as a movie goes beyond its surrounding marketing campaign and even the salience of the ideology of feminism, for at the end, the film “arrives” at the human condition itself and only does the film come alive in terms of sentiments.

There is no wizard to tell Barbie, as he tells the Tin Man, who wants a heart, “You don’t know how lucky you are not to have one. Hearts will never be practical until they can be made unbreakable,” though I don’t think this warning would change Barbie’s mind. Had I been a contributing screenwriter of Barbie,  Ruth would also quote the Wizard’s next line to the Tin Man: “And remember, my sentimental friend, that a heart is not judged by how much you love, but by how much you are loved by others.” Essentially, the message would be that Barbie already has a heart, and that to become human all she has to do is realize that she had indeed been loved. Gloria, the human mother who, with her daughter, accompanies Barbie back to Barbieland, shows love in trying to relieve Barbie’s unhappiness, for Barbie has lost her ease as a doll and "Barbieland" to the Kens. Because Barbie is crying at the time, her existential angst running deeper than her shock in seeing the other Barbies serving the Kens, we can infer that she has feelings, and is thus "real" and human even though she doesn't realize the extent of her transition by then. Even the other Barbies and the original Ken display a slight, or muted, sentimentality when they are waving goodbye to Barbie as she walks off with Ruth, never to return to Barbieland. Therefore, Barbie’s heart can be inferred from not only from the fact that she is crying when Gloria tries to cheer her up with a feminist speech and how kind Barbie is to the other Barbies and even to the original Ken during and after the battle over Barbieland, but also how much she has been loved (by humans) and thanked by the dolls.

Pardoxically, Barbie has no freedom in so far as she transitions in Barbieland; her freedom comes once Ruth has revealed that Barbie need only to will to be human. So there is evidence of teleology in the transition, for Barbie has no control over no longer being able to float and reverse becoming flatfooted, and of freewill in choosing whether to make the transition definitive by being and living with humans or resist it by remaining in Barbieland, albeit in a compromised condition. Theists can point to Ruth and the transition that takes place in Barbieland, and humanists can point to the power that Barbie herself has merely from a realization. Only after Dorothy realizes that she could have left Oz at any time can she leave Oz. Similarly, only after Barbie realizes that she has only to will herself to be human can she leave Barbieland for good.

RBG

By chance, I watched RBG (2018), a documentary on Ruth Bader Ginsberg, a U.S. Supreme Court justice, on the day she died in 2020. Being just a month and a half before the U.S. presidential election, the sudden opening immediately became political. This is of course to be expected, given that the sitting U.S. president nominates candidates and the U.S. Senate confirms them. The role of political ideology on the bench and thus in court decisions, however, is considerably more controversial because the justices are tasked with interpreting the law rather than stitching their own ideologies into law as a means of changing society. The documentary demonstrates that changing society through law was precisely Ginsberg’s objective.

As a lawyer in the 1970s, Ginsberg carefully selected cases that could incrementally change how the law discriminated against women. She understood that political change occurs only incrementally in the American system wherein the status quo has incredible inertia. Put another way, powerful interests benefitting from the status quo have considerable influence in American government. So her approach was to change the law bit by bit. Sitting on the U.S. Supreme Court, she was able even in her dissents to effect or influence the making of law in the direction of her objective of changing society. For example, her dissent on a case involving discrimination of job benefits led to the passage of a law to stop the discrimination.

It is one thing, however, to choose cases as a lawyer to effect a societal change through law, and decide cases by interpreting law. In cases before the U.S. Supreme Court involving possible discrimination against women, Ginsberg’s mission to change society conflicted with her judicial duty to interpret the law as objectively as possible. In other words, Ginsberg could be criticized for putting her ideological mission above interpreting the law fairly.
The documentary makes clear that her objective to change society flowed through her career in law, yet no one is interviewed to present a counter-argument. Societal change as an objective of judicial decisions is taken for granted. In this way, the film is biased in favor of Ginsberg. Yet this bias is hidden from the viewers because the judicial objective is presented as a given. The documentary, like its subject, works in effect for a specific societal change. I am not suggesting that law should protect rather than prohibit the discrimination of women; rather, I contend that both the documentary and Ginsberg could have subjected the assumed validity (and laudability) of deciding cases to effect societal change through law to critique and thus been more balanced, and thus fuller and broader.

Boy Erased

The film, Boy Erased (2018), is a drama that deals in a serious  way with the question of whether homosexuality is a choice, and thus whether conversion therapy is effective or an ideological ruse under the subterfuge of psychology and religion. Directed and adapted to the screen by Joel Edgerton, he could have dived deeper in writing the screenplay by making explicit the contending assumptions and ideas. Surprisingly, nowhere in the film do any of the biblically-oriented religionists quote the applicable verses in the Old Testament or in Paul's letters, or engage in a theological debate. The film could have gone further intellectually than the relatively superficial emphasis on the dramatic narrative.

The story centers around the post coming-out tension between Jared Eamons and his parents Nancy and Rev. Marshall Eamons. They are biblically-oriented, socially conservative Christians. That Marshall is the pastor of a church tells us just how important religion is to that family. Nancy and Marshall send Jared to a conversion-therapy day-program run by Victor Sykes. Jared is under pressure to lie in order to avoid having to move into one of the bunk houses on the church premises for a year. This is not, however, to say that Victor is an ordained clergyman; neither is he educated or even trained in therapy or even counseling, as Nancy finds out when she finally comes to remove Jared from the program. She tells her son that he will be coming home with her in spite of Marshall’s decision that the boy could no longer live in the house as long as he is gay. The assumption here is that a gay person could become heterosexual.

That Victor has no credentials either in religion or psychology is something that Nancy suspects after looking over Jared’s materials from the program (Jared and his mother stay at a hotel during the day-program). The lack of credentials as a clergy or in Christian counseling or therapy is not made much of in the film. The matter of clergyless congregations, such as Quaker unprogrammed Meetings, is thus not attended to. Specifically, the assumption typically under the rubric of the priesthood of the people dismisses or otherwise ignores the theological and ministerial knowledge (and practice) gained at divinity schools and seminaries. To be sure, clergy atop a church hierarchy can exploit their esoteric knowledge by ignoring that of the laity. Hence, some congregations have clergy whereas others do not.

I visited a Bahai place of worship a few times in 2019 because I had not studied that religion in my formal education. Believing that anyone can have access to the knowledge contained in the scriptures, the members of the Bahai religion eschew a clergy in principle and practice. I detected a real bias against people who have advanced knowledge. In fact, some of the members and even an associated non-member displayed an instinctual-like aversion to me after I had informed them of my academic credentials, including a ministry degree. In a discussion group, for instance, when I was introducing myself, the group leader (not a Bahai member, though a regular) interrupted me with the false claim that the group was representative of the Bahai faith. I suspect he was trying to discredit me, perhaps from a fervent belief in ideological egalitarianism which denies the value of expertise. 

I returned to the group a few more times, as I was able to learn quite a bit from the Bahai members about their religion. The same man was presiding. After I had just spoken, a woman asked me a specialized question directed to me (i.e., related to the expert knowledge I had just imparted). The group's leader interrupted me as I was beginning to answer the woman, aggressively insisting, "The question is for the group!" I saw in this response a stubborn refusal to recognize my expertise in religion. That he thought some non-scholars could answer the question just because they were laity demonstrated to me the cognitive-warping impact of ideology, including prejudice. I left the group immediately; I had seen enough. I understood why the religion refused to have clergy.

A week later, a Bahai member who had been at the group called me to try to convince me to come back to the group. Enforcing my scholar-identity, I said I would be glad to come back and give a talk or lead a discussion group. The member bristled, as if I were claiming too much for myself. This told me that he (and others) were disinclined to recognize me as a scholar (i.e., having expert knowledge) to such an extent that they had ignored my stated reason for being there and instead thought I was there because I was interesting in becoming a member. In actuality, the members who eschewed my credentials impiously presumed too much for themselves.

In the late 1960's, students at some universities in the United States held teach-ins because those students presumed that a professor was not necessary for knowledge to be learned. I have run into (usually young) people who declared to me that they are self-educated, as if this were equivalent to a college education. Even students getting a doctorate entirely online (one of whom didn't know what a thesis statement is!) tend to believe that they are getting a doctorate without even having to go to seminars. 

A similar issue concerns nurse practitioners who are becoming interchangeable with physicians at some medical clinics. Such nurses who specialize in psychiatry represent themselves as psychiatrists, while counselors over-reach onto doing therapy with impunity. Although saving costs has no doubt been driving this trend, I have been stunned to hear more than one nurse tell me that the training of a nurse practioner is the same as a physician’s own. Once I made a check-up appointment with a physician only to find myself with the nurse-practitioner, who of course insisted that she had had the same training. In general terms, dismissing credentials--typically those that the person does not have--can be viewed as the democratization of a vocation. This is, I submit, a case of decadence particularly severe in American society. 

In the film, that Victor gets away with having no credentials in either religion or psychology is stunning; this implies that he arrogantly assumes that he does not need the requisite education and training. Furthermore, it shows how much an ideology can stretch religion beyond its domain, such that therapy can legitimately be done without education and training in psychology. A disrespect of the encroached-upon domains goes with the over-reach. This could have been made explicit in the film.

Although Nancy objects to Victor's lack of credentials, she does not call him out on having encroached on another domain. "Being a biblical Christian does not enable you to do therapy," she could have said as she is shouting at him in the parking lot (and she is not the first to do so). Viewers could have received the idea that religion may have the proclivity to encroach excessively onto other domains, even without the need to undergo entrance exams at the borders.

Fortunately, the viewers do get to learn about and even assess the therapy program from seeing it from the perspective of the boys and girls in it. To be sure, more could be grasped with access to Victor and his staff away from the kids! Why does the staffer become so aggressive toward Jared when he grabs his phone in the office? Does Victor and his staff realize on some level that they are mistreating the kids, as when Victor invites one boy's family to spank the boy with a bible to rid him of the demon? That boy goes on to commit suicide. 

Nevertheless, some viewers may pick up on the fallacious logic that claims that because a person is not born a physician, it must therefore be a choice to become one. That is, Victor conflates vocations with instinctual urges. A participant objecting would mean that more viewers would grasp the fallaciousness of the argument. Also, as Victor accuses Jared of lying about having stayed over at a friend’s house without doing more than holding hands in bed, Jared could be made to say something like, “Hey, you didn’t believe me when I told you I’m not angry at my dad, and now you want me to lie about what I’ve done. I bet you’ve never studied psychology! You’re a fraud!” If saying this is unrealistic because Jared fears being sent to one of the facility's bunk houses for a year, the lines could come from another boy. 

In short, I’m suggesting that film is better as a medium when it is written like a music composition of more than a few levels that the mere dramatic can provide. In terms of homosexuality, more of a theological basis could have been in the script. Is being gay a sin? Is it caused by a demon inside the gay person? What is the religious basis for the claim that homosexuality is a choice? Quoting the relevant Old Testament passages as well as Paul would have brought this perspective out at a deeper level than is in the film and helped to distinguish this basis from a basis in psychology. This does not mean that the latter has necessarily viewed homosexuality in positive terms. The APA considered homosexuality to be a mental illness until 1973. Interestingly, Victor pushes the religious (demon) explanation rather than the mental-illness angle even though he is claiming to do therapy. 

The relationship between religion and psychology is difficult to discern, in large part because of how different the two underlying paradigms are. Pointing to a demon as a cause is much different than pointing to a medical cause. Relating the two seems almost impossible, yet this was not always the case. The ancient Hebrews, for instance, regarded the medically ill as sinful. Sin involves the absence of God. To Aquinas and Leibniz, this meant something less than from full being. It makes no sense to say that a person with a mental illness has a deficiency of being. Whether mental illness results in an absence of, rather than relationship with God is a difficult question. In his text, People of the Lie, M. Scott Peck theorizes that malignant narcissism is actually a defense mechanism surrounding a sense of emptiness inside. Such emptiness might resonate with a feeling of being apart from God. Does evil lie in the felt-emptiness inside or in the narcissistic attitude and conduct? Felt-emptiness inside is not necessarily the same thing of the lack of being that Aquinas and Leibniz associated with sin. Relating two very different paradigms, including basic assumptions and tenets, is fraught with difficulty even if the two overlap a bit. 

Unfortunately, the film does not go much into theology, including on whether homosexuality should be taken as a sin (and as distinct to a mental illness). Instead, homosexuality is likened to, or categorized with) alcoholism, violence in the home, and mental illnesses. Looking at the Biblical text itself, homosexuality is a sin. However, some Christians argue that the biblical claim is culturally and time-specific, meaning that the view of homosexuality in Israel millentia ago is reflected in the text. But does it even make sense to invalidate something that is part of Scripture? I submit that good arguments exist on both sides. Unfortunately, the film does not make this tension explicit. When Jared's father has two other ministers come over to discuss Jared, a discussion involving Nancy could have delved into the theological level. Nancy's first misgivings would be evident so her confrontation with Victor in the church parking-lot would be more believable.

The film does best with the dramatic levels centered on Jared’s inner struggles and that which exists between him and his father. The ending of the film is on those two trying to reconcile; that Jared would remain gay is almost treated as an aside. Nancy’s turnabout in coming to the aid of her son after he calls for her to pick him up is also salient toward the end of the film, but another opportunity to go deeper is missed because she does not tell Jared (and the viewer) what she found so objectionable about the therapy. Was it just Victor’s lack of credentials, or the basic assumption of gays being able to rid themselves of the instinctual urges?

The medium of film, even with its confining duration of a few hours, can go beyond the emotional levels of the dramatic or comedic to evince ideational tensions and even the underlying assumptions tussling for supremacy. Just as an antagonist tries to conquer a protagonist, ideas and principles, whether philosophical or theological, jest with each other. In fact, Nietzsche claims that an instinctual urge is the content of an idea. Ideas tussle for supremacy in the unconscious; the idea that comes to the conscious surface is the most powerful. Film can reflect this multi-level structure even to the point of including less powerful ideas that the viewers are not aware of, yet are influenced by. This should not be used, however, to shirk the ideational level of a film, especially when the story contains a salient controversial theme or aspect.  

Screenwriting as Dramatic Sense-Making or Ideological Subterfuge?

Howard (p. 165) claims that the screenwriters of Witness (1985) were “wise enough not to attempt to coerce an answer out of the material, to make this an indictment or a thesis instead of an exploration. If they had the definite answer to force and violence in society, they shouldn’t [have made] a film but should [have gone] directly to the United Nations with it. What they have created is an exploration of a complex and troubling issue. Modern urban society isn’t depicted as all bad and the Amish aren’t all good; there are forms of force in both societies, just as there are admirable things about them both. While, in the end, one use of force triumphs over another, that can hardly be a universally applicable solution. Rather, what the filmmakers have done is to make the audience confront its own feelings about violence and the use of force, to see that it is complicated and there are no pat answers, but, most important, to explore how each of us feels about the various faces of force we come to know in the story.”

Analysis:

In the end, “one use of force triumphs over another,” but Howard claims that this choice does not represent an answer or thesis because the triumph of the force of community pressure (e.g., the Amish witnesses) over the force of violence “can hardly be a universally applicable solution.” I find this argument to be weak and even fallacious. As Howard admits, the film’s resolution is that the force of community “triumphs” over the force of violence. This is an answer to the question that asks which of the two types of force is more forceful. While certainly not everyone’s answer and not on the more general topic of “force and violence” in society, the “triumph” does represent the screenwriters’ answer to the question: which force is stronger: community norms or violence? At the very least, a point of view is expressed in the answer. It is implied, furthermore, that community norms should be valued over the violence of a hero (and certainly of a villain). Another implication is that a community should not be intimidated by threats of violence; silent witnesses have sufficient power to stop a villain from shooting even though he or she has the “monopoly of force”—or so we have been led to believe.

Should the film Witness have ended without an answer that can be taken as an ideological poiont-of-view? Had the screenwriters followed Howard’s advice, the audience would be left in the dark concerning whether the pressure of Amish witnesses resulted in the corrupt cop shooting Samuel or handing over the gun. The audience would be forced to remain agnostic concerning which of the two forces represented dramatically is inherently more powerful. Any ensuing exploration, as in discussing the theme at a coffee shop afterward, would suffer from a certain indeterminacy left by the film. More to the point, the audience could deservedly feel ripped off in not getting a full payoff through a resolution.

Rather than not expressing a view concerning which of the two types of force is (and ought to be) more powerful, the screenwriters were effective in proffering an “answer” or thesis because they had represented the contending theories fairly. “Modern urban society isn’t depicted as all bad and the Amish aren’t all good,” Howard writes. “There are forms of force in both societies, just as there are admirable things about them both.” Rather than being shoved down the audience’s throats, the answer or thesis provided as the resolution can thus be incorporated as one thesis amid the contending points represented throughout the film. The writers’ motive is not felt to be so much to preach as to explore the phenomenon and proffer one answer as if “and here’s what we think.”

“Preaching,” in contrast, occurs when a film is itself a one-sided view. The motive is to push one interpretation as the definitive answer. This is what Howard is reacting against, and with good reason. Nobody likes to be preached at. Ironically, “preaching” actually diminishes or detracts from a writer’s influence. In the field of business and society in business schools, for example, some of the writers are ideologues pushing an anti-corporate agenda. Their writing is not respected as academic scholarship outside of their own cadre.

Once I attended a conference at Harvard Business School on Amitai Etzioni’s socio-economic “theory.” The gurus at the “Mecca” of business academia told Etzioni that he was merely trashing the neo-classical economic paradigm without in its place proffering another theory. In spite of (and perhaps indicative of) the lack of academic content in what was in actuality an ideological thrashing of corporate capitalism, someone in attendance (presumably a professor from some university) stood up at his desk at one point and declared, “We should form a labor party!” as he pounded the desk with a clenched fist. I was stunned, but not really very surprised. So it goes when credibility has been compromised by “scholars” who are at their core advocates rather than explainers.

Screenwriters are also explainers in a way, as they explore a phenomenon of human experience by means of storytelling. According to Bill Johnson, storytelling is a process—one that “involves understanding the dramatic issue or idea at the heart of a story, and arranging a story’s elements to bring that issue to resolution in a way that offers the story’s audience a dramatic experience of fulfillment.” Johnson goes on to specify the relevant “unmet desires and needs we carry within our hearts” as being satisfied by “a sense of meaning and purpose” that can come through story. In other words, like a leader through vision, a storyteller can satisfy the basic human instinct for meaning by means of sense-making.

While an answer can surface during (or as a result of) an exploration of a dramatic idea, the point of the venture cannot be to prove a specific thesis. Besides the inherent multivaliancy of meaning being compromised by an overweening ideological agenda, the answer in a resolution should come out of the dramatic conflict, which is a working out of the dramatic idea, and therefore not predetermined a priori. In other words, a dramatic idea cannot be exhausted by a particular ideological agenda, so emphasizing the latter must result in the former being to a certain extent eclipsed. Furthermore, because characters take on lives of their own as they interact in the dramatic conflict, they cannot be pre-programmed or scripted. Hence, the resolution of that conflict cannot be known up front, though it can be foisted, artificially.

Therefore, the screenwriter’s motive going in should not be to prove or advocate an initial thesis. Rather, curiosity or interest in a question involving the human condition lies behind the exploration, which in turn gives each new ground its due even as the story works its way to a completion (yet on a continuing road). This is actually not far from what motivates a scholar and how one conducts a study (this is perhaps why professors tell so many stories as part of their lectures).

In both cases, the passion is (or should be) directed on a phenomenon rather than on the writer or scholar him- or herself. This is my “answer” or thesis in this particular instance; it was not my point in writing—nor could I have even known of the “answer” arrived at here when I started my ratiocinations above, for the ensuing reasoning led to it. Nor do I view my thesis as set in stone or definitive, for I am still curious about the topic, so it won’t be long until my thoughts again take flight, leaving my little thesis behind as though it had always been destined to live on the island of misfit toys. Similarly, a screenwriter’s attachment (and loyalty) is to the curious phenomenon at hand and to story itself as an explanatory, exploratory device, rather than to a thesis or “agenda.” Sporting an answer along the way need not eclipse the exploration; indeed, a good effort grounded in passion for the phenomenon is apt to spawn a thesis or two, which in turn can be viewed as an oasis. The really mature screenwriter will even view them as mirages! Indeed, is not a story, including its characters and their little spats, a mirage of sorts? The key is perhaps to hold this perspective and yet to be able to take one’s stories seriously enough—without preaching.

Sources:

David Howard and Edward Mabley, The Tools of Screenwriting: A Writer’s Guide to the Craft and Elements of a Screenplay. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993).

Bill Johnson, Essays on the Craft of Dramatic Writing. http://home.teleport.com/~bjscript/index.htm  See also Charles Deemer, Screenwright: The Craft of Screenwriting (Xlibris, 1998), pp. 117-19.