do we need conflict?
Jun. 14th, 2007 05:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
miriam_eI was thinking about the stories we tell ourselves and the fables we believe. It seems to me that conflict forms a central part of all of these. All the religious texts I've read worship psychopathic gods who seem obsessed with senseless destruction. All the top movies seem to center around conflict, often life-threatening. Books seem to be the same. It is weird... and somewhat depressing. What does that say about us as a species?
Even some of my favorite movies, Amelie, Little Man Tate, For The Birds, The Telephone, Romy & Michelle's High School Reunion, which don't have guns or direct violence, still use conflict as an important story element.
I love the Karin Kallmaker romances because they are lovely, light escapes, but even these generally feature a fair amount of conflict, with some of the later ones even tending to tragedy, and I find this upsetting.
A couple of years ago I tried to write a story that generally didn't have conflict. It was, by all accounts a resounding failure. I'm still largely proud of it, except the parts where I bowed to pressure and added conflict, and I'll fix that one day when I get time. Unfortunately when I do I just know nobody will read it, or if they do they won't like it because it will be too "nice". But that has me puzzled: how can being nice be a failure? What is it about us that lets us describe a tragedy as beautiful, or a violent action story as thrilling?
When was the last time you read a book or watched a movie that had no conflict at all?
What the hell is wrong with us?
Even some of my favorite movies, Amelie, Little Man Tate, For The Birds, The Telephone, Romy & Michelle's High School Reunion, which don't have guns or direct violence, still use conflict as an important story element.
I love the Karin Kallmaker romances because they are lovely, light escapes, but even these generally feature a fair amount of conflict, with some of the later ones even tending to tragedy, and I find this upsetting.
A couple of years ago I tried to write a story that generally didn't have conflict. It was, by all accounts a resounding failure. I'm still largely proud of it, except the parts where I bowed to pressure and added conflict, and I'll fix that one day when I get time. Unfortunately when I do I just know nobody will read it, or if they do they won't like it because it will be too "nice". But that has me puzzled: how can being nice be a failure? What is it about us that lets us describe a tragedy as beautiful, or a violent action story as thrilling?
When was the last time you read a book or watched a movie that had no conflict at all?
What the hell is wrong with us?
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Re: The Word
Date: 2007-06-15 06:11 am (UTC)No. I mean conflict in the wider meaning. As you say, all kinds of conflict, even mild. But I am not making them all equivalent. Severe kinds of conflict involving arms and violence are an extreme. More gentle forms where a person's expectations are unfulfilled, leaving them less than happy -- that is some of the other extreme. It is all conflict.
What has me bothered is that we seem to find it so hard to make stories about simply happiness. There is this expectation that you can't have an interesting story without conflict. Why?
I can imagine a story about pleasure in which the story changes in numerous ways that seem to me would make it interesting. (I've been unable to get this damned problem out of my mind since yesterday. Am I obsessive or what!) Consider this:
A person is happily involved in research into a topic which they find intriguing. It brightens each day for them. When the weather is mild she enjoys the birds and the blue skies. When it rains whe loves the cosy indoors and how the plants are greened and the chorus of frogs. As she nears completion of her research she becomes more and more excited. At one point while gathering more data on one aspect of the work she meets someone who is a well-spring of information on the topic. This other person teams up with her and together they uncover wonderful implications for this research that none had suspected. When they complete the initial objective they celebrate both the fact that have done something truly wonderful, and the fact that now there are even more wonderful possibilities open to them, previously unsuspected... and they find they've somehow fallen in love. The delights of sex are heightened when they realise that they continue to pursue the research more quickly and easily now because they don't just work separately, but now over breakfast, in the shower, during midnight snacks, between bouts of glorious sex.
Wow! I find myself grinning right now, enjoying just the outline. I'd love to read this story! I might have a shot at writing it.
See what I mean? It should be possible to write a story that has surprises and interesting things without conflict. You could say that the desire to reach the research objective is a kind of conflict, and yes, it could be, but I think it could be written so that the character was drawn onwards by the joy of learning rather than being tortured by the frustration of not knowing.
So why can't I think of a single instance where someone has done something like this?
Actually that's not quite true. I did think of an entire genre of art that is based upon pleasure instead of conflict: porn. But that raises yet another question. Why is conflict and violence elevated to "high art" and pure pleasure sneered at, even to the point of being outlawed.
Why is it okay to make a movie about psychopaths callously joking about their murders (Pulp Fiction) yet unacceptable to document sexual bliss in exquisite detail? Not just in the puritanical west either, in India hindus bombed a theatre screening the movie "Girlfriend" because it was about two women who found pleasure in each other (pleasure is evil!).
I ask again:
What the hell is wrong with us?