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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022

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But it seems like audiences are getting tired of having their expectations subverted over-and-over again. Have audiences become so fatigued by underdog stories that they will pay to see the Bad News Bears lose to the Yankees?

Well, it's a natural catch-22, isn't it? Subvert expectations in the same way often enough and you will have established a new expectation that could use subverting. One of my pet peeves about recent genre storytelling is the twist-on-a-twist trope; I spend a good deal of my time watching new thrillers anticipating the requisite multiple twists -- to the point that the most refreshing surprise would be if there are no twists at all.

But then I think a lot of this drive for originality is largely missing the greater point. There are, as the book says, only 36 Dramatic Situations (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thirty-Six_Dramatic_Situations), so we are bound to revisit the same stories over and over, What makes them matter is not necessarily originality, but rather genuine investment and honesty. If a creator is driven to tell a certain story and does so honestly, it will resonate in a way that the same story, created to sell products or fit in a certain # of ideological platitudes, won't resonate.

Look at Rocky. It takes the common underdog trope and, with real emotional investment by its writer, seems original because it tells the story honestly. Spoiler: Rocky does lose his final match, but that doesn't matter to audiences who were invested in his emotional goals, which were fulfilled by genuine storytelling that insulted neither the characters nor the audience.