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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   2817 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for March 17, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I am of the opinion that there is no such thing in fiction as a joke ruining the tone. Every time someone complains that a joke has ruined the tone, they are likely misidentifying a problem. For example, the MCU doesn't have a problem with jokes ruining the tone. The MCU has a problem with characterization. The characters all employ the same kind of snark, regardless of whether it fits their established personality.

What, if anything, do you believe can ruin the tone of a film or other work of fiction? More broadly, what role do you believe tone plays in one's enjoyment of a work of fiction, and how do jokes and other parts of a scene influence it?

Tone is a subset of immersion. Tone is feeling what the characters feel, or what you would feel if you were there with the character. I have never experienced a tone break in the written word, but I have experienced it many times in live-action media. It happens when the actor performs in a way that is designed to elicit laughter or some other reaction to the exclusion of what the protagonist would actually be feeling or what I would be feeling if I were with the protagonist. In fact, as I write this, I'm not sure if there really is a difference between tone and immersion.

My favorite emotion that can be elicited from art is ambivalence. I like media that has parts that are funny and parts that are sad, but I love media in which the parts that are funny are the same as the parts that are sad. Tonal confusion is the best tone, and I think it elevates something good to something great. In real life, when something funny happens, it doesn't break your sorrow or terror. If you've ever seen someone have a psychotic break, you'll see what I mean. Those are often both funny and horrifying.

You have a very unconventional definition that your argument rests on that you failed to introduce when you made the argument. To reduce tone to believable characterization, or your immersion based on characterization, you have to ignore most of the ways the word tone is commonly used, which is generally as the entire structured mood in a film, touching on its genre and its "point-of-view", influenced by all aspects of its storytelling, including cinematography, soundtrack, and genre expectations. Imagine the early scenes of a horror movie where everyone is happy. Is the tone a happy cheerful one? Most people would say no, the tone is still horror, or a kind of tension, just by virtue of knowing what's next. Even if people said the tone is happy, just add some tense violins to the score and its now definitely horror no matter what the characters are doing. That's dramatic irony which most people would argue is an important part of tone, but is completely missing from your definition because it is entirely based on what the characters of the movie are feeling/doing.

To reduce it to immersion also robs it of its variations. Tone isn't just on a spectrum of effectiveness. It can be horror, it can be lighthearted, it can be romantic, cynical, and yes, ambivalent. And a break in tone is commonly seen to mean just shifting from one to another, not as an automatic failure. If something "ruins" the tone, people are generally identifying that the movie shifted tones unskillfully, although some people seem to think that shifting whatsoever is unskillful, which I would strongly disagree with.

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