Telling Stories Without Climaxes
Why there are no good films of Mansfield Park and other troubles for women's stories
This Thursday, I’ll share your responses to my piece on friendship founded on “boring” tasks and simple accompaniment. I’ve also written a piece for Breaking Ground in defense of snow days as a contradiction to a culture fixated on control.
I loved reading your stories last week about women who changed who you thought you could be as a woman. One thing that stood out to me is the way your experiences didn’t fit into the story structures we often default to. For example, Amy told a story about her advisor setting limits, but the story didn’t involve a dramatic showdown, just the slow, patient maintenance of boundaries.
It’s hard to imagine as a movie. As a poem, maybe. With a repeated, firm chorus amid intrusive stanzas.
I thought of Amy’s advisor while reading Jessa Crispin’s film criticism in Caesura. Crispin looks at a variety of films set in different periods, but which all seem to have the same woman at the center:
They fit into what Angela McRobbie has identified as the “perfection/imperfection/resilience” story arc of feminist women's media, stories of women proving their worth by being perfect, having relatable flaws that they embrace as part of their journey of self-discovery (usually something like a crooked tooth or a reliance on a socially acceptable substance and not like a hygiene issue), and creating resilience out of their hardship but excelling in the meritocracy through their excellence. […]
They follow the dominant story feminism has pushed for decades (to the detriment of any wilder or more radical visions of life, gender, or meaning): the world is against you because you are a woman, but you'll prove them wrong, just by being yourself, you'll see. Life is presented as a mountain to scale, a competition to win, and one must be on your best behavior to achieve your position at the top. And if you are unable to achieve success, it will be because of misogyny, not any structural barriers like a decaying social welfare system or our decrepit institutions.
I recognize the story arc Crispin is describing, both in movies and from times I’ve tried to apply it to my own life. It’s sometimes a fit, but I can get stuck when I see myself as a heroine in this mode, but there’s no one I can defy in order to solve a problem.
It shouldn’t be our only story, but it can be hard to adapt other tempos into film. My fellow contributing editor at Plough, Joy Clarkson, commented on twitter:
I’ve just read Mansfield Park for the first time, so I felt qualified to offer my hypothesis, which covers Persuasion, too:
Fanny’s interior life is better served by a novel than a film. If you want to tell a story about the interior virtue of a quiet character, I think you’re better off with a heightened style like a musical or a show with dance woven in.
The film that did work for me on this topic was Terrence Mallick’s A Hidden Life, about the life and death of Bl. Franz Jägerstätter.
Though, to an extent, having your protagonist martyred by the Nazis (even if it’s what happened in real life) is a kind of heightened style. The crisis of extraordinary evil throws patient goodness into relief, so that what might have been hidden is singled out.
The director, Terrence Mallick, takes his title from the closing words of Middlemarch, and I am curious how his style would work for George Eliot’s novel, which ends:
But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.
What art (outside of novels) has done a good job representing these hidden lives?
I’d love to hear your recommendations, especially if you’ve seen artistic forms that serve these kinds of stories well. E.g., a sonnet’s turn can be a dramatic shift of metaphor or emphasis, without having a climax in terms of plot.
P.S. My husband and I co-wrote a game, Back Again from the Broken Land, that is entirely set after the climax of a story. It’s a Tolkien-inspired game that takes place after the defeat of the Doomslord, as your small adventurers take their long walk home and see if they can make peace with the Burdens they carry. This is our last week on Kickstarter.
One of my favorite Studio Ghibli movies is "Whisper of the Heart", an extremely sweet film about a middle school girl, Shizuku who discovers she wants to be a writer. The story is mostly gentle moments in everyday life: she makes up a parody song with her best friend and gets mad at a boy who teases her about it, she visits an antique shop and gets inspired by the objects she sees, she has conflict with her family about her grades. There's a sweet love story at the center of it, where Shizuku meets a boy, Seiji, who wants to make violins. Two things set it apart for me in terms of womens'/girls' stories:
-One key part of the "climax" of the story, such as it is, is Shizuku deciding she wants to write a story and then writing the story, and then she gives it to one person to read who gives her honest feedback and appreciation. She doesn't win any contests, she doesn't suddenly get catapulted to a life of art - in fact, she decides to work harder on getting into a good high school so she can learn more about writing. The story is very much about her interior development and discovery of this thing she loves, rather than an external achievement or the sudden attainment of a miraculous ability.
-The love story is about two characters supporting each others' passions. They're initially attracted to each other over the passion and talent they can see each other - Seiji admires Shizuku's cleverness with words; Shizuku admires Seiji's musical talent. They talk frequently together about these things they love and spur each other onward to develop their talents (when Seiji travels to Italy to learn more about violin-making, Shizuku is inspired to pursue writing more seriously.) The heart of the love story is two characters spurring each other on to do better work and supporting each other throughout that - even though it takes one of them far away to Italy. It can be so unfortunately rare in the movies to see a love story between a man and a woman where they are spurring each other on equally - usually the woman plays cheerleader to the guy who discovers something about himself for the first time.
In general, I think the Studio Ghibli style is really well-suited to anticlimax, hidden lives, and mundane stories. The focus on small details throughout the films, the inclusion of moments that don't necessarily advance the plot, the attention to characters who are not particularly important or notable in themselves - these are elements that I think any director could use to move away from the classic girl-power heroine type movie.
"But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs." <- This feels like the perfect counterpoint quote to the "Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History" thesis, especially insofar as "well-behaved" is taken to mean quiet or deeply prudent.