Fear of the Void, Frasier’s Waistline, and the Art of Reduction
Lately, a recurring theme in my thoughts and conversations has been reduction.
By “reduction,” I refer to it less as a reference to quantity or chemistry, but as an idea. More specifically, the common idea of “cutting back” on specific elements of daily life in order to improve its overall quality. If someone talks about "cutting back, it is usually means that they are reducing some form of expenditure or consumption to see an increase in some other area of life. At a basic level, it's the most sensible way to streamline and improve life: to have extra time, you must do less. To have more money, spend less money. To improve your weight, eat less.
What I find interesting about reduction in practice is the way in which people often miss the point of the concept entirely, confusing reduction with exchange, or even addition. Sometimes people have such unquestioned assumptions or misconceptions that they actually add elements to their lives in misguided attempts to achieve some form of minimalism. You don't have to look any further than people's smart phones for proof of this point--how many separate "productivity" apps can one person use before the returns become diminished to nil?
My favorite example of the reduction-through-addition confusion is in a classic episode of Frasier. In the episode “Frasier-Lite,” Frasier and his coworkers at the radio station enter a group weight loss competition. At their second weigh-in, they discover that their team is heavier than when they started. Frasier, with his ever-present glass of sherry and penchant for gourmet cooking, is identified as the weak leak.
“How can that be?” Frasier sputters in indignant disbelief, “I added a salad to every meal!”
That scene makes me laugh just by writing it out, because Frasier’s glaring misconception sums up many of the innate confusions people operate by on a daily basis. It is my belief that true reduction is hard for many people to understand because it is simple in theory, but uncomfortable in practice. It is easy to say that something needs to be given up. Actually giving something up is much harder. I think this has to do with the human fear of change, but I think it can also be defined a more specifically as fear of a void.
We are confronted every day by choices. It doesn’t matter if we want something to eat, watch, buy or do; we can be guaranteed of multiple options to choose from. For a culture, this is a double-edged sword. Positively, it is an indicator of wealth and success. Negatively, it betrays an entire culture’s over-reliance on material elements at the expense of objectivity, critical thinking and spiritual fulfillment.
Why else would weight loss or budgeting be so complicated? At their core, they both concepts can be condensed to a single sentence apiece: Spend less. Eat less. Entire bookstore shelves could be replaced by single placards if a perceived need to fill all empty spaces did not exist. If the basic concepts were better understood, individuals' methods of implementing them would cease to be a reliant on the systems and advice of others, and would instead be expressions of personality.
This is extremely apparent when I listen to people talk about time management, then watch how they go about doing it. Everyone wants more time, but as soon as they liberate some space in their schedules, they immediately seek out something new to fill the void. After striving and cutting back activities to have "a moment's peace," the reality of being alone with one's own thoughts is suddenly too terrible to bear, and the void must needs be filled. Western cultures in particular often perceive voids as a symptom of idleness or of having a lack of constructive activities. In reality, extra time for one’s own self can be a wellspring of creativity to benefit the areas in life where meeting goals and fulfilling obligations is important. Creative people find creative ways of dealing with problems. They are valuable no matter where they work or what they do. And yet we deny ourselves the ability to be comfortable in silence or solitude.
We need to be comfortable with margins. We need to embrace the void.
This same concept applies to weight loss, the area in which many people, like Frasier, often choose what they think is the "least worst" option when, just maybe, the best option was never even thought of. As such, reduction inadvertently becomes addition.
“I added a salad to every meal!”
“Yes, but you didn’t decrease the size of your meals!”
This is a personal theory, but I firmly believe that the United States labors under culture-wide acceptance of false dilemmas. In situations where the individual must choose between a set of options, they often forget to check and see if they have to choose one of those options at all. Perhaps there is another option that they haven’t been shown yet. Or, perhaps the situation is not so dire that they have to choose anything at all, and can safely reject what they are offered and create their own paradigm for better living.
Easy example:
“Plain chips, or sour cream and onion?”
“No chips for me, thanks.”
Another:
“Regular or diet?”
“Water.”
One more:
“Let’s not spend too much on food; which is cheaper: Joe’s or Charlie’s?”
“Why don’t we just eat at home?”
Not every void must necessarily be filled.
Choosing the “least worst” option is not the same as reducing consumption.
Choosing only from the palette of options offered to you by others is never the same as making your own decisions.
Don’t be coerced. Don’t be fooled.
Let your decisions always be your own, and don't be afraid of a void. Learn the Art of Reduction.
Eating paleo and shopping in my sleep: "Free the Animal" reviewed.
Writer, blogger and entrepreneur Richard Nikoley is one of the more colorful and unique characters in the paleo blogosphere. He and I are very different people and I don't agree with him on everything by a long shot. The posts on his blog, Free the Animal, are blunt, confrontational, often delivered with unabashed profanity...but they are also downright entertaining. His take-no-prisoners attitude, especially pronounced when met with stupidity or bad reasoning, often provides much-needed doses of reality for the paleo community, whose information-cycling bloggers often seem to exist in a grass-fed and organically-pastured netherworld of online pontification.
The past year saw my own transition into a paleo-style diet and lifestyle. What began as a gradual series of minor lifestyle changes in an effort to lose weight, (portion control, cutting out soda, etcetera), led to deeper study that went beyond weight loss and into the ideas surrounding “ancestral” health. By the time Nikoley released the printed version of his take on paleo living, Free the Animal: How to Lose Weight and Fat on the Paleo Diet, I was already a grain-free, fifty pounds lighter, Vibram-wearing stereotype and I doubted the book would contain information that I hadn’t heard before from one source or another. However, I enjoy the blog and respect the man enough that a purchase of the print edition of Free the Animal was justified.
At least, I think I purchased it.
The exact event of my ordering the book remains a little hazy in my mind. I remember adding it to my Amazon.com wish list, then waking up one morning to an email confirming an order for it. There were extenuating circumstances--it was late in the semester and school was keeping me up at odd hours; I’ve come to expect occasional blackouts during such periods. However, in this case I suspect that a larger game might have been afoot, for upon my telling the 140-character version of this story on Twitter, I received a response from the man himself:
Hmm...well played, sir.
The apparent dubiousness of the purchase aside, I would like to share my opinion on Richard’s book, and how it measured up to my expectations.
The book is quite literally a printed compilation of Nikoley’s blog entries about the paleo lifestyle; compiled and printed by the ebook publishing company, HyperInk. In the interest of reaching a broader audience, Nikoley’s trademark colorful vocabulary has been toned down considerably, but his personality remains strong, as does the communication of his ideas without the extra saltiness.
The book has fourteen major sections, each of them easy to read and digest:
- Introduction
- Chapter 1: The Paleo, Primal, Ancestral Lifestyle
- Chapter 2: Your Inner Animal
- Chapter 3: The Standard American Diet And Other Diet Health Disasters
- Chapter 4: Fat Is King
- Chapter 5: The Cholesterol Con
- Chapter 6: Natural Disease Prevention
- Chapter 7: Eat Like A Caveman
- Chapter 8: The Power of Fasting
- Chapter 9: Evolutionary Exercise And Fitness
- Chapter 10: A Primal Weight Loss Plan
- Chapter 11: Recipes And Supplements
- Chapter 12: Success Stories
- About The Blog
The information in the book is solid and presented cohesively, as can be expected. But instead of giving away all of the information it contains, I would like to hone in what I felt set it apart from most literature about ancestral living. Unlike the path taken by most paleo nutritionists, Free the Animal does more than provide yet another treatise on insulin spikes, omega-3s and fat-protein-carbohydrate ratios; Free the Animal presents the paleo lifestyle as common sense.
Yes, Nikoley discusses nutrition and biology; yes, he discusses the psychology of food and intermittent fasting. But unlike the professional gurus who go to great pains to overawe readers with a doctoral dissertation’s worth of facts, statistics and observational studies, Nikoley’s book lays out the paleo lifestyle and its guiding philosophies in a refreshingly relatable way.
For paleo newcomers, I would honestly recommend Free the Animal as the starting point before moving on to the lengthier works of gurus like Robb Wolf or Mark Sisson. It isn’t that Richard Nikoley or Free the Animal are a “better” choice; to the contrary, most other paleo nutritionists provide much more detailed information, and longer and more colorful books to boot. But the main reason I loved Free the Animal was its no-frills, straightforward presentation. Mark Sisson’s Primal Blueprint changed my life last year, but I have to admit that its sheer amount of information scared me to death when I first picked it up.
By comparison, Free the Animal is both more and less of an assault to those readers who are just beginning to be interested in paleo nutrition. It is more of an assault because Nikoley does not suffer fools lightly and pulls few punches as a communicator. But Free the Animal nevertheless remains extremely relatable. Ever chapter presents its subject(s) through more than just the interpretation of impersonal data; Nikoley relates the impact of ancestral health, nutrition and fitness to everyday life. By attaching it to concrete ideas like personal appearance, productivity and a healthy sex life, the impact of the paleo diet takes on a significance beyond buzzwords like “burning fat” or “building muscle.”
So, is Free the Animal worth purchasing?
If you are already eating like a caveman, chances are you won’t learn anything new. However, if you want good introductory material in your lending library, this is a great book to keep around. And if you need a gift for “one of those friends” who complain ceaselessly about their weight while stubbornly continuing to fill up on empty and processed food products, Richard Nikoley’s Free the Animal might provide the necessary shot in the arm.
Free the Animal (Blog)
Purchase “Free the Animal: Lose Weight and Fat on the Paleo Dietl” on Amazon
Proof my business card!
As I continue to rebrand my online presence, I am also changing up my business cards. Part of this is because I want to seek out a different kind of business (editorial and journalistic as opposed to the last couple of years' focus on glitzy portraiture), and also because I am simply exasperated with the reaction I receive when I give my current business card to older prospective. They see featured headshot of my good friend Kimber Lee , and their first remark, either out of an attempt at humor or just missing the point, is without fail: "that ain't you." Eh, I just put it down to a generational gap.
Be that as it may, I want to avoid such problems in future conversations by choosing an image which has broader appeal and is more representative of the travel and journalistic photographs which have typified my portfolio choices for the past couple of years.
As part of this process, I want your help proofing this new card. Be brutally honest and let me know if there is anything I left out, or anything unique that you feel should be incorporated.
For taking the time to help, I offer many, many internet high-fives. Thanks in advance!
New Hub: "All Natural," and other grocery store misnomers.
If you are a Starbucks fan, you will enjoy this post.
Today's entry links to an article I published on HubPages. The subject is food marketing and its use of vague terms like "fortified" and "all natural" to promote some foods over others. What do these terms even mean?
Is "all natural" really natural, or just a game of semantics?
Are whole grains and multi grains are really as healthy as they are purported as being? And what about fiber? And is a "healthy" smoothie really better than something from Starbucks?
The article is a bit lengthy at about 1,500 words, plus links to supplementary sources and supplementary material, but if you are interested in nutrition and its relationship to culture, you will enjoy it.
Musing on Culture: The Adaptation Problem
The first trailer for Baz Luhrmann’s adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’ novel The Great Gatsby hit the internet last year. As might be expected of a Baz Lurhmann film, bright colors and elaborate set design swirl into a cinematic cornucopia very much in the vein of Moulin Rouge.
Link: "The Great Gatsby" Trailer
I haven’t seen many of the films in Luhrmann’s oeuvre. I did see Moulin Rouge and did not care for it, but that alone does not prejudice me against Luhrmann as a filmmaker. His films are unique and suit some tastes more than others. The initial news that Luhrmann would be directing the latest adaptation of The Great Gatsby sparked concern among fans of both the novel and its previous Hollywood adaption.
This concern is the same worry that plagues every film based on a well-loved piece of literature: will it do justice to the book?
I dearly love F. Scott Fitgerald’s original novel, but my life is a little too busy for me to devote too much time to obsessing over book-to-screen fidelity. Less than moved by the trailer; I filed it away in the “will watch, if on Netflix Instant” file part of my mind. Then I saw an article in my RSS feed, and it started a train of thought that I wanted to indulge here.
The article was “New Great Gatsby, On the Road Adaptations Revive an Old Debate: Can Great Books Make Great Movies?” and it used the forthcoming Gatsby and On the Road adaptations as vehicles to discuss whether or not great novels can always be adapted into great movies. The article even pulled out the heavy artillery with a lengthy Stanley Kubrick quote before ultimately pulling its punch and closing with a question instead of a resolution. The question is nonetheless a valid one. Can great books be fairly treated as films?
I have my own favorite Stanley Kubrick quote on this subject: "If it can be written or thought, it can be filmed." However, the point I want to make in this week's major blog is that it isn't simply the quality of the story which determines the ultimate quality of a film--the original format of the story is also a catalytic element for a film's success.
Today, I am making the case that good books never make good films, because only good films are good films. Books can be adapted into screenplays, but the for the film to be judged fairly, it must be judged on its own merits, before its relationship to the source material is taken into account. I contend that it is categorically impossible for any adaptation to be wholly faithful to its source material. Read on.
Making the leap from page to projection.
It does not matter if a book is “great,” or even well-known, because the process of screenwriting requires specific changes to be made in the adaptation of any source material. To establish this, I will offer an extremely well-known series of adaptations as a first example: The Lord of the Rings trilogy, written by J. R. R. Tolkien and adapted for the screen by Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens and director Peter Jackson.
The original Lord of the Rings novels are extremely detailed. Tolkien went to unprecedented lengths to flesh out the world of his stories, designing entire original languages, histories and geographies. Producers were faced with the two basic choices which must be decided whenever any book is to be adapted:
- Preserve the intricacy of the source material by tasking a group of screenwriters to adapt each novel into a six-hour miniseries.
- Create a less expensive, wider-reaching product by condensing each novel into its own two-hour feature film.
In the case of The Lord of the Rings, it is well known which option the producers took. Detail was undeniably sacrificed in the adaptation process, but consensus among fans is that the films stayed true to the spirit of Tolkien’s novels, even if certain elements were omitted or rearranged for clarity in visual storytelling (more on that later).
The Lord of the Rings was a rare series of adaptations, because the three films not only presented the individual personalities of Tolkien’s many characters, but the themes of the novels remained intact throughout. Themes and characters wage war with each other for audiences' attention, and to that point we will now focus our attention.
Themes vs. Characters
Themes are important.
Without a theme--a “grander purpose” as it were, audiences have no reason to watch characters on a screen. Even films and television shows discussed as “character studies” are only successful as such because of the themes explored in the nature of their characters. In the case of a show like Mad Men, the central character of Don Draper is rarely a likable individual. The omniscient audience is privy to every lie he weaves between his personal and professional lives, and are even given the upper hand through flashbacks that show how Don Draper literally became Don Draper. However, despite being unscrupulous and often very cruel, Draper succeeds as a character, because the writers of Mad Men use him to explore very real issues of man’s search for identity and fulfillment.
Even in films or programs like Mad Men which are categorized as "character studies," the actions of characters, however entertaining, are completely meaningless unless they speak to a finer point, a theme. As one more example, let’s briefly look at Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing.
Do the Right Thing has very few characters who are endearing for their own sake. However, Lee’s characters exist for a reason beyond their own stories. The blacks, Italians, Puerto Ricans and Asians populating Bed-Stuy in Do the Right Thing are not true individuals in the eyes of the screenplay--they are microcosms of entire populations. By writing characters with no significance as individuals, but who expressed the unique rages of entire demographics, Lee's film communicates the realities of modern racism with incredible force.
Strong stories necessitate strong characters, however unlikable they are. However, one cannot expect the same success when the order is reversed.
When a character’s individual significance is given precedence over their place as part of the film as a whole, this is often indicative of a story which lacks a truly compelling theme. If the viewer of a film is led to care more about character more than the story itself, chances are that they are watching a story which is not written to have any real significance.
In continuing our examination of characters and themes, let us look at them in the light of the writing process. It is important to understand the differences between stories written for print and stories written for film.
We will return to the idea of characters versus story in a moment, but before we do we must understand how these stories are written in the first place.
The world of difference between writing for print and writing for cinema.
In a novel or original screenplay, it is perfectly alright for characters to dominate over theme. Different kinds of stories cater to different audiences' tastes. If a film or a novel is only worth attention because it is simple, light entertainment, it is no less a legitimate work of fiction than if it is built on heavily wrought themes which are woven around every challenge of the human experience.
The problems occur when a story written for one medium (print publication) is retrofitted to the storytelling style of another (film).
Writing a story for print is a much freer process than writing for film. A novel can be as short or as long as is necessary to fully tell its story. It can be traditionally structured or spontaneous and associative in the ways in which its story unfolds for the reader. According to the story’s needs, the people, places and things within a story can be drawn in near-infinite detail. Until the story is offered to the mercies of an editor, the novelist reigns as a supreme deity over how his or her story is told. That is the freedom of written fiction.
Contrast this with the process and limitations of screenwriting, and its place in the collaborative business of filmmaking. Screenwriters do not create descriptively-written worlds which readers can interpret mentally; The delivery of a screenplay is not a direct transfer from page to mind, it is moderated by a team of artists and technicians who take it upon themselves to interpret the story and guide the viewer through in the way they deem proper. The screenplay is treated as nothing more than a working template with dialog for the actors.
Furthermore, the stories themselves are constricted in their writing by the confinement of time. No matter how much time passes within the context of a screenplay's story, and no matter how many characters it contains, the screenplay must be written so that its final, visual interpretation will not exceed a running time between ninety minutes and two hours.
Filmmaking is a business, and it must move efficiently to turn a profit. For production teams and actors to digest a story and commit it to film in a timely manner, screenwriters most often reduce the characters’ actions and thoughts to the simplest possible terms. This changes the very language of writing, and is what truly separates screenwriting from novel-writing as a distinct writing style. Consider the following example:
In a story about a hard boiled detective, the novelist might write:
Sam reached into his jacket pocket and took out the cigarette lighter his dad had given him as a kid, just for kicks on a Saturday. ‘Don’t tell your mom,’ dad had said with a grin. Now, the lighter was cold in Sam’s hand, but grew warm as he struck the light and ignited the unfiltered Marlboro between his lips. The lighter was warm, just like the bullet that popped his dad’s heart like a balloon the day after he gave Sam the lighter.
By contrast, screenwriting requires that the same action be expressed much more economically:
Sam takes his lighter out of his pocket and lights a cigarette.
A world of difference, wouldn't you agree?
Novels are hot rods, adaptations are station wagons.
Even though it is obvious that the styles of writing for print and writing for film are markedly different, that does not mean that one is less effective than the other. The problems arise when the infinite nuances of a well-written novel are pared down and re-written to be communicated visually.
A screenwriter faces a weighty problem in adapting a beloved story. There is never, ever enough time in even a two-hour film to include ever detail of a book. And, ultimately, it is the fans of the source material who hold all the cards. They know every twist of the plot, every motivation of the characters, and as a coup d'grace to the screenwriter's difficulties, every reader has seen it differently in his or her own mind.
The hairiness of the situation is made even worse by the ten-figure sums which are spent on major films. The film needs to please the fans, but every fan wants to see their own personal envisioning of the story, because anything else would be, like, totally lame.
This is the fundamental, aphoristic difference between novels and screenplays: novels are written for the theatre of the individual mind, and screenplays are written for mass exhibition via technical processes. Novels are written with a level of detail that literally cannot be expressed through the work of a camera. For a book to work at all as a film, it must be reduced.
Ultimately, most adaptations usually fall into one of the following three categories
- Mechanical movement through many plot points as possible, usually at the expense of emotion and depth of character. (Harry Potter, The Hunger Games)
- Abstract interpretation of theme which leaves the original story barely recognizable. (Apocalypse Now)
- Glorification of the characters over their story. (The Big Sleep, Fight Club)
Casting Judgement
Every adaptation must begin with the screenwriter's painstaking selection of the original story's "structural supports;" most integral parts of a story. Only when these have been established into a workable script can the screenwriter go back and add in as many of the extra details as will fit within the film's running time.
All too often, many of these so desired-for details are still deemed superfluous by studio executives and left out of the theatrical edit, being inserted back into the a "directors cut" at a much later date as "extra character moments for the fans." This, I suppose, is the only consolation some screenwriters will have after the perceived lack of effort on their part has already earned them the ire of their project's original fandom.
After Lord of the Rings, The Hunger Games, Harry Potter, Eragon, Twilight, The Da Vinci Code and innumerable other novels being adapted into films of lesser strength than their original novels, one would assume that book fans would have learned to not expect perfect fidelity from Hollywood; but the old indignant response continues to greet every film.
Coming full circle.
Referencing the Open Culture article from earlier, the question asked was “Can Great Books Make Great Movies?”
At the end of this piece, here is my answer: No book can ever make a good movie. Good movies make good movies.
If a movie is based on a book, book fans need to recognize and fairly acknowledge that novelists write novels, screenwriters write films. When the limitless scope of novel is shoehorned into the limitations imposed by cinematic storytelling, there will be loss in translation.
I love books. I appreciate and respect the time, thought and loving care which good (and even bad) authors impart to their work. Stories always begin with a mind, and even films and music begin in the minds of writers. In a sense, writers are progenitors of every culture.
But that does not diminish the respect which I have for the work done by filmmakers. Good filmmaking is the result of a year of collaboration between writers, directors, performers, artists, designers, caterers and enthusiastic gophers.
When an adapted film judged harshly and angrily criticized simply on the basis of its differences from the source material, book fans make a grave and very unfair mistake: in their rush defend the work of a single author, they fail to realize that what they are really doing is demeaning the honest and hard work of the hundreds of people who took as much as a year out of their lives to bring a book to visual life.
In closing...
Coming back to the subject of The Great Gatsby, I suggest that fans of the original book (like myself) acknowledge here and now that the direction of Baz Lurhmann and the acting style of Leonardo DiCaprio will most likely not capture the full depth and pathos of Jay Gatsby as originally written written by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Speaking editorially, I personally believe that Tobey Maguire is dead weight whenever onscreen and will likely not help the film's cause among book fans.
However, Baz Luhrmann’s lush visual style is quite appropriate for presenting the opulence and excess of New England’s upper class during the Roaring Twenties. Leonardo DiCaprio has also become adept at playing brooding characters whom life has left feeling hollow. Between these two elements, it is more than a slightly possibility that the film will fairly present a strong interpretation F. Scott Fitzgerald's theme of a man searching for meaning in a culture which does not value substance as much as it does style.
It is quite possible that I will love Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby as much as I love Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby--I will simply appreciate them in different ways.
