On Genre and Narratival Expectation

            I love a good story. One of my favorite aspects of a story is being able to enter into the world of the story. This is not so much entering into the plot of the story as entering into the world of the story, the world the story creates. Good stories are able to do this, like Star Wars, Harry Potter, Chronicles of Narnia, Doctor Who, Once Upon a Time (story world still in development with this one), and other like stories. These stories successfully establish not only a story, but also the world in which the story happens. These stories and worlds can be either possible or impossible worlds. The stories listed above are impossible stories. They are stories and worlds that cannot possible exist; they are impossible. There are other stories that are “possible;” they could conceivably happen. Many sci-fi stories tread a fine line between the possible and the impossible. Good sci-fi looks at the future (or possibly the present) and asks what could be, asks what could be possible.

            There is an additional aspect to stories as well: the probable and the improbable. For the rest of this essay/post I am using these two terms, probable and improbable, in a technical sense which I will explain. (If I mean to use them in a non-technical sense I will let you, the reader, know, or simple chose other terms.) This technical distinction is mainly for the benefit of the term “probable,” which can be better understood if I define “improbable” first. When I say “improbable” in reference to a story, I mean that which is unlikely to happen. This can be either in regards to a story plot as a whole, or to the individual actions of a particular character. When we look at a character doing something strange we are thinking not that what they are doing is impossible, but that it is improbable. Problems with physics in movies are under this category of the improbable. Of course someone surviving a 100 foot fall with a sudden stop is impossible, but that is not what bothers us when the story itself is impossible. What bothers us is that it is improbable that the person could have survived. Or say character X has been established as a fairly smart person but makes a bone headed decision that they should have known not to do. Their character decision is thus improbable. Under this consideration, the probable is thus not that which will happen, but what can permissibly happen within the story.

            Thus while a story can be utterly impossible, it can also be utterly believable. I am a huge fan of authorial intent, meaning that what a text means is what the author intended it to mean, not what someone else decides it to mean. Thus I feel slightly chagrined when I quote Oscar Wilde with no context whatsoever and agree with him in saying, “Man can believe the impossible, but can never believe the improbable.” This is, of course, proof texting at its finest, but it sounds really good and I hope you forgive me for the sake of the point I am making: different story genres have different rules for what is permissible, for what is considered improbable. Therefore genre needs to be taken into account when interpreting what is improbable in a story, or even what the story itself says, i.e. the message it conveys.

            That different stories have different rules for what is probable and improbable should be fairly obvious from a brief glance at the story genres of fantasy, sci-fi, and real life. In the fantasy genre, anything that is unexplainable might possibly be written off as “magic” and this would be an acceptable explanation not only for the characters within the story, but also for the reader/watcher. In sci-fi’s, strange things need to be explainable, even if the explanation is strange and nonsensical. The characters in the story at least have to be able to buy that the explanation is okay. In the genre “real life,” things have to make sense and also not be strange, not be out of the ordinary; they must happen naturally. A brief example from Doctor Who might make sense of this. Doctor Who is a British sci-fi show about a time traveling alien named The Doctor. The Doctor always has a companion with him, usually a human female (because stuff). Watching a potential companion meet The Doctor is like watching the genre “real life” meet “sci-fi.” Real life likes ordinary explanations and things to happen in their natural way, but sci-fi has strange things (to us) happen, but is able to explain them in quasi timey-wimey scientific ways. In real life, there is no such thing as time travel. In sci-fi time travel can happen if you have a TARDIS. In fantasy, time travel can happen if you have a time-turner. In regards to sci-fi, why one can time travel might be possibly explainable, but in fantasy time travel would just be chalked up to magic. While we consider time travel and stories of time travel to be impossible, while we watch we “believe” both stories because the manner in which the characters time travel is “probable.”

            When we have a problem with a story it is thus usually not with the impossibility of the story, but with the improbability of it. If we compare Luke Skywalker’s Death Star run in Star Wars Episode IV versus Anakin Skywalker’s destruction of the Trade Federation Droid Control Ship in Star Wars Episode I we can see this more clearly. Both stories are impossible, but I guarantee that we have more problems with Anakin’s story than with Luke’s. When Luke blows up the Death Star, the watcher gets the impression that Luke has done this with a combination of great piloting skills as well as the help of the Force. We know that Luke is a great pilot because of comments that he, as well as Biggs, make throughout the movie. He had also been struggling to learn how to use the Force throughout and was helped in the key scene by the ghost voice of Obi-Wan as well as the timely reappearance of the smuggler with a heart of gold, Han Solo. When Anakin blows up the Droid Control Ship, the viewer gets the distinct impression that he did so not by the Force or superior piloting skills, but by pure luck. He is a ten year old kid with no experience piloting space ships and it shows in that he thinks spinning is “a good trick.” He then doesn’t even get to the engine room by skill, but by crashing his ship through multiple levels of the ship’s hangers and then skids into perfect alignment to torpedo the engines. This simply is not believable. It is improbable whereas Luke’s destruction of the Death Star does look probable.

            These things being said, stories can get more complicated when multiple genres mix within the same story. An example of this is from the latest episode of Once Upon a Time, “Selfless, Brave, and True.”

**SPOILERS SKIP TO NEXT PARAGRAPH IF YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW YET**

In this episode a supped up taser is used to kill the character August Booth, aka Pinocchio, who at this point in the series has turned back into a living wooden puppet. I read some complains on forums after the episode that wood is non-conductive and that therefore he should be have been able to be tased (which, of course, is why we are told to not stand under trees during lightning storms -.-). I too was initially confused as to how this was possible. The people who posted their objections were pointing out something that they thought was improbable. No one had a problem with a walking, talking (how can he talk if he has no lungs?), animated (in the sense of being alive) puppet; this is impossible. What they did have a problem with, however, was that a taser could work against wood; this is improbable. I think the confusion here results from Once Upon a Time being a mix of two different genres: real life and fantasy. In fantasy, a puppet can live and no one uses tasers. In real life, puppets cannot live and tasers presumably do not work on wood. So in this scene, two genres meet, two expectations of what is possible, or permissible meet, leading to confusion.

**SPOILERS ENDED**

            Thus we might think about the series Once Upon a Time as having the genre fantasy-real life. For those who objected to the scene described above, they read the genre as fantasy-REAL LIFE whereas I read it as FANTASY-real life. I place more of an emphasis on the fantasy aspect than the real life aspect, thus broadening the acceptable explanations I am willing to receive concerning a story event.

            This genre expectation is also present in ordinary life, in the things we live and breathe and do. We have our own set of standards for what is impossible and what is improbable. Do miracles and supernatural events happen? Well, your answer to that is almost predetermined by what “genre” you see the story of your life as occupying. This point is important. Your life-genre predetermines the answer you arrive at and any evidence that might be present to persuade you to another side is formed and fitted to your preexisting life-genre. And it takes something extraordinary to switch life-genres.

            This approach also exists when you approach a book like the Bible. For the Bible, you will want to ask yourself what genre you think it occupies as well as what life-genre you think you occupy. Both have a factor in influencing what you think is impossible or improbable in the Bible. The Bible is one of those rare books where it really does matter whether the story it presents is impossible or not. Paul, one of the writers in it, says that if what Christians believe is not in fact true, then they and he are to be pitied above all men. For the Bible, the truth really does matter. The real test of the veracity of a thing is what happens when you act on that thing.

To restate everything: genre is important to stories. It lets us, the reader/watcher, know how to interpret the events we read about/watch. It lets us know what is probable, as well as what is improbable. Thus, even though a story might be impossible, if we have the right genre, we can see the story as probable and thus can enter into the story and live and learn there for a time.