The “Beats” In Our Fictional World

I never watched much TV. Now I watch less. Same for movies. I don’t know if commercial storytellers suck more (“It’s Cinderella Part IV, with black lesbians!”) or I’ve changed.

I suspect it’s the latter. TV and movies (and most books) dismissed with interesting stories and devolved to the most constrained groupthink possible. I began to see the matrix.

All good stories, whether a fishing tale delivered from a bar stool or a quarter-billion dollar CGI fest, have similarities. (Here we bow toward Joseph Campbell, without bothering to actually read his shit, because who’s got time?) However, similarities can’t be too obvious. When hacks take a story arc and just plain beat the thing to a pulp, the magic fades. It’s no fun anymore.

This is my reaction to the last two hundred (OK it just seems like two hundred) movies about superheroes. Or anything by Disney. Or the avalanche of sequels. Hollywood finances are a sucking chest wound because their job is to tell stories and they neglect the work of making stories.

But I digress. I mostly stopped watching TV when I saw Blake Snyder’s thumbprint on everything. Blake wrote Save the Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need. Hollywood followed it with the slavish devotion that only sheep can muster. It became inescapable.

It got to the point where I’d start calling out Blake’s “beats” instead of being immersed in the tale. (Just for the record, I didn’t read Blake’s book. It’s on my “to do” list but I’d rather shovel out the chicken coop and I hate shoveling. So I never got around to reading the book.)

Blake’s list is for a three act story and damn near everything you’ve experienced is more or less three acts. Within the three acts are 15 “beats”. There are elaborate “formulae” for how long to spend on each “beat” and there’s a tiny bit of variation. (“Spend more time on ‘Setup’ to linger on the sexy spy’s ass… we paid good money for her.” “There’s too much exposition in ‘Bad Guys Close In’, cut it short and hope people already know why Superman won’t like the Kryptonite milkshake.” You get the point.)

In general, if it came from Hollywood, it has these parts in more or less this order:

1. Opening Image
2. Theme Stated
3. Setup
4. Catalyst
5. Debate
6. Break Into Two
7. B Story
8. Fun and Games
9. Midpoint
10. Bad Guys Close In
11. All is Lost
12. Dark Night of the Soul
13. Break Into Three
14. Finale (Often with sub-parts: Gathering the Team, Executing the Plan, The High Tower Surprise, Dig Deep Down, Execution of New Plan)
15. Final Image

So, I’d be watching TV with Mrs. Curmudgeon and I’d ruin it for her. It would be some generic police / detective drama and I’d call out beats as I recognized them. Like this:

“Those bastards in City Hall are messing up the murder investigation? The plucky underdog detective can only catch the criminal if he defies his bosses direct orders? BREAK INTO TWO!”

Mrs. Curmudgeon would roll her eyes and I’d try to shut up as the second act rolled on. But I couldn’t help myself.

“The DNA evidence clearly implicates the Mayor? MIDPOINT!”

I’d realize I’m a shitty guy to have around while a TV show is playing and try to be better. I failed, every time.

“The crooked lawyer got the DNA evidence thrown out? ALL IS LOST!” It was almost impossible to not see it once you started looking.

It’s usually easier to see the end parts of the arc. Toward the end of the show I’d be ruthless.

“The plucky underdog detective is thinking of having a drink, despite his tragic history of alcoholism? DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL!”

“He’s got a scheme to catch the Mayor bragging about his heroin dealing? EXECUTING THE PLAN!”

The end of the show would be looming and it would be super obvious. I could call ’em like it was closed captions on the screen itself.

“Oh no, the tape recorder battery was dead! But the plucky underdog detective recites the entire discussion from memory? He does this by overcoming his fears caused by a tragic meltdown in his elementary school spelling bee? DIG DEEP DOWN!”

Now you know how much it sucks to be married to me.

Mrs. Curmudgeon has to watch much of her TV with headphones. I try very hard to avoid looking at the screen because sometimes I can pick out beats from just the acting.

There’s a silver lining to this, sometimes modern TV on mute is funny as shit. It’s absolutely batty! Recently I saw something with a guy in a giraffe suit. I assumed it was for toddlers; a modern Captain Kangaroo. Mrs. Curmudgeon assures me it is for adults and involves singing. Go figure.

Also, I’m not immune to the weirdness. I’ll spend an hour watching Roy Underhill make a picture frame and it’s heaven. Mrs. Curmudgeon will spend an hour watching people make cakes and I go into a coma. So there’s that…

ACT TWO!

I wrote all the previous stuff so I can tell you about this part. The “beats” happen in propaganda too. Who knew?

Not long ago I was driving to the feed store. I passed eleventy zillion signs for Trump and three for Biden. Then I bought feed from happy people selling farm goods at a profit to chumps like me. No masks. No bitching about masks. The weather was gorgeous, diesel is cheap, and hunting season is approaching.

Back home I surfed the internet. Everything was the opposite of what I was seeing in the real world. The real world ‘aint half bad. The media world is a dystopian nightmare.

I wasn’t thinking of anything in particular when I blurted out the beat. “ALL IS LOST!”

I swear I could see the beat. It’s messy and spread out over a thousand media streams but it’s there. This was the dark point in the arc; manufactured as needed. Not just for people on the Right but also people on the Left. Everything sucks. We’re fucked. 2020 is unwinnable.

“ALL IS LOST” is a big deal. The story needs it! Rocky can’t come off the mat with the renewed power of awesome until he’s first thumped good and hard. So it is with us.

The specifics were all delivered like it’s real, forever, bad, and inescapable. Trump has COVID and is going to die tomorrow. If you vote, your vote won’t count. If you don’t vote you suck. If we have to count votes, we’ll fuck it up. Peace deals involving Israel are irrelevant. Removing troops from harm’s way isn’t worth discussion. Good employment news is irrelevant. The economy is not recovering. COVID is death. Fewer COVID deaths isn’t good news. Every country is better than ours, in COVID and in everything else. Nobody is happy. We’re all gonna’ die.

They lay it on thick and harsh. “This is the new normal bitches. It’ll never get better!”

This is nothing new. We already know that virtually all media is now propaganda. Anything about which I have personal in-depth knowledge is reported completely erroneously. (See: Gell-Mann amnesia effect.) I’m sure you’ve noticed the same yourself.

But I never really thought about timing of events to produce the arc. I never thought about events (or rather manufactured events) occurring in a specific order. I don’t know why. It seems obvious in retrospect.

So that’s a thing. I’m seeing “beats” in a long arc. You are too. The degree to which we recognize it is up to us. For my part I see it as a refinement on my earlier cruder understandings of propaganda timing (See: October Surprise).

Things move quickly and I type slowly. Beats have timing assigned to them and ALL IS LOST is meant to be short.

Almost immediately, while I was getting my ass in gear to compose this post, the media transitioned to “DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL”. This is where the protagonist (and in turn the viewer) must experience doubt. “I can’t defeat the Dragon / outwit the lawyer / hit the home run. I’m just not good enough! Am I wrong? Have the Gods abandoned me? Will the wolves eat me?”

Sure enough, I experienced that. Maybe not that level of stress but sure… I felt doubt. My PredictIt bets are all valued at shit. The press was dancing in joy that “it’s all over” and I might as well “bend over and take it” (they phrase it slightly nicer). I tried to square this with cheap truck fuel and happy people at the feed store. Was I missing something?

Nah, it’s the story. The story must continue. “DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL” is only a “beat” in the story arc. Soon things looked better.

There was a 90 minute VP Debate and the best the press could do to Pence is joke about a fly? Really? That’s it? If a fly was the star, then Harris didn’t exactly hit it out of the park. Unless Pence disemboweled Harris with a fillet knife they weren’t going to say anything bad about Harris’ performance. So, it’s about a fly. (Lets face it, Pence seems as stiff as a board just in general. You could drop an eel on his head and he’d ignore it.) Around the same time Trump walked out of the hospital (which caused some people to bitch), took a ride in his limo (which caused others to bitch), and scheduled his next rally (which caused more bitching). You know what all that means?

“BREAK INTO THREE!”

Sure as shit, propaganda follows a script. Welcome to the third act! We’re living through a basic sequence of emotive events and it’s being written up, spun, and marketed (possibly subconsciously) as a three act story.

It’s mid-October and the timing couldn’t be better. We dispense with ALL IS LOST and DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL to enter act three of our exciting quasi-fictional year just as snow starts landing in my yard and kids are carving pumpkins.

The pacing is exquisite! If this isn’t a tense political thriller then what is? The distractions all year have been excellent, there have been twists and turns, it’s gone bigger than the stage itself. (Is there any reason why Europeans of Canadians should give a shit about US elections?) Now the story shifts from events to character; and then character to resolution.

The events getting airtime right now are just background. Fluff. So we can take a breather after DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL and embrace the fact that we didn’t crap out 40 minutes into a 60 minute show.

The fluff is funtime crap. We’re not fully vested in these details. They are just there to flesh out the real storyline. The Senate is grilling Amy Coney Barrett like they’re an actual deliberative body; which is cute but nobody believes it. Barrett’s holding up notes she’s taken (a blank piece of paper) and it’s a hoot. That’s not the main story and we all know it’s basically bullshit; but we needed the breathing room. Meanwhile, the press is trying to interview the Pence fly and everyone wants to forget that Biden just announced he’s running for Senate. We’re not deeply invested because it’s not the main story arc. The FINALE is when the whole thing gets resolved.

The FINALE will arrive right on time. Just was it was always going to be. The timing is tight as a drum. Perfect really. November 3rd is the day.

The propaganda story arc is following the “beats”. It’s in the hack mind of “journalists” everywhere. It wound its way (intentionally or not) to a thousand carefully worded posts and transcripts and articles. It doesn’t have to be organized. It’s just happening. Remember, it all started with groupthink.

We bought the ticket, we’re going to experience the show, that’s just how it is. Enjoy the FINALE!

A.C.