Reaction shots

At the climax of Starman (1984), Jeff Bridges assumes his true alien form and ascends to his shining starship overhead. We don’t see this happen, we simply see it on Jenny’s (Karen Allen) face as she watches the alien she loves depart. That’s all we need to see because Allen completely sells the idea something transcendent is happening.

This is a common fictional technique when dealing with something truly amazing: let the reader or viewer’s imagination do the work. We rarely see the horrors in an H.P. Lovecraft story but the characters’ reactions (often including gibbering madness) tell us they are indeed horrible. In the Doc Savage novel Fortress of Solitude, the sinister John Sunlight disciplines his followers by talking to them in a dark room. After that, they’d sooner die than fail him again — because if they fail, he’ll talk to them some more. We don’t hear what Sunlight says, which is smart: nothing author Lester Dent wrote for him could live up to my imagination.

Sometimes, however, writers use this technique in circumstances where it can’t possibly work. Comic books, for instance, will insist that the villain of the issue is so goddamn terrifyingly formidable the good guys have no chance — but usually they say stuff like that because the villain’s nothing of the sort. When Len Wein and Ross Andru introduce the Rocket Racer in Spider-Man #172, an awed Spidey declares RR could be “as great a menace as any I’ve ever faced before!” Coming from the hero who fought Dr. Octopus, the Green Goblin and the Hulk while he was still in high school … no. My brother and I both laughed when we read that line; I still make jokes about it.

Or consider Tales of Suspense #85. Hydra has captured Agent 13 (not yet named Sharon Carter) and baited Cap into a trap so Batroc can have a rematch with him. When the Hydra agents get impatient and try to kill Cap themselves —

A threat to Hydra? Dude, if one flamboyant martial artist is a serious threat to an organization plotting world conquest — well, it doesn’t look good for your plans.

In print fiction, reaction shots can’t usually sell charisma. I’ve read a number of stories in which the protagonist is supposed to be unbelievably charismatic: when he runs up against an obstacle, all he has to do is smile, ask and he gets a variation of “Well, this totally violates the rules … but because it’s you, sure!” This won’t work if the character doesn’t have that kind of magnetism and they almost never do. Mary Stewart makes it work with Arthur in her Merlin trilogy: from the moment Arthur comes on stage as a ten-year-old, he’s clearly someone marked for greatness. John Le Carré does it even better, probably because his con-man father had charisma to spare (check out Le Carré’s essay collection The Pigeon Tunnel for details). Most writers can’t pull it off.

It’s bad in any form of fiction if a character is supposed to be exceptionally brilliant/witty/insightful but when we hear their brilliant/witty/insightful words it ain’t any of that. Like a recent book excerpt I stumbled across in which the love interest’s “You’re still so beautiful” is described as “silver tongued.” I’m not saying the compliment wouldn’t work, particularly if delivered by someone charming and good-looking, but it’s the kind of compliment even I could manage to get out. Not proof of a silver tongue.

Or consider Oliver Queen’s time writing the “Queen’s Gambit” column for Star City’s daily newspaper in the early 1980s. When he writes a piece saying there are poor people and street gangs in Star City, the public is outraged — outraged! — that anyone would dare pen such an inflammatory, rabble-rousing diatribe. Oliver Queen should be horsewhipped — and if the public had a horse, they’d do it! (Joke courtesy of Gracie Allen though it probably goes back before her). Rinse and repeat with a different topic. It was so ludicrous my friend Ross and I used to joke about an Oliver Queen Award for banal insights that everyone in the story treats as genius.The 1992 Dolly Parton film Straight Talk qualifies in my book. Parton’s character spouts folksy homilies — about the level of “a barking dog ain’t gonna bite” — that convince everyone in Chicago she has a genius understanding of human nature. A call-in radio show and celebrity follow, which I find as plausible as my literary output winning the Nobel Prize for Literature.

In real life, of course, lots of people become inspirational figures while saying banal crap; many self-help books, dating-advice books and career advice books (etc., etc., etc.) recycle the same cliches and tropes and still sell. But fiction has to be more plausible than real life. If Parton’s character were real and successful it wouldn’t matter what I think: reality doesn’t depend on me buying into it. Fiction does, and in Straight Talk‘s case (and many others) I didn’t.

One way to avoid this is to do like Dent with John Sunlight: don’t quote the character, only show the reactions. That’s hard to pull off in a movie and not easy in print. In Ready Player One, Ernest Cline tells us that Art3mis is an online celebrity because of her funny, self-deprecating blogging. All we ever read of her posts is one where she divides John Hughes movies into Dorky Girl and Dorky Boy movies. I am, once again, unable to suspend my disbelief.

#SFWApro. Comics panels by Kirby.