American Stories now Required to have a Morale

Yeah, just like the Greek’s with their philosophical morales, and the early Christians with their religious moraels, modern American stories are now also “required” to have a morale—in the form of a character arc.

Okay, they’re not actually required. The actual term used is: “It is the highest form of Art” to include one. Which, in practice, means that it becomes a requirement, anyway. Because, the stronger the belief that something is a necessary part of Art, the more the gatekeepers will bend their acceptances towards that which includes the required theme.

So, to toll the death knell of what this has caused: No more Screwball comedies. No more Who-done-its. No more Adventure. No more Noir. No more Art films. No more…on and on.

(Yeah, and don’t email with the title of the latest film marketed as Action where the main character runs around emoing it up, instead of just staying in one place emoing it up. Films are short. Being marketed as Action doesn't make a film an Action film. If you fill a Coming of Age story in with a bit of Action, it's still a Coming of Age story. The Action is part of the setting. Because, if you've only got ten minutes of Action, and an hour and twenty of emo Coming of Age, the story isn't about the action, so it's not an Action film. Sad though it is that this has to be explained.)

But, they’re just requiring character arcs, not morals, right? Where do I get off claiming that morales are being required?

Mm. Lets take a closer look at those “character arcs.” The classical definition of a character arc is—how a character is changed by the events of a story. These changes can be positive (like in Up), or negative (like in Taxi Driver), or neutral, or can bounce around, or whatever.

But there is no such variety in the "character arcs" being foisted upon the Art world. For one, those “character arcs” are not of a character in a story, but must be of the main character of that story. Even if every other character but the main character has a character arc, that still will not be right. The main character must have an arc, and it makes no difference if any of the other characters do or not, one at all.

For another, and more importantly, these arcs must be positive. Anything else will not be considered a real “character arc.” A character must learn from their experiences, and it is implied that all learning is, by definition, positive.

Which is not actually the case, of course. But, as ever, that requirers aren't concerned with details.

Concurrently, the definition of “character development” has changed away from the classical "expounding upon a character’s personality so that they seemly fully-rounded." Now, it is defined as a character’s growth through their character arc.

Growth. That's a key word here. Because, those are no longer descriptive terms of critiquing, they are a theme. The theme would be “personal growth.” Personal growth is the moral that is now required in modern American stories.

And, yeah, personal growth is really hot right now. Which has exacerbated this problem.

So, what effects has this had on art?

Well, 90% of films are now the big three easy life changing events—Coming of Age, Epiphany, and Realization of Imminent Death. And most of the remaining 10% are other Life Stage films. So, if you don't like Life Stage films, you're screwed.

If you're a creative person, and want to see something different when you go to the theatre, you're screwed.

Artistically, it also offends creative people (artists are often creative people, by the way) to start making requirements in order to call something Art, because requirements are Ritual, not Art—everybody doing the same thing over and over again. Which isn’t saying anything against Ritual, I like a good ritual. But, it offends creative people to start claiming that such and such Rituals are the highest Art, so they better start including it in everything they do.

In a series, it takes a quirky Sherlock-Holmes-like character and within a few episodes makes him utterly bland. No more misogyny, no more, ridicule, no more cocaine habit. No more personality.

But then, once a series character gets "fixed," they don't generate any more drama. So, generally the character will somehow generate a new series of quirks, these too to soon be healed from. And on and on, until the characters seem to be utterly neurotic. Either that, or they go through relapses ad infintum so they can keep going through the same personal growth experience, sometimes shockingly even twice in the same scene—now there is an unstable personality.

And, it offends creative people most of all because, despite what keeps being said, all of this isn’t even a new development in the realm of Art. A modern genre has been doing this kind of work, and doing it better than anyone else, for decades. And that genre Soap Operas. And, yes, it offends creative people to demand that everything they do and everything they can see becomes a Soap Opera.

But, there is a larger scale problem with this requirement, as well—revenue. Yes, a large portion of the population (yay Baby Boomers) is completely satisfied with Personal Growth stories.

Yet, over time, those who are not will begin to drift away to other entertainment that they find more satisfying. Also, the theme which speaks so well to one generation will have increasingly less impact on successive generations, leading to a steady decrease in the numbers in the core group, as well.

Specifically, someone like me who used to spend hundreds of dollars a year at Hollywood theatres and film festivals now spends all that money on cable television.