More TV Meta

[marydell]

TV Drama :  Bad thing is done in large city by some dude, in the name of Christ.  TV channel interviews clergyperson for standard soundbite about Christianity being a religion of peace.  What are the odds that this exact clergyperson is the mastermind behind the bad thing?  Fortunately this is not a show that saves that type of info for the very end as if it's a mystery.

Roger Ebert's Movie Glossary calls this The Law of Economy of Characters.

Comments

[carbonel]

This is the same law that leads me to conclude that if Julia Roberts is seen playing a minor character on Law & Order, she's going to turn into a major character, probably the criminal, later on.

[txanne.livejournal.com]

AKA "the actor you've heard of did it."

[marydell.livejournal.com]

I think of this as a different law, since the single-clergyman thing featured an unknown, clergylike guy.

[seawasp]

I don't think it's the movie budgets that drive that law, though, contrary to what Ebert says on that page. It's the story requirements. In a book one can often get away with ramblings and digressions (look at Lord of the Rings and Tom Bombadil); a movie is a driving narrative and unless the digressions ARE the point, the story itself can't afford many irrelevancies.

[sanguinity]

...I think it's broader than "driving narrative." Les Miserables does it -- anywhere you go in France, for any reason, you end up running into the same five characters -- and that book is anything but a streamlined driving narrative.

It's not just Les Miserables, either, although I do notice it more in older books. (In this household, we call the phenomenon, "In the Nineteenth Century, There Were Only Twelve People in the Whole World.")

[marydell.livejournal.com]

"In the Nineteenth Century, There Were Only Twelve People in the Whole World."

This is so true--Dickens was extra-guilty of this. "That beggar I passed in the street is really my grandson!"

[marydell.livejournal.com]

I think it comes from the narrative, too. It's sort of the character equivalent of Chekhov's gun rule. Somehow it seems to be applied particularly to characters whose professions are recognizable from the clothes they wear (clergy, doctor).

Unfortunately having all that structural stuff running around in my head on a regular basis makes it impossible to ignore it when I notice it on screen....studying literature & writing is a bad move for anyone who wants to enjoy reading/spectating, I think!