Narrating the Obvious

...and God help you if you use voice-over in your work, my friends. God help you. That's flaccid, sloppy writing. Any idiot can write a voice-over narration to explain the thoughts of a character

-Robert McKee, Adaptation (2002)

Tangled, Disney's adaptation of the Rapunzel fairy-tale, may well have been a good movie, but I gave up after the first 15 minutes - a 15 minutes that included a sardonic voice-over, doing away with all subtlety and forcing plot-establishment down our throats. The movie opened with narration by the movie's male protagonist, Eugene, explaining the setting for the Rapunzel story and the movie's main conflict with broad strokes of self-aware post-modernism, explicitly identifying the films main villain and plot MacGuffin. 

Eugene the vain and Rapunzel the innocent - Tangled (2010)

The above quote from Brain Cox's character in Adaptation by Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman summarises why I found Tangled's voice-over so ham-fisted and uninspiring. These types of voice-overs violate the golden rule of storytelling - show, do not tell. In any medium, stage, written or visual, the story should be shown to us through the setting and portrayal of scenes and characters. Doing this in such a way that the audience doesn't have to think too much (and yet still fully comprehend) involves a high level of skill that comes hand-in-hand with good writing.

The recent trend toward voice-overs by animated films is a never-ending source of frustration for me. In a night of childish nostalgia, I watched Lilo & Stitch (2002), and Tangled (2010) back to back. The stark contrast between the first 15 minutes of both movies seemed to indicate a degeneration in Disney's storytelling technique. Lilo & Stitch relied on visual cues. The body-language, character and set designs suggested volumes about the universe in which Stitch existed and the circumstances behind his incarceration. Key scenes revealed most of the characterisation that we needed to understand Lilo and Stitch as outsiders in their own contexts.

Stitch's initial character design made him seem unruly and frightening

Tangled explicitly narrated almost everything. It pointed out to us who the villain was, why she was obsessed with eternal youth and exactly how the power of eternal youth was linked with Rapunzel's hair. It also went as far as to point out to us the significance of the 'floating lights' that appear every year on Rapnuzel's birthday. It didn't let us figure out for ourselves what was going on.

The argument that is frequently made to me in favour of Disney movies using this technique is that it gives the film a 'story telling' feel. Whilst I agree somewhat with this sentiment, film makers are given the freedom of a 90-minute long continuous visual medium in order to tell a story - beyond the limits of a 20 page children's picture book. And aside from treating children as bereft of subtlety, voice-overs remove the impact of audiences forming their own emotions as to what is going on. The triumph of Lilo & Stitch is that their characterisation is indirect such that the audience is able to pick out what key facet of their character connects the most. If you tell the audience how they should feel about someone, that sense of having an individual unique bond is lost.

Not every movie or play with narration is bad. Sticking with the Disney/Pixar/Dreamworks theme, Wreck-It Ralph and How to Train Your Dragon miss-step a little with their narration, but it doesn't go into the 'all revealing' territory that many recent movies have. Adaptation plays with this trope in Kaufman's stylistically post modern way. Film noir manages to feature voice-over narration as key technique whilst maintaining storytelling integrity, as in Orson Wells' The Third Man and  Frank Miller's Sin City. In these cases, narration is obtuse enough as to let the audience come to their own meaningful conclusions.

Sin City - narration obtuse enough to not compromise subtlety.

I'm guilty of falling into the voice-over trap myself. Some draft screenplays and stories that I've written have included lots of internal monologue because I was too lazy or tired to figure out another way to show what the character is thinking. But with revision I normally manage to find a more subtle way to show what's going on. And more to the point - writing like this leaves the work open for interpretation, which I find to be the overriding joy of absorbing and discussing literature with my friends.

Show, don't tell.

The Brave and the Bechdel

Two things happened to me recently: I saw Disney/Pixar's latest offering, Brave, and a friend of mine introduced me to the Bechdel Test.

Very many reviewers have already examined what I noticed about the film - that the story seemed to change style somewhere in the middle. The animation, scenery and general visual effects of the film were all quite breathtaking. However, the apparent shift in storytelling paradigm resulted in a movie that was somewhat less baked than it could have been. The main thematic source of praise for the movie stems from the quite honest and endearing portrayal of the mother-daughter dynamic between the protagonist, Merida, and the queen Elinor.

The film's strength - the relationship between Merida (left) and Queen Elinor (right)

This is where the Bechdel Test comes in.

The Bechdel Test is a simple gender-bias test for movies, born from the comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For by Alison Bechdel. To 'pass' the test, a movie is to satisfy three criteria:

1. It has at least two (named) female characters
2. Who talk to each other
3. About something besides a man.

At a cursory glance, the test is a very straightforward way to assess the meaningful presence of women in a film. As a statistical tool, it's an uncomfortable yardstick that sees a significant majority falling well short of these criteria (as simple as they may seem). 

Qualitatively, passing the Bechdel Test signifies that there is portrayal of women in the context of something that doesn't center around a male character. This ostensibly means that the movie attempts to address issues for women in a feminist, or at least a non misogynistic manner. (The extent to which this is the case, though, depends on the length of film for which rule 2 is satisfied).

This is where Brave does quite well. It is un-self-consciously about women. And I say 'un-self-consciously' because it addresses a particular issue pertinent to girls and women without the necessary involvement of a man. At it's heart the movie is about two generations of women reaching a better understanding of each other. 

This is in comparison to Disney's Mulan. Although Mulan is film with strong feminist overtones, the film (and indeed the original fable) concentrates on Mulan filling a role traditionally filled by men. This of course puts a strain on Mulan's ability to pass the Bechdel Test - the film's central conflicts are between Mulan and men, or Mulan arguing about men.

Mulan - masquerading in a male dominated world

Although I say that Mulan and other feminist movies like Mulan are self conscious, I do not doubt the meaningfulness with which they portray their female characters. These characters are able to be important role models for young girls and women.

And although I say that Brave is not self conscious, this doesn't necessarily work in its favour. The elephant in the room, that is that a woman should be used as a political bargaining chip, is never directly addressed. Though this issue is resolved in typically cheesy Disney fashion, the essential feminist issue is never looked into.

Merida draws her bow in defiance of her intended role

In a way, examining Disney films for feminism isn't the best way to go about measuring gender bias in modern cinema. Disney represents a particular branch of American mass media intended and manufactured for a very specific demographic. 

This same fact, however, allows Disney to be used as a yardstick of the progression of gender bias in modern cinema. As the tastes of modern Western parenting have become more progressive, so do the production houses that cater to those tastes. If the sample space were more statistically indicative, it would be interesting to see if there were a correlation between children's cinema passing the Bechdel Test, and modern western cinema in general.

Brave is an interesting step forward. Yes, it has a kickass female protagonist. Yes, Merida is strong, independent, believable and relatable.  And yes, the movie focuses on two women and their struggle to identify with each other. That it seems to overlook one or two issues is a problem that can be attributed to the same reason that the movie comes off as slightly a mediocre piece of storytelling. Hanlon's Razor (modified) - the screenplay was just not that good.

PS: For a more in depth treatise of the effectiveness of the Bechdel Test, read The Bechdel Test: What It Is, And Why It Matters by Emily Monaghan on Squarise.com.