tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5401830411147364284.post9588858057517075..comments2024-03-18T19:05:39.072-07:00Comments on Morphosis: Ready Player One (dir Steven Spielberg, 2018)Adam Robertshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15803399373213872690noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5401830411147364284.post-58166482666737371432018-04-16T10:14:58.667-07:002018-04-16T10:14:58.667-07:00Have you read Unplugged by Donna Freitas - another...Have you read Unplugged by Donna Freitas - another teen novel about being forcibly expelled from a VR paradise? Not as superficial as Ready Player One because it's more sceptical, but pretty bad nonetheless. The Plashing Volehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13021407602157515927noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5401830411147364284.post-84775858417379374532018-04-16T06:34:29.660-07:002018-04-16T06:34:29.660-07:00Don't worry Adam, I felt pretty much the same ...Don't worry Adam, I felt pretty much the same way about my own, partly VR based novel regarding the success of Ready Player One. Actually, the success of that book and similar others have led me to have some fairly frank internal dialogues about the artist's (I still can't seriously regard myself as such) dilemma. Do you aim for the aesthetic and intriguing, or plug into the rules-set for commercial success? You can be unsuccessful at either, of course, but I think it is very hard to be successful at both. All these stories like Ready Player One or, my personal bugbear, Robopocalypse, follow cast-iron narrative laws dating from prehistory. You can draw a line from these things through Grimm's fairytales all the way back to any mythology you care to name, plus or minus degrees of wish-fulfilment and/or dark warnings. Is this because we have made stories this way, and have come to expect them to be so, or because human brain architecture dictated they be that way? No matter the era, really successful stories seem to tap into self-validation on the part of the reader. I'm good, I'm smart, I'm not different, being different is okay, and so on. Ready Player One follows the curve and validates today's obsession with facile cultural artefacts. Whatever. you're the professor of literature, you can give me D- for this pseud-ish nonsense :). But, at the end of the day, it is a very sad but true thing that a cut and dried, predictable story following age old narrative paths is most likely to have the greatest success. It's comfy slippers for the mind. Basically, a film where a nerdy boy fights a cardboard villain dressed up as Donkey Kong to get the girl is probably going to make x to the power of forever more money than one of your excellent, illuminating novels, or one of mine less excellent, less illuminating ones. That's ludicrously unfair, but it's the way it is. Personally, I know I'd rather read one of your books.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02876497619575225022noreply@blogger.com