Lots of details could matter, and the spareness of the writing only hints at what could be going on “for really reals”.
Thank you, this was enlightening for me—somehow, though I’ve read a few books and watched a few movies in my life, I hadn’t realized what you put here plainly, that these cuts are a device for the author to hide some truth from me (ok, this was obvious in “Memento”). I must’ve been very naive, as I simply thought it has more to do with MTV-culture/catering to short attention span of the audience. It’s funny how this technique becomes immediately obvious to me once I mentally flip the roles with the author and ask a question “how would I hide something from the reader or mislead them to believe some alternative explanation while not outright lying?”.
Hm, perhaps a similar, but more visible and annoying technique/plot device is when the author abruptly ends a conversation between two characters by some explosion or arrival of third person, and they never get to finish their sentence or clarify some misunderstanding. On some level this is the same trick, but between two characters, as opposed to between author and reader.
I now wonder what other “manipulation” techniques I was subjected to. Anyone care to list some they become aware of?
I remember noticing and appreciating The Big Lebowski more each time I watched it for the way the The Coen Brothers hid things in plain sight by simply upstaging key facts with hilarious portraits of vivid characters doing something slightly absurd after the character loses the plot, so if you follow just the characters (which is super easy, because it is a smorgasbord of roles for character actors) you miss the “continuities” that the character(s) also miss.
Thank you, this was enlightening for me—somehow, though I’ve read a few books and watched a few movies in my life, I hadn’t realized what you put here plainly, that these cuts are a device for the author to hide some truth from me (ok, this was obvious in “Memento”). I must’ve been very naive, as I simply thought it has more to do with MTV-culture/catering to short attention span of the audience. It’s funny how this technique becomes immediately obvious to me once I mentally flip the roles with the author and ask a question “how would I hide something from the reader or mislead them to believe some alternative explanation while not outright lying?”.
Hm, perhaps a similar, but more visible and annoying technique/plot device is when the author abruptly ends a conversation between two characters by some explosion or arrival of third person, and they never get to finish their sentence or clarify some misunderstanding. On some level this is the same trick, but between two characters, as opposed to between author and reader.
I now wonder what other “manipulation” techniques I was subjected to. Anyone care to list some they become aware of?
I remember noticing and appreciating The Big Lebowski more each time I watched it for the way the The Coen Brothers hid things in plain sight by simply upstaging key facts with hilarious portraits of vivid characters doing something slightly absurd after the character loses the plot, so if you follow just the characters (which is super easy, because it is a smorgasbord of roles for character actors) you miss the “continuities” that the character(s) also miss.