Back Story
There is a large difference in the conversations one has with a new acquaintance and the conversations one has with a friend.
With a friend, one basically talks about what one has been doing in recent days or one reminisces with the friend and shares a story about an old time experienced together. It is either modern stuff or rehashed good times. New acquaintances, though, get a different set of conversations. Sure, it is stuff that the friend already knows- where one went to college, hopes, dreams, likes, dislikes. But, the new acquaintance also gets random stories from one’s past.
Oddly, friends do not often talk about random stories. Sure, every friend knows a few stories from when they were an acquaintance or from a time when a story might have come up from contemporary relevance. But, for the most part, one stops asking and one stops telling about the past. We have an infinite number of interesting stories, yet old friends and married couple will often sit in silence. They have a wealth of information to tell and share, but do not.
I am reminded of an old documentary on Star Wars. I know, there have been a trillion, but there was one called “From Star Wars to Jedi” that was the only one for a while. Lucas was talking about how fun Return of the Jedi was for him and his reasoning was that the first two films were inventing his universe while Jedi was playing in his universe. It is true that Jedi invented nothing new. The plot only involved resolving issues from the first two movies. We returned to Tatooine, returned to a Death Star, returned to a fight between Luke and Vader. The only things new were some fish people and some Ewoks (big whoop). The Empire Strikes Back, on the other hand, was intriguing. We learned more about everyone’s past and it changed our perception of the present (Vader has a master, Han had friends, Luke had a dad). Back story enriched our experience. By the time of Jedi, though, like an old friend, it seemed a little too late to bring up the past again. Exposition was over and, sadly, it was time for mere explosions.
With a movie, it is more understandable. There is only a limited number of minutes. What good is back story when the characters only have a limited number of experiences left to tackle? Then again, M. Knight Shyamalan puts much of the back story at the end and makes us all reexamine what we have seen. With life, though, we have years and years to experience with someone and the stories still stop.
Are we scared what the stories will reveal? Do we think the audience has already heard them? Do we think them boring? All of these are unlikely. People choose to fight, talk about the weather and other boring or destructive things instead of stories.
No, I feel one stops with the stories because the friend has heard enough of them to understand who one is. Back stories establish who a character is. If someone has heard enough of them to figure out, more or less, who the character is, no more are needed. Say, someone loved his or her dog. How many stories does one need to hear about the dog before it is firmly established than one loved their dog? One? Two? We get it.
Still, feelings of friendship and caring often come from simply spending time with people. Do we really know our friends? Do they know us? Probably not as well as we think. Back story can be fascinating, yet we keep them to ourselves when we shouldn’t. I mean, it took me 28 years before I heard a story about my mother smoking hash. There’s an M. Knight Shyamalan moment for you.
With a friend, one basically talks about what one has been doing in recent days or one reminisces with the friend and shares a story about an old time experienced together. It is either modern stuff or rehashed good times. New acquaintances, though, get a different set of conversations. Sure, it is stuff that the friend already knows- where one went to college, hopes, dreams, likes, dislikes. But, the new acquaintance also gets random stories from one’s past.
Oddly, friends do not often talk about random stories. Sure, every friend knows a few stories from when they were an acquaintance or from a time when a story might have come up from contemporary relevance. But, for the most part, one stops asking and one stops telling about the past. We have an infinite number of interesting stories, yet old friends and married couple will often sit in silence. They have a wealth of information to tell and share, but do not.
I am reminded of an old documentary on Star Wars. I know, there have been a trillion, but there was one called “From Star Wars to Jedi” that was the only one for a while. Lucas was talking about how fun Return of the Jedi was for him and his reasoning was that the first two films were inventing his universe while Jedi was playing in his universe. It is true that Jedi invented nothing new. The plot only involved resolving issues from the first two movies. We returned to Tatooine, returned to a Death Star, returned to a fight between Luke and Vader. The only things new were some fish people and some Ewoks (big whoop). The Empire Strikes Back, on the other hand, was intriguing. We learned more about everyone’s past and it changed our perception of the present (Vader has a master, Han had friends, Luke had a dad). Back story enriched our experience. By the time of Jedi, though, like an old friend, it seemed a little too late to bring up the past again. Exposition was over and, sadly, it was time for mere explosions.
With a movie, it is more understandable. There is only a limited number of minutes. What good is back story when the characters only have a limited number of experiences left to tackle? Then again, M. Knight Shyamalan puts much of the back story at the end and makes us all reexamine what we have seen. With life, though, we have years and years to experience with someone and the stories still stop.
Are we scared what the stories will reveal? Do we think the audience has already heard them? Do we think them boring? All of these are unlikely. People choose to fight, talk about the weather and other boring or destructive things instead of stories.
No, I feel one stops with the stories because the friend has heard enough of them to understand who one is. Back stories establish who a character is. If someone has heard enough of them to figure out, more or less, who the character is, no more are needed. Say, someone loved his or her dog. How many stories does one need to hear about the dog before it is firmly established than one loved their dog? One? Two? We get it.
Still, feelings of friendship and caring often come from simply spending time with people. Do we really know our friends? Do they know us? Probably not as well as we think. Back story can be fascinating, yet we keep them to ourselves when we shouldn’t. I mean, it took me 28 years before I heard a story about my mother smoking hash. There’s an M. Knight Shyamalan moment for you.
posted by American Dilettante at
11:09 AM
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