What would happen to hollywood if the narrative structure broke?

I was wondering what would happen if the narrative structure Hollywood loves decided to not work any more. What do I mean? Well consider this: If the narrative, which has penetrated us like a prison inmate, was no longer working what would they do? Ahh, Fight Club I hear you say… that didn’t have a narrative structure did it? No, it didn’t? Of course it did. It was just shown out of sequence. That’s a non-linear narrative. I am talking about things like the start-middle-finish formula that scores so well at the box office. What kind of movies would be made if there was no narrative. Bad ones?

As I sat down to write this I realised that the narrative formula has been used so much that it’s hard to think of any movie that does not use it. In particular, I was wondering where is it used and/or abused the most. Some would say David Lynch movies? I think not. His movies are just … plain… strange. Now, I am a Lynch fan but I have been sitting on the sidelines doing a PhD for a long time so I fell out of love with cinema. Actually I think I fell out of love with Hollywood when I couldn’t get my book published. The worse thing that can happen to a writer is for their work not to be published. It’s probably my fault for writing horse plop. *Coughs*.

The narrative is so powerful that if Disney stopped using it, the whole show would collapse. Let’s retell a story from Disney… Cinderella… without a narrative:

Part 1: Cinderella and her two wicked step sisters received an invitation to the royal ball. Her wicked step mother givers her all these hideous chores to do so she can’t go and really screws up her evening.

Part 2: Cinderella is cleaning the floors when suddenly her fairy godmother appears and says, ‘Look sweetheart you have are not going to make it to the ball because you have too much crap to do. I mean, have a look at how dirty this house is … you really don’t give a dam about how things look do you?’. The fairy godmothers disappears.

Part 3: Cinderella stays where she is cleaning until she spontaneously combusts.

Well that just sucks. The narrative is a piece of culture. It’s a fantasy well all believe in but nobody actually lives… kind of like winning the lottery. It’s right old load of BS yet it gives us false hope. In short, I think the literary, film and print media (you know who you are) rely on this thing called narrative. Personally I would like to see Cinderella retold as irony and not make any sense (like the one shown above). You know what, life isn’t fair to most people. So why do we buy into this? I think it’s because we want to believe in happy endings because the only time we come close to anything like that is when we get to knock off work early.

I am big fan of CSI Miami and an even bigger fan of the First 48. I have noticed that the First 48 only solve some of the crimes they get where in CSI Miami they solve them all! And still they get heat from the boss. They are what 999/1000? The narrative only makes it sometimes into the First 48 where as in CSI Miami they always win. Cops never win in real life. They have a job that is demanding, they get abused and for what? To protect us from each other.

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