Counter-assertion : there is such a thing as continuity.
"I tell the tale that I heard told." Vergil could make Homer's heroes his antagonists, but he couldn't make Achilles a weakling, or end the seige of Troy with the dispirited Achaians in retreat. A story has an audience as well as a creator, and violating their expectations is usually bad storytelling.
there is such a thing as continuity You're right, but that's a different thing. Continuity is facts about a fiction and "canon" is mistaking a fiction for fact*.
A story has an audience as well as a creator, and violating their expectations is usually bad storytelling Now there I disagree (and there's a discussion of this point in the comments on the post I linked). Radically revisionist reenvisionings* are one of the ways (though only one) the most persistent folklores survive. The King Arthur legend survives because of the anachronisms in a retelling for a new audience, not despite them. Tennyson's Arthur was so pure he did not father Mordred. Bradley's Arthur was her version's villain. Bruckheimer's Arthur wasn't even a king. Violating the audience's expectations may not always be popular, successful or well-done storytelling, but it's demonstrably untrue that it's inherently bad.
I don't claim that "continuity" and "canon" are the same ; my "counter-assertion" is meant to be more perpendicular than opposed to your assertion.
I suppose I should have said "poor" rather than "bad". I rarely make an unqualified statement, and that's for a reason. I have been known to say that "time travel usually means poor storytelling", even though there have been some very good time-travel stories. I am going to advance the proposition, as strongly as I can, that a story is a participative phenomenon, that it's not merely in the mind of the storyteller but also in the mind of the audience, and that neither is less necessary than the other — in other words, it exists between them, more like dialogue than like monologue. The writer is more likely to forget that than the actor or the oral storyteller, to imagine that there is only him and the page, but the interaction remains regardless of the medium. A "King Arthur" story has to be about Arthur, King of Britain. That word about conceals a multitude of possibilities. If your audience understands the Arthur stories, you can talk about them in many ways. You can make him the villain, make him not-a-king, transpose him to the present or the future, even not have him appear at all ; if you do it well, if you continue or comment on or otherwise work with the themes your audience is prepared to confront in the story, it can still be a "King Arthur" story. On the other hand, you can use the "King Arthur" names and settings to tell a story which doesn't fit, and your audience will just be disconcerted and annoyed, and the storytelling will fail. You could probably write a story with Jim Kirk as a clumsy coward, and have it be a Star Trek story and a good one ; but it would be much easier to write a story which isn't a Star Trek story at all, but merely looks like one. Your readers will be able to tell the difference, if not to articulate it, and they'll just pan it as a "bad story", not even bothering to hate it. Not all forms are that flexible. The epic poem would collapse without heroic deeds and larger-than-life characters ; the poetasters of Pope's time are remembered more than anything because of his Dunciad caricatures, because even mock-heroism gives them more reality than they had.
Okay. We're both saying the same thing our own way.
Not all forms are that flexible.
They limber up over time. Marian Zimmer Bradley made King Arthur the villain. J.J Abrams couldn't reenvision Star Trek with Captain Kirk as the villain, but someday someone shall.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2007-03-12 07:11 pm (UTC)"I tell the tale that I heard told." Vergil could make Homer's heroes his antagonists, but he couldn't make Achilles a weakling, or end the seige of Troy with the dispirited Achaians in retreat. A story has an audience as well as a creator, and violating their expectations is usually bad storytelling.
--publius--
no subject
Date: 2007-03-12 08:20 pm (UTC)* Master of unintentional alliteration!
no subject
Date: 2007-03-12 09:38 pm (UTC)I suppose I should have said "poor" rather than "bad". I rarely make an unqualified statement, and that's for a reason. I have been known to say that "time travel usually means poor storytelling", even though there have been some very good time-travel stories. I am going to advance the proposition, as strongly as I can, that a story is a participative phenomenon, that it's not merely in the mind of the storyteller but also in the mind of the audience, and that neither is less necessary than the other — in other words, it exists between them, more like dialogue than like monologue. The writer is more likely to forget that than the actor or the oral storyteller, to imagine that there is only him and the page, but the interaction remains regardless of the medium.
A "King Arthur" story has to be about Arthur, King of Britain. That word about conceals a multitude of possibilities. If your audience understands the Arthur stories, you can talk about them in many ways. You can make him the villain, make him not-a-king, transpose him to the present or the future, even not have him appear at all ; if you do it well, if you continue or comment on or otherwise work with the themes your audience is prepared to confront in the story, it can still be a "King Arthur" story. On the other hand, you can use the "King Arthur" names and settings to tell a story which doesn't fit, and your audience will just be disconcerted and annoyed, and the storytelling will fail.
You could probably write a story with Jim Kirk as a clumsy coward, and have it be a Star Trek story and a good one ; but it would be much easier to write a story which isn't a Star Trek story at all, but merely looks like one. Your readers will be able to tell the difference, if not to articulate it, and they'll just pan it as a "bad story", not even bothering to hate it. Not all forms are that flexible. The epic poem would collapse without heroic deeds and larger-than-life characters ; the poetasters of Pope's time are remembered more than anything because of his Dunciad caricatures, because even mock-heroism gives them more reality than they had.
--publius--
no subject
Date: 2007-03-13 12:31 am (UTC)more perpendicular than opposed to your assertion
Okay. We're both saying the same thing our own way.
Not all forms are that flexible.
They limber up over time. Marian Zimmer Bradley made King Arthur the villain. J.J Abrams couldn't reenvision Star Trek with Captain Kirk as the villain, but someday someone shall.