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I always hated this sort of statement because it confuses story with theme. Sure Harry Potter and LOTR and the 5th Element all might have some superficial simil

I always hated this sort of statement because it confuses story with theme. Sure Harry Potter and LOTR and the 5th Element all might have some superficial similarities, but each of them is very different in ways aside from mere set dressing. You can call anything equivalent if you pick and chose what factors matter

dTal 7y ago
Indeed. It's always "just" or "simply" the same <n> basic stories. But it's hardly simple to go from the 3 words "overcoming the impossible" to Lord of the Rings. Specifically, the power of the <n> basic stories meme is that it implies a lower information content of our stories than we supposedly realize. The meme makes you feel smart by inducting you into the enlightened set. But in fact, the low information content is in the supposed categories, not our stories. They throw out all the details that actually make a story. Even if one of the categories was the ridiculously specific "tiny man makes treacherous journey to destroy dangerous magical object, also there's a wizard", that's still a far cry from reconstituting LotR.
squirrelicus 7y ago
Hang on. I think you're missing the point. It's not about how "if you've read one, you've read them all". The fact that MacBeth is another way to tell the Futile Struggle Against Fate story doesn't in any way diminish the creativity or power or uniqueness of the work. The point is that if it's not an archetypical story it won't resonate with the human mind, and the writer will fail. We tell the same stories again and again because there's a finite set of stories that engage our mind, whether we like it or not.
- dragonsngoblins 7y ago
  But my point is the archetypes are so broad they may as well be meaningless. "Futile Struggle Against Fate" encompasses so much. May as well say all stories are "Man vs Man" or "Man vs Nature" or "Man vs God". Sure you can categorize basically every story into one of those three things but it is almost never useful to do so

dTal 7y ago

Indeed. It's always "just" or "simply" the same <n> basic stories. But it's hardly simple to go from the 3 words "overcoming the impossible" to Lord of the Rings. Specifically, the power of the <n> basic stories meme is that it implies a lower information content of our stories than we supposedly realize. The meme makes you feel smart by inducting you into the enlightened set. But in fact, the low information content is in the supposed categories, not our stories. They throw out all the details that actually make a story. Even if one of the categories was the ridiculously specific "tiny man makes treacherous journey to destroy dangerous magical object, also there's a wizard", that's still a far cry from reconstituting LotR.

squirrelicus 7y ago

Hang on. I think you're missing the point. It's not about how "if you've read one, you've read them all". The fact that MacBeth is another way to tell the Futile Struggle Against Fate story doesn't in any way diminish the creativity or power or uniqueness of the work. The point is that if it's not an archetypical story it won't resonate with the human mind, and the writer will fail. We tell the same stories again and again because there's a finite set of stories that engage our mind, whether we like it or not.

dragonsngoblins 7y ago
But my point is the archetypes are so broad they may as well be meaningless. "Futile Struggle Against Fate" encompasses so much. May as well say all stories are "Man vs Man" or "Man vs Nature" or "Man vs God". Sure you can categorize basically every story into one of those three things but it is almost never useful to do so