6 ms·

This is a deeply predictable (and pedestrian) take, and I 100% expected to see it here (as I expect to see it in any technical forum). Highly technical people

This is a deeply predictable (and pedestrian) take, and I 100% expected to see it here (as I expect to see it in any technical forum). Highly technical people -- developers, engineers, etc -- are much more likely (at least in my experience) to react negatively to nonlinear storytelling. Further, the reaction is almost never "wow, not for me" but instead "THIS IS STUPID". It's essentially the equivalent of walking through, say, a Mondrian exhibit and spouting "my kid can do that." I do not know why this correlation exists. I could make guesses, tying the exacting nature of programming with an attraction to well-defined and explicit storytelling, but it is what it is. THE BIG SLEEP is awesome. MULHOLLAND DRIVE is a tremendous (and award-winning) film. Ambiguity and vagueness are integral to art (and life!). Years ago, I saw a play by Maria Irene Fornes called THE DANUBE. It's a bizarre, baffling, and beautiful piece, and you cannot really approach it like you would (say) a Marvel film expecting a traditional narrative. That's not what it's FOR. It's an experience. You have to let go of the desire to tick off plot points and characters like players in a football program and just experience the art on its own terms. Creating something that includes, or even hinges on, ambiguity is challenging in the extreme. It's like when jazz musicians break the "rules" of music and melody; you can only break the rules and have it work when you have really mastered the underlying craft. Exploring these kinds of challenging works can be incredibly rewarding. I encourage anyone reading this to do so. I long ago decided that if I only ever saw plays/read books/watched movies that I liked, I wasn't branching out enough. Find things that challenge you, and engage them on their own terms. Figure out why (for example) a host of professional movie critics loved Lynch's film when it left you cold and maybe even angry. What do they see that you don't?

ryandvm 5y ago
Programmers are generally unhappy with fuzziness or else they wouldn't be good programmers.
- Joeboy 5y ago
  The enjoyment of figuring out what's going on in something like Mulholland Drive is rather similar to the enjoyment of debugging a complex bug. There's a frustration about it not immediately making sense, but there's also a pleasure to working it out. Primer on the other hand, I think all you can really do is accept that there are big unexplained gaps in the story, and no amount of debugging is going to help. I personally take that as a fun hint of a larger story you're not seeing. Never seen The Big Sleep so not sure which it's more like.
- klyrs 5y ago
  You're describing a mediocre programmer. How do you choose between two algorithms: small-scale runtime, large-scale runtime, effort to write, effort to maintain, etc. Folks who can't cope with ambiguity will make a single-measure heuristic and pull the trigger immediately. It's great for their 'goal accomplished' statistic, which mediocre managers love, but that isn't what a good programmer would do.
- TigeriusKirk 5y ago
  No one is more aware of the ambiguity of reality than someone whose job it is to explain it to a machine.
yupper32 5y ago
I really dislike this take. Listen, it's fine if people enjoy nonlinear storytelling to make it an "experience" or a canvas with a few straight lines painted on it. But it is stupid, to follow your quote. If you're using devices to make a story more difficult to follow, just for the sake of making it more difficult to follow for the "challenge", then that's stupid. I'm not claiming The Big Sleep is even in this category, because I haven't seen it, but plenty of films and books are. If a canvas painted a solid color or with a few straight lines sells for millions, then that's stupid. People enjoy "stupid" things all the time, and that's fine. There's nothing really wrong with that. But the important part of my point is: only artists seem to think they're above it.
- nwienert 5y ago
  Only you are claiming it’s only purpose is to make it more difficult to follow. There are a hundred valid reasons to have non-sequitur or ambiguity beyond the literal first-level surface analysis of just making it harder to understand.
- BoiledCabbage 5y ago
  > If you're using devices to make a story more difficult to follow, just for the sake of making it more difficult to follow for the "challenge", then that's stupid. I don't know you, and even I know you disagree with your own statement. If not, the only thing you'd enjoy are media targeted at pre-schoolers and young children. Anything targeting and age beyond that is made more difficult to follow, by design to make it more challenging than what a young child can grasp. That allowed the creator to explore deeper subjects. Maybe you don't like things more challenging than your comfort zone, maybe you don't like more less linear depictions but do like them somewhat. Unless you can tell me you only consume media targeted at young children. Even you average Marvel film leaves plenty unsaid that needs to be infered, plenty unspoken to be felt. Non-linear narrative's to evoke a response in the viewe, false imagery, deception, feints and direct intuitional/emotional appeals. Now those might be targeted at just where you like them, but thats admiring you like them and you agree with the approach and that it's not stupid. It's just when thing slave your preferred zone you begin to dislike them.
Causality1 5y ago
There's a difference between ambiguity that's integrated into a story and ambiguity that's forced on the viewer. If the only thing that makes the movie ambiguous is that the final shot of the film isn't five minutes longer, then that is the type of film I hate. All Is Lost, The Grey, Save Yourselves, etc. If it's woven into the story from the beginning then I have no issue with it even if it may not be for me.
thom 5y ago
It's true! I awake each morning, enraged at the lack of rigour in my dreams. I turn to my wife to tell her I found it hard to suspend my disbelief. She transforms into a crab. Every night it gets worse.
- ubermonkey 5y ago
  You. I like you.
legerdemain 5y ago
You must be one of those art snobs that liked Last Year at Marienbad!
- ubermonkey 5y ago
  Never seen it, but always wanted to! I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic or not, but I do want to point out that there definitely ARE a lot of people who immediately ascribe snobbery to folks who enjoy complex film, or art that requires thought, or wine above two-buck-chuck, or beer other than Miller Lite, or whatever. It's a pretty silly thing to do (and one that I'm pretty sure you're doing only in jest, let me be clear).
  - legerdemain 5y ago
    It's a unique film. The best word for it is probably "hypnotic."
lmm 5y ago
> Years ago, I saw a play by Maria Irene Fornes called THE DANUBE. It's a bizarre, baffling, and beautiful piece, and you cannot really approach it like you would (say) a Marvel film expecting a traditional narrative. That's not what it's FOR. It's an experience. You have to let go of the desire to tick off plot points and characters like players in a football program and just experience the art on its own terms. > Exploring these kinds of challenging works can be incredibly rewarding. I encourage anyone reading this to do so. I long ago decided that if I only ever saw plays/read books/watched movies that I liked, I wasn't branching out enough. Find things that challenge you, and engage them on their own terms. Figure out why (for example) a host of professional movie critics loved Lynch's film when it left you cold and maybe even angry. What do they see that you don't? I've had that experience. But I've had it in response to many phenomena, artificial and natural, not just critically respected artworks. If you approach other things on the same terms, you can find the same depth and reward - even when there's no there there. > Creating something that includes, or even hinges on, ambiguity is challenging in the extreme. It's like when jazz musicians break the "rules" of music and melody; you can only break the rules and have it work when you have really mastered the underlying craft. Citation needed. The effectiveness of GPT etc. suggest that poetic ambiguity may be the cheap trick that many of us have long thought it was; similarly I've seen a few cases where when a critic takes schizophrenic writings seriously and has much the same response as they do to respected artists. Has anyone actually done a double-blind trial comparing "good" and "bad" high-ambiguity works? (e.g. if you make those professional movie critics write their responses independently, without knowledge of the creators, and then compare those responses in an objective way, are they actually more correlated than chance?) In a world where ambiguity didn't actually take a lot of artistic skill, and whether a high-ambiguity work was perceived as good or bad was more a function of art-community politics (e.g. who the creator is), what would you expect to be different?
- ubermonkey 5y ago
  >Has anyone actually done a double-blind trial comparing "good" and "bad" high-ambiguity works? Peak HN comment right here.

ryandvm 5y ago

Programmers are generally unhappy with fuzziness or else they wouldn't be good programmers.

Joeboy 5y ago
The enjoyment of figuring out what's going on in something like Mulholland Drive is rather similar to the enjoyment of debugging a complex bug. There's a frustration about it not immediately making sense, but there's also a pleasure to working it out. Primer on the other hand, I think all you can really do is accept that there are big unexplained gaps in the story, and no amount of debugging is going to help. I personally take that as a fun hint of a larger story you're not seeing. Never seen The Big Sleep so not sure which it's more like.
klyrs 5y ago
You're describing a mediocre programmer. How do you choose between two algorithms: small-scale runtime, large-scale runtime, effort to write, effort to maintain, etc. Folks who can't cope with ambiguity will make a single-measure heuristic and pull the trigger immediately. It's great for their 'goal accomplished' statistic, which mediocre managers love, but that isn't what a good programmer would do.
TigeriusKirk 5y ago
No one is more aware of the ambiguity of reality than someone whose job it is to explain it to a machine.

yupper32 5y ago

I really dislike this take. Listen, it's fine if people enjoy nonlinear storytelling to make it an "experience" or a canvas with a few straight lines painted on it. But it is stupid, to follow your quote. If you're using devices to make a story more difficult to follow, just for the sake of making it more difficult to follow for the "challenge", then that's stupid. I'm not claiming The Big Sleep is even in this category, because I haven't seen it, but plenty of films and books are. If a canvas painted a solid color or with a few straight lines sells for millions, then that's stupid. People enjoy "stupid" things all the time, and that's fine. There's nothing really wrong with that. But the important part of my point is: only artists seem to think they're above it.

nwienert 5y ago
Only you are claiming it’s only purpose is to make it more difficult to follow. There are a hundred valid reasons to have non-sequitur or ambiguity beyond the literal first-level surface analysis of just making it harder to understand.
BoiledCabbage 5y ago
> If you're using devices to make a story more difficult to follow, just for the sake of making it more difficult to follow for the "challenge", then that's stupid. I don't know you, and even I know you disagree with your own statement. If not, the only thing you'd enjoy are media targeted at pre-schoolers and young children. Anything targeting and age beyond that is made more difficult to follow, by design to make it more challenging than what a young child can grasp. That allowed the creator to explore deeper subjects. Maybe you don't like things more challenging than your comfort zone, maybe you don't like more less linear depictions but do like them somewhat. Unless you can tell me you only consume media targeted at young children. Even you average Marvel film leaves plenty unsaid that needs to be infered, plenty unspoken to be felt. Non-linear narrative's to evoke a response in the viewe, false imagery, deception, feints and direct intuitional/emotional appeals. Now those might be targeted at just where you like them, but thats admiring you like them and you agree with the approach and that it's not stupid. It's just when thing slave your preferred zone you begin to dislike them.

Causality1 5y ago

There's a difference between ambiguity that's integrated into a story and ambiguity that's forced on the viewer. If the only thing that makes the movie ambiguous is that the final shot of the film isn't five minutes longer, then that is the type of film I hate. All Is Lost, The Grey, Save Yourselves, etc. If it's woven into the story from the beginning then I have no issue with it even if it may not be for me.

thom 5y ago

It's true! I awake each morning, enraged at the lack of rigour in my dreams. I turn to my wife to tell her I found it hard to suspend my disbelief. She transforms into a crab. Every night it gets worse.

ubermonkey 5y ago
You. I like you.

legerdemain 5y ago

You must be one of those art snobs that liked Last Year at Marienbad!

ubermonkey 5y ago
Never seen it, but always wanted to! I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic or not, but I do want to point out that there definitely ARE a lot of people who immediately ascribe snobbery to folks who enjoy complex film, or art that requires thought, or wine above two-buck-chuck, or beer other than Miller Lite, or whatever. It's a pretty silly thing to do (and one that I'm pretty sure you're doing only in jest, let me be clear).
- legerdemain 5y ago
  It's a unique film. The best word for it is probably "hypnotic."

lmm 5y ago

> Years ago, I saw a play by Maria Irene Fornes called THE DANUBE. It's a bizarre, baffling, and beautiful piece, and you cannot really approach it like you would (say) a Marvel film expecting a traditional narrative. That's not what it's FOR. It's an experience. You have to let go of the desire to tick off plot points and characters like players in a football program and just experience the art on its own terms. > Exploring these kinds of challenging works can be incredibly rewarding. I encourage anyone reading this to do so. I long ago decided that if I only ever saw plays/read books/watched movies that I liked, I wasn't branching out enough. Find things that challenge you, and engage them on their own terms. Figure out why (for example) a host of professional movie critics loved Lynch's film when it left you cold and maybe even angry. What do they see that you don't? I've had that experience. But I've had it in response to many phenomena, artificial and natural, not just critically respected artworks. If you approach other things on the same terms, you can find the same depth and reward - even when there's no there there. > Creating something that includes, or even hinges on, ambiguity is challenging in the extreme. It's like when jazz musicians break the "rules" of music and melody; you can only break the rules and have it work when you have really mastered the underlying craft. Citation needed. The effectiveness of GPT etc. suggest that poetic ambiguity may be the cheap trick that many of us have long thought it was; similarly I've seen a few cases where when a critic takes schizophrenic writings seriously and has much the same response as they do to respected artists. Has anyone actually done a double-blind trial comparing "good" and "bad" high-ambiguity works? (e.g. if you make those professional movie critics write their responses independently, without knowledge of the creators, and then compare those responses in an objective way, are they actually more correlated than chance?) In a world where ambiguity didn't actually take a lot of artistic skill, and whether a high-ambiguity work was perceived as good or bad was more a function of art-community politics (e.g. who the creator is), what would you expect to be different?

ubermonkey 5y ago
>Has anyone actually done a double-blind trial comparing "good" and "bad" high-ambiguity works? Peak HN comment right here.