Dramatica Explains the Happiness Gap

The New York Times has an article on the growing happiness gap between men and women. Men are apparently happier. Who knew?

The surveys assessed men and women based on how unpleasant they found various tasks during the course of their day:

Not surprisingly, men and women often gave similar answers about what they liked to do (hanging out with friends) and didn’t like (paying bills). But there were also a number of activities that produced very different reactions from the two sexes — and one of them really stands out: Men apparently enjoy being with their parents, while women find time with their mom and dad to be slightly less pleasant than doing laundry.

There all sorts of ways to explain the gap: changes in societal norms, have-it-all-ism, second shift-ism, etc. These certainly have the look and feel of truth.

Now, in the deep-theory behind Dramatica, there are two way of solving problems and assessing one's progress: linear (moving from one step to the next to the next) and holistic (balancing many things simultaneously). According to the theory, linear thinkers are primarily (though not necessarily) male and holistic thinkers are primarily (though not necessarily) female.

So in the course of a day men are able to move from one task to the next, and their sense of satisfaction is based solely on the task at hand. If they have 10 things to do they focus on just one and ignore the other 9. This is where we get the stereotype of the man who happily sits watching TV while the leaves go unraked, the fence goes unpainted, and the kids go un-fed.

Women on the other hand move through their day trying to balance each of their 10 tasks within the overall fabric of their lives. If 1 thing is going poorly, it diminishes her satisfaction with the other 9 and vice versa. This is where we get the stereotype of the superwoman trying to be a success at everything simultaneously.

If one is asked to report their level happiness on isolated activities, what they are really being asked is how happy are they solving problems linearly. My feeling is that men will tend to report greater happiness because the survey plays into the problem-solving style they are more comfortable with. If the questions put more emphasis on their ability to balance work, life, and leisure, you might get a different response.

Cliches and Conventions

I was thinking about the differences between cliches and conventions in genre fiction. When is something familiar enough to set the right tone, but not so familiar that the reader says, "oh, no, not this again!" Through the magic of the tubes, I found this blog post at Storytellers Unplugged, where they take on the topic this way:

My point is that it's all cliche, to a significant degree. In mysteries and certain kinds of horror, the killer's either going to be a man or a woman, as is the victim. You go to a ghost story for, well, a ghost. Same with vampires, werewolves, etc. If you want to approach plot and character from a point of view of irony, with emotional distance and intellectual curiosity, then I suppose you'll want post-modern with its own unique way of doing and saying things. But like New Wave, splatterpunk, experimental fiction in general, you pretty much know what you're going to get. There's an expectation of predictability in the fiction readers seek out. We want gore. Or atmosphere. Or footnotes.

The whole post is worth reading as are the comments. As one commenter notes, the French word cliche is meant to imply a stereotype, something that has been stamped over and over until it has lost its freshness.

So these question arise: when is a story convention just another cliche? When is an archetype just a stereotype? And when is prescribed way of doing things just too conventional?

Since I tend to think about writing in terms of hardcore structuralist expectations and mythical archetypes, this can cause problems. For instance, using Dramatica as my guide, I tend to approach stories holistically. So if I have this main character in this situation, depending on how I start the story, my ending is almost dictated for me. If that means if a part of it seems predictable or stale, then really the whole thing is predictable and stale and I either need to accept it or start over. Otherwise, if I change gears in midstream just to upset expectations, I end up with two halves of two stories that don't make a coherent whole. It's craziness for its own sake.

Where does one go from here? I think the best way (for me) to approach the problem of cliche and convention is to go back to my little pet theory of culture (emergence, refinement, parody, and revision). Conventions represent that refinement stage where meaning is inscribed and codified. Cliches on the other hand are the later parody stage where overuse and repetition robs the convention of its meaning, making it look foolish or just plain dumb.

The answer then, is to always revise. Attack the cliches head-on and reinvigorate them with our own perspective, our own "take". After all, that perspective (our own), is the only thing new that we can ever bring to our writing anyway.

A Theory of Culture

The cultural landscape is awash in nostalgia, revisionism, and remakes of every kind. If you weren't around in the 70s you can see new versions of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Hills Have Eyes, and soon an all-new Halloween. If you were a kid in the 80s, you had the Transformers movie this summer as well as a new (bad) version of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Coming up, Nicole Kidman is starring in yet another remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, called simply Invasion, and Harrison Ford again has taken up his bull-whip and fedora for another Indiana Jones outing. There are highly successful new versions of Battlestar Galactica and Doctor Who with an all new Kirk and Spock led Star Trek on the way. Along with these (pretty obvious) examples, we have genres built around nostalgia: retro-futurism, steam-punk, neo-victorianism, new weird, all hearken to our love of an invented past, present, or future.

So, just as Vico had his New Science to account for the cyclical nature of civilization's rise and fall, I would like to propose my own (though by no means original) theory of culture in order to account for this phenomenon. As I see it, all popular creations go through four stages: 1. Emergence, 2. Refinement, 3. Parody, and 4. Revision.

The first question of course, is what is meant by a "popular creation". I'm playing pretty fast and loose, so it could mean almost anything: a character, a scenario, a theme, a mood. Anything that can be transmitted and replicated, like a meme, between artist and audience, between individuals, and even between cultures.

Stage 1. Emergence

In the first phase, the creation appears suddenly and seemingly from nowhere and is recognizable as something that's new and unique or at least innovative. More importantly it is something that emerges in response to a need, to something that's missing from the culture. It is raw and immediate. This is the creation as myth, as folklore, as superstition.

Stage 2. Refinement

In the next phase, the creation takes on an iconic role within the culture. It has been refined and put into the larger social context. This is the period where all of its qualities become well defined, rules are fixed in place, relationships are established, and its meaning is easily comprehended. This is the creation as art, as literature, as Romance.

Stage 3. Parody

As time passes, the power of the creation is drained. It is no longer relevant to the culture and there is an effort to de-mythologize it and see it for what it is: one object among many. What was once dark, is now light. What was once deep and meaningful is now superficial and trivial. An object can have no power over us if we can laugh at it. This is the period of camp, of kitsch, and of irony. It is the creation seen through the lense of modernism and postmodernism.

Stage 4. Revision

Finally we come to the era of nostalgia, where the dead creation is restored to a new version of its former self. There is an attempt to get back to origins and the authentic nature of the creation, to reinvest in its original power. This can also be a period where the original meaning of the creation is subverted or inverted in order to give it new relevance to the present day. This is the creation in its endlessly volatile, endlessly repeatable retro mode.

One of the interesting things about this last stage is the creeping anachronism where contemporary interpretations are given to past events and our motivations become the motivations of historical persons. There is often a sincere attempt to restore something to its original and authentic state, but what we get instead is a simulation that reflects our own cultural desires and fears.

We confuse the Victorian era with our Neo-Victorian fantasy, ancient paganism with our neo-pagan inventions, and we assume that our readings are the same of those of the author and his or her original audience. The truth is we are reinventing things in our own image.

Examples

Dracula and Frankenstein

1. Emergence: The original texts from Stoker and Shelley. Raw imagination, folklore and superstition come together in original visions. Dracula expresses Victorian anxieties while Shelley gives us science fiction as skepticism and philosophy, as well autobiographical fears about the horror of childbirth.
   
2. Refinement: The Universal Monster movies fix them permanently in the public imagination with all of their features, characteristics, back-stories, and rules. Lugosi's accent. Karloff's bolts and lumbering walk.
3. Parody: Over time, the Universal Monsters are no longer scary. They turn instead to comedy and merchandising: Abbot & Costello, the Munsters, "The Monster Mash," Count Chocula and Frankenberry cereals.
4. Revision: The characters are reinvented as romantic and tragic figures, as in Coppola and Brannagh's remakes, as well as Goth culture, post-humanism, and Anne Rice. Contemporary anxieties cause us to empathize with their outsider status rather than with their victims. Monsters become anti-heroes.

Batman

1. Emergence: Bob Kane's original and dark Bat-man. He is a two-fisted hardnosed pulp character that reflects the time period.
   
2. Refinement: Now called Batman, he joins the DC pantheon of super-heroes alongside Superman and Wonderwoman in the Justice League. His universe is well defined: millionaire Bruce Wayne, sidekick Robin, Alfred the Butler, the Batmobile, the Batcave, etc.
   
3. Parody: The Batman comic and TV show de-volve into camp and self-parody. Ka-pow!
   
4. Revision: The Dark Knight Returns. Batman is reinvented as a much darker and violent character beginning with Frank Miller. Though no one will acknowledge it, he is a villain. In the Graphic Novel he battles and defeats Superman, a pawn of American Imperialism. We all cheer.
   

The Wizard of Oz

1. Emergence: L. Frank Baum writes the original Oz novels and invests in them his own experiences and political beliefs.
2. Refinement: The Wizard of Oz movie becomes the iconic version of Dorothy, the Tin Man, the Scarecrow, and the Lion. Changes from the original become the canonical version for most people.
   
3. Parody: The Wiz, a failed attempt to update the story, as well as repeated showings on television ultimately drain the story of life.
4. Revision: Wicked retells the story from the wicked witch's point of view, revitalizing it through inversion, and perhaps restoring Baum's original political vision. The upcoming Tin Man mini-series on Sci-Fi channel looks to be a darker sci-fi version of the story.