Storytelling Smackdown: Avatar vs. A Serious Man

Predating our recorded history, storytelling has been part of what makes our species unique. Our stories help us make sense of the world around us and build our confidence by assuring us that even the humblest person can find the strength to overcome daunting troubles. Reading, listening to, or watching stories relieves stress, reaffirms core social beliefs (often telling us that love, family, and friends truly matter), and underscores heroic values, such as loyalty, self-sacrifice, courage, and hard work.

As a writer of commercial genre fiction, I argue that that's a noble tradition and something our audience has a right to expect from us. We may be able to "get away with" straying or (sometimes) be rewarded with critical acclaim for dramatically altering the story landscape, but it's tough to endear oneself to a large audience that way.

Case in point: two recent Academy Award Best Picture nominated films, James Cameron's Avatar, which for all its nifty special effects is as heart an old-fashioned, ultimately triumphant hero's journey, and the Coen's Brothers' film, A Serious Man, which defies audience expectations by showing us a poor, downtrodden schmuck who never does rise up against the massive injustices heaped onto him by God and his weird family alike.



I left the theater completely inspired after viewing the first. Shouted "What the Heck?"(okay, I said worse, but I'm not copping to it in print) upon reaching the ending (meaning the movie's "ending," not the story's, because it didn't have one) of the second. Though I've loved the majority of the Coen brothers' past efforts (O, Brother, Where Art Thou? and No Country for Old Men are two of my all-time favorite movies) to and found the characterization of A Serious Man very well done, this film, for my taste, felt maddeningly self-indulgent.


Now, I think it's fine for a writer to challenge readers (or viewers.) I love being forced to reconsider a long-held opinion, knee-jerk prejudice, or to see the world from a wholly-unexpected viewpoint. Within the parameters of the storytelling framework, we have the power to illuminate all sorts of dark places in a way that still offers the powerful cathartic experience thousands of years of evolutionary culture has trained us to expect.

But at the end of the day, if you're going to indulge anyone, shouldn't it be the people who are plunking down their hard-earned dollars rather than yourself? Don't we owe our audience not necessarily a happy, but a satisfying, emotional experience?

Anyone else care to weigh in on either the question or the films?

Pants on fire. Never. Good. Thing. (Can Cameron movie option survive implosion of Pellegrino's Hiroshima book?)

Baby Jesus and I cry a little every time this happens. A little over a year ago, I had this to say about a bogus Holocaust memoir that made a fool out of Oprah and editors at Berkley. Now, apparently the story told by an elderly WWII vet who claimed to have witnessed the destruction of Hiroshima turns out to be fake, and the mushroom cloud is rising over a book that received a starred review from PW, was lauded by the NYT as "sober and authoritative," and optioned by James Cameron for the big screen.

Last Train From Hiroshima, out from Henry Holt in January, is Charles Pellegrino's deep dive into the personal stories behind this pivotal moment in history, including gut-wrenching stories from survivors and eyewitness accounts from those who flew the mission. From the article that appeared in the NYT Saturday:

Mr. Fuoco, who died in 2008 at age 84 and lived in Westbury, N.Y., never flew on the bombing run, and he never substituted for James R. Corliss, the plane’s regular flight engineer, Mr. Corliss’s family says. They, along with angry ranks of scientists, historians and veterans, are denouncing the book and calling Mr. Fuoco an impostor.

Facing a national outcry and the Corliss family’s evidence, the author, Charles Pellegrino, now concedes that he was probably duped. In an interview on Friday, he said he would rewrite sections of the book for paperback and foreign editions.

“I’m stunned,” Mr. Pellegrino said. “I liked and admired the guy. He had loads and loads of papers, and photographs of everything.”

The public record has to be repaired, he added. “You can’t have wrong history going out,” he said. “It’s got to be corrected.”

But that's a lot easier said than done. I can't speculate on strain to Pellegrino's relationship with Cameron (he served as sci advisor on Cameron's current smash Avatar), but they seem to go back quite a way, and frankly, Cameron must know that when you do interview-based research, you never know if that great story you're being told is platinum mine or tar pit.

As a memoir guru, I lecture my clients within an inch of their lives about the importance of telling the truth and the futility of thinking one can get away with lying. All oral history is subjective and, to a certain extent, malleable, but I think everybody's mama taught them the blatant difference between being on an airplane over Hiroshima and not being on an airplane over Hiroshima. Obviously, we have to work hard to back everything up with vigilant research, but I'm not sure what an author can do to protect him/herself from someone who'd go so far as to fake documentation.

Meanwhile, I hate the doubt cast on all oral histories every time this happens. At best, I guess it's another cautionary tale.