Friday, June 24, 2005
INTO THE WEST: "showing" instead of "telling" character goals
Year: 2005
Genre: Western miniseries, made for television
Cast: Matthew Settle, Tonantzin Carmelo, Beau Bridges, Keri Russell
Director: Simon Wincer
Teleplay: Cyrus Nowrasteh
Story: William Mastrosimone
Into the West: Manifest Destiny continues the story of Jacob Wheeler and his family. Jacob moves his growing family back east to live with his parents, but his attempt to plant roots withers rapidly beneath the unrelenting restlessness blazing in his soul. Soon Thunder Heart Woman and their children find themselves trekking to California, accompanied by Jacob's brother and three female cousins. Hardships, accidents, and Indian attacks take their toll on the family, until those who aren't killed are left shattered and hopelessly separated.
Meanwhile, the Lakotas wrestle with internal divisions. Rival tribes become more aggressive with new firearms obtained from white traders. Some Lakotas fear extinction at the hands of their ancestral enemies unless they "fight fire with fire" by also adopting the white men's weapons. Loved By the Buffalo's brother, Dog Star, struggles to unite the remainder of the Lakotas and keep them true to the old ways.
In the second episode of Into the West, the balance of the story focuses on Jacob. Loved by the Buffalo, a major character in the first episode, makes few appearances here. Instead, the Lakota plotline is carried by his brother, Dog Star, and concerns cultural and political conflicts. While the principal characters visibly suffer doubt and disillusionment, the external cause-and-effects are more vivid than in the first episode. This improved balance between internal and external makes this storyline more interesting than it was before, and easier to follow.
In this episode, Jacob develops a clearer external goal than before. He wants a place to build a home and settle down with his family. That's what he says he wants. It's the type of clear goal an audience can latch onto and measure the story's pace by as the protagonist pursues it.
The problem is Jacob has another goal, which is unstated and largely unconscious to him. His inner goal is to wander through the west until he finds himself. This goal is in direct opposition to his stated external goal of building a place to settle down with his family.
Jacob's internal and external goals, when combined, contain the ingredients for great conflict, because the internal goal works against and undermines his efforts to attain his external goal. It's building toward self-realization and a moment of meaningful character growth. Which is a vital thing to have working in a story.
But something happens in this episode of Into the West that undermines the promise of Jacob's plotline: the ingredients are measured disproportionately. Jacob's external goal is told to the audience, but he is never shown pursuing it. For instance, only through narration is it learned that Jacob and his family spend three years building houses and cultivating farms on their way to meet up with a California wagon train. The building and cultivating would have shown Jacob pursuing his external goal. Instead, the audience is shown his pursuing his internal goal, which is constantly moving, moving, moving. The key scenes between him and Thunder Heart Woman involve her trying to get him to settle down in one place, and his stubbornly rejecting sound advice in favor of launching them on yet another migration.
When the family is separated, Jacob speaks with urgency about facilitating their reunion. However, the actions backing up his claim are only told, while the ones shown to the audience demonstrate a peculiar lack of initiative.
The episode culminates with a surprise twist guaranteed to emotionally impact the audience. Entire stories have been built around the same kind of traumatic situation. Enoch Arden by Tennyson and Beneath a Southern Sky by Deborah Raney leap to mind as heartrending examples from classic and modern fiction.
However, because the audience sees Jacob only pursuing his internal goal to remain a rolling stone, his final sacrifice in the end doesn't feel like as much of a sacrifice as it should. He tells himself he's making a noble sacrifice and experiences sadness over it, but it feels to the audience more like he's getting exactly what he's wanted all along. His internal goal triumphs, but without his external goal making much of a show in the story, the final decision feels like it was a fixed fight.
Genre: Western miniseries, made for television
Cast: Matthew Settle, Tonantzin Carmelo, Beau Bridges, Keri Russell
Director: Simon Wincer
Teleplay: Cyrus Nowrasteh
Story: William Mastrosimone
Into the West: Manifest Destiny continues the story of Jacob Wheeler and his family. Jacob moves his growing family back east to live with his parents, but his attempt to plant roots withers rapidly beneath the unrelenting restlessness blazing in his soul. Soon Thunder Heart Woman and their children find themselves trekking to California, accompanied by Jacob's brother and three female cousins. Hardships, accidents, and Indian attacks take their toll on the family, until those who aren't killed are left shattered and hopelessly separated.
Meanwhile, the Lakotas wrestle with internal divisions. Rival tribes become more aggressive with new firearms obtained from white traders. Some Lakotas fear extinction at the hands of their ancestral enemies unless they "fight fire with fire" by also adopting the white men's weapons. Loved By the Buffalo's brother, Dog Star, struggles to unite the remainder of the Lakotas and keep them true to the old ways.
In the second episode of Into the West, the balance of the story focuses on Jacob. Loved by the Buffalo, a major character in the first episode, makes few appearances here. Instead, the Lakota plotline is carried by his brother, Dog Star, and concerns cultural and political conflicts. While the principal characters visibly suffer doubt and disillusionment, the external cause-and-effects are more vivid than in the first episode. This improved balance between internal and external makes this storyline more interesting than it was before, and easier to follow.
In this episode, Jacob develops a clearer external goal than before. He wants a place to build a home and settle down with his family. That's what he says he wants. It's the type of clear goal an audience can latch onto and measure the story's pace by as the protagonist pursues it.
The problem is Jacob has another goal, which is unstated and largely unconscious to him. His inner goal is to wander through the west until he finds himself. This goal is in direct opposition to his stated external goal of building a place to settle down with his family.
Jacob's internal and external goals, when combined, contain the ingredients for great conflict, because the internal goal works against and undermines his efforts to attain his external goal. It's building toward self-realization and a moment of meaningful character growth. Which is a vital thing to have working in a story.
But something happens in this episode of Into the West that undermines the promise of Jacob's plotline: the ingredients are measured disproportionately. Jacob's external goal is told to the audience, but he is never shown pursuing it. For instance, only through narration is it learned that Jacob and his family spend three years building houses and cultivating farms on their way to meet up with a California wagon train. The building and cultivating would have shown Jacob pursuing his external goal. Instead, the audience is shown his pursuing his internal goal, which is constantly moving, moving, moving. The key scenes between him and Thunder Heart Woman involve her trying to get him to settle down in one place, and his stubbornly rejecting sound advice in favor of launching them on yet another migration.
When the family is separated, Jacob speaks with urgency about facilitating their reunion. However, the actions backing up his claim are only told, while the ones shown to the audience demonstrate a peculiar lack of initiative.
The episode culminates with a surprise twist guaranteed to emotionally impact the audience. Entire stories have been built around the same kind of traumatic situation. Enoch Arden by Tennyson and Beneath a Southern Sky by Deborah Raney leap to mind as heartrending examples from classic and modern fiction.
However, because the audience sees Jacob only pursuing his internal goal to remain a rolling stone, his final sacrifice in the end doesn't feel like as much of a sacrifice as it should. He tells himself he's making a noble sacrifice and experiences sadness over it, but it feels to the audience more like he's getting exactly what he's wanted all along. His internal goal triumphs, but without his external goal making much of a show in the story, the final decision feels like it was a fixed fight.
