Great Expectations

But first! Happy Easter to all you Christians out there! And for your brief edifitainment, the slightly thematically relevant difference between promos and TV shows:

PROMO VOICEOVER: Next week, on House! When Princeton-Plainsboro turns into a hospital of revelations…
HOUSE ON THE PROMO: I… have to tell you a secret.
AUDIENCE:  Maybe he hooked up with Cuddy!
HOUSE ON THE PROMO:… which is really, really juicy.
AUDIENCE: Or Wilson!
HOUSE ON THE PROMO:  In fact…
AUDIENCE: Or Cuddy and Wilson! Or maybe he’s dying!  What if he’s back on Vicodin? Or he’s an alien! An alien replicant who takes Vicodin!  Who was born a woman! Or a hermaphrodite! OR A LUPUS-POSITIVE DINOSAUR!!!!!

(next week)

HOUSE ON THE TV SHOW: I… have to tell you a secret.
AUDIENCE: Yes?
HOUSE ON THE TV SHOW:… which is really, really juicy.
AUDIENCE: Yes???
HOUSE ON THE TV SHOW:  In fact…
AUDIENCE: YES?????
HOUSE ON THE TV SHOW: I once had an ingrown toenail.
AUDIENCE:… I hate TV.

In other news… Have you ever watched something that didn’t make sense, but you still knew it was a joke because you could tell it was a reference to something, only you didn’t know what? In this age of The Simpsons, Family Guy, and South Park — and of the Internet and its various memes, of course — it happens to me fairly often. I’m not sure exactly where the line Homer just said “came from”, but I know it’s from another book, movie, or TV show, or a historical event. When Bart  the Raven squawks, “Nevermore!”, it’s funniest if you’re familiar with the original poem, but you can still tell it’s a parody of something even if you’ve never read Edgar Allen Poe — just like you probably get the gist of this paragraph even if you’ve never seen the Simpsons Hallowe’en special I’m talking about.

The impact of stories and jokes often depends on the reader having certain background info. Some stories are deliberately undercutting or riffing off of well known tropes — if you’ve never seen much film noir or old-school cartoons, you might not have the same understanding of Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, a movie that combines the two genres, as someone who has. If you don’t have certain expectations about social interactions, most absurdism falls flat. And if a reader who’ s never read C. S. Lewis, J. K. Rowling, or J. R. R. Tolkien picks up Lev Grossman’s The Magicians, he or she won’t quite get Quentin’s love for his favourite fantasy series, Fillory.

Background info (or lack thereof) can affect audience’s perception of stories in two ways: first, the viewer might be missing a particular set of facts needed to make sense of the world of the story. If you don’t know what a gun is or how it works, you’re going to find an action-drama filled with shoot-outs very confusing. If you’ve never heard of a run on the bank, the scene from Mary Poppins in which Michael accidentally starts one will just seem like arbitrary chaos. The facts don’t have to be facts about the real world — if you missed the episode of The X Files in which Deep Throat got shot, you might be completely confused next season when he wasn’t around to give Mulder advice, and your confusion would be because you were missing an important fact about the world of the story.

But the second way background info can affect audience’s perceptions has to do more with the real world: expectations. Things audience members know or think they know about the world around them or the genre they’re reading or life in general colour what they believe or hope will happen next in the story they’re consuming. A simple example: someone who’s read a lot of murder mysteries gets to be pretty good at guessing whodunnit because they begin to pick out the literary devices the author uses to try to trick the reader. In a run-of-the-mill Agatha Christie, it’s always the guy or gal Dame Agatha tries to fade into the background, and not the young lovers or the suspicious man*.

It’s similar to the way personal expectations can affect the effectiveness of a joke. If you are a supporter of Sarah Palin, this probably isn’t as funny as it is to someone who considers her candidacy to have been absurd political move. If you’re a nerdy blonde, you might find dumb blonde jokes less amusing. If you’re anti-racist, jokes with a punch line insulting  people of a certain skin colour or ethnic background likely aren’t enjoyable.

One big example of how expectations and prior knowledge can completely change the audience’s perception of a story (the one that inspired this post, as a matter of a fact), is my reaction to Jesus Christ Superstar. After not being impressed with the 2000 made-for-TV version and getting plenty of recommendations, I rented the 1973 version. And… it was better in almost every aspect, but there was still something missing for me. I thought about it and thought about it, and I think it has to do with my expectations: I’m Jewish, and I went to a Jewish elementary school. I was never taught anything about Jesus except for a brief and secular history with no mention of miracles, godhood, etc. I’m coming to the musical with the idea of Jesus as an ordinary man and without any knowledge of the Gospels to fill in the story. I want to be told what kind of guy this Jesus fellow is, but the musical focusses on showing who he isn’t — on playing off the assumptions it can be assumed that its audience members share.

Because I don’t have those assumptions in my bank of cultural references, the musical plays differently to me. It’s as though Andrew Lloyd Webber is trying to tell me a knock-knock joke, and I don’t understand that I’m supposed to say, “Who’s there?” at the right moment. I need to be shown that Jesus is a good guy. I need a scene that tells me specifically what he’s done to upset the priests, or why the temple’s important. I need more context, both emotional and factual.

Although judging and manipulating an audience’s expectations is an important part of every writer’s craft, I think writers of science fiction and fantasy and writers for young readers face particularly difficult dilemmas. To give an example, I’ve heard many different opinions on what children and young adults might find confusing  in a book. Can I keep a reference to a popular song from the eighties? Should authors avoid using difficult words? Does the intended audience already understand how the Canadian parliamentary system works, or should I include a quick expository primer?

Expectations also play a huge role in speculative fiction because there’s so much information to get across — and because authors often assume systems of magic or made-up technologies are intuitive to everyone when in fact they make sense only to people who are also familiar with certain tropes. I know when I bring my YA fantasy manuscripts into a group or conference where most of those present don’t read fantasy, I can expect some questions about things I thought most fantasy-readers would take for granted, like the four elements being earth, fire, air, and water.

To make matters even more challenging, part of what makes some stories great is the way they subvert their audience’s expectations. Think of any movie with an awesome twist (e.g. the shower scene in Psycho) or particularly hilarious moment that makes you go, “Oh, no…” (e.g. the final musical number in The Life of Brian) to see how effective surprise can be. But surprises work only if you know what the audience thinks is going to happen.

Conclusion: either know your audience, or… be psychic? I guess Counsellor Troi’s talents might come in handy after all…

* Although, to be fair, one of the reasons Agatha Christie is still well read today is because she occasionally turns the “rules” of the genre on their head: … er, I don’t think I can actually explain how without spoiling some great mysteries. If you haven’t yet, read The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, And Then There Were None, and/or Murder on the Orient Express. See?