One of the most valuable lessons I learned in my otherwise-useless-in-a-capitalist-economy Arts degree was in an early semester of cinema studies at university: the first discipline of any thorough analysis is to take a thing seriously, no matter what it is.
While that kind of observation may seem self-evident and not much of a discipline at all, applying it universally and effectively is harder than you might think. Especially when it comes to something you may be tempted to disregard offhand. But, I assure you: The Principle Always Applies.
Under the tutelage of those who taught me an invaluable lesson—a pair of lecturers later deemed too costly to maintain within the one class, the budget-shaving expiration of which came as a surprise to precisely nobody at all—this particular discipline assisted my class to get past the decades-old hammy acting and pastel palette of Miami Vice (the ‘80s television show) to analyse its underlying themes. They are indeed there if you look for them, but they were almost impossible to take seriously until we, the class, actually went out of our way to take them seriously. The exercise was composed of two parts: the first was an analysis of an episode of Miami Vice with no instruction given; the second was with an instruction to take it seriously.
This doesn’t quite “say it all”, but it says most of what needs to be said. How can Phillip Michael Thomas (Tubbs) still look so good (ignore the colours on the shirt and tie) in the same frame as Don Johnson (Sonny) looking like he fell out of a shoulder-specific steroid machine for clothes and into his grandfather’s oversized pants, and then everything got drained of 90% of its actual colour for good measure? Image: NBC
The first set of responses simply gouged the show, driven as it was by outdated clothing, outdated filmic techniques, outdated sound… it was so monstrously incongruous to us all that the only reasonable response was to skewer the thing with all our might. Hilarity, as they say, ensued. And, that was the point: it was amusing. But it didn’t take the material seriously. The second set of responses, now that we had been admonished for our frivolous attention to pastel palettes and unusually large Hawaiian shirt lapels, took the time to find meaning within the structure of the episode (Calderone’s Return, Part II, for the curious), and to dive into the structure and symbolism of the show. Needless to say, there was a trove of material to mine once we actually started looking for it.
Which was the ultimate point of the exercise. There is so much valuable information I learned during my degree that I have since forgotten, little wisdoms, quotes and refrains, whole arcs of awesome literature and the elite literary name-dropping that might have sounded good in certain snobby conversations had I actually remembered those authors’ names. But this… this one lesson has seared itself into my brain like a brand on a bull’s backside.
About five years ago, I was undertaking a fairly routine dissection the then-popular book Twilight and what I perceived as its inherent lack of value. It was yet to spawn any sequels and perhaps the film had only just been released (I actually can’t recall). But already the whiff of it had put me on edge. I made the mistake—though, in hindsight, no mistake at all—of criticising it in front of someone who had really enjoyed it. Naturally, they had a rhetorical question of a scathing nature for me:
So, have you actually read it?
That’s the other irritating thing about assessing something without proper knowledge; you think you’ll be right and even if you consume said material you probably will, still, be basically right… but you will never be exactly right. And I knew it, and she knew it, and so I answered: no.
So why don’t you read it then and then come back and bag it out if it’s so bad.
I’d driven myself into a corner of my own making, taking such pains to eviscerate material I had not, it was true, even read. And so, to honour her request and as self-inflicted punishment for not following the necessary discipline of The Principle Always Applies, I borrowed Twilight from the library I worked at, somewhat smug in the knowledge that there was no way I would possibly like this bawdy, third-rate, faux-romantic, teen-targeting trash.
To my horror—my genuine horror—I read the first chapter and found it quite interesting. Here was a female protagonist whose situation and character were both genuinely intriguing; she was from a broken home, had a somewhat complicated relationship with both parents (one of whom was available to her, the other not), and she was being uprooted from the world she knew into some new place, tipping her world upon its head. I couldn’t believe my cursed luck: I was curious to see where it would go. I was concurrently beginning to sense (nay, dread) the inevitable confessions I was going to have to make at some point in the future.
I could see what it was that had drawn in its target audience; the book was, a chapter in, solid. Whatever grossly unfair stereotype I had enveloped around Stephanie Meyer before reading her book was beginning to look pre-emptory and facile for something in the vicinity of three excruciating chapters (maybe only two; it was certainly early on). Inevitably, however—to my great relief, I’m not gonna lie—the protagonist befalls a psychosis-inducing event of paralysis which seemed to instantly carve thirty points from her IQ and catapult her attitudes back in time to somewhere in the vicinity of the Dark Ages the moment that the vampire-boy enters the classroom, or the food hall, or wherever it is she first sees him.
Needless to say, my three-chapter surprise ended there, and the rest, as they say, is appropriately rendered critical analysis. I think that’s how it goes. Take solace, disciples, Twilight really is a steaming pile of shit overall. But the beginning is actually pretty good.
This remains a cautionary tale. If Meyer was a little more than a talentless hack whose story veered dangerously into regressive, abuse-excusing, privilege-endorsing territory then perhaps I would have persisted. But after a few more chapters I had read enough, and the rot had set in. Example after example multiplied the gnawing truth. The next time I was called upon to defend my assault on Twilight, I would be fully prepared.
The Principle Always Applies. That’s my rule.