Leave Nurse Ratched alone (Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images)
While working on Network, their 1976 satire on television news and the American public, director Sidney Lumet and writer Paddy Chayefsky mocked what they called the “rubber-ducky” school of screenwriting: “Someone once took his rubber ducky away from him, and that’s why he’s a deranged killer,” Lumet writes in his memoir Making Movies. He continues: “I always try to eliminate the rubber-ducky explanations. A character should be clear from his present actions. And his behaviour as the picture goes on should reveal the psychological motivations. If the writer has to state the reasons, something’s wrong in the way the character has been written.”
I wonder what Lumet would make of studios greenlighting entire movies to “state the reasons”. Largely thanks to Emma Stone’s spiky charm, the 101 Dalmatians prequel Cruella made $233m on its release in May. If Hollywood can rehabilitate a puppy-skinner who is basically called Cruel Devil, then all bets are off. Following prequels to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (Ratched) and The Sopranos (The Many Saints of Newark), get ready for the origin stories of Buzz Lightyear from Toy Story and Gru from Despicable Me. The ubiquitous Timothée Chalamet is currently shooting the Roald Dahl prequel Wonka. Now that Netflix has acquired the Roald Dahl Story Company, the only obstacle to a Young BFG movie is that he would sound too much like a rapper.
Blame, in part, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which bucked William Goldman’s “Nobody knows anything” maxim by building a series of interconnected movies into Hollywood’s dream scenario: a safe bet. Constructing a universe around beloved IP is the business model of our times, besides which inventing characters and worlds from scratch looks like a terrible bother. But the MCU has six decades of comic-book mythology to work with and, because it had a plan from day one, relentless forward momentum. Most IP-juicing requires starting with well-known movies and working sideways or, increasingly, backwards.
For the Star Wars empire, whose first three prequels notoriously depleted global supplies of exposition, that means Solo and Rogue One, both set prior to the Star Wars movies that people fell in love with. For The Wizard of Oz, the blockbuster musical Wicked asks how those witches ended up so mean. Meanwhile in the world of superheroes, Joker reaped 11 Oscar nominations by presenting Gotham City’s murderous chaos agent as the product of bullying, insufficient mental health care, urban decay and toxic showbiz. Not so judgemental now, Batman.
Some of these are successful entertainments but, nonetheless, ones that nobody asked for. I doubt that any child has ever watched the Wicked Witch of the West and thought, “Huh, what’s her story?” Most of these stories were originally written before the rise of pop psychology, when it was OK for a character to be wicked or bizarre without inviting an investigation into nature, nurture and the long-term consequences of trauma.
It’s not that there are no successful attempts to mine a character’s past for information that might decode their behaviour. Citizen Kane’s Rosebud or Vito Corleone’s salad days in The Godfather Part II are gold-plated arguments for the value of an artful backstory. But screenwriters are obsessed with providing damp-squib answers to questions that nobody was asking. I enjoy reading interviews with the people behind prequels as they try to justify the exercise without admitting that the only important question these movies are answering is “How can we squeeze more money out of this IP?” Ever wondered how Han Solo got his name? Me neither. Turns out he was alone a lot. Cool.
Television has its own version of rubber-ducky syndrome, now that flashbacks are de rigueur and grief has replaced alcoholism as a short cut to depth of character. Baptiste was already the most depressing cop show on TV — Camus of the Yard — before they killed off Baptiste’s daughter and his hallucinations of a stuffed toy elephant turned tragedy into accidental comedy. Another recent BBC procedural, Vigil, was grippingly assured in the present-day scenes but drifted off course in the flashbacks. It was as if writer Tom Edge didn’t trust us to believe that a woman would feel uncomfortable investigating a murder on a submarine (pretty stressful!) unless she had previously experienced her own watery calamity. Watching these shows back-to-back with Mare of Easttown, I began to wonder if a shocking bereavement was a requirement of the job. It feels a little crass to milk grief so frequently, and unnecessary, too.
How much do we need to know about a TV detective to be invested in a whodunnit? Columbo had an indelibly eccentric personality (mostly improvised by Peter Falk) but no stated first name and no private life except for a wife we never saw (unless you happen to have watched the flop 1979 spin-off Mrs Columbo). Columbo was what he did, and that was enough.
What Lumet and Chayefsky were really getting at with their rubber-ducky quip was the pretence that explaining everything is akin to psychological veracity. We are all shaped by our experiences, good and bad, but rarely in a clear or simple way. Psychotherapists don’t identify one essential turning point in a client’s life (“Hmm, Dalmatians, you say?”) and then close the case. Sometimes, one can know every factor and still encounter a terrifying, unilluminable void at the heart of a personality. In real life, not everybody who does appalling things is misunderstood.
There is, of course, a humane liberal impulse to understand how circumstances can corrupt an individual; how the abused can become the abuser. It is the job of psychologists and the criminal justice system to get beyond the idea that certain people are irredeemably sinful, and the task of historians to fathom how seemingly ordinary people could become complicit in atrocities. Authors such as Gitta Sereny (who wrote about the Nazis Albert Speer and Franz Stangl and the 10-year-old child-killer Mary Bell) and Gordon Burn (who chronicled the serial killers Peter Sutcliffe and Fred and Rosemary West) dedicated their lives to interrogating the problem of human evil.
Disney and Warner Brothers, needless to say, are not engaged in that painful work but in the trivialising of trauma to give profit-seeking entertainment a veneer of psychological curiosity. It is both morally dubious and narratively absurd. In storytelling, villainy often has a theatrical boo-hiss quality that requires no elucidation.
Why is Cruella a canicidal fashionista? Because otherwise Dodie Smith’s story would have been just a bunch of dogs running about. Why is the Joker a cackling killer? Because the joylessly uptight Batman needed an antithesis. In Frank Miller’s 1986 graphic novel The Dark Knight Returns, a pompous psychologist appears on a talk show with the Joker to argue that he is not so much evil as horribly mistreated. The Joker promptly kills him, and everybody else in the room, with glee.
It’s true that Miller was a law-and-order conservative who enjoyed poking fun at bleeding-heart liberals but, like Christopher Nolan, he also knew that the Joker is compelling because he is beyond understanding. Ridley Scott squandered a great deal of time and money on making two prequels to his own Alien, even though the unknowable menace of the creature was what made the 1979 movie such a taut shocker. More often than not, additional information makes antagonists less intriguing.
As one of the showrunners of Lost, Damon Lindelof was as responsible as anybody for the backstory epidemic, creating a time-hopping narrative tangle that concluded with a crushing disappointment. He was then a co-conspirator on the Alien prequel Prometheus. On his next show, The Leftovers, he learned his lesson and leaned into his characters’ reactions to the mysterious disappearance of 2% of humanity rather than the reasons for the event. Trauma was the cake rather than the icing, and therefore taken seriously. In becoming so comfortable with complexity and ambiguity, Lindelof made one of the finest shows of the decade. The theme tune of the second series summed up the ethos of the whole show and the reason behind its success. It was a song by country singer Iris DeMent: Let the Mystery Be.
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SubscribeAn inconvenient truth that practically all of our greatest pop’n’rock artists didn’t go to uni and that the post 92 meat grinder money making universities don’t give a toss about the students as long as the numbers are high, and in fact many students are thrown on the scrap heap
It has been obvious for some years that higher education in the UK and the US is primarily – and often solely – about money.
If you come out of university with a degree that does not gain you employment, you are forced to take any job available, however menial, Your schoolmates, on the other hand, have had three years’ experience in the workplace and so are at an advantage.
It is in the best interest of the students that courses are assessed and students are aware of the job opportunities that are available for graduates with only limited academic ability..
You are quite right Iris. In fact I’m reminded of the old joke ‘What do you say to a media studies/social sciences graduate? – A big mac and fries please.’
entrepreneurs who create the wealth that employs graduates more often than not, did not go to university… as has always been the case.. It is often just a wage slaves academy!
It’s very simple. Make universities responsible for student loans. That will encourage them to produce employable graduates. Close any university with a dropout rate of over 20%.
Carpenters, Plumbers, Electricians, Engineers, Transport Professionals, etc. Some need a degree, some need an apprenticeship, some need on-the-job training or vocational training. Far better than a degree in ” ” Studies.
I keep saying that there is nothing useless or non-vocational about a humanities degree per se. I read history at university, and I would defend that discipline against all-comers as being a training in considering evidence, establishing the relevant facts, and drawing conclusions, i.e. a training in reasoning, which is essential for any profession and especially for management and leadership roles. A high-level training in, say, mathematics, certainly imparts logical rigour and attention to detail, but it has little to do with the more intangible, but vital, skill of good judgement.
I agree, Jonathan, a good humanities degree from a good university is a valuable thing and usually leads to enhanced earning potential. Unfortunately, the reckless expansion of the sector has resulted in a profusion of graduates with second class degrees from third rate universities. This helps no-one, except of course the ridiculously well remunerated Vice Chancellors.
I believe it was Vince Lombardi who corrected the saying “practice makes perfect” to “perfect practice makes perfect”. If you are studying any subject to a high level, you will be developing valuable skills. If you are not, you may merely be practicing errors. In technical degrees the errors are immediately obvious and cannot be hidden.
I think you need both good judgement and some attention to detail (from your remarks I’m quite sure you have both).
However, there is a belief in this country (and the US and many others) that you do not need technical competence or experience in the relevant industry to be a good manager or leader – i.e. that “management” is a generic discipline that is portable across industries. I strongly believe this to be false and my experience in technology businesses shows that those which succeed and survive are the ones whos leaders have both deep domain (technical) skills and experience with leadership and management skills.
My experience is that the number of people with both exceptional technical and leadership and management skills is very small. But these are the people you certainly need these days.
We should not knock the uni’s. They do a remarkable job on their inmates, training them in the virtues of being hyper-sensitive non-resilient weaklngs, quick to take offence at almost anything, seeing micro-aggressions in the blink of an eye (someone else’s), for ever feeling ‘unsafe’, requiring an endless stream of trigger-warnings (from Beowulf through Lear — King , but probably Edward as well –to Pride and Prejudice and onward), shutting out debate, by violence if necessary, and so forth — and that is not to mention vilifying as much of our history as imagination can manage, and hating our country, all accompanied by narcissistic self-flagellation for white, or any other, guilt.
Do you want your, or anyone else’s, child to emerge from uni in that state, part of a failed generation?
Reopen polytechnics teaching career subjects at night school and day release
Sadly this educational fiasco can firmly blamed on John Major Esq, and his 1992 ‘Further & Higher Education Act’, and not on the wretched Tony Blair, as is so often assumed.
The damage done is probably terminal.
I think it began even earlier. It was in the late 1980s when I first noticed that even the dimmest offspring of the middle classes were going to university, and referring to it as ‘uni’.
It must have some relation to the destruction of the Tripartite education system. Once everyone went to comprehensives then they must all go to university. All that is needed is the willingness to drop academic standards and to drive up public and private debt.
The late 80s was when norm referenced marking was ditched,
The problem is exacerbated by the quasi religious desire to overrepresent certain groups at what were great institutions.
I would put forward the view that allowing polytechnics to become universities made little difference as they had long forgotten their remit of providing technical education and training with a vocational focus and had been churning out graduates in Marxist drivel for years. But you may have a point that Blair only ramped this up.
You are right to highlight John Major’s policies as starting the rot. It was under his premiership that the polytechnics, which provided excellent vocational training programmes and educational qualifications, including degrees, were converted into universities, many if not most of which became second rate and remain so to this day. Tony Blair substantially worsened the situation by decreeing that 50% of school leavers should attend university – an approach enthusiastically adhered to by David Cameron, who likewise tripped out on diversity and inclusion rather than academic prowess. Both Blair and Cameron introduced tuition fees, which have crippled many graduates with debts for degrees that they struggle to pay off in low paid job just above the threshold for non-payment.
The over-expansion of higher education in the UK is turning the country into what I would call a “Dunning-Krugerland” – i.e. a society with a huge number of people who are educated just enough to believe they are experts, but not sufficiently to realise they are not. Social media makes this painfully visible.
You can see the mediocrity and ignorance all around you. The quality of analysis, debate and discussion in newspapers, TV and radio is vastly inferior to the 1970s and 1980s. “Presenters” constantly interrupt and try to make it all about them and “build their brand”. No politician is allowed to talk for more than one or two minutes without some trite question or interruption. Almost all questions are leading ones. Original and challenging ideas are condemned out of hand.
It is time that universities suffered financial penalties if the graduates they produce are not up to scratch. Those that aren’t good enough need to close.
There is a real – and huge – opportunity cost in tieing up people and resources in wasteful activities. But even more so by mis-educating people – persuade me that the majority of today’s “protestors” and “campaigners” – the ones gluing themselves to roads – aren’t or negative value to society as a whole.
Then add in the massive student loan debt default being built up which will fall back on the taxpayer.
Blair may be gone, but the evil he engendered lives on.
You can defund the humanities at the government level without abolishing them. Plenty of people who do stuff in the humanities make their living by selling books, talks, and obviously, university courses. The “barbarous” idea that without government funding the humanities would disappear seems to imply that nobody cares about them and have to be forced to fund them, which if true, is by itself an excellent reason to defund them.
A reevaluation of the university system is long overdue. Humanities degrees have a place. Society should always be producing people who write well. I totally agree that where possible all degrees should entail a wage earning element as part of a condition for admission. I hope Sunak seeks to defund all these wacky lefty courses that exist now. I doubt this will happen however.
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There is a simple way round all this – if you want to do a Humanities degree, then before you can do that, you do a year min three max, in the workplace, anywhere in the country, paid min wage, but with government provided student dorm style subsidised accommodation. Govt responsible for placing you, but system similar to UCAS. Businessess who take on young people at 18 in this way to get tax breaks. No such requirement on STEM degrees, for the simple reason that you would not want to lose any of the most creative STEM period in young people, which starts at around 18.
Wouldn’t it be easier to insist that Humanities and Social Sciences courses require 3 As at Alevel, one of which must be maths. Those that don’t are not eligible for Student Loans.
STEM and vocational courses and apprenticeships are funded as now.
The objective should be that only the very brightest and most committed do history or psychology etc and these courses make up 5-10% of university placements.
Crikey, the Maths stipulation would rule out literally everyone wanting to take a Humanities or Social Sciences degree. Of course, this is not necessarily a bad thing.
Latin in preference to Maths perhaps?
Nice idea
That would certainly have suited me. I was good at Latin, whereas my maths stopped when confronted with long division, aged nine.
There are quite a lot of people from the humanities side of things who have contributed greatly to society but were crappy at maths.
I like the idea of a higher grades requirement, but 3 As seems harsh. Perhaps allow leeway for a B or even a C if you get an A* somewhere else.
I was being a bit tongue-in-cheek but the grade requirement should be raised and the ratio of these courses to STEM/ vocational should be 1 in 10.
I also like the idea of people having to have a “difficult” A Level too – maths or Latin would be acceptable.
The current option of mediocre A Levels in psychology, English and media studies and then a 2:2 in sociology at the University of Nowhere is a waste of the student’s time and the taxpayer’s money.
Minimum university entrance requirement: one of: one A-level in a STEM subject, a qualification in a trade with work experience, a year in the armed forces or on a ward on the NHS, or a foreign language to B2 level. (I started the comment as a joke, then realised there might be something in it)
I agree there might be something to it.
From 2000 to 2016 I taught part-time at University of Bradford, Yorkshire UK. I saw the quality of the intake gradually go down during that time. Similarly, the motivation and enthusiasm of the students began to wane – it was totally pointless for at least a third of the students I reckon. And that was in engineering! Eventually the department was wound up and remaining staff redeployed. It was a standing joke that while the official entry requirement was 2 Bs, we would accept any student with 2 Ds who didn’t need life support systems. Just a failing industry doing the “bums on seats” exercise to justify it’s existence. The best teaching I ever did was three years (1973-1976) at the Kenya Polytechnic where the students were keen as mustard to learn real skills for their jobs in telecomms and electronics.
A very good blog, Frank, and spot-on with regard to our need for respected, high quality technical/vocational education, and on the fact that our universities are full of young people with no real interest in their studies, who also provide a depressing milieu for those fellow-students – and there are plenty – who DO have that interest. (And I speak as a former university lecturer). My only quibble might be regarding the German situation. Having just spent a week with two Germans, one of whom spent some time teaching in a technical school, I was made aware that lack of interest and motivation has also become prevalent amongst many young Germans in such schools.
The expansion of tertiary education was a genius move by Tony Blair. Get young people to take out huge loans to pay to remove themselves from the youth unemployment figures, at the same time creating a huge number of jobs for lecturers, most of whom would vote Labour. Brilliant.
Whether the degrees themselves would be useful for those taking them was beside the point.
Cracking good blog!
I’d welcome some kind of action around worthless degrees, but the idea that their worth would be decided on the basis of what kind of income the degree leads to is crazy.
Then what is your alternative ? How would you measure “worthless” ?
As a former full-time lecturer (second career after a lifetime in senior/top management) in a UK university business school and a BA graduate in English (from a world class university in its day), I feel I have some basis for adding to the discussion. Some points for consideration:
The fundamental purpose of the university is to be a collection of scholars looking for truth. And to train younger people to replace them, or who will benefit in their eventual work from learning from them.
That sound high-falutin’ but that’s it. The other things the university does stem from this basic purpose.
So a good program involves serious, rigorous thought, original ideas, involves people who are real scholars not just in one area but have a wide basis of scholarship.
The degrees that are worthless are those that undermine this. In humanities and sciences, those that have poor standards, mainly.
But also the proliferation of professional qualifications that are basically cash grabs by universities are a serious problem.
I utterly loathed every second of Kings College London… nearly as much as my fellows who actually wanted to be ‘ slisters’.. I did not finish the law.
Yeah