"Versimmilitude"

[fontaine]

I read an article by a noted cognitive psychologist that talked about two kinds of thinking and rhetoric. In the first, one tries to convince another through logic and in the second, (characterized by narratives), one tries to convince through versimmilitude--creating realistic characters in realistic settings.

It occured to me that there aren't too many opportunities in life to fully explore the lives of people (particularly inner lives). Good fiction provides that opportunity because while characters can be very life-like and realistic, they're not real. Thus, Ennis's and Jack's feelings are not going to be hurt (nor will we get sued!) by being analyzed and discussed because they're characters, not real people. By better understanding them, we're able to better understand ourselves.

Maybe one of the true achievements of this story was rendering such life-like characters and creating such a high degree of versimmilitude. What do you think?

[Front-Ranger]

I think your observation is ver' good, fontaine! Proulx' forte is a kind of hyper-realism about rural lives and characters, people who are in most of our backgrounds. Those characters ring true--their dialogue, their actions, and most of all what they do not do that would be out of character. That's what grabs us like no logical treatise ever could! Compare Brokeback Mountain and the Kinsey Report. The former brings the latter to life!

[serious crayons]

In her essay "Getting Movied," Annie addresses this very subject. She lists a bunch of realistic details from the movie: Ennis dirty fingernails in a love scene, the old ENTERING WYOMING highway sign, the splotch of nail polish on Lureen's finger, Mrs Newsome's Texas hair, the speckled enamel coffee pot ... then says,

" ... all accumulate and convince us of the truth of the story. People may doubt that young men fall in love up on the snowy heights, but no one disbelieves the speckled coffeepot, and if the coffeepot is true, so is the other."

(Thanks to F-R for her generous loan of "Story to Screenplay"!)

[Jeff Wrangler]

In her essay "Getting Movied," Annie addresses this very subject. She lists a bunch of realistic details from the movie: Ennis dirty fingernails in a love scene, the old ENTERING WYOMING highway sign, the splotch of nail polish on Lureen's finger, Mrs Newsome's Texas hair, the speckled enamel coffee pot ... then says,

" ... all accumulate and convince us of the truth of the story. People may doubt that young men fall in love up on the snowy heights, but no one disbelieves the speckled coffeepot, and if the coffeepot is true, so is the other."

(Thanks to F-R for her generous loan of "Story to Screenplay"!)

Dang, I love that sentence about no one disbelieves the speckled coffeepot!  Thanks for quoting it, Katherine, little darlin'! Just brightened up an otherwise excessively gloomy Monday!

[serious crayons]

My pleasure! 

When I met Front-Ranger a few weeks ago, she graciously allowed me to borrow her copy of "Story to Screenplay" and now, just like you, I keep it right by my computer for quick reference! How did I get along without it for so long?

[Rayn]

Maybe one of the true achievements of this story was rendering such life-like characters and creating such a high degree of verisimilitude. What do you think?

Absolutely!  The characters are so real that they are life-like.  They reflect the truth of many real lives past and present.  Fiction does allow us to see the inner lives of people/characters, it's true, and don't forget poetry.  Poems can do the same thing, especially some of more Confessional Poets like Ginsberg, Plath, Sexton and even Frost or Dickinson.  It's a bit more difficult to understand poetry because it can be like a "different language", but poetry very often reveals the inner lives of very intense people.

Rayn

[fontaine]

Absolutely!  The characters are so real that they are life-like.  They reflect the truth of many real lives past and present.  Fiction does allow us to see the inner lives of people/characters, it's true, and don't forget poetry.  Poems can do the same thing, especially some of more Confessional Poets like Ginsberg, Plath, Sexton and even Frost or Dickinson.  It's a bit more difficult to understand poetry because it can be like a "different language", but poetry very often reveals the inner lives of very intense people.

Rayn

Poetry is an interesting idea. I've been focusing most on stories--written and filmed. In one classification I saw, it mentions epic poems as a type of story, but I think you've hit on something in mentioning these short poetic moments. It's like Annie says in "everyone believes a speckled coffeepot!"

BTW, Frost is my favorite poet. I "get" his poetry (and can even recite "Stopping by Woods" by heart) but don't get most of it. Maybe a feeling, but it's so fuzzy, I feel more confused than inspired.

If you'd like to wax on about this idea of poetry and versimmilitude, I'd be very interested in hearing it!

[Front-Ranger]

Yer welcome, latjoreme! I'm glad you're putting the STS book to such good use! BTW, our wordy friend Toast uses that quote from AP as his signature. I love that quote, and it has inspired me to spend several afternoons rummaging around in antiques stores and flea markets for the perfect spatterware coffeepot. It's amazing the variety of styles there are; I found one that was perfect but no top. Another one had a different style of handle, others were too gray or too blue. I'm also constantly searching for the perfect picture of a coffeepot, see below for an example. My search continues!!

[fontaine]

Looking at that picture of the coffee pot made the word "metaphor" spring to mind. Specific images and details invite associations through metaphors. Now that I think of it, this movie was saturated with metaphors, some of which were explained (Texas women don't get older, they just get blonder) and some, like the coffee pot, that don't--nor do they need to.

The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that the kind of deep emotional response people have to Brokeback (and other movies like Titanic and Harold and Maude), rely on metaphor and people making connections between the film and their own emotional life.

[serious crayons]

The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that the kind of deep emotional response people have to Brokeback (and other movies like Titanic and Harold and Maude), rely on metaphor and people making connections between the film and their own emotional life.

That's interesting, Fontaine. Do you mean that people respond, not only in the obvious way to the plot and characters, but in a more subtle, Jungian way to the metaphors?

[Rayn]

Poetry is an interesting idea. I've been focusing most on stories--written and filmed. In one classification I saw, it mentions epic poems as a type of story, but I think you've hit on something in mentioning these short poetic moments. It's like Annie says in "everyone believes a speckled coffeepot!"

BTW, Frost is my favorite poet. I "get" his poetry (and can even recite "Stopping by Woods" by heart) but don't get most of it. Maybe a feeling, but it's so fuzzy, I feel more confused than inspired.

If you'd like to wax on about this idea of poetry and versimmilitude, I'd be very interested in hearing it!

I appreciate the encouragement, but I was only pointing to poetry as it often reveals the inner working of people's lives and minds.  Poetry can reveal or reflect truths in ways other arts cannot, so it is more concerned with truth than with verisimilitude. 

I realize the two words are related, but I take verisimilitude to mean "having the appearance of truth".  Poetry might take verisimilitude or the appearance of things as a subject in a poem, but verisimilitude isn't what poems are usually after in the area of "truth telling".  Film, on the other hand, is much more about appearance than poetry. 

Poetry is about many things, including entertainment, truth, beauty, strong emotion, form, facts, history, news events, images, metaphor, music and a whole long list of "more".... 

I'm not being short, but it's just way too long a topic to deal with here.

Rayn

[coffeecat33]

I have been wondering why some of us are so addicted to this story and why Jack & Ennis are so real that sometimes they live inside us and sometimes we are them. Here's what the author has to say: Annie Proulx, “Getting Movied” from “Story to Screenplay”

“… I was driven to write [BBM]. These characters did something that, as a writer, I had never experienced before – they began to get very damn real. Usually I deal in obedient characters who do what they are told, but Jack and Ennis soon seemed more vivid than many of the flesh-and-blood people around me and there emerged an antiphonal black-and-forth relationship between writer and character.”

These two men became real while Ms. Proulx was writing the story. The story, Jack & Ennis also obsessed Diana Ossana who pursued its inception for nearly 10 years. It's like Jack & Ennis existed in the Collective Unconscious and demanded to have their story told. If this is how they were created, it's no wonder they feel so real to us and live in us and with us.

Another explanation: “Sublime” is a term that came into use in the 18th century to denote a new aesthetic concept that was associated with ideas of awe and vastness.

“The ideas of pain, sickness and death fill the mind with strong emotions of  horror: but life and health, though they put us in a capacity of being affected with pleasure, they make no such impression.  The passions . . . about the preservation of the individual, turn chiefly on pain and danger, and they are the most powerful of all the passions . . .Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain and danger… is a source of the sublime.  The passions which belong to self-preservation . . . are simply painful when their causes immediately affect us; they are delightful when we have an idea of pain and danger, without being actually in such circumstances . . .Whatever excites this delight, I call sublime.”   Obscurity in some things contributes to the effect of the picture, because in art as in nature, dark, confused, uncertain images have a greater power on the fancy to form the grander passions than those which are more clear and determinate.” – Edmund Burke

Some of us feel the pain and grief experienced by Jack & Ennis. We're one-step removed from the grief but I think it also creates a "grander passion."

coffeecat33

[bbm_stitchbuffyfan]

I like that idea of versimmilitude.

These two men became real while Ms. Proulx was writing the story. The story, Jack & Ennis also obsessed Diana Ossana who pursued its inception for nearly 10 years. It's like Jack & Ennis existed in the Collective Unconscious and demanded to have their story told. If this is how they were created, it's no wonder they feel so real to us and live in us and with us.

Love this...

[Front-Ranger]

In her essay "Getting Movied," Annie addresses this very subject. She lists a bunch of realistic details from the movie: Ennis dirty fingernails in a love scene, the old ENTERING WYOMING highway sign, the splotch of nail polish on Lureen's finger, Mrs Newsome's Texas hair, the speckled enamel coffee pot ... then says,

" ... all accumulate and convince us of the truth of the story. People may doubt that young men fall in love up on the snowy heights, but no one disbelieves the speckled coffeepot, and if the coffeepot is true, so is the other."

(Thanks to F-R for her generous loan of "Story to Screenplay"!)

I hope your STS is still within reaching distance of your computer, friend!

It is still as true as ever: "if the coffeepot is true, so is the other."

Time has gone by, and both Adam's coffeepot and my bucket, which were stolen after the Estes Park BBQ, have been replaced. I scoured thrift stores, antique joints, and flea markets until I found two that resembled the originals perfectly. All is together again, in perfect harmony, just like the beginning of the Dozy Embrace scene, where bucket and coffeepot stand perfectly aligned over the burning embers of the campfire...

[serious crayons]

I hope your STS is still within reaching distance of your computer, friend!

Well, time has passed, and now it's in a whole different room. But only a short walk away! I still find myself consulting STS pretty frequently to check my memory of a line or detail.

[Front-Ranger]

These two men became real while Ms. Proulx was writing the story. The story, Jack & Ennis also obsessed Diana Ossana who pursued its inception for nearly 10 years. It's like Jack & Ennis existed in the Collective Unconscious and demanded to have their story told. If this is how they were created, it's no wonder they feel so real to us and live in us and with us.

I agree. It's my opinion that Jack and Ennis are manifestations of an ancient archetype which focuses on the duality and complementaryness of not only people and nature but forces that balance and harmonize our reality. Jack and Ennis were drawn together by destiny, as each of us is drawn to our complementary being.

Another explanation: “Sublime” is a term that came into use in the 18th century to denote a new aesthetic concept that was associated with ideas of awe and vastness. Some of us feel the pain and grief experienced by Jack & Ennis. We're one-step removed from the grief but I think it also creates a "grander passion."

coffeecat33

I agree with this too!