A while back some friends were talking about payoffs, or that sense of satisfaction at the end of a series, whether bookish or television. How did people define payoff? I think of it as dramatic catharsis. Because my brain doesn’t do literary deepthink, the best I can offer are examples to explain what I mean.
Way back when I was just finishing high school, those of us who loved The Prisoner waited with gut-tightening anticipation for The Last Show. I was intensely puzzled, and kind of disappointed, except for the last three seconds. My dad was impatient (though he’d liked the series overall, or we wouldn’t have been watching it, as he controlled the TV) and my sibs bored. A week or so after, there was a Mythopoeic Society meeting, at which it became a spontaneous topic of discussion once we were done with the book chosen for the meeting. I listened with intense interest; I’d thought I was too stupid to understand what was going on, and that everybody else would have Gotten It. What I heard can be summarized this way:
“What a rip!”
“Did you ever see anything so stupid?”
“They obviously didn’t have any idea what to do.”
“I am SO SICK of psychedelic stuff that’s supposed to be all symbolic, instead of anything that makes sense.”
“Not even the last five seconds—and those were good—was worth sitting through all that for.”
Not one person liked it, as I recall, though most agreed that those last few seconds were cool (and a lot of people asked, “What did it mean?” causing the typical late sixties rodomontade about the military-industrial complex and Big Brother, etc etc)
Now segue up a few years. It’s the last episode of M.A.S.H. Again, everyone we knew was glued to their tube, for in those days, no TiVo or VCR (or maybe VCR was around, but only the rich had ‘em) and so if you missed it, you had to wait until summer for the rerun. At a gathering a few days later, I was part of a conversation that went something like this:
“Stupid!”
“Pretentious! They forgot they were, you know, doing a comedy.”
“Oh, that was an Emmy bid, you can just bet.”
“Maybe that %$^! about the baby, but all that kissy poo at the end? That’s just losing control of it–they stopped being characters and turned back into actors.”
Segue up to just a few years ago, when the extended edition LOTR came out, and a lot of people I knew bought them, in spite of some ambivalence about how the trilogy ended. This time I overheard a conversation among teachers and kids, basically to the tune of: “Most of the extras on the last show was just the actors going around hugging each other telling each other over and over how awesome they were. Even more boring than the five separate dumb endings with them all standing around grinning at each other!”
When watching the exhausted faces and the tears of the LOTR actors on that same Extended Edition Extra, I was struck by the intensity of emotion in their faces. They’d been through something tough, challenging, and exalting together. And I thought about that sense of having endured something—anything—the making of an art work or the survival of an energy-consuming event of any kind—imbues those who shared it with passion that brings meaning to the smallest gesture and word. I wonder if that powerful, overwhelming emotional catharsis is what drives some Last Shows or last books to end up being stinkers—the makers’ emotional catharsis is mistaken for dramatic catharsis.
Here’s how I see the difference between the two: an emotional catharsis is primarily felt by the creator(s). A dramatic catharsis is felt by the reader/viewer.
Sometimes writers, in their efforts to have The Last Battle top all previous efforts, put forward a climax that is just bigger and louder and vaster (pile on the superlatives here) but otherwise pretty much the same sort of climax as previously explored. Nothing is really changed, outside of the heroes having to fight for their lives against the Big Bad. Then . . . rest! And the same sort of fight at the end of the next book or episode.
A dramatic catharsis that works for me is not just a climax with a meaner Dark Lord in a deeper dungeon prolonging the most horrible tortures evah, after the nasiest gloating speech in the history of villainous speeches, before the Sword of Light comes to the rescue. The best dramatic catharsis for me furnishes something new. Even if it’s relatively small, like an insight not visible to anyone else . . . like at the end of “The Scouring of the Shire,” when Frodo understands that in saving Middle Earth, it was not saved for him. Compared to the blowing up of Mordor and the last-ditch saving of Gondor, this ending is very small, but the dramatic catharsis is just that much more intense a payoff.
I’m not sure whether to thank you or glare at you for posting this right when I’m trying to figure out how to wrap up the Victorian Onyx Court book, which will be at least a temporary conclusion to the series.
You’re right that it ought to not just more but more — and yet, if you reach too hard for that more, you can overshoot and end up with something that’s trying so hard to be meaningful, the reader/viewer just rolls their eyes.
Yes, that was at the time for me a completely new experience. This feeling of “not only you but your home will be changed after a long absence” and “some victories demand a price that has to be paid continously and still it may be worth it”.
Also the moment when Frodo actually turns to the dark side and is only saved by the already-much-deeper-fallen Gollum from becoming a slave to Sauron. I hadn’t seen that coming at all at the time (I always follow desperately along, rarely figuring things out before they are revealed to me).
When Tolkien writes about it in his essays on the matter, he calls it eucatastrophe, I believe. Although the aftermath is only part of that.
Estara: Yes, Tolkien writes about the deep satisfaction of eucatastrophe. His reasoning resonates with me.
I think for a very long series, there’s no way you can have a cymbals-clashing, trumpets-blaring ending that’s in any way going to be big enough to encompass everything that went into a series. I think maybe–and I’m thinking this literally as I type, so it’s pretty unformed–a reader needs some time to unwind. So take LoTR. You have the drama of the victory at Gondor–tremendous scene, both on the Pelenor Fields and when Aragorn’s banner is revealed on the ships–and then you get some wind-down at the houses of healing, and then there’s the second climax with the ring actually going into Mt. Doom, and the trusty eagles–and then, the long tail as you get weddings out of the way and tidy up the loose ends.
“Tidy up the loose ends” is maybe too dismissive a way of putting it. It’s very satisfying work, or it can be. (Readers’ mileage may vary.)
If this long tail gets too too long–if there are substantive plot developments–then you run the risk of having the river of your story peter out into a huge delta, but I do think you need something of a tail, to let the reader come to terms with the fact that the doors into this world are closing.
Asakiyume: I agree. For me, one of the reasons why the protracted end of Lord of the Rings works is that each of the endings is different to marked degree. We don’t have a succession of Aragorn’s coronations and everybody standing around in their best clothes being cheered as heroes.
I think you are onto something with the distinction between emotional (for the artist) and dramatic catharsis for the consumer. So many times I’ve felt let down–and not even by a series–by an author suddenly changing a character or sending a plot sideways to make the final bang bigger.
I want resolution of what had gone on before. It doesn’t all need to be happy, but some writers seem to lose sight of what they’d appeared to be leading up to all along.
Pilgrimsoul: this is exactly why I perceive this difference between artistic emotional resolution and dramatic catharsis, even though (speaking as a writer) it can be extremely difficult to parse the difference from inside.
Ah but you are aware of the issue. I never find your work wallowing or self indulgent. Some of your endings can be painful, but they are satisfying.
I see some of the commentors on your blog have the same sense of wanting consistency that I do.
I hate stories that tie up every single loose end, because they feel too tidy–but I want a certain threshold number of loose ends tied up. (Aside from the general slipshod rottenness of the 80s film Young Sherlock Holmes, one of the things I loathed was that they insisted on explaining the origin of every! single! Holmes trope: the deerstalker, the cloak, the calabash pipe, his avoidance of women. The only bit that really worked was the bit with his math teacher–and they stole that from Seven Percent Solution.)
I want cost, I want a reasonable amount of triumph, and I’m really more interested in the emotional resonance than I am in who gets to Rule the World.
A satisfying conclusion ends with
the makers’ emotional catharsis is mistaken for dramatic catharsis.
Yes, yes, YES.
This is a big topic of discussion in our household. Recent shows that “messed everything up”: Battlestar Galactica and Lost.
I think the issue with these shows is that they tried to wrap everything up in one episode, which is problematic if you’ve left two many big questions unanswered by the time you get to the final volume.
#1 No No: wrapping up all of the questions with a new question that has nothing to do with the old questions. This gives a feeling of randomness because, hello. Pretty damn random! When I think about Starbuck on BSG, I still get palpably angry.
I completely trust an author (book) or team of writers (tv) to wrap up all of the questions…until we get to the final book/episode without a single answered big question that did not open two new questions. While I’m in the story, I love what I’m seeing/reading, but I also suspect that the story is completely out of control. In a long series, this sort of exponential multiplication is dangerous.
The longer this goes on, the more I know that, not only does the author/team not know how to conclude things, they also never knew where they were going. Oh, he/she/they had an overarching plan, but he/she/they didn’t know his/her/their details.
I can’t begin to know why this happens. I suspect that some writers are afraid that readers/viewers won’t maintain interest once they see that Oz is really some bumbling, random guy behind a curtain. Or, they want to be clever and show us who Oz is at the precise moment the Wicked Witch is doused with water, which is simultaneous to the moment that Dorothy clicks her ruby slippers. BAMMO! Surprise, triumph, and emotional bang all in one go!
But, as far as I understand, so long as there’s still an unanswered question (or, say a dozen of them) waiting in the wings, it is completely satisfactory to have a question answered without introducing new issues.
Boy, the Prisoner…they could have been answering far more questions…but I can forgive a bit with tv shows which are suddenly canceled. Unanswered questions in a series where the end date is known years in advance? NO FORGIVENESS!
And I wonder if the question/answer ties into the emotional links writers/actors can feel with a work. When you know the answer to a question, and have known it from page one in the series, that answer does not seem like A Big Deal, so it lacks emotional punch. It doesn’t seem Big. When my daughters ask what we’re having for dinner, they are anxious to know what fate awaits them, but I’ve known since shopping day. I was pretty excited about mango/black bean burritos on Monday; by Friday, I’m more interested in what I’m making next week.
Wow, and I rambled. Sorry about that. As I said, this is a main topic within this household. There are some odd overlaps between preaching and writing. (Not the “Moral” part, mind you, but the structure and the tension between questions and answers.)
Jennifergale: Yes. It’s very hard, as you probably know from your own creative work, to fashion an ending that is going to please everyone. It is very common, and very human, to project one’s own emotional catharsis onto the work.
That said, something an ending just seems. . . imposed. Like (for me) the last fifteen minutes of Avatar: The Last Airbender were sharply disappointing in every possible way, with a final image that actually made me queasy.
Yet until then, I adored that show.
What was it that soured the ending of A:TLA for you?
Marie:
SPOILERS
The real story was never Aang’s, inspite of the title, that is he was the hero, but the protagonist–the one who had the greatest growth and change–was Zuko. The chemistry between him and Katara was not only terrific, but their coming together would have symbolized the peace of the fourth peoples.
Instead, we got an extra long, very silly battle with Zuko’s father that could have been a tenth of that length for how it was resolved, Mia is suddenly sprung on Zuko out of the blue, and Katara is left French kissing a fourteen year old boy. Eugh!
I remember waiting for and watching the last episode of The Prisoner too. It left me completely baffled and let down and thinking I was watching some kind of parody ending that had little to do with the series I’d enjoyed up to that point.
Blake’s Seven was another series that ended in a mouth-open, what-just-happened disappointment. But then, after the first two series, Blake’s Seven had neither Blake nor Seven in it.
It seems to me that some TV shows are canceled with little warning, meaning the producers weren’t able to lay all the groundwork for their ending. I’ve always assumed that was the issue with The Prisoner. With Dollhouse last year, the problem wasn’t with the ending — which I liked — but with the fact that Joss Whedon had clearly planned a great deal more middle before he got there. It was a little abrupt.
I’ve always thought Buffy the Vampire Slayer ended perfectly. Not only do Buffy and her friends beat the Big Bad — as they did every previous season — but the whole “one slayer” system is completely upended. I’ve been going through earlier seasons of Buffy of late and realized how carefully they built this series toward that ending.
Truth is, I don’t think a lot of the people who make TV series really respect the stories they tell, so they just make the shows willy-nilly, having the characters do something that completely contradicts who they are for the sake of one episode, and coming up with a bang of an ending whenever the network tells them to stop. That’s what’s wrong with a lot of those endings.
Aside from the abrupt-cancellation problem, TV (and movies to a lesser extent) suffer from that truly fatal problem, the Committee. It is not one person (who may or may not have common sense) making these decisions; it is a whole gang of folks, all usually grinding around different agendas. The studios, the stockholders, Legal, the sponsors, the star, the publicists — all with a finger in the pie. It’s a wonder anything coherent ever gets to the consumer at all.
Which is why in spite of everything writers are blessed. We can Fix It and it stays fixed.
Very true about TV endings, and disappointments, and death by committee.
Authors do have control over their endings (unless they give in to editorial fiat, and some have even found their work rewritten) but sometimes they can perpetrate the “what just happened here?” endings. I have encountered more than one “. . .and then a bus hit them and they all died, the end” disappointments. Or endings that lack all resolution, in order to make (or stomp to death) a Point.
Yoicks. Somehow the end of my post got cut off (I was not being clever, alas). And of course, I no longer remember what I was going to say. Oh well.
#1 No No: wrapping up all of the questions with a new question that has nothing to do with the old questions. This gives a feeling of randomness because, hello. Pretty damn random! When I think about Starbuck on BSG, I still get palpably angry.
I’m with you there, Jennifer! BSG was one of the best most intense series I’ve ever seen, but I think you’re right when you say the story got away from them. I find that it’s often the stories that are high-concept, with complex twisty plots and all those high stakes that disappoint at the end. It’s like the writers create this Gordian knot out of the story and don’t know what to do with it.
the makers’ emotional catharsis is mistaken for dramatic catharsis.
Oh, I never looked at it that way, but that might explain why I feel all cold and embarrassed at the end of certain stories and movies when everyone is hugging and kissing and bawling and pouring forth their feelings.
I like my resolutions to be more restrained, and to have a bittersweet touch to them. I want the sense that life will go on, not in gold-and-scarlet glory, but in its own mundane way, full of small triumphs and small failures. It’s been a long time since I read the Prydain Chronicles, but the ending of The High King with the heroes leaving for the Summer Lands touched me in the same way as the elves’ and Frodo’s departure from Middle Earth.
Thank you. This has been very thought-provoking and will help me with my resolutions (which I’ve always found tricky).
Rabia: thanks for reading, and good luck with those projects!
Oooh, your example is a good one. I think that it gels with what I mentioned on your lj about The Last Unicorn — there’s a sense that these big goings-on have profoundly impacted the characters, and that victory came at a price. Frodo’s price may seem small to the rest of the world, but he is irrevocably changed by his quest. And I think that makes it work.