I Hate Whimsy

MithLuin

MithLuin

Administrator
Staff member
I hate a certain style of 'fantasy' storytelling, where the person creating thinks that the subject matter is not serious, and so portrays it in a whimsical way while clearly looking over the heads of younger viewers to the adult saying 'you know this isn't real, but it's fun, right?'

It is not fun. It sucks the wonder out of the story, making it merely 'cute.'

The thing is, this style is much more blatant in a visual storytelling format, so while easy to spot, it's also, infuriatingly, somehow 'default' to a lot of people when approaching a fantastical subject matter. Peter Jackson had to keep telling his actors that elves were serious business, like real history. Granted, he maybe went a bit overboard with the solemn serious elf thing, but...it was not whimsical, that's for sure!

The Dufflepuds scene from The Voyage of the Dawn-treader:


"Willy Wonka" song from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

I don't even know what is happening in this Mirror, Mirror scene. Something dumb, most likely.

In this depiction of heaven in What Dreams May Come, heaven is an oil painting. Which is cool, I guess, but everything you touch smears like oil paint too, so that every moment is being broadcast 'this isn't real'. So close, and yet....

Whimsy is different from kitsch, which is also cringey in its own right, but at least that takes itself seriously.

 
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Not entirely sure if i get what you mean...

The Dufflepuds do remind me of PJs Dwarves in many ways. Burtons Willy Wonka film certainly was one of the worst things i had ever to endure in film.
 
MithLuin said:
I hate a certain style of 'fantasy' storytelling, where the person creating thinks that the subject matter is not serious, and so portrays it in a whimsical way while clearly looking over the heads of younger viewers to the adult saying 'you know this isn't real, but it's fun, right?'
Click to expand...

This is the way I experienced Winney the Pooh and Alice in Wonderland when they have been read to me as child - "the author does consider children babies not able to think". Too irrational for my taste then, actually I found them far more fun when older.
 
I really don't mind wimsy at all. Alice in Wonderland has wimsy. But its inkeeping with the overall theme and tone.

I have more difficulty with adaptations putting a lampshade on elements of wimsy they don't know how to handle. Putting a lampshade on something can work if the overall tone is tongue in cheek or played for humour. Generally in more serious narratives, or in an adaptation that overwise treats the rules and setting of it's universe as 'real', highlighting a difficult concept with a nudge and a wink is a big tonal shift and can take you out of the moment.

I don't mind so much with the Narnia or Willy Wonka references as the Narnian books very freely invite the reader to engage with the concepts through asides. A moment played for comedy didn't come across to me personally as a negative example of putting a lampshade on something. And for me, the Willy Wonka example matches the movie's tone which generally veers more toward Dahl's darker humouristic sensibilities.

But I do agree, if you aren't breaking the tone for a significant narrative reason, but are simply doing it to let the audience know that, essentially, you wanted to include a strange element from the source material but didn't know how to have it be inkeeping with your retold universe, then it really breaks the pacing. I'd sooner you leave those elements out of the adaptation, find a way to incorporate them well, or construct your narrative has enough breadth to hold different tonalities. It's actually one of the reasons I really enjoy the Hobbit adaptations. They have deftly handle the range of tones within the book rather well, in my opinion, without the story feeling narratively disjointed. It may in other ways, but I don't think the seperate tones (the pathos and bathos).
 
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