John Bowker (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} johnbowker) wrote, |
Okay, let me try a little more convincing...
"Fantasy" is an ill-defined term, but one of the generally accepted categories is "What if?". For example, on the list for this year's panel is the movie Cars (what if cars were anthropomorphic and lived in a world in which they were the dominant species?). Sometimes the spiral outward can be larger (Children of Men: What if humanity can no longer have babies for some reason, what's 20 years in the future going to be like?) or smaller (The Lake House: What if two people can live in the same house at the same time, only a year apart?) but the spiral itself hinges upon the what-if? question.
With Brick, the what-if? looks something like this: What if the hard-boiled characters and plots of film noir were superimposed on the high school experience? Because while all of the characters in Brick resemble high school students, they're not. They live in a world almost completely devoid of adults, one in which they've in effect taken on the adult roles, with associated maturities vastly outside what they'd likely show in reality. The movie isn't about "real" high school kids*; it's about cynical, ruined grown-ups wearing high-school bodies while they act out their drama to its conclusion. It's not fantasy as it's generally understood, but it's definitely a world slightly disconnected from our own, kinked just enough to be off-parallel. To my mind, that makes it slipstream and therefore fantasy.
(Before anyone jumps in and says "You don't understand, high school is like that now, maaaan!", I will freely admit it's been awhile. Maybe Brick is exactly what high school is like now. But god, I hope not.)
"Fantasy" is an ill-defined term, but one of the generally accepted categories is "What if?". For example, on the list for this year's panel is the movie Cars (what if cars were anthropomorphic and lived in a world in which they were the dominant species?). Sometimes the spiral outward can be larger (Children of Men: What if humanity can no longer have babies for some reason, what's 20 years in the future going to be like?) or smaller (The Lake House: What if two people can live in the same house at the same time, only a year apart?) but the spiral itself hinges upon the what-if? question.
With Brick, the what-if? looks something like this: What if the hard-boiled characters and plots of film noir were superimposed on the high school experience? Because while all of the characters in Brick resemble high school students, they're not. They live in a world almost completely devoid of adults, one in which they've in effect taken on the adult roles, with associated maturities vastly outside what they'd likely show in reality. The movie isn't about "real" high school kids*; it's about cynical, ruined grown-ups wearing high-school bodies while they act out their drama to its conclusion. It's not fantasy as it's generally understood, but it's definitely a world slightly disconnected from our own, kinked just enough to be off-parallel. To my mind, that makes it slipstream and therefore fantasy.
(Before anyone jumps in and says "You don't understand, high school is like that now, maaaan!", I will freely admit it's been awhile. Maybe Brick is exactly what high school is like now. But god, I hope not.)
