WARNING: THIS ENTRY CONTAINS "SPOILERS" REGARDING THE MOVIES "SOMEWHERE IN TIME" AND "THE LAKE HOUSE". And "Sliding Doors". And "Romeo & Juliet". And a few others. If you have any interest in seeing these movies but haven't done so, then you are advised to rent and see them now and return immediately to read my timely comments.

Heh, heh. I said "timely."

I've been thinking a great deal about fiction and the defense of the status quo, lately. To wit: most (but not all) commercially successful popular fiction, be it in print or film, ultimately embraces accepted social norms. This is important to me right now, because of the novel that is brewing in my head and threatening to spill onto the electronic page before too long.

Stephen King wrote an excellent essay in his non-fiction book, Danse Macabre, in which he points out that the horror genre is particularly conservative (that's "conservative" as in: defending tradition and demonizing -- literally, in this case -- any departure from the status quo). His point is very well made, and I highly recommend you seek out his comments. In short: the horror genre is all about doling out punishments for breaking the rules.

Most other genres are about doling out rewards for following the rules, which is what makes horror the flip-side of the mainstream coin: it's a focus on the negative, but it's still supporting the status quo.

Consider navel-gazer movies like "The Family Man" or "Me, Myself, I", where the protagonist gets a chance to compare "what if?" lives of having pursued career versus having pursued love and family. In all such movies, the protagonist ultimately realizes that even though their life in which they pursued the career was fabulously successful -- bringing them fame and money and a fantastic quality of life -- still, it's better to have the life of mired suburbian mediocrity with the noble-yet-imperfect mate and the infants who pee on you and all the similar joys of middle-class conformity because, hey, it's more emotionally fulfilling than driving fancy cars and eating at the best restaurants and wearing tailored clothes.

In short, these movies are pandering to their Western Civ, middle-class audience. "Hey, you there! In the middle-class! You made the right choice! Don't you feel affirmed?"

Occasionally, you'll see an excellent and commercially successful story that doesn't pander. The movie "Sliding Doors" has a similar "what if?" opportunity to see a life go in two different directions at a decision point, and the ending of the story is quite satisfying while, at the same time, it doesn't hand the audience a pat judgement on how love always triumphs and all that rot. Actually, it had quite a different premise: that, when all is said and done, we will be who we will be... that single decision points do not a life make.

Since there is such a thing as excellent, commercially successful fiction that also manages to not pander to the audience and endorse the status quo, I need to come to terms with how that works. I want the novel that I'm working on to be such a story; to challenge certain societal norms and still be compelling and satisfying.

I was hoping to find such a story in the movie, "The Lake House." This is a recent flick that falls into the "time-travel romance" sub-genre. The previews implied that it might have a subversive take on the status quo.

Of course, in the romance genre, the rules are: boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy wins girl back. If the story is a comedy, the successful conclusion of the formula is kisses and happiness ever after. If the story is a tragedy, then the last piece of the formula (boy wins girl back) is thwarted, and everyone dies as punishment. See "Romeo & Juliet".

Both the comedic and the tragic variation are satisfactory endorsements of the status quo, since successful completion of the formula means life and goodness, and failure to live up to the terms of the formula means death and sadness. If only Juliet dies and Romeo goes on to live a happy life of debauchery, then the status quo is not supported, and the audience gets mighty cheesed.

When a story is successful even though it doesn't pander, it is because the story still resonates with Truth. To bring up "Sliding Doors" again as an example, it is satisfying because it acknowledges that the consequences of our choices are more complicated -- and more interesting -- than simply "good" and "bad". The movie endorses hope, even while it denies the "happily ever after" myth.

Which brings me to "The Lake House", which I had picked up for a few bucks at the local DVD store's sidewalk sale. I was hoping to see some interesting choices in the storytelling, because the premise is kinda neat. Boy doesn't meet girl, because boy and girl are living in two different time zones. As in: two years apart. They correspond via a magic mailbox, fall in love, and get really, really frustrated with their timing woes. Surely, this must resonate with middle America. Isn't the middle-class all about frustration?

[As a side note, I'd like to recommend that the designers of the back cover of the DVD case be arrested and sent to a Turkish prison. The blurbs on the back cover keep saying, "Can the two ever meet?" while half of the photos show the two main actors together in the same scenes. I mean, what the intercourse is up with that? It's like putting on the back of "The Empire Strikes Back" the question, "Is Darth Vader really Luke Skywalker's father?" with a picture of Vader holding up a baby photo of little Luke nestled serenely in young Darth Vader's arms.]

The problem with the Lake House is not simply that it violates all concepts of time-travel causality. This wasn't supposed to be a science fiction flick, strictly speaking. Rather, its fatal flaw is that it tries so hard to pander to the audience ("Love rulz! Woo-hoo!") that it violates its own sense of Truth. It tries to give us the Happily Ever After ending, even after it very clearly set up the tragic death ending. The movie held open the possibility, right up until the final scene, that there could be an interesting, sophisticated Truth that would allow one character to live on while the other one dies. Instead, we get this pandering message: because he "waited", everybody lives happily ever after, after all.

Oh, by the way, that was the spoiler I warned you about.

Pander, pander, pander.

When I was a young'un, there was a movie called "Somewhere In Time" that also had the ill-fated time-travel romance kink going on. It starred Superman and Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, and the story was, as in "The Lake House," cleverly laid out right up until the last scene. "Somewhere in Time", however, managed to pull off an emotionally satisfying resolution without pandering *too* much. It managed to have both its tragic cake and happily eat it, too, by allowing the boy to die *and* get the girl. Oh sure, it was a sappy reunited-in-death kind of thing, but dude... the guy's death was *so* satisfying that it made the whole thing work. I don't think it would have worked as well if it had only the tragedy, nor only the happily-ever-after. What it did was offer us a third alternative: rather than "love is good" versus "losing love is bad", we got "love can make you lose your mind as well as your appetite. And then you die." Now *there's* a Truth that resonates.

Now that I think about it, "Sliding Doors" also managed to have both the tragic ending and the (nominally) hopeful ending all rolled up together. And the guy died in "Ghost", too, and that was popular. And same for "Titanic". Hmmm.

But not "The Lake House." It sets up for both possibilities, but then instead of choosing a third alternative, or even the more plausible tragic ending, it short circuits itself and makes a break for the happy ending. It doesn't work.

As an extrovert, I'm inclined to throw my ideas out there and see what shape they take. While my original intention of writing this little missive was to rail against the maddening ending of "The Lake House" -- I mean, really, all that wasted set-up! -- I realize now that this is really about the novel I'm constructing. How do I make it commercially viable and still not pander?

The answer is simple. It's not enough that I'm going to kill two of my main characters. I'm also going to have to add a romantic element. And pathos. [sigh.] Writing is such hard work.