Twisted Design

My favorite narrative is a book entitled, Kiss Me Judas. It was written by Will Christopher Baer in 2004. I was fortunate enough to have him as a teacher in the summer of 2006. Baer's prose is hypnotic, lulling the reader deeper and deeper into the surreal world of the protagonist, Phineas Poe. This book is not only skillfully written, readers deeply identify with this anti-hero.

Glassner's discussion on the depth of immersion, that narrative requires, was fascinating. Many of his points, I already knew on an intuitive level, but I had never seen them methodically written out as he had them. Kiss Me Judas starts with a simple plot that evolves with complex phychological issues. Baer uses the urban myth, where a man's kidney is stolen, as his initial premise. The plot relies heavily on Glassner's principle of empathy, a strong sense of emotional bonding. It drives the narrative.Even as it twists, readers are compelled to understand Poe's motives based solely on empathy.

Glassner states, "Great characters lead two fascinating lives at the same time." Phineas Poe is forced to lead two lives as well. Fresh from a phychiatric ward, he is the disgraced cop mourning for his dead wife. He meets Jude at a hotel. She's mesmerizing and predatory, as Poe discovers, when he awakens in a bathtub minus a kidney. His second life begins then, as he becomes a hunter. He tracks Jude with this strange mixture of hatred and infatuation. In Poe's outer life, he is practically dieing on every page from impromptu surgery complications. His inner life resembles a carnival fun house. Grief distorts his reactions one way while hatred and love drive other motives.

This story employs many of Glassner's outlined techniques, but it mainly depends on plot twists. Readers are unprepared when Phineas Poe leaves the hospital in a bloody mess in favor of tracking down Jude. It seems counter productive, but grief and anger can produce irrational results. Many readers were surprised that this character lived at all. The story also makes use of fractured and shattered time. We get glimpses into Poe's life when he was a cop. We get snippets of what his wife was like before her death. The story then pitches forward to Poe's present state where he literally has nothing else to lose. He becomes obsessed with catching the woman who cut out his kidney.

Transmedia Storytelling

Jenkins introduced me to the concept of Transmedia storytelling as an evolving form of narrative. I agree that it is a very smart marketing move that many industries could benefit from, but I don't think it is simply a good marketing tactic. Classifying it as such makes it seem like the shallow trick of corporate minions. It's relevant to me on a different level because I'm starting to see how Transmedia storytelling could affect traditional ways of presenting fiction.

What if Charles Dickens' character of Estella was not someone you met when you first read Great Expectations, but someone you knew from a social networking website such as Myspace or Facebook? In the simplest of terms, readers would be closer to the character if they have been exposed to them before. The narrative could then evolve to the point where readers felt as if they were reading about someone they know. Traditionally, readers come to know and relate to characters as the narrative unfolds. In the digital age, we want information and we want it fast. This old process may loose some readers simply because they don't relate to a character soon enough. If the reader doesn't relate to a character, then they may not care what happens to that character and lose interest.

This also involves a form of narrative that I'm anxious to experiment with and that is presenting fiction as non-fiction. In Jenkins' chapter entitled Why Heather Can Write, Hogwarts is presented as a physical school. Heather Lawver's fiction took the form of non-fiction as The Daily Prophet emerged. Her web based school newspaper, for the fictional school, was innovative and promoted a deeper connection within the Harry Potter fan base. I'm sure it also encouraged new readers for fans who discovered the web site before the books. Since Heather was home schooled, I think it also calls attention to some flaws in traditional learning. Kids were getting an education outside of their traditional education.

Although I'm intrigued by the idea of presenting a fictional character as non-fiction, I'm bound to run into the same problems as Lawver did. Warner Brothers was concerned about "potential confusion" but I'm not so convinced that I have an obligation to explicitly discern or disclose a flesh and blood person from a fictional character? Whose the authority on that issue? A carefully constructed character could easily possess human qualities. The only thing they would lack would be physical elements, which may be unimportant in our time. After all, the internet dating industry depends on a deep level of connection way before physical acts of hand holding and hugging ever come into play.

Concepts like internet dating, social networks, and Lawver's school newspaper are examples where physical aspects are treated as mundane and therefore unworthy of attention. Younger generations may watch the Disney version of Pinocchio and wait with anticipation for the character's final reward, only to feel the sting of disappointment when he is granted the opportunity to be a real boy. These viewers may be thinking one word: overrated. The importance of that gift simply isn't there anymore as it was for previous generations. It's interesting to think that this generation could probably appreciate the Disney-free version of the story, which was never intended for children. It features an irate puppet who constantly tries to stomp on that annoying cricket. This, for some reason, is far more believable than Disney's overly tolerant wooden boy. Then again, Disney rarely advocates thinking for one's self and continues to treat old stories with sterilization, detachment, and anti-septic.