I read this essay the other day, and I think the author
misses the point, and tries to blame pulp fiction for the
problems in the American media today, which is beyond
ridiculous. He asserts that pulp stories are emblematic of
so-much of the black and white thinking that people tend to
do. While this is true of many pulp stories, it's certainly
not true of all of them. (Find the black and white in the
Maltese Falcon, I dare you.) And this impulse is a basic
human one. To say the Lewinsky scandal fascinated people
because of its pulp fictionesque storyline is silly. ( He
maintains Ken Starr was cast as a hero. Did I miss that?)
Every event gets worked into some sort of narrative. People
have been telling stories since they've been able to do so.
In journalism, there's a term called "Framing a story." In
short, it's deciding what the narrative arc is going to be.
You have a bunch of information and you can't just present it
as a laundry list of facts because no one will read it. We're
wired to look for patterns. If there isn't one wemake one up.
You have to shape the information into something people will
recognize. Outside of journalism, people do this all the
time. I mean, what is religion other than an attempt to
impose a storyline on existence? The author hit on a pretty
deep subject there, but he didn't really think it all the way
through. Pulp fiction hasn't shaped how we see the world. It
reflects how we see the world.
On Dec 10, 2007 12:17 PM, jacquesdebierue <
jacquesdebierue@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
> Thanks, Todd. I think the essay can give the
uninitiated the wrong
> impression about the pulps. They were not as crude
as he depicts them.
> And the enormous variety of pulps (not to mention
the thousands of
> writers, offering plenty of variety within each
genre) makes it
> difficult to pinpoint exactly what the attraction
was, and for whom.
> Detective, fantasy, weird tales, horror, science
fiction, romance,
> spicy, aviation, war, sports, western... surely not
all of them aimed
> for the same readers? Surely not all of them used
the same methods?
>
> Lastly, the idea that pulp stories need to be
legitimized by Michael
> Chabon or Quentin Tarantino is silly.
>
> Best,
>
> mrt
>
>
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