Cringeworthiness

[flemmings]

Someone over at incandescens' FL is talking about narrative squicks. I'll quote rather than link, since one never knows who has lurkerphobia these days: When people talk about "squicks" in terms of stories (be they book, movie, or TV), they usually mean things having to do with sexual content or certain kinds of violence. What I'm talking about here are narrative devices or tropes that make you cringe, upset you, or otherwise unsettle you deeply enough that it ruins the story for you.

Now I cringe a lot about perfectly ordinary things. ST-TNG, as someone famously said, made me cringe just from putting the cassette into the player. But I have a very good narrative squick and have had for years, which I call Last Battle Syndrome.

Everything goes wrong. Everything goes against the heroes. The bad guys win easy victory after easy victory and the good guys not only win nothing, they're misunderstood and mistreated and miserable and despairing. And it's probably raining. Or snowing, whichever is more misery-making.

I hate it.

CS Lewis and Beverley Nichols did it; OOtP did it for its first four hundred pages; Nix does it too much for my liking. All of whom are British authors, I note. Can't see Americans standing still for Good Guys Finish Last (And Suffer While They Do It) myself, because the American ethos likes people who battle to the end and refuse to believe things are as bad as they are. (Parenthetically I'm sure the Japanese do it chronically, but that's a function of their Kawaisouuuuu reflex and bearable; like fan service, you know what it's doing there. It's also too over the top to be taken seriously.)

Anyway I'm tempted to stop reading when it happens in western works, because actually I have no assurance that everything *will* Turn Out Right, and the sheer misery going on makes me want to stick my head in an oven. Anent which, I stay away from Holocaust anythings for that very reason.

Which brings me to Woxin. What a good thing, I think as I watch the feather recitation on a proper screen in proper colours, that I know how it all ends because this is just too hideous to be borne. What a good thing anyone likely to be watching this knows how it ends. (I only know because paleaswater told me.) But even knowing how it ends, you know... I haven't the tiniest *clue* what Gou Jian is doing, or feels about what he's doing. Which is either 'but everyone knows: this is what he *did*' or is the director also playing his cards very close to his chest.

Simple enough to think, OK he's playing the game that will get him back to Yue. But what kind of self-control, what kind of determination does it take to subsume all your instincts and training, and abase yourself so completely that not the slightest crack shows on the surface? Can you? Did Gou Jian? Or has he just become someone else for the duration, a kind of splitting of personality needed to get him through this trauma? I wait to find out.

And after all this time thinking 'Yes, yes, you keep showing me what Gou Jian's up to, how about showing me more Fu Chai?' it's now, 'Yes, yes, you keep showing me what Fu Chai's doing, how about showing me more Gou Jian?' It might have been hard to do in terms of actual narrative, but I do wish the screen time had been balanced out better. Your OTP ought to be paired more.

And it is, it really is. 'I want to keep him alive so I can use him' is so ridiculous an attitude it's amazing that even the rather dense that way Fu Chai can believe it of himself; and more ridiculous that the astute WZX doesn't see the simple truth. Fu Chai doesn't understand Gou Jian and needs to and can't; and so he has to subdue Gou Jian just to remove the dangerousness of something that's so much outside his own experience. 'If I can put a collar around its neck then I'll have proved that it's really just a housecat, even if housecats don't have scales and claws and batlike wings.' Truly, he'd have been much better off playing chess with the king of Yue in the evenings.

Oh, one other thing. To my ang moh eyes, the feather recitation is *so* dramatic, *so* theatric, *so* over the top, it almost seems as if Gou Jian is mocking Fu Chai. The Yueites clearly don't take it that way, but to me it looked terribly like Wu Zi Xu got up and walked out because he couldn't believe Fu Chai was dumb enough to fall for a word of this.

Comments

[rasetsunyo.livejournal.com]

it almost seems as if Gou Jian is mocking Fu Chai.

I don't see that myself, but it looked a lot like 装疯卖傻 feigned loopiness to me. Except that part of it is real. And it keeps getting worse because Gou Jian does all these terribly cringing servile things and sometimes I can't look it's like that pround, pround man had died on the cliffs. And of course he had. That hurt, even knowing what happens in the end, because I don't think he ever came back.

but to me it looked terribly like Wu Zi Xu got up and walked out because he couldn't believe Fu Chai was dumb enough to fall for a word of this

That's it exactly. Fu Chai, so susceptable to egoboos. I wanted to slap that gratified expression off Fu his face. >=(

But what kind of self-control, what kind of determination does it take to subsume all your instincts and training, and abase yourself so completely that not the slightest crack shows on the surface? Can you?

It's the kind of determination that makes people teach it to kids 2500 years later in Moral Ed. Though I wouldn't choose to teach it to kids myself, it being about revenge more than anything.

Or has he just become someone else for the duration, a kind of splitting of personality needed to get him through this trauma?

I don't know that we ever find out. I have my thoughts, but they're just that -- speculation.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

That hurt, even knowing what happens in the end, because I don't think he ever came back.

Ack. OK, I'll be watching. Though my own philosophy is that it's no bad thing for proud men to get broken. It frees them to do so much they couldn't before.

It's the kind of determination that makes people teach it to kids 2500 years later in Moral Ed.

Well, it was about revenge in the first instance, but surely the Moral Edders have more benignant goals in mind? 'Hang in and suck it up' isn't a bad lesson to learn for life's rougher spots.

[feliciter.livejournal.com]

I haven't the tiniest *clue* what Gou Jian is doing, or feels about what he's doing

I agree with 装疯卖傻, at least in the initial part before WZX told him of Yu Yi's assassination and spent. He was obviously mocking Fu Chai in the OTT recitation and certainly looked like he was pretending when Hao Jin came, but after that he seemed to become someone else completely when he lost it and thrust the uprooted flowers (which he'd been looking after so tenderly) at WZX - someone who's only got revenge on his mind and is going to do anything it takes to get out of Yue, who is sitting inside the servile automaton falling at Fu Chai's feet and leading his horse with all sincerity, a flash of whom is seen in those glazed eyes when the lowly groom, unnoticed by anyone in the stable, stares at his (erstwhile?)知己 being tempted by the King.

surely the Moral Edders have more benignant goals in mind?

Not only to hold Gou Jian up as the paragon of patiently bearing humiliation and never losing sight of his ultimate goal, but also Fu Chai as a negative example of pride/complacency before a fall, and getting distracted from his life's purpose by the finer things.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

He was obviously mocking Fu Chai in the OTT recitation and certainly looked like he was pretending when Hao Jin came, but after that he seemed to become someone else completely when he lost it and thrust the uprooted flowers (which he'd been looking after so tenderly) at WZX - someone who's only got revenge on his mind and is going to do anything it takes to get out of Yue, who is sitting inside the servile automaton falling at Fu Chai's feet and leading his horse with all sincerity

So half of me wonders what was he between falling off cliff and hearing of his son's death? Calculated servility? Or instinct, as paleaswater says. And after the night in the rain comes that turning into someone else thing, the act that *must* be perfect in order to convince, because the stakes are now too high not to win.

[paleaswater.livejournal.com]

装疯卖傻 is how I saw it too. It's actually a brilliant move, though I suspect it's more instinctual on Gou Jian's part rather than planned. Wu Zi Xu is absolutely right, Gou Jian is too proud to bend. If he pretended to be just meek and properly subservient no one would believe him. But when a man is that proud it is conceivable that they might go mad if they pushed beyond a certain point. And it looks like everyone else on Wu side, including Gongsun Luo, bought into Gou Jian's madness. The summary for the series in Chinese says something about achieving victory, but at the price of his humanity, and I feel like there's some truth to that.

[paleaswater.livejournal.com]

Also should add, another way to see the reading is that Gou Jian actually meant it to refer to himself -- that the righteous (that sounds cheesy, doesn't it?), those who follow the way of heaven, would eventually triumph. And Fu Chai didn't seem so much satisfied and smug as stunned and mesmerized.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

And Fu Chai didn't seem so much satisfied and smug as stunned and mesmerized.

It's a drawback of Hu Jun's face that both expressions look exactly alike to me. The only thing that tells me Gou Jian's got his claws well and truly into his soul is the twitch in his eyes from time to time, esp when WZX suggests killing him *again*.

[rasetsunyo.livejournal.com]

Oh and out of curiousity: how was the poem translated?

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Quite awful, and extremely truncated. I was hoping for explication on the tigers and bears, and got only Who needs swallows when there are phoenixes.

But I look back at your entry (http://rasetsunyo.livejournal.com/74419.html) and agree- would you guys stop yelling 大王!! all the time? It accomplishes absolutely nothing.

And err yes:

WHAT. O___O

And why this visceral *attraction*-

To Uncle Ming? Silly question. No, actually, I think it goes back to yin and yang. Fu Chai is all yang, but in my world at least yang is a shallow essence. All sun and openness but no depth at all. It needs yin to be balanced: Gou Jian's depths and darkness. Fu Chai isn't complete without Gou Jian and senses it on some level. That's why he can't entertain for a moment the notion of losing Gou Jian.

Gou Jian... doesn't need Fu Chai as much. Partly because I see yin as more umm grounded than yang (which technically it is, isn't it?) but also because Gou Jian has not one but two yang people who know all about him, and restrain the worst yin effects in him (umm- if he lets them.)

[rasetsunyo.livejournal.com]

Who needs swallows when there are phoenixes.

<_< 鹏 ≠ phoenix.

Sigh I was afraid it would come to this. Anyway usual disclaimers totally unqualified no ear for poetry yadayada:

O shame
O sinner.
One regrets
A once-held ambition;
One regrets
A life not worth living.
O great bears seen in dreams¹,
They ford crashing torrents.
O Great Yu² who yet lives,
He walks the four corners of the world.
O merciful and compassionate King,
Yours is the strength that delivers us from evil.
I should not have lived:
Great fish leap to soar as roc³; what then a swallow's⁴ wheeling flight.
I should not have lived:
Great kings light the realm in glory and majesty, banishing fiends that infest ancestral shrines.
I should be wandering dark places beneath the earth.
I should be singing deep within the grave.

But no; I must not die.
In death
I cannot know the rebirth of the heavens' grace;
In death
I cannot witness the majesty of these mountains;
In death
I cannot see the High King vanquish the world;
In death
I cannot see the High King's brilliant reign.
O glorious and majestic King,
In your chariot drawn by shining horses,
In your silver armour and golden shield,
You churn a thousand leagues of mighty winds,
Ten thousand leagues of swirling dust.
You are arrived from the furthest East,
Descended from the the highest Heavens.
The Emperor Yao sings in praise,
The Emperor Shun⁵ sings in honour.
O glorious and majestic King,
You are dominion of all the realm,
The power of mercy and compassion
You are the embodiment of heavens' grace,
The sweet dew that nourishes the earth.
Like waves I dash the sacred mountain's rocky peaks,
I watch the mighty ocean's frothing waves.

*"Gou Jian" flattened to "I" because addressing onself in thrid person has an unfortunate Elmo's Song feel to it in English.

¹according to zdic: 夢熊羆 = 夢熊 = dream of bears = symbolises begetting of male descendants; 羆 refers to either brown bear or mythical beast with no equivalent in English (in the same way 鹏 refers to a mythical bird with no equivalent in English)

²大禹 Yu the Great (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yu_the_Great), legendary founder of the Xia dynasty

³鲲鹏: 鲲 is a large mythical fish which turns into a 鹏 a large mythical bird; symbolises someone moving up in the world

⁴燕雀 lit. swallows and sparrows, meaning insignificant persons of low aspiration

⁵Emperors Yao and Shun are legendary wise kings

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

(purrs) It was worth the frustration of reading the subtitles to have *this*. Thank you very much.

I'm of a generation that knows not Elmo's Song. Couldn't think for the longest time who Elmo was or might be, even. Hence no twee associations with 'personal name = I' and lotsa noble Japanese experience with same. (Err well amend that. Lotsa twee Japanese experience too- 'Mari-chan iya da!' says Mariko.) I know you can't do it in English, but it always strikes me as an immense pity. One needs some workaround to avoid that brazen first person pronoun.

Oh, and tell me while you're here- how'd you get the Chinese text into tables over in the entry (http://rasetsunyo.livejournal.com/74419.html) where you quoted them?

[rasetsunyo.livejournal.com]

You're welcome! :D

Used table code:

<TABLE CELLPADDING="10">
<TR>
<TD>

text text text text

</TD>

<TD>

text text text text

</TD>
</TR>
</TABLE>

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Great. Thank you.

[feliciter.livejournal.com]

*________* This is a wonderful translation, thank you!

(I think I am going to have to use the *squee* icon a lot)

[rasetsunyo.livejournal.com]

:D Thanks, I'm so relieved you like it!

(That happens a lot in series starring Uncle Ming.)