This week I had my first ever direct exposure to Doctor Who. For the record, I thought it was great, but that isn't why I'm writing this time.
My mind seems to work by way of parallels, metaphors, similarities and common threads. And while noting the way a long-running serial works, I realised that the management of the brethren as an organisation is in many ways the same. The Brethren - new series! Where will the twists be this time around? Will the audience still be enthralled, or will they drift away?
No, seriously.
As I understand it, a show like Doctor Who (or, say, Star Trek for something equally long-lived) is big enough that it needs quite a large team to make it work. Also, at least in the case of my prime example, there is one person where the buck stops, and who gets to say what goes. Other people may do a lot of the writing, but it must fit into the top person's structure. It is the Creative Director's personal universe. If that sounds familiar in any way, you may see where I'm going with this.
In a similar way, a new person was recently employed to write a new James Bond novel. Imagine the sense of power, being that person. Finally (assuming the person is a fan), you get to say what goes. If some detail has always annoyed you, then zap! that detail need no longer exist. James Bond is now a chivalrous teetotaller who has a clear understanding of the importance of a clear command structure and proper bureaucracy.
But there's a problem. In any of these types of scenarios, the all-powerful creator of story is not operating in isolation. There is an audience, and that audience has some kind of investment in the history and workings of the narrative universe. They will want something new, if the genre is not completely fossilised, but it must not be at the expense of the structure already in place ... and for any long-running story, that structure will have a lot of detail, many tangles. Some untouchable pillars, but also a whole load of "just stuff" that makes it what it is. As a story-writer in such a situation, complete freedom is not what it sounds like.
Yes, you can make changes. But major changes will need a lot of work within the story: something that happened earlier must be revealed to be a mistake, a dream, presented wrongly for some reason first time round, or some reason must be found for the change that doesn't insult the intelligence of people who value the story. Small things may be glossed over, but people have a deep need for even trivial things to somehow make sense, and contradictions will weaken their hold on the story by making it easy to dismiss. And how many such changes could be made without fatally weakening the story structure by mocking its past?
What I'm saying, which is probably obvious by now, is that while I've often thought of the brethren as a kind of creature, this week it has occurred to me that the system is just as much of a narrative. A long-running serial, handed over from team to team and head writer to head writer, always with the body of the brethren as the long-term audience. The kind of things that finally led me to lose patience with even pretending I could believe in it were just plot twists that were too sudden as the new team let the continuity slip. I give them some credit - they're trying to drag the story into the modern age - but it's a tough task doing that while keeping an audience on board who have certain expectations, and I think they're struggling.
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6 comments:
It's a narrative that has damaged so many in its captive audience, and even killed some.
Damaged so many, as powerful stories so often do. Narrative, I think, is a large part of the strength of all sorts of ideologies, as people seize anything that makes life make sense, and then all kinds of hurt become possible in preserving it.
Still, if I was forced to spell out all such consequences every time I posted, in the manner of a devout Muslim adding a blessing after each mention of their prophet's name, this blog would rapidly become tedious even to me. My preference is to keep the focus on what is fresh in my mind. The fact that I don't mention negativities doesn't mean I don't know about them.
You make an interesting point. I think there is a discipline aspect that the narrative perspective does not address. The ability of the leadership to punish misinterpretation is an important component of brethren life. From my perspective, the brethren story has more parallels to North Korea than it has to Star Trek.
I like the idea of EBism as a soap opera. JTJnr introduced the idea of ongoing change. "Have you heard the latest?" and "keeping up with the current" became common EB expressions. But, as the Minnesotan said, to maintain power, it developed a very cruel side.
I belonged to one of the greatest EB centres of evil in the 1960s. Reading the above, I realised that what we were given by the JTJnr camp at that time was "bread and circuses." The bread came from the Hales's commercial system, and the circus was the nightly show where we all gathered in the Colosseum to see some unfortunate body being dragged to pieces.
EBism might have developed its cruel side during the JTjr years (see 2nd posting from Anonymous), but IMO Plymouth & Exclusive Brethrenism was founded on a gleeful "Spirit-led" focus on dividing the wheat (followers) from the chaff (disagreers). Even in the 1800s some of those divisions were CRUEL.
Reading accounts of Plymouth-then-Exclusive Breth activity in the 13 decades 1830-1959, one can't help feel the obsessive "withdraw from those who disagree" focus was inherent from the earliest days of Brethrenism.
Sorry JND & Co: I reckon Brethrenism (particularly EB) is all just a massive cock-up and ego-trip, to which Jesus' name and reputation should never have been connected. IMHO, JTjr et al just managed to drunkenly spot and exploit further openings in the power-game market.
BTW Survivor, I await your Brethrenic Verses narrative with much interest!
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