Hornby, Hornby, Hornby
A Cory Vincent Column
Richard Hornby has a number of thoughts about what good drama should be doing. Some of his ideas merely state what he thinks of when getting ready to perform a play. Some of them are useful, others I wholly disagree with. One of the nuggets I actually do enjoy to a large degree is his focus on “motifs.” When studied correctly, motifs can help us understand the way a play-world works. It allows us to gain insight we might have missed, and makes use of things we might have thought were “boring” “repetitive” or “gimmicky.”
Take How I Learned to Drive for instance. Vogel’s play centers on, as the title suggests, driving. Throughout the play, characters continually make references to the idea of driving. Whether the chorus shouts that Lil’ Bit needs to be a defensive driver, to telling her to shift it into reverse, the (slightly corny) driving puns help to do a number of things in the context of the play. First, they set up foreshadowing. Almost every corny driving pun foreshadows some incident. If they say she’s got to step on the gas, then we are about to jump forward in time. Putting it in reverse does the opposite. It also, however, gives us a frame to judge the play in. When a person is driving, there is a lot of control involve. There are a number of elements that could go wrong, and each one requires your full attention simultaneously. One wrong move, and you are toast. The same could be said of the relationship between Lil Bit and Uncle Peck. They each had to try and stay in control, lest they crash and burn and turn into something ugly and resentful.
Motifs find themselves in places other than plays too. Take the TV Show Supernatural. Supernatural is all about hunting down creatures that go bump in the night. It’s all about these two brothers and their trials and tribulations. And it’s about demons. Demons everywhere. Sometimes the demons are literal demons, trying to kill you. These demons function as mirrors. Each time the brothers see a demon, they judge themselves, and sometimes re-assess where they stand in life. Sometimes it strengthens their resolve, and sometimes it breaks it. This was the most enlightening part of the show for me, because I was baffled at why they would suddenly change viewpoints like emotional pendulums every other episode. It was only when looking at the show through a motif did I realize that the demons were both literal and metaphorical. The bigger and more important the demon, the bigger the issue tackled. All of the best brother to brother fights happen at the end, after the Demon is slain. Having stared at a real demon the whole episode, the brothers are able to confront the smaller demons in their own lives.
Personally, I don’t think its any different. Motifs may be easier to build into a TV show than a script, since you can write out exactly how things should look, move, and feel in a TV Script, but they are not different. Both serve the same purpose, and both are just as effective.
A Cory Vincent Column
Richard Hornby has a number of thoughts about what good drama should be doing. Some of his ideas merely state what he thinks of when getting ready to perform a play. Some of them are useful, others I wholly disagree with. One of the nuggets I actually do enjoy to a large degree is his focus on “motifs.” When studied correctly, motifs can help us understand the way a play-world works. It allows us to gain insight we might have missed, and makes use of things we might have thought were “boring” “repetitive” or “gimmicky.”
Take How I Learned to Drive for instance. Vogel’s play centers on, as the title suggests, driving. Throughout the play, characters continually make references to the idea of driving. Whether the chorus shouts that Lil’ Bit needs to be a defensive driver, to telling her to shift it into reverse, the (slightly corny) driving puns help to do a number of things in the context of the play. First, they set up foreshadowing. Almost every corny driving pun foreshadows some incident. If they say she’s got to step on the gas, then we are about to jump forward in time. Putting it in reverse does the opposite. It also, however, gives us a frame to judge the play in. When a person is driving, there is a lot of control involve. There are a number of elements that could go wrong, and each one requires your full attention simultaneously. One wrong move, and you are toast. The same could be said of the relationship between Lil Bit and Uncle Peck. They each had to try and stay in control, lest they crash and burn and turn into something ugly and resentful.
Motifs find themselves in places other than plays too. Take the TV Show Supernatural. Supernatural is all about hunting down creatures that go bump in the night. It’s all about these two brothers and their trials and tribulations. And it’s about demons. Demons everywhere. Sometimes the demons are literal demons, trying to kill you. These demons function as mirrors. Each time the brothers see a demon, they judge themselves, and sometimes re-assess where they stand in life. Sometimes it strengthens their resolve, and sometimes it breaks it. This was the most enlightening part of the show for me, because I was baffled at why they would suddenly change viewpoints like emotional pendulums every other episode. It was only when looking at the show through a motif did I realize that the demons were both literal and metaphorical. The bigger and more important the demon, the bigger the issue tackled. All of the best brother to brother fights happen at the end, after the Demon is slain. Having stared at a real demon the whole episode, the brothers are able to confront the smaller demons in their own lives.
Personally, I don’t think its any different. Motifs may be easier to build into a TV show than a script, since you can write out exactly how things should look, move, and feel in a TV Script, but they are not different. Both serve the same purpose, and both are just as effective.
I enjoyed what you said about control--relating the care and caution driving takes to building a relationship. I also thought it was clever that you continued the driving puns to describe the end result between the two characters: "they crash and burn and turn into something ugly and resentful". I thoroughly enjoyed reading your post cory.
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