I felt sweaty just writing that! Look, I've gotten a
ticket before and it's no big deal but the lizard part of my brain freaks out
anyway. You'd think I had a body in the trunk or something. Which leads me to my
point--how detective shows want us to believe a person would just go about
their business after committing a heinous crime. When the worst thing a
character ever did (before committing murder) was jaywalk, how did they suddenly
turn into a sociopath? Where's the guilt, the remorse? Where's the Lady Macbeth
trying to wash the blood off her hands, or the narrator who hears the tell-tale
heart of his victim beneath the floorboards?
Every work of fiction asks the reader to suspend their
disbelief to a degree. The author may condense time or sprinkle in some amazing
coincidences, but the reader doesn't mind. The reader wants to believe. Otherwise,
there would be no Harry Potter, no Game of Thrones. But there is a line that
cannot be crossed, at least for me. Okay, two lines. The first is the Hannibal
Lecter syndrome I just described. The other is when the writer defies the laws
of physics. When a hundred pound woman kills her rival and moves her body down
several flights of stairs and then hauls her away in a car to bury her in the
woods I lose my mind. I can't even carry ten pounds of groceries that far. Yet
it happens all the time, people effortlessly moving bodies hither and yon without anybody seeing them. Not only
that, there's an episode of Castle
where a woman supposedly hangs a body upside down from a catwalk. I need to
know who her personal trainer is. Why isn't she entering body-building
competitions instead of murdering people? She missed her calling.
One of my favorite scenes of tongue-in-cheek self-awareness
is from the film, My Cousin Vinny,
where Vinny questions a witness.
Vinny: How could it take you five minutes to cook your
grits when it takes the entire grit-eating world 20 minutes?
Mr. Tipton: Um... I'm a fast cook, I guess.
Vinny: [across beside the jury] What?
I'm sorry I was over there. Did you just say you were a fast cook? Are we to
believe that boiling water soaks into a grit faster in your kitchen than any
place on the face of the earth?
Mr. Tipton: I don't know.
Vinny: Perhaps the laws of physics cease to exist on
your stove! Were these magic grits? Did you buy them from the same guy who sold
Jack his beanstalk beans?
Yes, Vinny, the laws of
physics do cease to exist on TV, but if you miss them you can always switch off the TV and pick up a book. No, that won't work either. Why don't you carry a heavy bag
of groceries up and down the stairs and then bury it in the woods? I promise
you the laws of physics won't disappoint.
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