I recently saw this question posted in (don’t judge me) the Internet Movie Database forums: Is it possible for a TV show to last without overturning its premise? The question was asked in reference to sci-fi and fantasy shows, but it applies to just about any kind of indefinitely long-running story. I will broaden the question: Is it possible for any long-running story to last without overturning its premise?

What’s a premise, in this context? The short answer is “what the story is about.” The premise of Smallville is that it’s about Clark Kent and Lex Luthor in their teen years, before they become superhero and supervillain, respectively. The premise of The Simpsons is that it’s a less fantastical, more dysfunctional look at the typical sitcom family. The premise of House, MD is that it’s a group of doctors who specialize in bizarre cases that nobody else can handle.

Let’s go for a more accurate definition. The premise is nothing more than the set of conditions, or limitations, that determines what a story is going to be about. And what it’s not going to be about, for that matter.

Example: Alec Holland is an experimental plant researcher in the bayous of Louisiana. One day, he becomes the victim of an act of sabotage. He mutates into the Swamp Thing, a man/plant hybrid monster, which must take revenge on the perpetrators and find a way to become human again.

Now, maybe there’s some other interesting stuff happening in Louisiana at the same time–political scandals, achievements in the arts, and so on–but that’s not in the story, because it falls outside of the conditions of the premise.

One condition of the premise is that Swamp Thing is trying to become human again. If he does, then his goal–the thing he wants, which drives him to do what he does–is met. There’s no more story. The main character is done. His character problem, the problem that falls within the conditions of the premise, has been solved.

Maybe he has other problems. Maybe Alec Holland has severe credit card debt, or a little cousin with autism. But that’s not in the story because it falls outside of the premise.

If Swamp Thing were a one-off story, like a novel or a movie, this would be no big deal. Assuming an optimistic ending, Swamp Thing would beat the bad guys, figure out how to become human again, and live happily ever after with the friends he meets along the way.

But Swamp Thing was an ongoing comic book series–to be continued forever, no end in sight.

Swamp Thing needs to become human again, or there’s no reason for the story to move. But if Swamp Thing solves this problem, the story ends and DC Comics is out of a monthly title. The premise, the set of conditions that determines what the story is about, has put the writers in a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t position.

There are a couple solutions. One of them, typically employed on TV shows, is to gradually lessen the importance of the conditions and hope the audience doesn’t notice. The premise becomes broader, more inclusive, less distinct. The story becomes less specific, more directionless, more bloated, more meandering. Everything but the kitchen sink can be included, with hit-or-miss results. This happened in Swamp Thing for a while, causing a decline in the quality of the series. On the Simpsons, this approach produced the finest TV comedy of the ‘90s.

A riskier solution is to, in one swift motion of authorial godhood, abruptly destroy the premise and implement a new one. If it works, the story has a new lease on life. If not, the story is reduced to utter ridiculousness. This solution was successfully implemented in Swamp Thing, courtesy of a daring-but-then-unknown British gentleman by the name of Alan Moore. In just a couple of key issues, he introduced plot points that completely redefined (let’s all say it together this time) the conditions that determine what the story is about.

This not only freed the books of the limitations that had come to shackle them, but introduced new ones that kept a strong sense of direction and did not pose the same Catch-22 as the previous ones.

In answer to the original question, I would say it’s necessary to do SOMETHING to the premise. Once you’ve explored every cubic inch of the box you’re in, there’s nothing else you can do. You either find a new box, or look for ways to expand the box you’re already in. Or you do something that, Seinfeld aside, is unthinkable in American television: you end the story before it becomes necessary to ask questions like this one.

This entry discusses the plot of the film The Usual Suspects frankly. As this film includes one of the most controversial surprise endings in recent memory, I advise those who haven’t seen it to avoid this entry until they have. In the meantime, feel free to peruse my many other fine articles!

On the one hand, the ending of The Usual Suspects could be a clever twist that forces you to reconsider everything. On the other, it could just be a crass dramatic con job. It all depends on how you look at it. There is little good to be said about the “It was all just a dream!” plot device in its various permutations. It’s usually the writers’ way of forcing their way out of a corner. It’s a literary blunt instrument. The Usual Suspects may or may not be an exception.

Is Verbal Kint really Keyser Soze? “Probably,” says director Bryan Singer. The case is never quite closed, as sure as it seems when Verbal strides out of the police station without his characteristic limp. (Watch the film very carefully. There is much evidence to implicate Verbal, but there is also some evidence that muddies the waters.) Though it’s not a certainty, this entry assumes that Verbal is most likely Soze.

If this is so, then the rug is pulled out from under the audience. Everything they’ve been led to believe over the course of the film, everything that has entranced them, has been an elaborate lie. Negative reactions are understandable. The audience members placed their trust in the story, only to have it wholly and cruelly undermined. It’s as though the whole movie up to the point of the revelation is rendered inert.

I will be so bold as to ask, “Why?” In a sense, every movie is invalidated sooner or later, usually the moment the end credits roll. The wool is inevitably pulled from the eyes of the audience. They’re forced to acknowledge that everything they’ve just seen was just a figment of somebody’s imagination. “It was all just a dream.”

What does The Usual Suspects do differently? Maybe it recognizes itself for what it is, whereas most fictions do not. It takes the audience out of the fiction just a little bit sooner than usual, so that they must understand it too. It’s like bringing up the lights in a theatrical performance while the set is still being changed. It confronts you, admits it’s manipulating you, and revels in the fact that it does not care.

That’s all well and good, but there’s a difference between accepting something and liking it. To that, all that can be said is this: as far as you were involved, prior to the Big Moment, were you enjoying yourself? The characters are all amusing in their own ways, but the plot is not the easiest to follow. Roger Ebert’s memorably succinct comment was, “To the extent that I understand, I don’t care.” The validity of the ending is irrelevant if the movie hasn’t already won the audience over.

But if it won you over, were you not intrigued by the ominous specter of Keyser Soze? Was there not sufficient suspense in the possibility that this demonic figure might win in the end? And were you not presented with a character that, supported by evidence, might reasonably be behind it all? Does it matter that much or all of Verbal’s story was a deception? Aren’t all stories deception? What else matters if the story can affect us in the moment, as a good story should?

Verbal Kint may just be another storyteller, and he may also be Keyser Soze. Whatever the case, he’ll flip you for real.

The Halloween season is over. Hopefully everybody has decompressed from their annual binge, whether it be on candy, booze, horror movies, or whatever else.

There is a distinct division within the horror genre. There’s the old-fashioned kind of horror, which aims to put you on the edge of your seat and prickle your anxieties. Then there’s the junk food: the stuff that serves up gore and violence as a means to an amusement, like monster trucks flattening rows of demolished cars.

There’s no use evaluating one version of horror against the other. Each has its audience. But the differences are worth discussion, which is why I thought I’d share this interview clip from comic book writer Alan Moore.

There was a British comic called Action, which received a great deal of negative attention from Mary Whitehouse and various campaigners for decency at the time because of the violence of its content…

One of the strips in it was called Hookjaw, and it was a blatant Jaws ripoff about a giant white shark. And I think it was originally drawn by a Spanish artist. I’m not sure of the artist’s name, but he was heavily into the gore on the strip. He would do it in a chops-smacking EC Comics fashion, where you saw every dangling eyeball, you saw every uprooted set of entrails… There is something about that kind of horror that is kind of reassuring, because it is so preposterous… it gives you an insulation against the material you’re reading. You can look at it and think, “Right, this is happening in some kind of horror universe, where everything that is possible… is going to happen, and happen spectacularly.”

When the artist finished on the strip, they replaced him with an artist from the girls’ comics, the British girls’ comics that were around at the time. And this was an artist who was mostly used to drawing the very demanding but largely conversational strips, which have got a completely different set of requirements [from] a horror strip. They show most people half-figure in the middle distance, having conversations in a completely mundane and lackluster environment, that is nevertheless drawn in perfect mundane detail.

So when the previous artist was on the strip… if he was called upon to show the discovery of a severed arm on the beach, then he would know how to do the shot. It would be right down there in the sand, next to the bloody end of the arm, looking up past all the exposed veins and dripping tendons and splintered bone, at the horrified people staring down at it in an upshot. Whereas the new artist on the strip, if he was asked to show the discovery of a severed arm on the beach, he would draw it as a middle-distance full-figure shot, where you’ve got a number of bland-looking people–therefore, realistic-looking people–standing around without contorted expressions, staring down at the awful fact of a severed human arm lying at their feet.

It wasn’t drawn to exaggerate the gore quotient. It was drawn in this completely quiet and unassuming way, the same that he would draw in a girls’ comic. But the horror was 10 times greater. It was because you were suddenly looking at a severed arm in an apparently real world, that was the same world that you could conceivably inhabit.

And this… I’m convinced, was the reason why his artwork worked so beautifully.

- Alan Moore, on Eddie Campbell’s contribution to From Hell
(Resonance FM, 10/23/2008)

The example of the two artists and their different approach to the same strip is an excellent illustration of the two varieties of horror. One kind savors every detail and lets it all hang out in a sort of hyper-realistic fantasy. The villain is the hero, the one with the personality; the victims are a blank canvas. They’re cannon fodder, and the object of the horror is to have fun at their expense.

The other kind relies on the commonality of everyday experiences to put the audience into the thick of it all. When the horrific element shows up, it’s all the more jarring, because it happens in a universe that isn’t deliberately “horror-ized.” The object could still be viewed as “fun,” but the fun comes at our own expense. We’re the victims, in a vicarious sense. The film Paranormal Activity is a relevant, if somewhat flawed, recent example, in that it takes the idea of horrific elements in a real(istic) world to an almost absurd degree.