Underworld 3: What's in a Name?

At the request of Phanisvara prabhu I'm writing something about the latest movies...

On the way home from work today I finally noticed the billboard that Param Satya has told me about a number of times - it's the one for the new movie "Underworld: Rise of the Lychans" [website with trailer].

I've seen the first two movies of the Underworld franchise, and while the leather/vinyl suit is cool there is just something about them that... misses the spot. I can't exactly put my finger on it, but I think I'm getting close.

The movies are pretty slick. They obviously have a reasonably high budget (that is, by modern Western standards - in a more objective sense it might be considered obscenely high to produce 90 minutes of entertainment).

The idea is kind of cliched - vampires vs werewolves. It's doesn't really tap into the present zeitgeist, zombies. In that sense maybe the aspect of a metaphor for real life is missing. That could be it - it just feels hollow. A lot of times when I watch a movie I go away with some realisation about life - for instance I watched "Fun with Dick and Jane" [wikipedia] and realised that the recent economic collapse is not some isolated event, but merely World.com and Enron on a much bigger scale - it's not just industry that is corrupt, but the modern economy itself.

However, Underworld movies produce no such response in me. It's like the first time I heard about prasadam, spiritual food. Late one night I was sitting in a Subway with my fellow band members and Mandy, the singer, looked like she was about to cry. I asked her what was wrong and she said to me: "This food has no love in it. My friend is a Hare Krishna and they always cook their food with love and devotion. This food is empty." That's how the Underworld movies feel — like empty calories — slick, but deeply unsatisfying.

Every ___ has a beginning­­­­

The tagline for the new movie is: "Every War Has a Beginning"

This kind of sums it up really. It's a tagline, like every other movie has a tag line. It follows the same form, but it has no substance. It's as if the movie makers are imitating what they understand to be the form, but with no realization of the application, and no message.

Every War Has a Beginning?

No kidding. Every thing has a beginning. Tell us something we don't know. Essentially they've said nothing, except that the movie is about the beginning of the war between the vampires and the werewolves. Ho hum.

Now if they had said: "Every War Has a Hero", that would have been more interesting. Does every war have a hero? Maybe, maybe not. Come along and find out. This movie will show a specific case of a war and how it has a hero, and this specific instance will prove, or at least make the case, that this is a general principle.

As well, "hero" is something specific to "war", or at least conflict. Maybe there is some lesson that can be derived that in any conflict we are called upon to be courageous, step up, take a hit, and make a difference through our courage and sacrifice.

But "Every War Has a Beginning?" First of all, I don't care. Second of all, even if you prove it, you haven't really achieved anything or said anything, and I still don't care.

The Importance of Titling

Taglines and titles are important. These are sometimes the only marketing you have. People make a decision to give more time to your message, or not, based on this snippet.

I attended a talk by Damian Conway, aikido artist, university lecturer, public speaker, and one of the designers of the Perl programming language, where he talked about the importance of the title of your talk.

Suggestions that he gave were: to phrase it as a question, to combine two dissimilar things, to create mystery.

Creating cognitive dissonance, putting two dissimilar things together in a way that provokes the brain to say: "Say what?", is a powerful tool.

Examples of creating cognitive dissonance:

• Pastor Mark Driscoll's sermon titles (example: "Biblical Oral Sex" - see the excellent recent article Who Would Jesus Smack Down?, its own title a good example of intriguing cognitive dissonance, for more on Mark and his revolutionary conservative ministry)
• Jason "Matacular" Fladlien, the Hare Krishna rapper - "more mack daddy than meditation, more hip hop than Hare Krishna" [album review]
• Pirates vs Ninjas
• This sketch from the 1977 comedy "Kentucky Fried Movie":
  

The humour in that sketch comes from juxtaposing two radically different, even contradictory things. Just like "Fun with Dick and Jane", which juxtaposes the classic "Dick and Jane" children's books (and includes the line "Run, Dick, Run!") with the criminal lifestyle of the protagonists. Fun with Dick and Jane has a message, and the entertainment factor is used to sustain audience interest, whereas the KFM sketch is just the comedy component with no message, like a short demonstration of the technique.

Cognitive dissonance generates an important factor in entertainment and in stimulating and holding attention - tension.

Placing the Bhagavad-gita [read it online] right smack bang in the middle of the major action scene of the Mahabharata is a study in cognitive dissonance and tension. You can taste this setup in the opening of the Gita - Dhrtarastra asks: "What happened when my sons and the sons of Pandu assembled at Kuruksetra, desiring to fight?" If the writers of Underworld had written Bhagavad-gita the answer would be: "They fought", followed by 90 minutes and millions of dollars of predictable special effects and plot development.

Instead, in Bhagavad-gita we are treated to an expose of tensions and resolutions, beginning with protagonist Arjuna's emotional breakdown in the midst of the battlefield, and finally resolving with his determination to fight (there should be unpredictability, but it should be balanced with resolution). It's a cliffhanger, with a spiritual message.

Putting this to use

There is nothing wrong with being interesting while being profound. Listen to George Carlin to get an idea of how a guy can be a philosopher and commentator on society, reach a popular audience, and get a message across while making people laugh.

Keeping the audience's attention long enough for them to get the message, and giving it to them in ways that make it stick is important.

Here are five tips to help you do that:

1. Design a provocative, attention-grabbing title, one that leaves a question hanging and a promise to resolve it when people come to hear your message.

2. Tell two parallel stories, and resolve the tension between the two at the end. For example, you could relate a historical tale and a contemporary one, showing that the principles underlying them are the same. [read an article on the Parallel Narrative Design Pattern]

3. Put two completely unrelated things together at random, then brainstorm how to connect them. This is a technique for stimulating lateral thinking popularised by the man who coined the very term "lateral thinking" - Edward de Bono [wikipedia | website].

4. Use multiple media to reinforce your message. If you do this, make sure that they don't conflict. For example, if you use a projector, don't speak while you project words onto a screen. The same part of the brain processes both speech and written words. If you speak, then project a picture that supports your message. As one pandit/wag put it: "You're supposed to be doing the talking. If your slides are doing the talking, then what are you doing - interpretative dance?". Use this in combination with the lateral thinking technique above to generate positive cognitive dissonance by using a "random" picture, then having the audience "make the connection" in their head. This is also a mnemonic (memory) technique that will make people remember it. [read more on Mnemonic Devices]

5. Follow a predictable pattern, then deviate from it. You have to be careful with this, because if you get it wrong it can really flop. A great example of this that I saw in action was the scene in Oliver Stone's movie Natural Born Killers where Rodney Dangerfield appears with his daughter. The audience was used to seeing Rodney Dangerfield in comedy, and Stone made the scene follow the comedy pattern, including the canned laughter. The audience fell into the pattern and laughed along. Stone gradually morphed the scene into something quite different, involving an abusive incestual relationship. At some point in the process the audience becomes aware of themselves laughing at something and finding it inappropriate. For me, it made me aware of the comedy pattern conditioning. It's a very Zen technique [read about Zen koans, or read a whole stack of them].

That is all.