You know, you spend the best years of your life arguing against the conservative notion that academia is full of navel-gazing, pointy-headed nudniks so out of touch with the real world that they suck up millions to pursue theses that anyone with an ounce of common sense could disprove in thirty seconds, and then something like this comes along.
In a story that smacks equally of grant-chasing and pure desperation, the Massachussets Institute of Technology -- providing dynamic proof of what happens when people trained in science attempt to apply objective standards to subjective fields of study -- has collaborated with a number of Hollywood big-shots to create something called the Center for Future Storytelling. The premise behind this colossal boondoggle is pure crankery: the movies, they say, are running out of stories. Despite record profits at the box office, we're apparently running dry of narrative (an argument their spokespeople bolster with such fist-shaking geezer logic as blaming text messaging, <i>Guitar Hero</I> and cell phones). It's basically an updated version of the argument advanced in the 1970s that thanks to the proliferation of rock 'n' roll music, we were rapidly running out of melody, and within thirty years there would be no such thing as a new song.
The whole thing is patently absurd. Narrative is a rhetorical device, not a natural resource; it can't be depleted like a coal mine. We'll no more run out of stories than we'll run out of metaphors. Even the act of defining different types of stories in order to prove that we're running out of them is a form of narrative. Do we see an increasing number of shitty movies based on old TV shows? Sure we do. But it's not because there aren't any original stories; it's because Hollywood keeps financing hackwork. And why does Hollywood keep financing hackwork? Because people pay to see it. Blaming some kind of imaginary depletion of the Narrative Zone on scriptwriters' inability to write decent endings ignores the fact that the whole thing is largely a business transaction, not a creative endeavor. And even if the ridiculous claim were true -- which it isn't -- it ignores the fact that there are other ways to tell innovative stories on film than narrative, and Hollywood has shown precious little interest in them, either.
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