Aha! OK. If we view stories as constrained in some way, then it's easy for me to agree with you. For example, if Little Red Riding Hood is only about wolves and people, then it really doesn't matter how well the story is acted. But if it's *also* a more occult story about trust and the wolf is a metaphor for some types of people, then it *does* matter how well it's acted. Sure, maybe the moral of that story is relatively obvious. But if we allow ≥ 2 layers for that story, we should probably allow N layers for any given story.
Such complexity can be "unrolled" by being more explicit ... lots of dialog, lots of explaining characters thoughts, focus the camera on plot devices, etc. Or it can be *implied* with richly grounded acting. And the richer the acting, the more alternative inferences different audience members can make, whether they take the actor as sincere or not. The different layers will be differently sensitive to different audience members. Sure, maybe the main message comes through to everyone. But maybe layer_N only comes through to some tiny subculture (like staging various posters on the wall, or hand gestures, or whatever). Those not in the subculture would need that message to be unrolled for them. But further, I can continue to claim that roles are more expressive than topics because roles communicate the uncertainty/variation surrounding points of view that topics can only vaguely hint at. To me, this is why movie remakes are interesting ... and why different translations of the same fictions (e.g. https://www.npr.org/2019/01/14/684120470/after-24-years-scholar-completes-3-000-page-translation-of-the-hebrew-bible) are interesting. This is NOT to say that some messages can't be communicated without an apparently sincere vehicle. It's a meta-message about all the potential alternatives that vehicle *might* have taken. Awareness of that exploding graph of possibilities surrounding the story's particular ephemeris is what makes a story engrossing. On 1/28/19 1:05 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote: > The "topic" is the content of the story, and there has to be some mutual > understanding about it by the writer/director/actor/audience for it to mean > anything. It seems like the potential importance of the "role" is to say > some messages can't be communicated without an actor who is taken to be > sincere. That's what I have a problem with. -- ☣ uǝlƃ ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
