In the July 10, 2026 post “Crisis in Storytelling,” I was thinking about the film Song Sung Blue and I wrote, “Somewhere in the translation of reality into drama something went wrong. “
Art, like anything else in life, demands we make choices about what we include in the work and how to present it to the audience. These choices demand we pay attention to our reality. The way we attend to our encounters and thoughts determines what we consider real and important and how we engage with it.
Since cinema is the art I’m most familiar with, I’m considering screenwriting as an example. I remember reading textbooks that described the script in terms of a formula – three-act structure, elements of each act, of each genre, etc, giving numerous examples from popular and critically acclaimed films. At the same time they warned how difficult it is to write truly fresh and original work (it is, in a sense!) and that achieving it comes by writing from personal experience and by accessing your unconscious. (hm, I should go back and re-read the chapter on the unconscious.)
I don’t completely disagree with any of the above instructions per se; they describe a real process in their specific way. However, what I have observed in the last decade or more, is that films and tv shows feel like I’m watching the same thing over and over, only with different faces, clothes and settings.
Instead of using the formula as help in translating real experience into drama, we have discarded reality altogether. It seems to me we have created a “reality” in our heads from ideas, stories, films we’ve heard and seen and we use the formula to keep recreating older art in a new guise rather than engage with reality afresh.
Don’t get me wrong, I know there is always some original and some imitation art on the far sides of the bell curve, but for me the bulk middle as a whole used to be a lot more relatable and fresh fifteen years ago then it is now.
