{"id":1267,"date":"2021-02-25T15:48:57","date_gmt":"2021-02-25T20:48:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/?p=1267"},"modified":"2021-02-25T21:48:44","modified_gmt":"2021-02-26T02:48:44","slug":"what-is-the-why-sometimes-i-just-dont-care","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/what-is-the-why-sometimes-i-just-dont-care\/","title":{"rendered":"What is the Why? What if I Don’t Care?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
What *is* that thing? How can it be on the wing of an airborne plane? Does it really matter?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Something I\u2019ve found frustrating as a writer of speculative fiction is when people want detailed explanations of why all the bad, freaky stuff happens\u00a0in my stories. (Or any book or TV show or movie, really.) Why is the house haunted? Why is this person immortal? How\u00a0does the phone know what its owner is thinking? \u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

This issue has started bugging me again because, as we do just about every New Year\u2019s weekend, Bill and I watched a marathon of The Twilight Zone <\/i>on the SyFy Channel. Not all the episodes are winners, but as most of us know, the best ones are absolute genre legends.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Sometimes the episodes offer explanations for the weird, spooky shit that happens.\u00a0<\/span>But quite often they do not, and it\u2019s the ones that provide no<\/em> reason for their bizarre events that are often the most instantly-recognized classics.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Take \u201cNightmare at 20,000 Feet,\u201d which you probably know a little about even if you\u2019ve never seen it. William Shatner? The monster on the wing of the plane?\u00a0Yeah, that one.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

We are never told what that monster actually is.<\/p>\n

We are never told why it messes with Shatner and nobody else on that flight.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

We are never told how it knows to jump out of sight if anyone else on the plane might see it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Hell, we\u2019re never even told how it can survive outside at 20,000 feet and hop around on the wing of an airborne plane with no trouble.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Would the episode be better or more effective if we were flat-out told what it is, why it\u2019s able to do what it does, and why only Shatner sees it?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Maybe, but I don\u2019t think so. The strength of that episode is in Shatner\u2019s performance as an extremely nervous, mentally fragile flier who\u2019s seeing this creature do dangerous things to his plane but can\u2019t make anyone else believe him. Does it really matter what<\/i> the terrible thing is?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I think not.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And then there\u2019s \u201cLiving Doll,\u201d which, while not quite<\/i> as iconic as \u201cNightmare,\u201d is one of the show\u2019s most popular episodes. Telly Savalas stars as Erich, a married man in an extremely tense relationship with his wife Annabelle and his stepdaughter Christie.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

(May I just take a moment as a writer to admire the effective way the show communicates that information? In the beginning of the episode\u00a0Annabelle, returning home from a shopping trip with Christie, tells the little girl to hurry upstairs with her new doll before Erich sees it, and that\u2019s literally all you need to hear<\/b> to understand what this family\u2019s life is like. *chef\u2019s kiss*)\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Erich\u2019s pissed off when Annabelle buys Christie\u00a0a talking doll he deems too expensive; he can’t father children of his own and seems to take Christie’s very existence as salt in that particular wound. And when Christie’s new talking doll takes a dislike to Erich and starts threatening him whenever they’re alone together\u2026well<\/i>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

We\u2019re never told why or how the doll can do these things. Are all Talky Tinas sentient and homicidal, or just the one little Christie happened to bring home?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I dunno. Does it matter to this particular story?\u00a0Let\u2019s say the show offered a concrete explanation about Talky Tina\u2019s behavior. Maybe it\u2019s one of these:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

– Talky Tina is the embodiment of Christie\u2019s suppressed hatred for her mean asshole of a stepdad; \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

– Talky Tina is possessed by a demon;<\/p>\n

– Talky Tina is possessed by the ghost of a recently-executed serial killer;<\/p>\n

– Talky Tina\u2019s manufacturer set her behavior switch to \u201cEvil\u201d instead of \u201cGood.\u201d (That\u2019s what happened in The Simpsons<\/i> Halloween parody of this episode. Which is hilarious.)<\/p>\n

Would knowing any of those things make the episode more enjoyable? Would they even really matter? I say no. Talky Tina,\u00a0and Erich\u2019s responses to her,\u00a0are wrecking the already-poor relationships he has with his wife and stepdaughter; the situation brings all kinds of family resentments boiling to the surface. It really doesn\u2019t matter how\u00a0Talky Tina can do what she does.<\/p>\n

You can play this game with other popular Twilight Zone episodes. How come Anthony from \u201cIt\u2019s A Good Life\u201d has all those terrifying powers?<\/i> Why were doubles following people around in \u201cMirror Image?\u201d<\/i> How did Marsha the mannequin in \u201cAfter Hours\u201d actually have a <\/i>mother?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Does it matter?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In an era when everyone wants to know exactly what things are and why things are going wrong, the power of imagination\u00a0has been lost. Explanations can\u00a0detract from the horror rather than enhancing it.\u00a0If you write a story like “Living Doll” that gives me a\u00a0reason why Talky Tina can do what she does, and I think your reason\u00a0is stupid, the entire story collapses. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think it\u2019s an accident that some of the most popular Twilight Zone<\/i> episodes don\u2019t give the viewer any reason for why everything\u2019s gone all freaky.\u00a0<\/span>Sometimes weird or outright awful things happen for no obvious reason, and you simply can’t avoid them. You can drive yourself mad asking “Why?” and never get an answer. That\u2019s terrifying. That’s also life.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Something I\u2019ve found frustrating as a writer of speculative fiction is when people want detailed explanations of why all the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[38,10,85,34,5],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1267"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1267"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1267\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1274,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1267\/revisions\/1274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}