Real Rhinos and Irreal Economies (Young Playwrights Programme)
The following blog is from an article I wrote for the Bunbury Banter Theatre Company’s Young Playwrights Programme, published on the 19th of August, 2020.
Prologue
I recently read the 1959 play Rhinoceros by Eugene Ionesco and watched the performance of it by Chabot College's Theatre Arts. Both are available to read and watch for free online, links are provided at the bottom.
The story essentially follows a man trying to go about his daily routines but is interrupted by the sudden appearances of Rhinoceroses around the town, stirring the town up into a debate on what kind they are and how many there were, with semantics and details getting in the way of the people addressing the Rhinos themselves. It is soon revealed that these Rhinos were the people of the town who became radicalised into accepting a disease that turns one into a Rhino, with people, later on in the pandemic, accepting and tolerating the normalised idea of Rhinos being everywhere, rejecting any discussion on the morality or consequences of such, and choosing to benignly join them, leaving our protagonist alone, screaming to no one, that his will not capitulate.
After a while, it becomes clear that the people being turned into Rhinos is a metaphor for people becoming Nazis, through radicalisation then peer pressure then tolerance then simply because it is the current way of things, which warrants a second viewing to pick up on the nods that one might miss the first time around. The story is both comedic and intellectual, with the surreal fantasy and total absurdity coming from the character's reactions rather than the transformation of the people into Rhinos. This Kafkaesque tale of how quickly a town can be swept up in such philosophies also touches on ideas, nearer the end, of McCarthyism, which would have been fresh in the contemporary mind when this was written. There's a lot to say about Rhinoceros, and I'm sure to either write about it in the future or write something inspired by it, but for now my mind is grappled with something more personal that the play has reminded me of.
Act I - Thesis and Antithesis
"well, that would never happen" was a phrase I heard a lot growing up.
As a easily distracted child I often only heard it when it was in relation to things I was interested in, like entertainment. I would watch Doctor Who at eight years old and I'd hear my parents complain about how the government would never fund a massive flying aircraft carrier to fight aliens like the Valiant. It made enjoying shows a lot harder when I was constantly told by adults that my science-fiction show about aliens wasn't correct, of course I knew it wasn't real but poking holes in it still wasn't fun. This was at its worst when I started trying to write my own stories. Anything wholesome or worldly written by this literal child would be met by criticism from adults saying that it wasn't realistic; 'why would they forgive each other, people don't do that' and 'how can a whole world be happy, that's not how the real world works'. Boys my age were into guns and wars but I was happy writing nice stories, but my family and teachers and friends were concerned by this and basically forced me into being more boyish and into manly conflicts, so my happy cuddly world suddenly had an evil world called 'Rock World' where all the people had the word 'killer' somewhere in their name, because war and conflict was apparently realistic and happy endings don't happen in 'the real world'.
Due to this, I grew up more critical of my own work. I couldn't stifle my childhood wonder, so I kept with ideas of fantasy and science fiction, but I was far more aware of implications. I was still young and naive so most of these criticisms were valid, although could have been delivered in a more positive way, such as when I included time travel into the third act of one of my stories and then explored all the paradoxes it came with while forgetting the actual story I was writing, which was met with scorn from a parent who thought it was 'wholly unconvincing'. This also led me into learning about story structures and proper characterisation and cause and effect, all to make a more convincing story. I mean, writing something where Act III was twice the length of the first two acts, could you imagine?...
But then, in my late teens, I started to realise that the criticism from these people weren't of how realistic these things were in the story, but out of the story.
The reason my parents complained about the Valiant was because aliens didn't exist, not because they thought a government wouldn't respond to alien attacks with building an warship to fight aliens. The reason my cuddly world was incorrect wasn't because they thought cultures can't be wholesome, it was because Earth wasn't wholesome in their eyes and therefore no society could be, as well as it being a planet made of clouds which they thought couldn't exist because it doesn't exist right now in the real world. When they criticised Iron Man's suit, it wasn't because it had some core problem with it's design or functionality, it was because power armour didn't already exist so it's unrealistic. The reason my time travel story was 'wholly unconvincing' wasn't because of the poor plotting, it was because time travel is made up.
This revelation to me came at the same time the same people were saying that the idea of a certain American becoming President of the United States was a ridiculous idea because it was unrealistic, and as their prophecy was more and more likely to be rejected by fate, I became more and more disillusioned with their stance on possibility.
I couldn't go back to my wide-eyed optimism anymore; I didn't want to. I could reject years of what little development I had, so instead I moved forward on my own. I looked at their thesis of critical thinking and the antithesis of that which was being critical in all the wrong ways, and in the most pretentious teenager way, I wrote a painfully thesauric essay using Hegelian dialectics and found my best path forward.
Act II a- Synthesis
Enter stage left: Verisimilitude.
The Valiant in Doctor Who made sense in universe because humanity had been attacked by aliens, confirming their existence and threat, and so the governments responded accordingly and funded a massive flying aircraft carrier that could meet the aliens in the sky and fight them. The actions make logical sense within the context of their storyworld. It wasn't real life, of course it wasn't, but the events within the storyworld separated that reality from ours and so the consequences would be different too. What matters is that the actions make sense within the reality it has created. If the government did what they usually do in Doctor Who, which is nothing at all, despite numerous alien attacks, then that would be unrealistic, as there's a clear military threat they must meet. The society within a storyworld being dynamic and reactive to events is good worldbuilding and having them react realistically to events gives the appearance of being true or real, helping one to suspend their disbelief and enjoy the show. That is verisimilitude; the appearance of being true or real. This is fiction 101, I know, but it goes further. This isn't just me explaining to you that stories aren't real, I'm explaining that they are to themselves.
Act II b - Contradiction
Nowadays, being a professional pain in the arse who loves stories and wants stories to always be their best or better, I criticise a lot. In fact, that's where much of my story ideas come from: I see a missed opportunity or contradictions within a storyworld that could be expanded into a story all by itself.
A few months ago, I was in a group watching a friend play the fantasy game Skyrim and I offhand mentioned that the magic system wasn't realistic. Instant humiliation; probably should have worded that far better. After we finished laughing about how I called magic "unrealistic" I worked to clarify. I didn't mean that magic doesn't exist in our world, I'm saying it doesn't work in their world. Skyrim is a great game, don't get me wrong, it has fantastic gameplay and an engaging story and a beautifully fleshed out world, beautifully fleshed out up to a point. The magic seems added on as an afterthought. It's a fantasy game so of course they're not going to skip on magic, but the consequences of such haven't been incorporated into the storyworld even a little. The histories include mention of magic and there's a College full of Mages, but the spells themselves are treated as if they're just the plain concept of 'magic' and nothing more.
If you get arrested in the game, they take your weapons from you and throw you in the cage, but you can just turn around and throw a fireball at them. The fire can burn people alive but functionally it can't burn the wooden building you're in. Nowhere does it say the wood is magic or unburnable, you just can't, as if they didn't think of it. There's also a spell in which you can conjure a sword from air, it can be learned at the start of the game and costs very little mana (a rechargeable energy) to use, and it is stronger than a regular iron sword that most NPCs use. Magic isn't a genetic thing, it's something anyone can learn, so why hasn't everyone learned this. Why are their armies that have each soldier carrying a heavy sword when you can teach them all how to conjure their own, making them less encumbered, giving them the opportunity to always have a weapon when they need one, and saving money on swords? This could easily be explained in universe if they established some kind of blacksmith cabal that meant the people weren't allowed to use that kind of magic and had to pay for regular swords, but they didn't. So why hasn't the storyworld adapted to the worldbuilding elements?
Skyrim Shopkeepers can't witness theft if they don't see you stealing, leading to players just placing baskets over their heads and taking everything in the building.
This is a big problem in the game, as they have a consistent problem with going broader than deeper. They add more new spells to give the player more abilities; fire, electricity, ice, conjuring, black holes, resurrecting the dead. But they never went deeper. Just looking at that list you can see all the depth each one can have that would drastically change the landscape of their cultures. Fire would mean more this society akin to feudal Europe could advance straight into the industrial age, electricity means essentially free power that could bring this primitive society right into the modern age, ice means an interesting career in medieval refrigeration, conjuring could provide a new ethical dilemma on companionship, black holes could lead to god knows what, and resurrection means armies of the dead or even just keeping your loved ones alive. Every single spell should have shaped the world of Skyrim, and yet the game mechanics haven't implemented any kind of emergent gameplay. Excusing magic systems for not having a realistic impact on the world because 'magic isn't realistic' is not valid media criticism.
This ability was theorized by the audience for months before it was introduced
Act III a - Solution
A story that has done deeper magic systems very well and have an engaging amount of verisimilitude is Avatar: The Last Airbender. In this world, there are four kinds of magic users: firebenders, airbenders, waterbenders, and earthbenders. Each one uses a style of martial arts that allows them to use and manipulate their own respective element and we were shown ways in which these four basic elements have been creatively explored with depth. There is a Fire Nation that is already in the height of their industrialisation while the rest of the world is still using medieval technology, simply because the easily generated fire allows for easy energy. The Earth Kingdom exists with massive walls protecting them because groups of benders can easily erect one in seconds. Waterbenders can, if they focus hard enough, bend the water within a person's body to essentially 'bloodbend' and move people against their will. A blind earthbender, who can see through vibrations in the ground, uses her unique senses to feel the earth elements within metal and becomes the world's first metalbender. And in a show that takes place decades in the future, when they've created electricity, we see a blue-collar job is firebenders focusing their power and creating lightning to power the electrical grid of a city.
The depth Avatar: The Last Airbender explored makes the magic system seem more believable because it's employed and exploited in every way imaginable, and that is simply with the magic of controlling four basic elements. Bending the elements isn't possible in real life like it is in that children's show, but it is given the appearance of realism within it's storyworld by asking 'what would a world be like if this kind of magic existed?' and then exploring that in great detail.
To be clear, internal realism makes stories more believable and gives more storytelling opportunities, as well as keeping an audience engaged if they are able to put two and two together and see a possible consequence of what's being explored. If there's a clear exploit in the elements you've established, then either remove the elements or address it head on.
Let's say there's a fantasy country that has an entire economy around gold coins. Then a character is playing around with benign magic and comes across the spell to transmute any matter into gold. Suddenly the economy is in peril. It will take a while for this knowledge to spread, and in that time the character turns rocks into gold and sells them for gold coins. They do this over and over and live rich. The news gets around and now everyone is turning anything into gold. Suddenly the currency is worthless, the state is in crisis. Now the storyworld is faced with an awful situation and must choose how to advance; do they create a new currency and grant everyone the same lump sum, and if so do they give the powerful more, do they give business owners more, do they give everyone new money equally? This opens up a lot of political debates and allows for social movements and conflicts to arise. If the country is already in turmoil, then all that is just increased. If there's a civil war, then both sides now can be scrutinised for how they propose to deal with it. If the country is controlled by a global empire, then this could led to the eventual collapse of said empire. So much could happen. These are possible solutions to the chemical mixture that is worldbuilding.
So anyways that's another spell in Skyrim, the spell to turn any ore into gold, in a nation that runs on a currency of gold, and yet these opportunities are not explored in the slightest. Game of the Year 2011.
Act III b - Resolution
Internal Realism, also known as Internal Consistency, doesn't just apply to magic, it applies to everything that is established within a story.
If there's a character who is great at martial arts fighting against an army or armed soldiers, don't have the armed soldiers move from their safe distance and get right up close to the martial artists and then aim their weapons at them, that's not what anyone with a brain would do. Tyrion Lannister was set up for four seasons of Game of Thrones to be a cunning and intelligent character, winning wars and proving clever in political intrigue, but for the final four seasons every single idea he has goes horribly wrong because he's only said to be intelligent and his words don't match that; such as when fighting against a villain that can raise the dead, he decides to hide the women and children in the crypts, along with all the corpses. If you set up a world that is just like our own, physics and all, and then have a character get thrown through a brick wall, destroying the wall, and then having the character stand up and brush it off; that is failed internal realism. You can't just brush that criti
This can also work the other way around. If you establish the world as more abstract, then you can have unrealistic things occur so long as it can function within that framework. Consider movies like Melancholia (2011) that tells the tale of a woman living with depression, and so the world is similar to ours but with one distinct difference; a rouge planet is crashing into Earth. In a story that establishes the world to be like ours, the gravity of Earth would immediately be messed with and the people would be dead before the planet hits, which would be very quick as the gravity would pull them together. But the movie opens with abstract visuals that could not happen in real life, showing the viewers that this story is not depicting reality but a metaphor.cism off with 'it's a story about spies and assassins, it doesn't have to be realistic'.
One must always consider the implications of the world they create.
If you establish a quaint French town, and everything is normal like our real world, and then you introduce a Rhinoceros, and/or the Nazi the Rhino is a metaphor of, charging through the street, then have the people appropriately react to that in a way that makes sense in both truths and in a way that delivers the message of the story, such as satire.
Realistic stories must not be real life stories. If you think a story is bad solely because it is not real, especially when it is not trying to be real in real life terms, then that is bad media criticism.
When creating a new world, if you invent a car, you must also invent the traffic jam.
Doesn't Look Realistic, But Feels Realistic
Epilogue
When I write stories, I try my best to ensure it has Internal Realism. I would never use the line 'it's not real so it doesn't have to be realistic'.
As storytellers, our primary goal is to tell a convincing story. If we tell a story that nobody can be immersed in, or engaged in, or believes in, then we've not told a very good story. And by "believes in" I don't mean actually believe the events before their eyes is actually happening, I mean belief in the stage sense. When actors assume a role, they are not lying to the audience, not do they believe they are truly the person they inhabit, otherwise the actor who plays Hamlet would freak out at the start of every play because a ghost appears. Instead, the audience and actors do not believe what they see is real, but they believe that it is emotionally true, that it is grounded, that it is authenticity in art. The audience is pulled in the story and treat it, with a certain disconnect, as if it were real. If they see a bomb with a timer under a table where people are eating, they treat that as actually happening within the storyworld, and therefore start thinking about when it will explode, what will happen, who will be hurt, what will be the consequences of this. But if the playwright simply forgets the bomb and the story carries on without it, then the audience will be confused as to where it went, why it didn't explode, and why the natural consequences did not occur. The writer can turn around and say 'well it's not real so it doesn't matter' then they are a bad storyteller because they would fundamentally misunderstand the art form.
I will argue day and night for stories to be their best or better. If you can't tell a good story with the elements you have, you're either not treating them right or you've got the wrong elements. Even broken internal realism, like with the case of the transmutation of matter, can be deconstructed and put together with the same parts to tell a better story.
It's better to have the people shout, "OH A RHINOCEROS" than "Oh, a Rhinoceros?".
