Sometimes there are things I know I'm going to write about, but I have to wait for them to congeal inside my head before I can pour them out. I've been feeling this one back there for a while, but it isn't coming together. Nonetheless, I'm going to write about it now, just because it's bothering me. So be aware that this isn't going to be as good as I really wish it would be.

Escapist entertainment has a long and rich history. What occurred to me was that when we judge escapist entertainment to decide if we like it, there are two dimensions.

First, how good is it at transporting us to another place, another situation? The ideal is that we completely lose awareness of ourselves and are, at least for a while, totally immersed in the place the writer(s) wish(es) to take us. This is the "Oh, my God, I suddenly realized that my muscles are all stiff and my bladder is full and it's 4 in the morning because I've been reading this book without moving for six hours" effect. We'll call this one "transport".

Second, is it taking us to a place we want to be? We'll call this one "destination".

For any given person, the overall desirability of any given piece of escapist entertainment will be the product of of a mental "transport" score (basically as a percentage) and a mental "destination" score. The "best" entertainment will score high on both scales, which is to say that it is very good at taking us to a place we very much want to be.

This is critical: it's the product, not the sum.

And now we get to the point: generally speaking, there won't be a lot of disagreement about the transport score for any given series. Most of the heated arguments will be about the destination -- and the reason the arguments get heated is that the desirability of the destination is largely subjective.

What you get is instances where most members of the audience like the destination, instances where few like it, and in the most controversial cases you have maybe half the audience that are entranced with the destination and half who hate it. That's where the most heated arguments happen.

Some examples: Noir is one of the best series I've ever seen. It's one of the few series I've given four stars to. I stand by that evaluation, but over the years I've come to realize that it was very effective at transporting me, but it took me to a place I didn't want to be. That's why, on my "future series" list, like Noir is a reason why I'm not interested in a series. I don't rewatch Noir. I'm very glad I watched it, but I don't ever want to watch another series like it.

I'm willing to give Maria-sama ga Miteru the benefit of the doubt and assume that it's very good at transport. I haven't seen any of it, however, and have no intention of ever watching any of it, because that's a destination I have no interest in.

What got me thinking about this was that I was contrasting Planetes and Tenchi Muyo: GXP in my mind, to try to figure out why TMGXP has so captivated me, whereas Planetes left me entirely cold. I finally decided that the reason was that Planetes was taking me to a place I wasn't interested in going.

It's near future, and about people living and working in low earth orbit, using equipment which is at least a plausible extrapolation of current technology. There are a lot of people out there who are obsessed with this particular thing. These are the people who joined the L5 Society back in the day, and spent their spare time trying to design cheap launch systems and orbital colonies.

I was never very fascinated by that, and these days I'm not fascinated with it at all. So I'm willing to give Planetes the benefit of the doubt and assume that it's extremely good at transport. Problem is, the destination is one I'm not interested in. 100% transport multiplied by 0% destination is 0% good, and that's why the series leaves me cold.

Tenchi Muyo: GXP probably isn't as good at transport as Planetes, but for me at least the destination is far, far more desirable. It's arguably fantasy rather than science fiction. But it's light-hearted, and it gives me a protagonist I like, and there are lots of pretty girls, and the visuals are much more interesting to me (and not just the pretty girls), and it's a place I like to visit, a place I'd like to go to. So even if it isn't technically as good of storytelling (which is to say, its transport score is lower) the drastically more desirable destination is, for me, more than enough to make it a lot more fun. 80% transport multiplied by 90% destination is 72% good, which beats 0% good.

And that's why I got six episodes into Planetes and stopped watching, but I've watched Tenchi Muyo: GXP all the way through at least five times now.

I think this is part of why random unsolicited recommendations are so worthless. The person provides what they think is the final score, but usually doesn't take into account the subjectivity of the destination component of that score. The young woman who kept nagging me to watch Ghost in the Shell: Stand-alone Complex kept saying how good it was -- but the reason I wasn't interested was because the show destination wasn't a place I wanted to be taken.

There are people who love vampire stories. They love to be taken to dark places, spooky places. They like being made to vicariously feel fear and horror. I don't like those things. There are people who love shoujo-ai stories, too, and they're the ones who love Maria-sama ga Miteru. I don't, and I won't be watching it.

I think that on a subliminal level I was always aware of this dichotomy, the bifurcated nature of evaluation of a show, because I've always tried in my reviews to present enough information about it to allow my readers to decide if they might like a show even when I did not. I try to provide a representative variety of frame grabs, because the graphic design is obviously part of the "transport" evaluation. I also try to describe the show enough to make it so someone else can get a pretty good idea of the destination, albeit without revealing spoilers. And I've been told more than once by readers that they've read reviews of series I didn't like, and decided they might like them anyway, and given them a try and did like them.

Which is good, because I know that my opinions are not universally held. I'm not the arbiter of all good taste. (God knows.)

UPDATE: The multiplicative nature of the final score is the reason why a desirable destination alone isn't enough to make a series worth watching. Girls Bravo doesn't have as desirable a destination for me as TMGXP, but it's a damned sight more desirable for me than Planetes. On the other hand, Girls Bravo is dreadful at transport, and that's why the show is shit.

A "masterpiece" is a show where the transport is superb, and the destination is considered very desirable by a large majority of audience. In other words, Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings.

A "cult movie" or "cult show" is one which has a destination that a small number of people are obsessed with but the majority aren't interested in, or outright despise. (In other words, "Rocky Horror Picture Show".)

I think this explains Miyazaki's films a bit better. Miyazaki is an outstanding story-teller, but his destinations vary all over the map. For me, Spirited Away and My Neighbor Totoro had outstanding destinations, but Castle in the Sky and Nausica of the Valley of the Winds were not so good. Miyazaki's transport score is always extremely high, but his destinations are hit-or-miss.

UPDATE: Mark points out that the word "immersion" is probably a better description of the first factor than my choice of "transport".

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 03:23 PM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
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