The Anatomy of Story (22 page)

In the satiric-ironic form, you make the moral argument by constantly setting up a contrast between a character who thinks he is being moral-supporting the beliefs of the society—and the effects of those actions and beliefs, which are decidedly immoral. The main steps of the satiric-ironic argument go like this:

■ The hero lives within a clearly defined social system. Typically, at least one character explains in part or in whole the values on which the system is based.

■ The hero believes strongly in the system and is determined to rise to the top. He decides to pursue a goal having to do with ambition or romance.

■
An opponent who also believes strongly in the system and its values goes after the same goal.

■ As the characters compete for the goal, their beliefs lead them to take silly and destructive actions.

■ The argument of action in the middle of the story comes from a sequence of juxtapositions between characters who insist they are acting morally, expressing the highest ideals of the society, and the disastrous results.

■
In the battle, the pretentiousness and hypocrisy on both sides is exposed.

■ The hero has a self-revelation that usually involves questioning the value of the system's beliefs.

■ The hero, or a second character, often undercuts the self-revelation, showing that the self-revelation hasn't really been learned.

■ The hero takes moral action that is right personally but usually has no effect on the foolishness or destructiveness of the system.

■ There is a marriage of friendship or love, suggesting that the couple will form a better microcosm of their own but have little effect on the larger society.

The satiric-ironic argument is used in
Pride and Prejudice, Emma
(and its modern version,
Clueless), American Beauty, Wedding Crashers, Madame

Bovary, The Cherry Orchard, The Graduate, M*A*S*H, Ton Jones, Waiting for Guffman, The Player, Being John Malkovich, Down and Out in Beverly Hills, The Prince and the Pauper
(and its modern version,
Trading Places), La Cage aux Folles, The Importance of Being Earnest, Private Benjamin, Dog Day Afternoon, Victor/Victoria, Shampoo, Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice,
and
Lost in America.

Emma

(by Jane Austen, 1816) J
ane Austen is the master of the satiric-ironic moral argument, and
Emma is
probably her finest achievement. Here is the moral sequence of this classic satire:

■ Emma is a headstrong, self-righteous, insensitive, and socially blind young woman constantly trying to be a matchmaker.

■ Her first goal is to get Harriet, who is an orphan, married.

■ Believing in the class system but also self-deceptive in thinking Harriet is of finer background than she appears, Emma convinces her to turn down a marriage proposal from farmer Robert Martin.

■ She also convinces Harriet that the higher-born rector, Mr. Elton, should be her husband. In the process, Emma unwittingly leads Mr. Elton to believe that it is she, Emma, not Harriet, who is interested in him.

■ The result of these well-intentioned but immoral actions is that Harriet loses the offer of a good man and that Mr. Elton proposes his undying love to Emma. He is then crushed to find out that Emma does not share his love in the least.

■
At a ball, Mr. Elton, now married to someone else, embarrasses Harriet by refusing to dance with her. But she is saved when Mr. Knightley steps in to be her partner.

■ Frank, a visitor to the county, saves Harriet from some unpleasant characters on the road. Emma wrongly believes Frank is Harriet's new love interest, even though he is quite superior to her in social position.

■
At an outdoor party, Emma flirts with Frank, even though she is not interested in him and it clearly upsets another visitor to the social group, the beautiful Jane.

■ Emma also humiliates the prattling but kindly Miss Bates in front of everyone. Mr. Knightley takes Emma aside and criticizes her for her insensitivity.

■ When she learns that it is Mr. Knightley, not Frank, that Harriet has set her sights on, Emma is shocked into the realization that she is in love with Mr. Knightley. Furthermore, she realizes that she has been a meddling, overbearing, clueless woman and is sorry she kept Harriet from marrying Robert Martin in the first place.

■ Mr. Knightley confesses his love for Emma and agrees to move into Emma's house so she can continue to take care of her father. In the novel (but not the film), the classic marriage at the end of the comedy, and Emma's great self-revelation, are undercut by the fact that she is able to marry Mr. Knightley only because her father is afraid of chicken theft and wants a younger man around the house.

In this story, the main satiric-ironic argument is carried by Emma's efforts to find Harriet a suitable mate. Through it, Austen lays out a system based on strict class differences and women's total dependence on men. Her hero, Emma, supports the system, but she is also self-deceptive and foolish. Austen slightly undercuts the system still further by making the farmer, who Emma believes is below Harriet's station, a good and worthy man.

The moral argument proceeds with a series of bad effects from Emma's matchmaking perceptions and actions. Austen focuses this argument using two parallel scenes of social slight and immorality. The first is when Harriet is embarrassed by Mr. Elton's refusal to dance, followed by Mr. Knightley coming to her rescue. The second is when Emma is painfully cutting to Miss Bates at a picnic, and again Mr. Knightley is the moral correction, upbraiding Emma for her insensitivity.

Notice that Austen makes the case in these crucial scenes for a deeper morality, based not on one's social position but on what is kind and decent, one human being to another. Notice also that Austen avoids sermonizing by making these moments emotionally powerful in the story. It hurts to see Harriet snubbed and Miss Bates humiliated in public. And it feels good when Mr. Knightley does the right thing, saving a defenseless young woman and calling our hero to task for her cruelty.

The marriage between Emma and Mr. Knightley is a reaffirmation of the system, in that both are of relatively high and equal standing. That system, and the values it is based on, will not change at the end of this satire. But their union does subtly undercut the system. Emma and Mr. Knightley come together not because they are of the right class but be-cause Emma has matured and become a better person and Mr. Knightley is a man of high character, regardless of class.

5. Black Comedy

Black comedy is the comedy of the logic—or more exactly, the illogic—of a system. This advanced and difficult form of storytelling is designed to show that destruction is the result not so much of individual choice (like tragedy) but of individuals caught in a system that is innately destructive. The key feature of this moral argument is that you withhold the self-revelation from the hero to give it more strongly to the audience. This is how the black comedy moral argument works:

■
 Many characters exist in an organization. Someone explains the rules and logic by which the system operates in great detail.

■
 Many of these characters, including the hero, go after a negative goal that involves killing someone or destroying something.

■
Each believes strongly in the goal and thinks what he is doing makes complete sense. In fact, it is totally illogical.

■
 The opponents, also within the system, compete for the same goal and also give detailed but insane justifications.

■
One sane person, usually the ally, continually points out that none of this makes any sense and action will lead to disaster. He functions as a chorus, but no one listens to him.

■
All the characters, including the nominal hero, use extreme, sometimes even murderous, methods to reach the goal.
■
The actions of the characters lead to death and destruction for almost all.

■
The battle is intense and destructive, with everyone still thinking he is right. The consequences are death and madness.

■ 
No one, including the hero, has a self-revelation. But it is so obvious that the hero
should
have had a self-revelation that the audience has it instead.

■ The remaining characters are horribly maimed by the struggle but immediately resume their efforts to reach the goal.

■ Slightly more positive black comedies end with the sane person watching in horror and either leaving the system or trying to change it.

This tricky form is easy to screw up. For the moral argument in black comedy to work, you must first make sure your hero is likable. Otherwise the comedy becomes an abstraction, an intellectual essay, as your audience backs away from the characters and feels morally superior to them. You want the audience to get sucked in so that they suddenly discover that they
are
these characters in some fundamental way and not above them.

Besides a likable hero, the best way to pull the audience emotionally into a black comedy is to have your hero speak passionately about the logic of his goal. Writers who want to add some hope to the bleakness of the form give the lone sane person an alternative to the madness, worked out in detail.

Stories using the black comedy argument are
Goodfellas, Network, Wag the Dog, After Hours, Dr. Strangelove, Catch-22, The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom, Brazil,
and
Prizzi's Honor.

COMBINING MORAL ARGUMENTS

Though unique forms, the various moral arguments are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, an excellent technique used by advanced storytellers is to combine some of these forms in one story. James Joyce's
Ulysses
starts with the simple good-versus-bad argument found in most myths and deepens it with the far more complex satiric-ironic approach.
The Cherry Orchard
is a combination of pathos and satire-irony.

The attempt to mix tragedy with elements of black comedy and satire or irony in
American Beauty
shows how difficult it is to combine these forms. Though brilliant in many ways, the story never quite reaches its full potential as tragedy, black comedy, or satire. The major moral argu-

ments are unique variants for a reason. They work in different ways and have quite different emotional effects on the audience. Putting them together in a seamless way requires extraordinary mastery of technique.

Other examples of mixed moral arguments include
Madame Bovary, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,
and
Dog Day Afternoon.

THE UNIQUE MORAL VISION

At the most advanced level of moral argument in storytelling is the writer who creates a unique moral vision. For example, Nathaniel Hawthorne in
The Scarlet Letter
sets up a three-person character opposition that makes The case for a natural morality based on real love. Joyce in
Ulysses
creates a natural religion and an everyday heroism by sending a "father" and a "son" on a day trip through Dublin. This is big-picture moral argument, hut it is not moral argument alone. The expertise, the craft, of these writers shows itself in webs of character, plot, story world, and symbol that are as broad and as detailed as their moral arguments.

A unique moral vision is also present in a few blockbuster films. If you think these films are huge hits primarily because of their visual special effects, you are mistaken. In
Star Wars,
George Lucas creates a modern-day amalgam of Eastern and Western morality, combining a Western hero with a Zen-like knighthood and a morality known as the Force. Obviously, this is a much less advanced moral argument than
The Scarlet Letter
or
Ulysses.
But the attempt is made, and its brevity has helped give the
Star Wars
films universal appeal. As simplistic as it is, "May the Force be with you" has been, for many in the audience, a creed they could live by.

Similarly,
The Godfather
not only portrays the world of the Mafia in 1940s America but also lays out a moral system based on modern business and modern warfare. Taglines like "I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse," "It's not personal, it's business," and "Keep your friends close and your enemies closer" are the catechism for the modern American version of Machiavelli's
Prince.
Like
Star Wars, The Godfather
is dealing in moral shorthand. But you should not forget that the attempt to lay out a moral system in the story—with at least some success—is a major source of the appeal of these stories.