A contact of mine is raising money for a documentary about Basque children who escaped to England in 1937.   The contact only has a few hours to raise another tens of thousands of pounds for the project, or they risk losing everything.

There are other historical films, however, where time was even more urgent.

My contact’s film, “To Say Goodbye”, is  the story children who were evacuated from Bilbao in the time of Franco.  These children were then taken to England.  They were only meant to be in Britain for 12 weeks, but many have lived their entire life in exile.

The filmmakers plan to make an animation, using the recorded voices of the last surviving children.

Under the funding rules of a broker they are using, the filmmakers need to raise over 58,000 pounds within the next few hours.  Time will probably run out long before you read this.  By then, “To Say Goodbye” will probably say goodbye to the money that has been pledged so far.

Promoting the British War Effort

In his book, The History of the British Army Film & Photographic Unit in the Second World War, Dr Fred McGlade writes about the struggle to create films to get America involved in the war effort. It seems the Germans were spending a lot of money on movies, and the Brits were losing the propaganda war. Much of the footage we have of the Second World War today is because of a small group of dedicated men who filmed what was then current events. (See The British Photographic Unit in the Second World War.)

One of the first conflicts to be recorded on film was the conflict in Crimea. The invention of the photograph has changed history. We know much more about the American Civil War than most previous wars, as the number of photographs of that war tell us stories much quicker than words ever could.

The misuse of the Camera

Some war films and other “histories” have been pure propaganda.

I came across an old news report of a First World War battle being staged. The reporter witnessed the scene of a local baron, showing his prowess, through a kind of contemporary re-enactment. His forces were firing valiantly at a fictitious enemy.

Unfortunately for him, some real soldiers watched the events, didn’t know it was staged, and took up arms against the baron and his actors.  As they fled the real enemy, the reporter saw the Baron’s true character.

Telling the story of Armenia

Another story about World War I grabbed my attention. It was a book called “Ravished Armenia”

The book tells how Aurora Mardiganian escaped torture and massacre, and the horrors she went through.

Here Aurora tells of what she witnessed happening to another girl:

“And you, my little one,” [Hagdi Ghafour] said, just as low and soft.  And he repeated the questions to her he had spoken to her sister. She spoke softly, too – softer than had her sister, yet just as firmly. “She was my sister. With her I saw my mother die, and now you have taken her. I, too, have asked God to take me again to Him. You may kill me also, but I will never submit to you.”

After this, Hagdi Ghafour threatened to kill her as a warning to the others.  Three men with whips (called Bashi-Bazouks in the text) stood near.  They stripped the girl of her clothes and swung her “like a hammock.”

“Then, while we screamed with the horror of it, the third bashi-bazouk brought his whip down upon the swaying body.”

“I shut my eyes so I could not see, but I could not shut out the sound of the whip cutting into the flesh, again and again, until I lost count. Even when the girl screamed no more and her moans died away the whip did not stop for a long time. Then suddenly I realized the blows had ceased.  I looked and saw one of the bashi-bazouks lifting the girl’s body from the floor. He held her by the waist, and her arms and bleeding legs hung limp. She was dead.”

The author then spoke of seeing bodies on the side of the road, “I counted bodies laid at the roadside until I could count no longer! I wondered if God could make room for all of them in heaven.”

While Mardiganian escaped, time was running out for her fellow Armenians. The world needed to be convinced that Armenians deserved statehood, to prevent those tragedies from happening again.

The book was serialized in the Washington Times in 1917. But not all Americans read books and stories in the newspaper in the 1910s. The story had to be told on film as well, in order to reach a wider audience.

Aurora Dramatizes her own Story

In 1919, the Washington Times told the story of how this book became a film.

Aurora Mardiganian, still refered to as a girl, was no movie star. When she came to the ballroom of the Hotel Plaza, the “little waif” “hesistates at the door; a tear glistened in her eyes.”

According to an Washington Times, her mind didn’t hear the music of the orchestra and “bright lights of the New York Ballroom”, but rather the “darkness of the tents” and the rattle of the “drums which beat a call to summon an execution squad.”

She now had a new struggle.  The film had to be completed, to show the world, those who don’t read books, that Armenia was a nation worth saving.

A film was made, shot “just as Aurora remembered it.”

“Come down,” the director told her as one scene was to be shot, “just as you did at Geulick.”

Filled with memories, Aurora lept “to the balcony rail” and “threw her body over until her feet began to dangle over…” she lost her grip, bulky rugs folded around. She fell to the ground, and her foot bent under her and was crushed.

The Doctors attended Aurora, and gave her painkillers. Her ankle was fractured. Doctors orders included plenty of rest.

“But that will delay the making of my picture – and the committee wants it quickly, that they may let all America see it.” she protested.

She lept out of bed. “See” she cried “see, all is well already – it does not hurt at all – I can walk and do my picture all right now.”

At first, Aurora was carried.  They shot the scenes where “she could stand or sit still.” and not put weight on her fractured ankle.

The hurt seemed to heal, and Aurora denied that there was any more pain.  She re-enacted “wild” scenes of escape, of the enemy raiding the camps. “Aurora declared that her ankle was so well that she could do whatever was required of her.”

The picture was finished within the scheduled time frame. The last scene to be shot featured Aurora “on the deck of a steamship reaching her arms to the Statue of Liberty.” When this was shot, Aurora collapsed on that deck, moaning in pain.  Now that her work was done she could admit that it hurt.

The film could now be released, and the world would be convinced.

(Alas, it was not to be. Armenia did not gain a secure independence until the end of the Cold War.  And by then, it was much smaller than the homeland envisioned by Woodrow Wilson and others of the time.)

The Nanking Massacre

In 2009, Lu Chuan went to the small Welsh town of Lampeter to tell students about his film “City of Life and Death” which depicts events known as the Nanking massacre.

In his research for this project, Chuan visited libraries in China and Japan, finding documents which will probably still be there twenty years from now. As an ex-military man, Chuan also saw the benefit of interviewing Japanese veterans who were present at the massacre.

These men often welcomed Lu Chuan into their homes, offered him tea, but stood in an awkward silence. The interviews, from what I understood the translator say, appeared fruitless. Lu Chuan relied on his experience in the Chinese military to try and understand the way a soldier thinks. A Japanese soldier is just a soldier after all.

Not everyone agreed with Chuan’s version of the story. Despite Chuan’s past success and fame, and despite the fact that “City of Life and Death” included top Chinese talent and was very well done, it was rejected from some Chinese film festivals. The Japanese actors involved, according to Chuan, received death threats, and some had moved to China.

Chuan’s decision to tackle this topic seems to have cleared the way for other films about the Nanking massacre.

As history passes, old monuments wash away. There may not always be physical pain involved in talking about the past, there way not always be death threats and broken feet. However, there is another kind of pain that many filmmakers (and authors and lecturers) have to over come. There is the pain that is caused by the bad memories of the past.

When the story is worth telling, a storyteller must learn how to live with that pain it causes the storyteller until that story is told.

Writing hurts, research hurts, memory can hurt, and we should respect the right of others who remain silent about the past and chose not to go through that pain.  Some choose to cover it in fiction, others merely point the researcher in the direction of stories similar to their own.

I remember a child once telling me that “you never cry daddy.” Sometimes we need to hide the pain until our job is done.

But aren’t we a bit hard on dialogue?  Even Eisenstein, the famous Russian formalist known for his silent “montage”, saw it’s uses.

My interest in dialogue goes back to the old days when I read plays.  Most people think of a screenplay, or a film script, as the story and the dialogue.

I tried showing films in a foreign language, and have found that children over 5 tend to complain.  (Children under five, however, seem satisfied with cartoons in foreign languages.)

When I watch a film in a foreign language, even if it’s a language I know well (like French), subtitles in English will distract me.  I’ll find myself reading the subtitles and perhaps missing some of the action.

With this reliance on dialogue, I start to think that maybe the purists are being a bit eccentric.  Can you understand a film without dialogue?

Murnau and others strived to make such a film.  So did many of us in film school.

The silent filmmaker’s reasoning may have been that cards inserted into a film were annoying, and took away from the story and its pace.  Dialogue in the pre-sound days wasn’t filmmaking, it was subtitling.

A few filmmakers experimented with bringing art to these subtitles, but the text looked wrong.  Others tried to minimize it.

Now that we have sound, a film student’s main reason for dropping sound, or shooting MOS (without sound), is because shooting “sync” (synchronized) sound is expensive.  It’s simpler to shoot films without dialogue.

It’s difficult to shoot sound and a moving subject at once.  The mic (especially a boom microphone) could end up in shot.  You could pick up interference, or off screen sounds.  On camera mics usually aren’t very good.  Seperate microphones either limit movement or require extra crew members.

Yes, I have shot films where I monitored picture and mic at the same time.  It’s kind of like a circus feat.  That is, unless your subject is speaking in monotone or standing still.

Yes, I have used detached mics.  I have some amusing stories to tell you people forgetting they are wearing them.  These, however, pick up background sounds (like shirts ruffling) and do need to be monitored.

Dialogue is unquestioningly expensive, and it can distract us from the other things going on.

So why keep it?

To explore this, I have tried watching films without it.  Even Eisenstein admits that America’s fast paced talk was more gripping than Soviet poetics.  His reasoning for using silent film was partly that they didn’t have money.

If we look at propaganda from another angle, we see unsuccessful attempts by the Italians to send messages to the colonies.

Colonized people in Ethiopia, Italian Somalia, and even a great deal of people in Libya didn’t understand the Italian language and probably didn’t get Italian (or western) mannerisms.  Thus when they were shown Italian films, the propaganda value wore off.

Ruth Ben-Ghiat points out that the non-Italians brought their own meaning to these films.  Italian filmmakers didn’t realize how much they relied on dialogue (and other assumed understandings) to get their stories across.

As a result, the natives were cheering for “the wrong protagonists.”

Yes, I’ve cheered for the “bad” guy in a poorly made propaganda film, so I get where the “natives” where coming from.  That’s even when I understood the dialogue.

We bring a lot into a film when we watch it.  A big crutch we rely on in language.  That doesn’t mean that clear dialogue can save a bad movie.

I remember watching “An American President.”  Thrown in that film are statistics, seemingly invented on the spot, concerning gun control and other topical issues of the day.  I remember listening to Michael J. Fox spouting out these “facts” and having my cinema experience ruined.

Maybe I laughed, I don’t know.  I sure know that others laugh when a filmmaker shoves ideas down their throat through dialogue.

Take Poison Ivy’s environment speech in Batman and Robin, and Bruce Wayne’s “but what about the old people” counter argument.   What was the point of those lines?

Yes, the film wasn’t storyboarded well either, but the dialogue couldn’t move a bad story forward.

There are cases, however, when dialogue tends to work.  “Luke, I am your father” and “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn” both work well with words.

You could have a flashback to Darth Vader with Luke’s mother, and then being there at Luke’s birth, but that just wouldn’t work as well.  You could have Rhet slam the door in Scarlett’s face, or walk away without saying anything, or do any number of things, but I think dialogue works best to show what Rhet really means.

Many great visual moments don’t rely on these dialogue points.

Take High Noon. The symbolic meaning of the Sheriff dropping the star and riding off without saying much really tells you the protagonist’s attitude.  In The Graduate, the opening and closing both show characters who are emotionally lost.  Without saying words, both movies say more than dialogue ever could.

But why does silence speak so well?  I think it’s because so much of the rest of the film relies on dialogue.

The absense of something only has meaning when contrasted with its presense.

If there are hundreds of children playing and talking in a field at the start of a scene, and no children at the same location later, we have change, and that change brings meaning.  If however, there are no children in either scene, and nothing to remind us of the existence of children, the lack of children at the end doesn’t carry as much meaning.

In the case of laughing children in a scene such as this, you can allow your actors to ad lib.  The noise may be more important than what is actually said.

Sometimes, mumbled background noise is unnecessarily subtitled, adding unintentional meaning to a film and distracting from the main storyline.  In a disco or a playground, the presence of sound means more than the mundane details of the dialogue that makes that sound.

In the end, only you will know how much dialogue your story really needs.  Each story is different, and every decision you make could produce a different outcome.

Can you make a film without dialogue?  Of course you can, it has been done.  Should you make a film without dialogue?  That depends on what message you want to bring across, and how you think it will best be conveyed.

If you can’t afford a microphone, but are creative enough to convey meaning without sinc sound, then go for it.  If you have a great sound team, but don’t have time to figure out how to tell a story without words, then there’s nothing immoral about using words.

In either case, remember that film, like language, is a form of communication.  Body language isn’t seen on the phone, but voice tone is heard.  Intonation isn’t heard in an email, but meanings are assumed from context and sentence structure.

The good news is, you don’t need a PhD in communication to communicate with your audience, whether you use dialogue or not.  No, all you need to do is put yourself in your audience’s place.

Who needs dialogue?  Those who can use it well.

Bibliography:

Ruth Ben-Ghiat and Mia Fuller, editors. Italian Colonialism. (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.)

Sergei M. Eisenstein. (translated by Alan Y. Upchurch.) On the composition of the short fiction scenario.  (Calcutta : Seagull Books and Eisenstein Cine Club, 1984.)

The first time I remember hearing any details about “Tripoli” was on board an old American ship, which was turned into a museum.  I think it was the Constitution.  I was just a school kid who might have seen a few pirate movies and heard a we war stories from elderly relatives.

My godmother was the first female conductor of the US navy.  But there were so many other naval battles, why is “Tripoli” still remembered?

In school, we learned about Lewis and Clark, we covered Napoleon, some of us knew about the Whiskey Rebellion and even people like Nelson.  Decatur, however, was extra credit to most of us.

Books that talk about the history of the United States often gloss over the war.  Tripoli is a footnote on Decatur’s biography even in some encyclopedias about with American history.  Decatur himself not one of those figures you “have to” learn about.

The Tripolitan War seemed perhaps insignificant to those charged with teaching the history.  In Libyan history books, it has been absent as well.

Denmark had it’s own “war” with Tripoli, Turkey did too, so did so many other powers.  The Karamanli Dynasty had fought with or against almost every significant country of the early 19th century.  But not everyone was at war with the United States.

The American government did everything it could to avoid war.  In fact, of its first five wars, only two were really declared. This mentality, which I will explain elsewhere, kept the American armed forces small.

The small american military made history more exciting.  Its easy to read a document, an old journal, a letter, even a congressional report or a newspaper article and sense urgency and uncertainty. Every seaman, every soldier, seems to be right in the middle of action.  And every person counts.

Recent wars have been waged on a such a massive scale that we can’t tell if a story about it is fact or fictional.  Even earlier wars in the same area, fought between great powers, had a lot of scope for making things up.

But when every moment counts, things are different.

To the tactical historian, Tripoli is an enigma as well as a rallying point.  If Jefferson or Lear or Adams or Morris did this or that, then perhaps things would have turned out differently.

To the contemporary historian, Tripoli is a lesson for today.  I’ve stumbled across many articles, and political and scholarly treaties, which retell part of the story in order to argue for how we should run the country (or the navy, or the budget, or something else) today.

Personally, I don’t buy most of the arguments made, but I’m fascinated with the way the story is retold each time.

No land was gained.  No leaders were deposed.  Other countries claim to have had more effect on the region, at least until World War II.

To me, what’s interesting is the intimacy of the war.  It was personal to everyone who wrote about it in the 19th century.  It was small enough that people didn’t just use it to fill pages.

It changed the lives of people involved.  It changed, in many ways, American.  Ok, so the Quasi War with France and the War of 1812 could steal the credit for many of the triumphs and tragedies of Tripoli.

But there were at least two events during that war which changed America forever, even if they didn’t have their full effect for another two hundred years.  (Stay tuned for news on where these stories will be published.) And there were men who came out of it changed for life.

Those few historians who say that the war is forgotten have never visited the haunted houses, have never visited the old boats, have never talked to anyone in the navy, and have likely not read very much in the library either.

Everywhere, the feats of Decatur, Eaton, Leitensdorfer and others have some down to us through literature, movies and around the camp fire.

There is one more thing that makes Tripoli fascinating, something I didn’t discover until December.  I haven’t seen anyone tackle it head on, but there is something very strange about the histories of Tripoli.  But that is another story.

The extreme film where character “is” plot is The Muppets Christmas Carol.  (this post contains spoilers.)

Scrooge is the plot.  He is the guy who made things as they are, and he is the one that suffers the consequences.   Only his actions can set things right at the end.

The film, in a way, is about Scrooge, and so is the story.  The other characters do not change, except perhaps in their attitude to him.  Without Scrooge, there is no story.

That’s not to say that he is the theme.  The theme is greed verses charity, or the Christmas spirit, or the love of money verses the love of our fellow man.

No, it’s not just about Victorian England.  Sam the Eagle accidentally tells the young Scrooge “Business, it is the American way”.  Gonzo then whispers in Sam’s ear, and Sam corrects himself  and says “it is the British way.”

We see here that the film is not about a particular time, or a particular injustice, but it has a universal message.  It tells each of us that we can make a good or a bad difference in the lives of others.

Scrooge is the sole master of his destiny.  His story is our story.  We are either watching to change our ways, or to hope that a “Scrooge” we know will change his.

Anne Frank is the opposite story.  She has no control over the Holocaust.  She can only keep quiet so that her family and friends aren’t caught.

Anne Frank seems similar to Tiny Tim.  She tries to understand Hitler’s madness.  Unlike Tiny Tim however, Anne is facing an irredeemable foe.  We know this is history, and we know that she can’t change her fate.

Yes, Anne Frank’s story is a unique story, she was an individual.  But the plot that affects her affected millions of others.  Millions of other stories can be made about other personalities in the same situation, and all could be true.  The plot is not her own doing, and it is not something she can change.   The people who are responsible do not interact with any of the major characters.

Most Holocaust films do not promote a universal theme.  Yes, films are made in the hope that this will never happen again.  But do we relate this movie to other genocides?

Are Holocaust films are meant to show the universal effect of man’s inhumanity to man?  We don’t have Sam the Eagle making that Freudian slip there for us.  These films are about one terrible part of history that we can’t go back and change.  Character isn’t plot here, history is plot.

The Christmas movie is the best example of “Character is plot”.  The sports movie, especially when it’s a one-on-one sport, is usually the next closest thing.

Rocky is the plot.  Sure, some other wannabe boxer might have the same story.  But every step of the way, he’s the guy calling the shots on what he’s going to do.  He’s not a helpless victim of some great big tyrant.  No, he’s not all that powerful either.  But he gains strength through his actions, he goes from a loser to a somebody.  Without Rocky’s actions, there is no plot.

Unlike Scrooge though, every other character’s actions make a difference too.  Adrian could decide she doesn’t like Rocky.  His competitor might stop fighting as hard and lose form.  Anyone’s actions can change the plot drastically.

In a war movie “history is plot”.  We know how the war happened, who won, and how much damage it caused.  No character has the power to prevent all those deaths, and no character has the power to change history on his own.

Most war movies aren’t just about one character.  They are about a team, who are in turn part of a larger team.  What they do affects their teammates survival and their own honor.  The hero didn’t create the situation, and no one can solve it alone.  One man may desert, but he’s only making himself into a coward, the war will be won without him.

A hero can move a plot, or the hero can be moved by it.  But what about when the hero moves against the plot, or the plot belongs to a minor character or even the villain?  To be continued…

I checked my old geography books. Everything from the Twentieth Century tells me that:

• the Indians have an Ocean,
• the Arabians have a Sea,
• and the Persians have a Gulf.

Somebody wanted to change that.   Why?

We give people names all the time.   The hardest name for me growing up was “What you call your friends’ parents?”

In The Cosby Show, the patriarch’s son-in-law calls him “Dad”.  It’s funny to watch Bill Cosby’s character react.  It asks a question of whether this is appropriate.

The son-in-law could also call him Mr. Huxtable, or Heathcliffe.  Another option is Sir, or he could make up a nickname.  The name “Dad” reveals that Bill Cosby’s character has indeed gained a son, whether he likes it or not.

Meet Dave shows another way to address people in a strange situation.  Dave’s crew doesn’t know how to act on Earth.  They start greeting people by immitating a Sales woman’s greeting.  “Welcome to Old Navy”.

To me, it was funny on many levels.  Sure, Eddy Murphy is great at being silly.  But it also reflects how I feel when signing an email to a stranger.

I usually mimic whatever the other guy says, even if it sounds very odd to me.  If I get a Hi Vasco, I return a Hi Dave.  If I get a Dear Mr. de Sousa, I’ll reply with a Dear Mr. Ming Chang.

I feel like a robot when I sign off as “Regards” or “All the Best” and only include my first name in a business email.  Having grown up with only “Love” and “Sincerely”, all these other greetings are foreign to me.  I only mimic those around me to “fit in”.

But sometimes, I won’t mimic others to fit in.  I don’t smoke around smokers or swear around those who swear.  I won’t lie just because “everyone is doing it.”

So let’s get back to The disputed Gulf.  I won’t call it “The” Gulf. I used to live near the Texan Gulf (sorry, err, the Gulf of Mexico).  That, to me, is “The Gulf”.

And I don’t see any point in calling it the “Arab” Gulf.  Why not change the English Channel to the French Channel?  Or the Irish Sea to the Welsh Sea?  Besides, “Arabian Gulf” is too close in name to the Arabian Sea.

I’ll go with the Persians on this one.  I may have my differences with the current government of Iran*, but no one can be wrong all of the time.

Now, what do I call my father in law…?

*(“I ran, you ran, we all ran from Iran, because they were being mean.” )

Johnny starts planning his career. This one he’ll give for free: he’ll promote the script on websites like shooting people, talent circle, and scripts for sale. Then, when he wins an award, he’ll sell a concept written on a napkin for a record amount of money and retire.

Personally, I never had that dream. To me, screenwriting is the day job, and I plan to write at least another 30 features before I retire. Many talented writers get paid far less than lawyers, agents and other work of a similar nature. Many take on “low paying” jobs in teaching because full time writing doesn’t pay them very much at all.

But Johnny doesn’t know this. He gets home, drags his muddy shoes on the carpet, opens Final Draft, and starts typing with two fingers. The stress of his job – the way his boss yells at him, the endless cutting and pasting – pushes him to the limits of despair, and suddenly it’s as if he can’t write a word.

Should Johnny quit his day job and go into writing full time? Should he take a writing course to motivate him? Probably not.

In Johnny’s case, writing block is a good thing.

Imagine if he does write that “award winning” screenplay. So Johnny beats out 50,000 other contestants and wins about a year’s salary in some screenwriting contest, and offers his script to some director who’s latest Youtube short has a million views.

That director makes Johnny’s film, and it’s a riot.  Johnny’s boss’s kids see it, and they burst out laughing. Johnny’s best friend sees the first half of it, and she laughs. When the broadband connection stalls the video one too many times, she promises to watch the rest later.

In the middle of the night, Johnny gets a phone call. His best friend has now seen the whole film, and she’s appalled. He wonders why she doesn’t have a sense of humour, only to be met with a dial tone.

Johnny goes to work the next morning, and his coworkers avoid his gaze, except for the janitor who congratulates him for a film well made.

The janitor, usually quiet, suddenly becomes the biggest mouth in the whole town.  He recounts the funniest parts of the story the way a child recounts a Pixar film.  The janitor’s laughter is filled with such sincerity, it’s as if the whole room is suddenly filled with joy.

Johnny looks up at his boss.  The boss, like Johnny’s friend, has no sense of humour.

Johnny isn’t sacked immediately.  He’s just put on hold.  People don’t tell him where his mail is.  His contract isn’t renewed.  His job description is changed so that you suddenly need a specialist degree that Johnny doesn’t have.

Down at the country club however, Johnny’s the talk of the town.  Everyone encourages Johnny to write another hit, so he does.

This time, Johnny thinks he’s on form. He’s writing a real winner, and Hollywood will love it.

However, no one with money cares that Johnny had an Internet hit. Some will credit the director, the actors, the editor, or even the score with the way the film came out. The dialogue, they say, was wooden, the structure forced.

He goes back to the director, but that guy’s got a new sucker writing the next script.  The “producer” doesn’t have any money, and doesn’t plan to look for any either.

Johnny’s back at square one, make that minus one.  He’s got the screenplay to fill the gap in his cv, and employers are asking him what the script was about. Some have a hearty laugh when they find out, but none want to be the subject of a future satire.

Now, this is an extreme case which I just made up off of the top of my head. A much more likely scenario is that Johnny gets a great idea, stays up late writing it, and is too tired to do his day job properly. If it’s based on his real life, it ends up looking more like a rant than a screenplay.

˙ʇǝɹƃǝɹ ɹǝʇɐן p,noʎ ʇɐɥʇ ƃuıɥʇǝɯos ƃuıʇıɹʍ ɯoɹɟ noʎ sdoʇs ʇı ɟı ‘ƃuıɥʇ pooƃ ɐ ǝq uɐɔ ʞɔoןq s,ɹǝʇıɹʍ

“Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm” – Groucho Marx?

When speaking to a computer, all you have to do is use the correct syntax and the computer understands.

Huh?  For you kids out there, that means if you press the red button, Mario jumps, or the spaceship fires.  The computer knows what you mean.  And the computer knows that the red button always means the same thing no matter who presses it.

But people don’t know that (especially us grown ups).  We forget that.  We judge the message by the messenger (I think that’s the right cliché).

If you don’t believe me, look at all those quotes at the bottom of people’s emails.  Who do they quote most often?  Groucho Marx?  Winston Churchill?  Vasco de Sousa?  (I wish).

“Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm” – Groucho Marx.

Actually, it was Winston Churchill.

Words change their meaning depending on who says them.  As a man with an unusual, Latin sounding name, I have a certain stereotype to live up to.

I can enhance that stereotype by the way I dress, or the topics I chose to discuss.  There are some people who will chose to think of me as a stereotype regardless of what I say or do.  I could go by a pen name to please them. Fortunately, I can still do things to enhance the reputation I have with open minded people.

Whether you are an author or not, what you say will be taken in the context of what people already think about you.

Is what you are saying a joke, a rant, a sage piece of advice?  It’s not just what you say, or even how you say it.  It’s what who’s hearing it thinks of you that determines the meaning.

That’s why we quote others.  Churchill has more authority than most of us when it comes to winning and losing.  Groucho Marx has a reputation for being jovial.   When we quote men like them, we can borrow their reputations to support our shared ideas and observations.

We can’t always rely on their reputations.  Not everyone knows that Groucho Marx was a comedian. And some young people may have been taught differently than we have about Churchill (I hear there are parts of Wales where Winston is very unpopular).

Both Groucho and Winston have their reputations because of what they are known for doing.  As an author, what I let people know about what I do determines my reputation.

Fictional dialogue is the same.  Dialogue gets its meaning from a character.  If Tartuff, Hamlet and C3P0 all say the same line, we could infer three separate meanings.

Every time you say or do something, you build your own identity.  Are you a know-it-all, a jack of all trades, a whimsical flirt, a humorless scrooge, a caring do-g0oder, a clumsy goofball or something else?

Unfortunately, it’s not what you really are, it’s what other people see and hear that determines your reputation.  Fortunately, there are things you can do to help shape that reputation.