Curse Your Sudden But Inevitable Betrayal! [Bitch and Moan]

This is going to be a more srs post, but not too in-depth because I haven't had breakfast.  This week we'll discuss something Anthony Burch brought up in a Rev Rant way way back, oh look, a link.  Audiences in all media experience surprise when expectations are proven wrong.  However, the sense of betrayal is slightly different in that it causes more dramatic behaviors such as cognitive dissonance and raegquits (in the academic community known as balking).

Case 1:  My First Null Hypothesis.  Let's take a look at a genre with surprise but no breach of expectations.  Greek tragedies are an example of rituals where the endgame is already known.  Surprise comes from individual experience, such as timing and delivery.  The same can be said of one of my favorite traditions, Guy Fawkes Day.  We know exactly what we're going to do to the straw man, but the often secret selection of our Guy Fawkes reenactor offers a modicum of surprise.  Note that balking is minimal in these instances, unless you have serious objections to straw-on-fire violence.

Case 2: Breach of Expectation Without Balking.  This is best characterized by the Mystery genre.  As I mostly hate the genre since it's one of the bastions of shitty pulps that only survive because of a combination of fanatical otaku-like readership and somewhat meh gimmicks, I'll post some that are out of the mold but still fit.  Two films, Memento and Clue are great examples where escalation of surprise (albeit in different ways because....eh...just go fucking watch those two movies, you won't regret it) acclimate the audience, thus avoiding sudden and arguably inevitable betrayals.  A lesser example is anything related to Law and Order, as the plots generally dodge and weave as new evidence is revealed.  However, episodes where complete reversals of the typical ending where the villain-de-jour is brought to justice are rare, and thus repeat audiences can generally bank on a formulaic exposition.  The exception is the spinoff Criminal Intent where the criminals have their own concurrent subplot.  In any case, this type of betrayal actually increases audience engagement--usually because these pieces all exist within a historical context.  The form of betrayal changes with each medium and period as we are trained to add another dimension of comparison, so in the age of serialized novels it would have been unexpected for the detectives to be perpetrators (nowadays we have Michael C Hall plays the same asshole in everything he's in but we still love him like we love Christopher Walken) and in more modern times, having the villain played by a confederate in the audience thereby breaking the fourth wall (I seriously have no example because I don't see many stage plays and that would be impossibly expensive for a movie, not to mention the DVD although I'm sure Rocky Horror fans would beg to differ).

Case 3: Shit, It Was In Front Of Me And Nobody Said Anything.  I guess this is where Polaris comes into play.  When the mimesis offers no cues into an unknown, the audience simply projects themselves into these gaps.  However, when they are revealed, the shock can result in balking behavior.  The reveal of a gay main character is something of a shock as no cues were given as to the character's nature, and in keeping with the narrative and player's own projections of sexual normalcy, create a female.  The resulting shock is something of a cognitive dissonance, where players were fine with portraying a heterosexual female but not a homosexual male.  In KOTOR, our facelessnamelessevengordonfreemanhadaname protagonist was revealed to be Darth Revan.  Oh, yeah, spoilers.  Too late.  Whatever, get over it.  Note that this is avoided completely in its spiritual offspring, Mass Effect where backstory is chosen to player taste and Shepard's heroic destiny is chosen by literally a deus ex machina.  Back to KOTOR, the fact that our investment as players was changed because suddenly, instead of our own projections, our character was now Revan, playstyles were changed and balking may have occurred.  I guess you could say the same thing about Sixth Sense but honestly that scene was created so you'd jizz in your pants.  This effect comes from audience alienation.  When the mimesis doesn't offer sympathy, audience members look to their peers.  Individuals try to reaffirm that they are not alone in the shock by looking for signs of distress anywhere available, this includes bitching and moaning on the IMDB forums.  KOTOR had other characters note their surprise but quickly restate the mission to force us to move on.  I guess one way of recreating this effect is to watch a foreign comedy film in a theater full of native speakers, where you don't get any of the jokes but they do.  You'll likely sink in your seat or laugh alone to avoid alienation.  And somehow I just sold some copies of Rosetta Stone.

Case 4: Fixed Reward Scheduling.  This comes from mostly episodic experiences, we'll start with gaming. Because games mostly revolve around a risk/reward mechanic, and playtimes are split into consistent chunks, we have an effect where our ultimate goal is only partially met for our efforts.  In old-school Mario titles, the princess is in another castle.  We have, however, eliminated an enemy stronghold and never have to go back (doing so would dramatically result in balking).  If it were revealed that the princess was raped and murdered before our porcelain protagonist is able to produce said prodigal princess, a player would abandon his plan to procure royal poon and accept what is called sunken cost.  Yes, I used alliteration for no reason than to piss you off.  The same could be argued of Dead Space, where we're dealt two consecutive blows--first finding out that our escort mission to save Nicole was for naught, thus negating Isaac's raison de PLASMA CUTTER, and later having undead Nicole kill(?) Isaac, robbing us of our consolation goal, getting the fuck out.  This is an economic effect:  humans understand the concept of sunken cost and respond to it by abandoning the investment or escalation.

Case 5: You Suck At ___ FPS, GG UNINSTALL. Sometimes we just hate losing, it reminds us that we're not as good as we think we are.  Also, I hate children on Xbox Live.  It makes me want to open an abortion clinic.  Besides, I'm better than you are at ____.  You should just fucking give up.  Unless you want to play Hookerbrawl 6 (Tekken).




I'll be posting a Spray and Pray later (maybe today or tomorrow), I've got hot new music and the Q1 2010 anime season loaded on my leechbox.