#4: The Aesthetics Of Action Storytelling
Hola! So we return once more! I hope you all had as good of a week as possible given circumstances.
Everything is a lot lately, so I hope you’re all taking care of yourselves and staying safe.
With that said, let’s go.
What We Mean By Action
I’ve been mulling over something that has always struck me as odd. When we say ‘Action Movie’ or ‘Action Storytelling/Filmmaking’, what we often really mean with the word action there is ‘Violence’.
Action is a fairly blank word, it can be anything, it’s action, but it struck me that it is so fundamentally synonymous and indivisible from ‘violence’ when we refer to it in visual storytelling. Not that I don’t love the shit out of great well-choreographed and well-shot violence as much as the next person, believe me I do.
Nothing is quite as thrilling as watching an incredible Kenji Tanigaki action sequence, wherein the impossible is pulled off with just great, intense training, prep-work, masterful choreography, stunt-work, and lot of great wire-work when needed. The aesthetics of violence can be terribly fun, and a great means for storytelling, as ‘action’ at its best is purely that, action, an expression of an individual, what they are doing, and what they do, and how they do it, is greatly reflective of character. The best action storytelling is able to mine this understanding to thrill, to excite, and also to make you tear up.
But as much as I do love seeing John Wick take down some slimeball, I was thinking of the kinds of stuff we get less of, the things we miss out on, when we make the automatic leap and assumption of Action=Violence. Just…how we think of action storytelling and what it can be and do, beyond what we already assume it just is.
The Aesthetics Of Violence and The Aesthetics Of Athletics
I was thinking about it because I was reading Sports Manga one does, and it struck me once more, as I went through scene after scene:
These are absolutely action comics. This is action storytelling. These work, effectively, on the same fundamental principles as all the great big bombastic action stuff, whether it’s stuff with fantastical energy beams or intricate sword-play. It’s just that The Aesthetics Of Violence are replaced with The Aesthetics Of Athletics. The aesthetic shift is key, but the same fundamental principles all still apply.
And there’s an added layer to this shift, I think, particularly as with Violence, you kind of don’t know what to expect. Of course, every work sets its own expectations with its action aesthetics, to prime you and create its set of parameters, around which your expectations revolve. For instance: You don’t expect the same thing from a John Wick action scene and a Hot Fuzz action scene. They’re two very different works, with different leads/characters, a different world, and thus the expectations derived differ. But nevertheless, broadly speaking, there is, I think, one crucial difference when you compare The Aesthetics Of Violence and The Aesthetics Of Athletics:
The audience knows the game or has an awareness of it. There are clear established rules and principles, and what needs to occur, possibly, and how, and the numerous possible ways in which it could. There’s an innate familiarity and a pre-expectation due to that familiarity, which doesn’t exactly exist, I think, when the audience is watching a knife-fight between two opponents. You know Bond’s gotta win, but it can happen in just about any possible way. There’s no clear, clean framework through which this all filters, a system of sorts, the way there is in athletics, which while due to the nature of storytelling/fiction, can be as open and broad with action possibilities, like in a scene of violence, still gives it a certain distinction that I think is worth noting.
You can essentially do everything with the aesthetics of athletics that you do with the aesthetics of violence, in terms of the basic storytelling principles that they’re operating under. So, say, there’s a technique, whether it’s a Kungfu move, or an attack or defensive maneuver that is set-up and ‘established’ at the start of the story in some capacity, which the lead does not know/cannot do/or has witnessed, the way it is done can act as a ‘set-up’ for the later eventual ‘pay-off’ in the final act of the story, wherein the lead pulls off this thing, and it’s satisfying. It can be a rad sword slash, it can be even something like a clever trick of misdirection or sleight of hand, which is used to turn the antagonist’s own brutal force against them, by luring them into the right situation. Whatever it is, you can absolutely see this same effective principle, the basics of basics, set-up, build-up, pay-off, being done in any sports story. Say, the entire story is a lead character trying to pitch a certain kind of pitch. And he never does…until that final moment. Stuff like that.
And altering the sport, not unlike the kind of martial art in an action story, gives you tweaked and altered Aesthetics Of Athletics. You get a different texture and sensibility with each. Baseball isn’t Football, Football isn’t Hockey, Hockey isn’t Cricket, Cricket isn’t Basketball, so on and so forth. Each provides differing aesthetics which you can play with, rules and systems, that you can really lean into to do cool stuff.
But it struck me, we don’t do too much of that, especially with Western works, by and large. Sports stuff by and large now tends to be Biopics, more often than not, and we term them and discuss them in the framing of ‘Drama’ or ‘Sports Drama’, rarely, if ever ‘Action film/Action story’. There is one prime exception to this rule, however, and that’s the Sports which ARE explicitly a hybrid of The Aesthetics Of Violence and The Aesthetics Of Athletics.
Boxing movies are big, and understandably so. They bridge together two different things into one (MMA stuff is similar in this vein) and I do so adore them. Ryan Coogler’s Creed remains one of my all time favorite films, and is a great example of how action can be beautifully expressive of character. The moment Adonis should pull back, should stop, but he pleads with Rocky to keep him in, that he needs to do this, he needs to prove he’s not a mistake, that he’s worth it, that he needs to fight for that? It’s beautiful. The moment Adonis falls, and flashes back to his father, who was never there, his nigh-mythic father, and then rises up like a man possessed? Hell of a moment. And it’s genuinely fascinating and thrilling to see the possibilities within these great hybrids, these things which exist with their feet in both worlds, a real sport, and being entirely built around violence.
And to some extent, it is worth noting, staged and performed as it is, Wrestling, like WWE, AEW, NJPW, all of that also occupies this niche and space. They’re blatantly action storytelling, especially with fictional characters and personas, and Wrestling is this strange hybrid of both The Aesthetics Of Violence, given it’s what it centers on, and The Aesthetics Of Athletics, as these are clearly very real people doing these things, and there’s a bunch of rules/guidelines and a framework (which can be broken if needed, that’s part of the fun), from Money In The Bank, Ladder Matches, to even outlandishly insane stuff like Stadium Stampede Matches.
It’s also at this moment, as I was mulling all this over, that I remembered the great masterpiece, a film for the ages, the legendary Stephen Chow’s brilliant SHAOLIN SOCCER:
It’s primarily understood as a Comedy/Kung fu action flick above all else, but its true genius goes beyond just that. It’s a film that on its fundamental premise level alone completely understands and recognizes that The Aesthetics Of Athletics and The Aesthetics Of Violence both fundamentally operate on the same core Action Storytelling principles, and then goes on to take full advantage of that fact. It gets that the core appeal is largely the same, impressive stunt-work and just plain cool, impressive shit being done by people, presented in a way that’s enjoyable to the audience, with some stylistic flair.
It smashes sport and violence, taking soccer and injecting kung fu kicks and madness into it, and has fun with it. It’s a great, hilarious comedy, but it’s also deeply sincere, and a hell of a smart film.
But as much as I do love that, as much as I do adore these hybrids, which operate on a smart awareness, ultimately, beyond all that, I was thinking about the opposite. Shaolin Soccer is a work that takes a sport which does not have The Aesthetics Of Violence, and imports those aesthetics on to it, to create a fundamentally funny, unexpected, interesting clash of expectations and entertaining. But what if rather than just blatantly importing those Aesthetics Of Violence on top, without ever feeling the need to get that blatant and injecting that violence, we took that keen awareness that underlies these things and injected all of the best lessons we’ve got, acquired, and learnt from action storytelling rooted in those violent aesthetics?
I was thinking about that because that’s what it felt like all the best Sports Manga I was reading were essentially doing. And I remain fascinated by that. It’s why I was considering the limitations and gaps, the errors in automatically assuming Action requies some measure of Violence, the notion that ‘Action Storytelling’ cannot be divorced from that or be devoid of that. Especially given there are absolutely stories and works in my mind, certain things, which I think have yet to be done, particularly in comics, and very specifically in Western Comics.
There’s space here, I think. There’s great, grand room in this arena, to really go hard and do some rock solid Action Storytelling stuff. To really be playful and have fun, and make something striking.
Screen Stuff
What have I been watching lately?
I’ve been on a bit of a Kazuya Shiraishi dive lately, which worked out perfectly as it matched my Takeru Satoh dive as well, and I got to watch their key collaboration:
One Night is a story of a family wrecked by trauma, as we cut from one momentous night of youth to the far future, with everyone being old, and seeing how they’ve all been shaped by that one night, how they all still remain haunted by it.
With a stacked cast, led by a Triple A star like Satoh, it’s an interesting watch. Its most interesting quality is its unwillingness to truly judge its characters, as it attempts to be less ‘This is right/This is wrong’ and more ‘This is how it feels’. It runs a bit too long, and by the end its nature as an adaptation of a stageplay becomes evident. The resolution of the whole venture ends up being far too clean and easy than work like it perhaps demands, but nevertheless, I thought it was a curious addition to Shiraishi and Satoh’s ouvres.
On the TV side of things, I’ve been relaxing lately with Midnight Diner:
We follow one consistent location- The Midnight Diner run by a man only known as Master, whose deal is that so long as he’s got the ingredients, he’ll make you anything you want or ask for, and as you can expect, he’s open from night to morning.
Each episode is about half an hour, which makes it really easy viewing, but the real fun of it isn’t the food, although the food’s great. It’s the people, and their stories. In effect, this is an anthology series about various people, their struggles, their relationships, their successes, all of that, as they interweave at the strange crossroads of this diner. People meet, people fall in love, people drift apart, and memories are forged. It’s about all the little moments, the small insignificant things, made into a work of art.
This is the series where you get the story of those people having dinner in the background of a movie or a show, who you get to see or know for 2 seconds, before we cut away forever. Who is that strange woman eating there in that corner? What’s that old dude’s deal? That fella with the guitar over there? It’s all the ‘insignificant’ stuff granted significance, and there’s an odd sweetness and resonance there, which I quite enjoy. And the kinds of stuff the series is able to touch on and weave through, while creating this largely accepting, welcoming, comforting safe-space for all in The Midnight Diner, that’s a delight.
I like this sort of stuff, the ‘in-between-the-spaces’ works, wherein there is no Grand Hook, no High Concept. It’s just…people living, going about, trying, and doing their best (or worst!). It’s life.
It’s why I love Eddie Campbell’s ALEC.
It’s reality as lived and felt, which you can’t just sum up and capture in one go. Only these little, fleeting moments, joined together, to say ‘This is how it was then, at this moment’. Life is too big, too massive, to just reduce, and so you just get these snapshots. Here was this night, this day, this encounter, this moment. And then life goes on.
It’s my favorite kind of realism.
That’s it for this week!
I tried to go lighter on this one given how heavy the previous entries have been, so I hope that’s okay.
As ever, do let me know what you made of this, as I am always happy to hear back. And I’ll be replying back to a number of your responses later this week, and hopefully touching on some cool bits and questions brought up (with permission) in here in the near future.
Cheers, folks! Stay well!
Until next time
-Ritesh