Inspired by Barbara's post this week, I thought I'd take some time to talk about a plotline that I just. can't. stand. Whether in a ms I'm considering or out in the wild world of non-Bleak-House media, this story drives me up a wall and back again, giving me heebie jeebies and generally unbalances my carefully leveled countenance.
It's this one:
"Please, please, won't someone believe me? I know a horrible, frightening truth and NO ONE WILL LISTEN TO ME! Why am I the only one who sees this? Why do I have no credibility with the general public -- or my loved ones? THIS NOT LISTENING TO ME WILL COST YOU ALL YOUR LIIIIIIIIIIIIVES."
So, I guess, more simply, this could be classified as the Reverse Boy Who Cried Wolf.
There are a few reasons that I find this particular narrative so frustrating:
1. Being so completely in possession of life-saving knowledge (The aliens! They look like us now!) and being so utterly ignored is the worst kind of powerlessness. (Well, a bad kind of powerlessness. I guess I shouldn't presume to label it the worst kind.) Powerlessness of any kind is difficult for me to watch (in my mind's eye or on a screen or in real life) -- I get anxious and keyed up and feel just plain unpleasant.
2. Watching such scenes unfold, I can invariably think of (at least) eleventy-billion better ways for Sally H. LifesavingKnowledgePants to get her point across to Sheffield P. MindsMadeUpperson than the method she's using. Seriously. Sally cries when she should shout. She trots out crazy-person-looking handdrawn maps when she should just make eye contact and speak earnestly. She shreiks "Trust me!" from behind the bars of a mental institution, at clearly unsympathetic white-coated cynics. She does not adjust her tactics to her audience. She is unconvincing ...
3 ... until the third or fourth body surfaces. THEN people start to take notice of Sally and her maybe-not-so-outlandish-after-all theories. But it takes those first few deaths (or tragedies, or whatvever -- this drama can unfold in countless ways, and not all of them have to do with aliens). The other characters are just so stubborn in their disbelief. Just so unwilling to quesiton their own sacred knowledge. Just so heedless.
4. Well, and there's always that one guy who is never convinced ... and the audience is supposed to take some heart in the scene where he's finally given his due by the brainsucking, human-looking aliens. "Ha-HA!" we're to shout. "At last Sheffield is dead, dead from his lack of listening!" But I've always found those scenes to be too little, too late. They never satisfy in the way I want them to ... because it's not important to me that Sheffield die. It's important to me that his mind is changed. That he opens himself up to a new (maybe scary!) idea. That he becomes un-stubborn and (gasp!) vulnerable to change.
... So, I guess what I really hate it when people don't listen. Or won't accept that maybe they're not always right. That maybe, just maybe, Big Bird isn't lying and Mr. Snuffleupagus IS real.
