My postmodern American fiction class this quarter began by reading an author who wrote an essay called “The Literature of Exhaustion.” John Barth’s work is a lament of the exhaustion of literary conventions, and the few possibilities for further innovation. It’s really rather depressing, if it’s true. Is there nothing new to say?
TV Tropes is a website devoted to evidence of this, in a sense, but it takes an entirely different and less depressing perspective on the concept. As recently discussed in my favorite podcast “Slate’s Culture Gabfest”, TV Tropes is a Wikipedia-like collection of devices and conventions found in media, including television, movies and literature. In other words, the website breaks down recurring themes in popular fiction. It describes itself as a “catalog of the tricks of the trade of writing fiction.” And while it might sound like further indication of the tiredness of literary conventions, TV Tropes is a bottomless barrel. Anyone can contribute to this collection, and it’s encouraging to see the infinite depths of trope possibilities.
In the comedy tropes section, for example, TV Tropes users discuss such devices as “parental obliviousness,” “not that there’s anything wrong with that,” and “have I mentioned that I’m sexually active today.” It’s easy to conjure up examples of these in television shows and books and movies, and recognizing that they are ever-present isn’t frustrating or exhausting. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that” pops up often about the relationship between Jerry and George in “Seinfeld”, and we can see “have I mentioned that I’m sexually active today” in “The Breakfast Club,” and “parental obliviousness” in “Home Alone,” though it’s subverted in the novel “Ender’s Game” by Orson Scott Card, when the kids forget that their intelligence is hereditary.
Through these tropes, the audience is able to juxtapose one appearance of a trope with another, and to see how each “accidental public confession” diverges from our expectations.
The website is quick to make the distinction between tropes and cliches. According to the website’s homepage, “The word cliched means “˜stereotyped and trite.’ In other words, dull and uninteresting.”
Barth may see all tropes as “cliched” and thus boring, but the contributors to TV Tropes recognize infiltration of tropes and choose to engage with it.
This distinction is important, introducing a new way of consuming literature and media. The discussions display an earnest and genuine curiosity about the media we consume, and the users’ objective is to be aware of it. It’s evidence of a growing culture of educated consumers, and it leads to new depths of understanding.
Alexander Pushkin’s eponymous protagonist “Eugene Onegin” might be the same “Don Juan” character created originally by Lord Byron, but it’s still interesting to see what each author does with these stock characters, and it allows for intertexuality: a relationship between the works in which knowledge of one adds meaning to the other. Shakespeare himself is known for stealing plots and characters from existing stories, and this does nothing to reduce his genius.
What I find encouraging about TV Tropes, as a contrast to Barth’s dreary view, is the possibility that innovation is not the only interesting thing about literature and media. The infinite depths of this website are a testament to the remaining intrigue of time-worn conventions, and the remaining possibilities that exist in playing with these old tropes.
Perhaps the key to creating fiction in a world where it’s all been done before is not to focus on innovation but to evolve alongside an increasingly aware and intelligent readership. If TV Tropes users are any indication, modern readers seem eager to allow authors to do new things with old materials.
“The Written Word” runs every other Thursday. E-mail Bastien at jbastien@media.ucla.edu.