The Meta-ness of "Bolt"
So one of the in-theater previews that seems to be accompanying G-rated movies at the moment is for “Bolt,” a Disney film coming out around Thanksgiving. The next paragraph is my best effort to explain its dizzying layers, but the easiest way to understand the discussion that follows is to watch the trailer, here.
The central character is Bolt, a heroic talking dog who protects a little girl from evil villains. Except, he’s not really heroic because he’s actually an actor, in a TV show inside the movie. The TV show is about a heroic dog who protects a little girl from evil villains. What Bolt doesn’t recognize is that he is an actor-dog, playing a hero-dog on a TV show, inside a movie. Only his costars (like the actress-character who plays the little girl in the TV show within the movie) know that he’s an actor.
The amount of wising up required, in order to appreciate the Bolt idea, is staggering. As a viewer, you are expected to understand that you’re watching an actor, playing a dog who “really” is an actor-dog playing a hero-dog, not that he knows it. Since the central action of the film revolves around the actor-dog’s false belief in the authenticity of his hero-dog role, you have to suspend your disbelief of the actor-dog’s implausible ignorance. Can anyone capable of that also be capable of genuine childlike wonder? I’m not sure.
If you’ve read The Tipping Point (and you have… c’mon…. admit it), you may recall a related vignette about a certain episode of Sesame Street, in which Big Bird searches for a new name. The plot of the episode was fun for adults—-Big Bird, in a moment of existential ennui, concludes that his name is oddly functional and lacking in character, and spends the rest of the episode looking for a new one. But the story was confusing to young children, who speed up their learning about the world by assuming (usually correctly) that the things they encounter have one consistent name apiece. The layering was overkill. It makes for an interesting vignette because most of us have long since forgotten what it would be like to lack layers, to view the world as a simple place where the distance between things-as-they-are and things-as-described doesn’t hold a lot of inherent interest.
From Big Bird to Bolt, it seems, we’ve come a long way. But I’m not sure I like the progression. I’m tempted to say that if a typical five-year-old is Bolt-ready, we are doing way, way too much wising up of young kids, way, way too early. My favorite book on this subject is Thomas de Zengotita’s Mediated. De Zengotita writes as if he were speaking, and the book diagnoses this layering as a serious problem—-we aren’t able to experience reality because we’re too darn busy experiencing unreality, and judging things as being unreal in particular ways. It’s as though the only conversation we can have is about layering; everything is unreal and we are constantly tied up diagnosing its unreality.
And now a confession. When I’m writing or reading about mediation, I go back and forth between thinking it’s really profound—-maybe the central observation possible about the world we live in—-and thinking that it’s a bunch of self-referential, naval-gazing nonsense. Either way, there’s a simple truth at the bottom: Exposing young kids to the vertigo of a film like Bolt is, on some level, totally nuts.
Dear Mr. Robinson, why do you hate awesomeness?
— Senescent · Jul 4, 09:46 AM · #
The question I’ve always had is that the English-language novel was quite meta or postmodern early on, with Tom Jones and Tristram Shandy, both in the 1750s. And then novelists more or less lost interest in playing games for over a century. Why was that?
— Steve Sailer · Jul 4, 10:04 AM · #
So I suppose I won’t be getting your help on the kids’ puppet show I’m working on? The one in which puppets of the puppeteers from Sesame Street act out Pale Fire with small puppet copies of Big Bird and friends?
— Matt Frost · Jul 4, 11:06 AM · #
Matt: You’re right, I can’t help. But I could make an eerie simulacrum of myself available for your use—a David-bot.
— David Robinson · Jul 4, 01:48 PM · #
Yesterday at the fireworks there was a family sitting near me. Dad never once took his eye off the camcorder viewscreen; he missed the experience in his zeal to record the experience. Bro constantly took pictures on his cellphone; sis text messaged, I’m not kidding, the entire time.
I don’t put much stock in that Everything Bad is Good for You thesis— I don’t see why narrative complexity necessarily makes us smarter or more virtuous— but I don’t doubt that today’s five year olds can at least follow the storyline, whatever negative consequences this kind of thing has for their sense of wonder. I don’t think there will be a
My first reaction to the trailer was just to think “Boy, I’d much rather watch the movie the first 30 seconds of the trailer was about than the one the rest of the trailer was about.” But then The Real Inspector Hound is one of my favorite plays, so I guess I’m part of the problem.
I’m off to visit the world’s most photographed barn.
— Freddie · Jul 4, 03:28 PM · #
I’ve been waiting ten years for someone to make The Truman Show into an animated children’s feature, and you’re not going to spoil it for me! (When do they get to Blue Velvet?)
— Martin · Jul 4, 04:23 PM · #
DR: “Since the central action of the film revolves around the actor-dog’s false belief in the authenticity of his hero-dog role, you have to suspend your disbelief of the actor-dog’s implausible ignorance.”
The trailer is unclear, but it’s possible that the dog is deliberately being kept in the dark (“he’s never been out of the studio”)…ok, that only makes sense if the dog would be capable of knowing the difference, and the humans know it. On the one hand, he’s a dog. On the other hand, he’s a cartoon dog, who has seemingly human intelligence but probably only talks to other animals, as per usual.
You really wanna mess with the kids? Have the actor-dog turn out to be a girl dog, even though his character is male.
Buzz Lightyear’s similar confusion about his reality-status is a big point in Toy Story, and that worked out ok.
At the other end of the advisability spectrum, there’s the Bewitched movie, which went meta for no reason that I can see.
— DonBoy · Jul 4, 04:53 PM · #
I disagree with you on some levels, although I appreciate the sentiment of what you’re getting at. My response to you, and my thoughts on today’s youth can be found on my blog post entitled: “Layering overkill?”
— Geoffrey Gaurano · Jul 5, 01:33 AM · #
It’s an interesting post…but I think you’re making “Bolt” sound a bit more complicated than it really is. He thinks he’s a real hero, but he’s just a hero on TV. I think kids will be able to appreciate a comedy that’s working on that level (and the comic possibilities are obvious – Bolt gets into situations he only IMAGINES he’ll be able to handle, but will then skate through based on dumb luck).
It’s also a very similar premise as another popular CG-animated character, Buzz Lightyear. You’ll recall, he THINKS he’s an outer space explorer, but that’s just his character – in reality, he’s just a toy.
— Lon · Jul 5, 03:24 AM · #
“Can anyone capable of that also be capable of genuine childlike wonder?”
He’s a dog. I love dogs, but I don’t put too much stock in the intelligence of anything that licks its own ass.
The concept seems interesting, but I have no interest in giving money to John Travolta or Miley Cyrus.
— Reality Man · Jul 6, 06:30 PM · #
Shorter review: “The Truman Show” meets “Underdog”.
— Pyre · Jul 7, 04:35 AM · #