Notes on Layering Fiction

I have been contemplating my developing theory of layered fiction. I suspect that I have asserted before that stories of pure entertainment or pure metaphor are on a more or less equal level, though I will always prefer the entertainment because at least it is not actively trying to be obtuse. 

Another part of this attitude is my discomfort with the unconsciously elitist underpinnings of virtually all avant-garde art films. It seems to me to be little but a chance for the cultural and intellectual elite to build their own clubhouse, no plebs allowed, because to get any value from an avant-garde art film, you have to be one of those elites. You cannot watch it as entertainment, only as a complex code that only a privileged few understand.

At the same time, this is not an argument for making everything insufferably lowbrow. I think there is a compromise to be made, and that compromise forms the basis of my theory of fiction.

My theory predicates itself on layering. My aim is to create fiction that even a casual or uneducated viewer can at least enjoy on its own merits as entertainment but that maintains one or more additional layers of meaning that can be unearthed with a little effort on the part of the viewer. The idea is that the deeper you look, the more you will find. You get what you want to get out of the artwork, and if you have the time, the will, and-or the know how, you will find your effort rewarded, but the art does not fully exclude anybody.

This requires making every scene, every line, every shot, etc. do at least two things a once. It will require a little more thought and effort, sure, but we could use some more of that in entertainment these days.

In the next few weeks, I will expand on these ideas in a full-length video that examines the Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard movie The Cabin In The Woods with an eye on analyzing its use of thematic layering. Whether you like the movie or not, it is an extremely clean example of layering, and is thematically crystalline. I will explain. Keep an eye out for it.