Torso Torques

[steepholm]

I was kind of annoyed by a Film Programme discussion the other week with Stephen Woolley, the producer of The Crying Game. The thing that annoyed me was this discussion of the film's famous twist:

We started the campaign [not to reveal the ‘twist’] in the UK. I wrote a personal note to all the film critics when the film was released, and I think 99.9% of them kept it quiet. … That twist became part of the reason the Americans flocked to see the film. At the height of its popularity in New York I used to slip into the back of cinemas, just for the moment, just for the revealing moment, because the audience would go crazy. … Obviously, it did work as a sort of hook for the film.

Well, of course I've talked about that film here before, since (because I like it in other respects) it got me thinking a bit about twists in general, what they do and when and why they work, or not - and when they're plain objectifying. That discussion is here.

But Woolley said something else that was rather interesting, and tangential to the other discussion. They were talking about the positioning of the twist and its relation to genre. Many twists come at the end of the story - but in The Crying Game it comes somewhere round the halfway point. And the effect is to change the genre of the of film - in this case from a fairly hard-bitten thriller about the IRA into something quite different (what would you say the genre of The Crying Game is by the end?)

Woolley's comparison was with Pyscho - where the midway murder of the apparent main character signals the change from its being a crime thriller to a psycho-drama. Another example that springs to mind is, of course, Madoka Magica...

I feel there must be at least a few others - stories that that reveal that the audience (and possibly the characters) have been wrong-genre-savvy, and make them reevaluate everything that's happened through the prism of a different genre template, but that also give them the time to do so, rather than using the revelation as a final-scene pay-off. A twist in the tail is fine, but a twist in the torso is better. It's a model that appeals to me, anyway - but how common is it?

Examples, please!

Comments

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I think The Crying Game switches genres enough and the genre-switching is so central to the entire movie that it can't be pinned down to any genre by the end. I'd say it's about identity - how it's defined, how it's chosen, and what aspects of it people choose to use to define themselves. But that's a theme, not a genre. Looking back from the end, though, my gut reaction is that it's a love story. Especially since the plot is a variant of a classic love story in which a soldier who goes off to war, leaving his girlfriend behind, tells his buddy to look her up if he doesn't make it, and then the buddy goes home and falls in love with her himself.

I know there's more anime than Madoka that have mid-story shifts, but a lot of them are primarily tonal rather than genre per se. Then again, you could argue that the shift in Madoka is also tonal. That being said... Neon Genesis Evangelion, Trigun, Escaflowne... Princess Tutu doesn't exactly shift genres, but the second half is radically different from the first. Utena, same.

In books, Stephen King's Dark Tower series has a minimum of four different genre switches in a seven-book series. Rosemary Kirstein's Steerswoman has a big genre switch somewhat early on, and then a sub genre switch later, with plenty of time to explore the implications of both.

But my absolute best example of a mid-book genre switch is Frances Hardinge's Cuckoo Song. It starts off as horror and becomes a different genre entirely about half or a third of the way in. I was not expecting that at all.

Also, you never know what genre any given Diana Wynne Jones book will end up in. Like, I'm not sure how to classify The Homeward Bounders to begin with, but whatever it is when it starts out isn't where it is by the two-thirds point, let alone where it is at the end. Hexwood also switches genres at least twice during the story.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Good suggestions, there, thank you! Neon Genesis Evangelion and Cuckoo Song had already flitted through my mind, oddly enough - the latter particularly, since I used a somewhat similar device (use of a doppelganger's pov) in The Fetch of Mardy Watt, but without (I think) changing genre, and was wondering about the difference.

To add to your anime list, there are some very weird genre things going on in Hirugashi no Naku Koro Ni, though it's not so much as a once-and-for-all shift as a kind of compulsively repetitive series of whiplash switches.

DWJ is certainly a candidate: Hexwood especially, and perhaps Time of the Ghost? I'm sure there would be others, too, if I were to start working through them.

[ashkitty.livejournal.com]

Evangelion is definitely one - hey look, fan servicey giant robot anime and OH HOLY GOD WHAT JUST HAPPENED WHAT IS GOING ON? ;)

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

When I was halfway through Madoka for the first time, I posted this - which conveys something of my feeling at the time:

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Oh, Power of Three, of course!