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Feb. 10th, 2007 11:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethAm reading more lit textbook.
Speech act theory now.
Could apply it to Torchwood.
But I have the feeling it would come up with useful things like "Captain Jack is the boss of them" and "Torchwood try and control the perceived and expressed reality of others"
there was a handy thing though about how we accept things a sentence takes for granted. like if you say "my brother could beat up your brother" then you might doubt that they could in fact beat them up, but you won't so much doubt that the brother exists.
It also said that if you say "I'm going to visit the fairies" then the audience takes for granted that there are fairies. But I think it's rather compressing that. Because audience may or may not accept the existence of fairies, depending on genre conventions, context of statement, character context, and sundry other factors including Being Very Awkward.
Also people are less likely to suspend disbelief for the niggly details. I mean, we can accept there are aliens and fairies and suchlike but people get grumpy when the Torchwood 'verse reality seems to be that of a popular movie rather than that of a carefully researched bit of history. Because they're getting it Wrong, you see. Except actually they're saying something more like their 'verse is a sekrit xover. Is a bit like how the Doctor keeps on reversing the polarity of the neutron flow. Just because it's utter rubbish in our 'verse doesn't mean he's getting it wrong. Just that physics and/or translation from the Gallifreyan is a bit different over there.
I was also thinking that the bits of a play you would pay most attention to, where they set up character and suchlike, are the bits of a *series* most likely to be full of goofs and ignored-later stuff. Because the actors don't know as much as their characters would *or* as much as they and the audience will by the end of the season so their initial choices can be difficult to reconcile with later knowledge. But the more episodes get piled up the more characters sort of settle in and have a middle as well as a bunch of outliers. I mean, there's a usual character, once you have a lot of data. At the start there's just a scatter of data points. But just because we have so little to work with we're going to work those scattered points very hard. Which is a bit awkward if they decide to change them later.
... for some reason I keep wandering back to Ianto in 1-01 kind of grinning at Gwen and nodding her through the door. The gesture amuses me. But I also want to pull that sequence apart and analyse it for character and themes and stuff. Because we have the first introduction to Torchwood-the-place and it's all about deception, false fronts,Owen being a twat the staff not actually being very good at the hiding (partly because they can erase their mistakes), and the bit about CCTV so she was all being watched even when she thought she was being sneaky. There's a lot of theme to pull out of that.
And then Jack tries to control not just what Gwen does but how she phrases her observations. That's taking control sort of higher up the chain? Like... if he just wanted her to do like he said he wouldn't have to be so insistent on her saying it right, it's more like he wants her to *think* like he says, so he keeps poking until she expresses in an acceptable manner.
And then there's the bit where she's all 'you can't do stuff to me I'm police' except she's already cheating if she's police, she isn't acting like police or in uniform or properly like the law says with searching places after you ask. She's being sneaky with pizza. So she's as two faced as the others already. Only not very good at it. And trying to use her group affiliation as a shield when she's already stepped outside it. Which doesn't work so very well. A bit like in Day One she tries to use Torchwood as a magic word but it don't work yet because they're all grrr at her and don't believe her. She hasn't got word power yet. So Jack has to be the magic word instead.
... I could rephrase that to be more coherent or I could go read more book. I think book.
Speech act theory now.
Could apply it to Torchwood.
But I have the feeling it would come up with useful things like "Captain Jack is the boss of them" and "Torchwood try and control the perceived and expressed reality of others"
there was a handy thing though about how we accept things a sentence takes for granted. like if you say "my brother could beat up your brother" then you might doubt that they could in fact beat them up, but you won't so much doubt that the brother exists.
It also said that if you say "I'm going to visit the fairies" then the audience takes for granted that there are fairies. But I think it's rather compressing that. Because audience may or may not accept the existence of fairies, depending on genre conventions, context of statement, character context, and sundry other factors including Being Very Awkward.
Also people are less likely to suspend disbelief for the niggly details. I mean, we can accept there are aliens and fairies and suchlike but people get grumpy when the Torchwood 'verse reality seems to be that of a popular movie rather than that of a carefully researched bit of history. Because they're getting it Wrong, you see. Except actually they're saying something more like their 'verse is a sekrit xover. Is a bit like how the Doctor keeps on reversing the polarity of the neutron flow. Just because it's utter rubbish in our 'verse doesn't mean he's getting it wrong. Just that physics and/or translation from the Gallifreyan is a bit different over there.
I was also thinking that the bits of a play you would pay most attention to, where they set up character and suchlike, are the bits of a *series* most likely to be full of goofs and ignored-later stuff. Because the actors don't know as much as their characters would *or* as much as they and the audience will by the end of the season so their initial choices can be difficult to reconcile with later knowledge. But the more episodes get piled up the more characters sort of settle in and have a middle as well as a bunch of outliers. I mean, there's a usual character, once you have a lot of data. At the start there's just a scatter of data points. But just because we have so little to work with we're going to work those scattered points very hard. Which is a bit awkward if they decide to change them later.
... for some reason I keep wandering back to Ianto in 1-01 kind of grinning at Gwen and nodding her through the door. The gesture amuses me. But I also want to pull that sequence apart and analyse it for character and themes and stuff. Because we have the first introduction to Torchwood-the-place and it's all about deception, false fronts,
And then Jack tries to control not just what Gwen does but how she phrases her observations. That's taking control sort of higher up the chain? Like... if he just wanted her to do like he said he wouldn't have to be so insistent on her saying it right, it's more like he wants her to *think* like he says, so he keeps poking until she expresses in an acceptable manner.
And then there's the bit where she's all 'you can't do stuff to me I'm police' except she's already cheating if she's police, she isn't acting like police or in uniform or properly like the law says with searching places after you ask. She's being sneaky with pizza. So she's as two faced as the others already. Only not very good at it. And trying to use her group affiliation as a shield when she's already stepped outside it. Which doesn't work so very well. A bit like in Day One she tries to use Torchwood as a magic word but it don't work yet because they're all grrr at her and don't believe her. She hasn't got word power yet. So Jack has to be the magic word instead.
... I could rephrase that to be more coherent or I could go read more book. I think book.