English 340: Hyper Hermeneutics


Subjectivity in The Lucky Ones (posted 21 September 2005)

What I thought was most interesting was how effectively The Lucky Ones presented multiple subjectivities at the same time. This is something that's difficult, and usually very tedious, to do in a fixed, written format. The short video clips give you enough time to understand a character, get a sense of their personality and their relationships to other characters, then move on to another character with the last fresh in your mind. If the clips lasted much longer or were much more involved, I think it would mean a loss of the ease with which you can jump from one character's narrative to the next, or back and forth between episodes.

I should probably also add that I didn't even realize until I read Ann's comments that you were able to actually click on the items in each person's profile, and this reinforces some of my earlier thoughts. Although all the personal belongings remain static between episodes (and making changes to these items as you progress through each episode would add to the effect) it gives you a better sense of who they're supposed to be as a person and helps to ground them more effectively in the narrative.

One of the main problems with this sort of work is that of a unifying voice, and I think they handle it well with the narration. The voice itself is quite interesting; it seems youngish, and most likely female, although there are times it's difficult to tell. The choice of the young voice adds a quality of curiosity to the piece and does a good job of tying things together.

All that said, I think The Lucky Ones could have been more effective and fleshed out more, but it has a lot of interesting things going for it. They manage to keep the car shilling from overpowering everything else, although the Mariner button is never far away. The characters themselves were nothing if not familiar, but the folksy effect of the banjo music in the background and the slightly strange theme music helped to keep things from being too cliched.

Comments

After messing around with it again, I realized one of the other big problems with a format like this: features are not always apparent. While the layout of the personal belonging background doesn't seem to change, the actual properties of it do; answering machine messages and fortune cookie fortunes change. So I'd say it raises my opinion of piece for its thoroughness, but lowers it for not making things a bit more clear.

Posted by: Steve [TypeKey Profile Page] at September 21, 2005 02:29 PM

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