Inneresting #122 - Force of Habit
Three things you need to remember: Repetition, consistency, and repetition.
Will Durant summarized Aristotle so well, people think Aristotle was responsible for the quote “We are what we repeatedly do.” When characters repeat themselves in a narrative, we see what feels natural and what matters to them.
Same as it ever was
We always wind up at the pub - Lessons from the Screenplay looks at how Shaun’s inertia in Shaun of the Dead is essential to the story, and his repetitive behavior plays into the callback structure of its comedy.
It’s coooold out there every day - Joseph Petitti examines how Groundhog Day uses a time loop to play with Nietzsche’s idea of “eternal recurrence.” Greg Lessard and Michael Levison apply Directed Acyclic Graphs to examine the narrative repetitions in the film.
This dancer’s day-to-day - Vi D. Smith, Candace G. Ostrich, Renee R. Brown, and Lindsey H. Steding collaborate on a look at the stressors on Black Swan’s Nina that lead to her self-destructive habits.
Professionalism as habit - David Thomson breaks down the practiced cool detachment of Jef Costello in Le Samouraï.
Remember Sammy Jankis - Robert Hopkins focuses on the depiction of habit and ritual to compensate for a lack of memory in Memento.
Creating a body of work - David du Chemin argues artists need to generate a lot of work to see what ideas repeat.
The song remains the same - The Walk of Life Project proves conclusively that Dire Straits wrote the best song to end any movie.
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We’re innerested in you…
Previously on Inneresting…
In case you missed it, in last issue’s most clicked link James Chiang looks at Steven Covey’s notion of “sharpening the saw,” and what it means for creative people to prepare themselves.
Other Inneresting Things…
Matt Webb looks at the plausibility of self-replicating interstellar probes.
Every wonder how many days it’s been since a solar flare or asteroid impact?
Connor Oliver still thinks a Macintosh Classic II is the best computer for him to use.
And that’s what’s inneresting this week!
Inneresting is edited by Chris Csont, with contributions from the entire Quote-Unquote team.
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