skip to main |
skip to sidebar
If one can recognize – and sympathize with – the protagonist as the person who gets dumped on in Act One, then Andy Schleck is now the protagonist of the 2010 Tour de France. Stage 15 is a little late for Act One, but at least I know who to root for in the stages that remain. Ride, skinny boy – ride!
Of course, the dumping upon is merely the situation that helps establish the protagonist’s status. We still need a story… what will Andy choose to do next? Will he dig in and claw back those precious eight seconds? Will he accept former friend Contador’s hotel room apology? Will he whine about it and drop further back – in which case, I'll stop rooting for him.
Speaking of which, someone should have offered Lance Armstrong a rewrite after his early stage disasters. He could easily have been the protagonist, but he ignored the clearly heroic choice laid before him. Lance might be out of contention, but teammate Levi Leipheimer clings to a spot near the top. How wonderful would it have been if the great Lance Armstrong had declared, as his farewell Tour slipped away, "This one is for all the teammates I've had over the years." The world would have set aside any reservations they ever had about the guy if Lance Armstrong had pulled a Bull Durham
during his remaining two weeks in the sport, and sacrificed his own glory to drag Levi onto the podium in Paris. Of course, that hasn't happened. And perhaps the sort of man who can win seven championships in a row is not the sort of man who will EVER sacrifice himself for a teammate. But hey, it would have been nice.
Slate has an interesting article on our deep-seated desire to root for the underdog. Though the article offers several semi-scientific reasons, the writer suggests that part of our tendency to root for the guy who isn't winning actually traces back to the narratives all around us – a bit of self-fulfilling prophesy for us writers:
When you think about horse racing, which comes to mind first: Seabiscuit's underdog victory in the 1938 Pimlico Special or Cool Coal Man's unremarkable loss at the 2008 Kentucky Derby? … And consider all the other underdogs in our culture—from the Bible, from literature, and from every sports movie ever made. It's no accident that we remember the Titans...
Show don't tell, show don't tell, yeah yeah yeah – we are all good little writers. We know this. We have it tattooed on our wrists for easy reference.
But here's a twist. Much of the time, when I watch television, I don't watch it. It's on, and I'm listening. I look up every now and then to check in, but I'm also sorting mail, washing dishes, reading magazines, or even – as right now – tapping away at my computer.
I read an article once that had statistics on this sort of thing. The article claimed lots of people don't watch watch television, they only sorta watch. I tried to find that article for your reference, because I hate it when people say, "I read an article once" as if that meant anything, but when I googled people who listen but don't watch television I got a lot of people bragging about how they don't watch television. I hate that, too.
Anyway... where was I?
Right. Watching television, mostly with my ears. The television in question is the Tour de France daily coverage on Versus. Lance Armstrong's new ad for the Nissan Leaf electric car plays heavily during the commercial breaks. Here's the voiceover script for the ad:
In twenty years of cycling, even when I was ahead, I was always behind. Behind cars. Behind trucks. Behind... those guys. Tailpipe after tailpipe, after tailpipe. Until now. The one hundred percent electric, no tailpipe, Nissan Leaf. Innovation for the planet. Innovation for all.
The ad is quite clear – when you see it. Tailpipes spew smoke and Lance coughs and one understands that "until now" refers to the tailpipes and the smoke and that Lance is still behind the cars, they're just not spewing smoke in his face anymore. But the first time I saw the ad, I didn't really see it – I only heard it. And I heard something quite different.
THE AD QUITE CLEARLY STATES THAT THE NISSAN LEAF IS SO DANG SLOW THAT A GUY ON A BICYCLE WILL NEVER HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT RIDING BEHIND IT AGAIN.
I think this is not what the good folks at TBWA/Chiat/Day had in mind. These are the people behind the Justin Long/John Hodgman MAC ads. These are good writers. And the Leaf ad is a good ad, as long as you watch it. Which I didn't. And according to that article I couldn't find, a lot of other people won't either.
So definitely show, but make sure you aren't telling something completely different at the same time.
