Many, many moons ago when I was knee-high to a grasshopper, I used to love reading. And while other kids were looking at comics or Goosebumps novels, I was obsessed with Choose Your Own Adventure books. For those unaware, this series of children’s ‘game books’ involved a certain level of interactivity by asking readers to make a variety of choices at the end of particular chapters to advance the story in different, albeit obviously limited, ways.
This level of interactivity within an otherwise linear medium was wholly appropriate, particularly given the target demographic. And despite the fact that I used to regularly (read: always) cheat and skip ahead to see if I liked the ending that I intended on choosing, I loved the books. But they were only ever destined to be a short-lived novelty and, even though their very design encouraged multiple read throughs (at least, for good little boys and girls who didn’t cheat like I did), there was something definitive missing thanks to the removal of narrative linearity.
You may have read this story on the PopSci front page about a futuristic opera that boasts, among other things, interactive instruments. Up until this point I’ve tolerated the often misinformed opinions of test audiences causing tragic reshoots for ‘confronting’ films and audience-decided endings for particular TV episodes, but this futuristic opera seems to be the dancing robot that breaks this camel’s back.
Interactivity is spreading too far.
As an avid gamer, I love the interactive nature of games and the subsequent levels of immersion. At least on paper, games have the ability to tell amazing stories because of the active engagement required from the player, as opposed to the passive engagement of a linear book or film audience. But just because I love interactivity in games, doesn’t mean that it should be spread across other mediums.
I don’t want a Choose Your Own Adventure version of Romeo and Juliet where they can live happily ever after. I don’t want a remake of Memento that spells out a definitive way to understand the film. And I certainly don’t want to a stage performance of Phantom of the Opera that lets me knock off the Phantom early in the piece so it can turn into a soppy Christine and Raoul romantic affair.
Yes, I realise that these examples are somewhat extreme, but we live in an age of remakes, sequels and a distinct lack of unoriginality. As people experiment further with interactivity in places it really doesn’t belong, I worry that my tongue-in-cheek examples may become prophetic.
What do you think?
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I agree that in some areas interactivity can go too far. A great example of this is the recent remake of I Am Legend. This film had great potential and if you read the original script, as I did, then you would see that the ENTIRE movie was changed by the alternate, audience-chosen ending. A fantastic, dark and confronting film that really kept you thinking became just another crappy zombie remake with just enough “difference” about their “infected” to slide it past a few radars. In short, it was an unoriginal piece of trash, all because the test audiences chose to subject all the rest of us to their own, shitty adventure.
Interactivity can be extremely flawed when used like this. You cant use the general population to make artistic decisions simply because they’ll never push the boundaries. The majority will choose the safe, comfortable option and never challenge themselves with anything even remotely provocative. All the greatest artist in history were great simply because they WERE different and did things that either noone else had done before, could do, or had ever thought of. If you leave those decisions to the 80% of the populace that considers reality TV to be satisfactory entertainment then you’re going to wind up with a world eerily similar to the one depicted in Idiocracy.