Quote:
Originally Posted by st.cronin
You keep talking about "writing for expectations" which has nothing to do with what I'm talking about at all.
My claim is that the starting premise of any art is that there is an audience, and an artist. The reason I'm talking about this in this thread is that I've been told (I forget if it was in this thread or somewhere else) that the ending for the Sopranos was Chase's personal ending, that he gave the audience no consideration at all. I don't know if that's true, but if it is, how can that possibly be art?
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The starting premise of any art is
not that there is an audience -- rather, the starting premise is that there is an artist. If they are compelled to create, it doesn't matter if anyone else besides them values the work, EVEN IF they do eventually want an audience for it. Chase presented his vision, and we're debating its aesthetic merit. It's not a wrong or bad ending because it defies expectations -- it's a good or bad ending on the merits of whether the work achieves artistic excellence, outside of audience.
I see where you're coming from, but we disagree about the importance of the audience to a work. From my perspective as a practicing artist, I can tell you that audience consideration for literary work is nearly zero. Popular work, on the other hand, makes audience expectation a primary concern. The Sopranos was a series that was massively popular despite being "literary" in its execution -- for the gifts Chase gave the audience (the constant malaprops, the references to outside events and such that would be resonant with the popular audience), the narrative was at its core a literary one, and the "story" ended in a similar way to many literary narratives. In fact, I'd argue that an audience steeped in literature is less likely to be put off by the finale because our expectations are refined by exposure to similar methods of dealing with narrative closure, especially in short stories.
I'd also argue that Chase
did give the audience what they wanted -- something unprecedented in television history that would guarantee interesting debate.