The Gilligan's Island theory of stories · 2:29am Oct 13th, 2014
As pointed out on a recent Straight Dope discussion thread, there are only four types of stories:
1. Someone else is on the island (big game hunter, beautiful woman, jungle boy).
2. The castaways are threatened by a natural disaster (sinking island, tsunami, volcano).
3. Something odd is washed ashore (radioactive seeds, containers of ice cream, a robot).
4. The castaways are finally about to be rescued, but Gilligan fucks everything up.
This neatly accounts for all possible story types, as long as you're only talking about stories that were made as Gilligan's Island episodes.
The problem with any theory claiming to list all the basic story types is that it's difficult to know whether "all stories in 20th-century English literature" or "all stories found in Hollywood movies" is closer in its variety of story types to "all stories" or "all Gilligan's Island episodes".
I watched a lot of Gilligan's Island back in the day. The stories may be repetitive, but the actors and the comedy saved it from being a four-trick pony.
Obviously, there isn't a true finite list of story types. It's about the details. Those change and it's the details that matter when it comes to making a story stand out amid its stylistic brethren.
From that, I can narrow it down to two story types:
Something changed.
Something might change.
Nope. Remember the beauty contest? Gilligan was the tie breaker, and voted for the gorilla. Also the trial episode where Jonas Grumby (his character name, used only once) was put on trial for who had responsibility for the wreck of the Minnow. (all I can think of off the top of my head. ) I grew up with those six, which is perhaps why MLP entices my creativity so much. They both have Strong Stereotype characters with defined color schemes whose episodes revolve around the reliable way they react to stimuli.
I think the real problem is that in order to come up with a list, you either have to generalize so much as to make your list utterly useless, because it does not really describe the stories in any meaningful way, or you have to make an extremely long list, which is hard to make exhaustive and impossible to tell if you're missing anything until someone comes up with something new.
I think that the latter is probably more accurate than the former, as there are actually some story archetypes which really do exist and really do more or less tell the story beforehand, and you just hang stuff off of them. Graves fics are a great example of that; there are, basically, four kinds of graves fics:
Someone is thinking about meeting up with someone and ends up at their grave.
Someone goes to a grave as a form of interaction with the deceased, ultimately coming to some sort of resolution.
Someone goes to a grave to show their devotion to the deceased or their ideals.
You think it is the first one, and then we subvert it when they get to the grave and it is really someone else entirely, with the first person they were thinking about joining them there.
Those really do sort of tell you the story, even though there are lots of details which change, they are all fundamentally pretty similar.
If you want to go even further, you could say that all stories are about a change in the status quo, and the decision of the actors to either embrace or deny it.
The act of categorizing is a strategy by which thinking observers try to make the world comprehensible. The significance of this act is not in the categories themselves, but in what they say about the observer.
I think I see the analogy here...I think...but I would go with it's closer to "all Gilligan's Island episodes". The problem with trying to classify all the basic story types I feel is that after someone reads you the list, you can usually pretty easily imagine more types to add, that probably contradict other parts of the theory itself.
Is there a way to classify all basic story types? I dunno. I like to think there is, that we just have to look at the problem in the right way. But who knows. Certainly fun to talk about!
Sorry for being pedantic. Theories provide conclusions under some logical framework on the basis of some set of premises. The claims that theories make are on (1) the soundness of the logical framework, (2) the soundness and completeness of the premises, and (3) the consistency of interpretation of the first two (and probably other things that I can't think of right now). The problems with theories claiming to list all basic story types is that they (1) neither provide nor suggest a logical framework under which to understand the theory, (2) don't make their premises clear, and (3) make no attempt to harden the interpretation of even the subject (What constitutes a story? What are allowed types?).
I have no understanding of literary theory. I'm just making things up based on my biases on the subject. Speaking of bias...
I think what you're pointing out is the inherent bias of experience. It's impossible to know how much you're not experiencing because all indications of your missing knowledge can themselves be biased. In the end, most informal theories tend not to be for everyone for all time. They tend to be for a limited audience that shares the biases of the theorist. A theory about "all stories on 20th century English literature" may be just fine for an avid reader of 20th century English literature. It may be just fine for historians trying to understand those likely to be avid readers of 20th century English literature. It's probably not fine for an avid reader of 21st century fanfiction. Most current and historical academic theories of literature are probably not fine for an avid reader of 21st century fanfiction.
2529547 Sorry for being pedantic. Theorems provide conclusions under some logical framework on the basis of some set of premises. Theories, by contrast, are arguments that don't operate within a logic that has either soundness or completeness.
I think that's at least true when it comes to theories about stories.
The problem with the Gilligan's Island theory of stories is that it fails to take into account fan fiction.
You think I'm joking? Well, let me state that the problem with the theory of 20th century English literature is that it only applies to works that are from the 20th century, English, and generally accepted as literature. As far as I can tell, any grand unified theory of stories would have two properties: It would be a numbered list, and someone would near-instantaneously find (or create) exceptions.
Also, in the movie The Castaways on Gilligan's Island, the group is rescued from the island but they return and create a tropical resort.
The lesson here is that when offered a three - hour boat tour with a cast of commedia del arte characters--decline.
2529790
You're right, but I still conflate the terms. I guess that's the opposite of pedantic.
How do you go about deciding whether or not you accept a literary theory? If someone tells you that they can list all basic story types and provides a list, how do you go about evaluating the list? Or in this case, what made you decide that it's unlikely for anyone to be able to provide such a list, regardless of the contents of what the theorist provides?
If it's because you don't expect the theorist to have a well-defined notion of "story" that matches yours, then he's failing (3). If it's because you don't expect the theorist to have a "valid" reason for his beliefs, then he's failing (1). If it's because you don't expect the theorist to articulate his beliefs that led to the list, then he's failing (2). Unless there's some other reason, your ideas of "theory" and "theorem" might be equally well applied here, since otherwise you're treating his "theory" as a theorem.
2531852
Same way you accept a scientific theory, I suppose. Find the relevant data and compare your predictive accuracy with and without the theory. Or try to use it empirically and see how you like the results. "Writers are more creative while drunk" is a literary theory. Most literary theories should be small-scope claims like that.
The special problem in literary theory is deciding what counts as literature, or what counts as good or bad. That hides the question "good or bad for what?" So a large-scope literary theory should have a qualifying statement saying what function the stories it talks about have, or at least giving a bunch of examples of the types of stories it talks about.
So I don't think making a list of basic story types makes sense. You have to restrict what kind of stories you're talking about. Because "story" in its most-general sense just means "a sequence of events". A to-do list is a story. A poem might be a kind of story without even being a sequence of events!
You have 2 lists of 1,2,3, so I don't know which you're referring to.
"Theory" and "theorem" denote the critical distinction between real-world reasoning and math. People who lose track of the distinction end up claiming to have proven things in the real world. Then they burn people at the stake who disagree.
2536466
* I'm switching from a "theorist is making a list of stories" scenario to a "theorist is making a list of good stories" scenario since I think your post does the same.
I was referring to the first paragraph in 2529547. Here's the expanded version:
You answered the question anyway. It seems like you would expect anyone providing such a list to not convey the theory in a way you both could understand equivalently (or similarly enough to agree), which would be (3).
I'm not sure how I feel about the distinction between math and other kinds of reasoning, but it seems like we can come to the same conclusion without that distinction, so I guess it doesn't matter just yet. I would also expect the theorist fail to specify the "for what" when saying that "good" stories follow one of a few archetypes.
There are at least two ways to lose track of the distinction: to think that both are equivalent to your idea of "theorem", and to think that both are equivalent to your idea of "theory". Thinking that both are equivalent to your "theorem" leads to people thinking they've proven something in the real world. Thinking that both are equivalent to your "theory" leads to people thinking that nothing is provable. You're thinking that I think of everything as concrete, but I think the exact opposite. I try to factor in the difference in perspective when trying to understand theories, and I prefer to over-apply the difference than under-apply it.
Maybe I should have used the phrase "reasoning framework" instead of "logical framework". Whatever the phrase, it should sound subjective, and I forgot to make that explicit in my first post.
2538060
This could get confusing very quickly if it isn't already. Can we agree to prefix ambiguous words with the person whose interpretation we intend to use? BH for Bad Horse, ES for equestrian.sen, and T for theorist?
Example:
It harder to read, but in the end it's a lot more clear what's being said.
2538080 Then if I think you've misinterpreted me, I get to talk about ES-BH-story.
2538639
Yup.