posted
I brought this up on the History Boys thread, but it was not really what that thread was about. Card didn't feel Little Miss Sunshine was actually edgy, but he felt History Boys was criminal. Where is the edge, and what is it for?
I would venture to say the edge involves an artist sharing with the audience a truth in the artist's unique voice. The material itself doesn't have to be new. As we have often discussed, hardly anything ever is new. Newness isn't even necessary in the artist, apart from the fact that we will experience an artist's vision for the first time at some point. (Would you believe I have yet to knowingly see a Scorsese film? Checking IMDB I realize I saw one: Age of Innocence.) An obsession with novelty in art has no more virtue than the drive to eat a different cuisine every night in order to appear "hip".
How does one hunger for what one has never tasted? Is it really a sense of adventure that is satisfied by such wandering? "I ate at a Thai restaurant last night, and I swear it was just like being there!" Yet we call it adventure. We must, in order to satisfy some part of ourselves that must be placated to be civilized. It is like small portions of conquest.
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Works the hold an edge I think are works that force us to think, or make a clear statement. The statement would also have to get us to think, and in ways we never did. Edgy to me it thought provoking. Some novels have done this, and a rare few have done this to me during the whole novel. The end of Enders Game is one example for this forum. Other novels and movies that have an edge and force you to think would be Fight Club, American Psycho, Apocalypse Now, or American History X. These are the first ones that popped in my head when I thought edgy. I think writing edgy would require passion and emotion to be conveyed. They are the ones you want to talk about with your friends, and not just because they were cool, but because they can make you talk about issues you would have never given thought to before, or at lest not offered up in coffee conversation. Fahrenheit 451 is another one that does that. If you agree of not it gets you to think about an issue that is important to the author. I would even give Jarhead that title. As an aspiring writer I think that capturing that inside view is important, and we should strive to be edgy. I do not want my work to be known as brain candy, and merely for entertainment. I want the story to start up conversation and stir emotion even after it put down. How do you get that edgy feel without being preachy I think is the question though.
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Yet we call it adventure. We must, in order to satisfy some part of ourselves that must be placated to be civilized. It is like small portions of conquest.
