Storytelling Entropy

Arguments about some spooky decline in the quality of art are, I think, often motivated by uncritical, nostalgic enjoyment of media people consumed as kids. There’s always some new study (this one’s fun ) about how kids these days listen to garbage.

I thought this video essay might be more of the same, but it develops an interesting case that changed how I think about media. The essayist discusses several features that they argue make movies feel hollow:

The essay attempts to tie together these things together into a single idea that the author calls storytelling entropy. In their words:

The lightsaber condenses a multitude of meanings and ideas into a simple, singular object. As such, we can see it as an example of anti-entropic storytelling – anti-entropic because it renders disorder into order. It takes a plurality of story elements, unifies them, and then compresses them into their absolute essence.

Consciously or unconsciously, we generally admire anti-entropic storytelling because it just adds so much richness to stories, and because it invokes the feeling that everything is meaningful, purposeful, and interconnected in a way that just makes sense.

This definition is a bit hard for me to parse. After considering for a while, my understanding is that “anti-entropic” storytelling tries to build or reinforce meaningful semi-conscious associations the subject makes with parts of the art. Put differently, “anti-entropic” storytelling builds a cohesive network of vibes around elements of the story and nurtures those vibes. “Entropic” storytelling does the opposite – it liquidates the value stored in that network.

As an example, consider the Harry Potter movie franchise. People love the main series of movies, and for good reason – the character writing and acting are reasonable, the fantasy elements of the plot are accessible, and even though the movies start out episodic and self-contained, there’s a larger narrative direction. The story is sincere, and consistently adds new wonder to the world. It’s anti-entropic, in that it works to construct as sense of wonder and connection in the watcher. The Fantastic Beasts movies are a different story. The movies try so hard to shove in characters from the original series. The story seems like an excuse to stay in the Harry Potter world a little longer and to experience some of the same characters from the original series. It’s entropic, in that it seeks to extract and monetize the nostalgia people have for the world of Harry Potter. In the process, it dilutes away at the richness of the world.

Overall, I like this way of thinking about media, and it’s helped me clarify some of my thoughts about music. Streaming platforms (and more recently, short-form video) have guided patterns of music consumption to focus on smaller and smaller parts of a musical project, in a way that likely favors catchy earworms (2)this article suggests that the word “earworm” is a product of the electronic age. Intuitively, it seems hard to imagine that earworms would be popular in a world where music was harder to listen to and there were fewer profit incentives. . “I’m Good (Blue)” or “Play that Song” are solid examples of entropic music creation – they copy hooks from existing songs and add nondescript lyrics. They’re really catchy, but they derive a lot of their catchiness by capitalizing on existing associations people have with the hooks. They might be nostalgic, or ironic; regardless, they’re attempts to manufacture a hit rather than deepen the associations people have with the existing songs. Taylor Swift’s album re-release is similar – it seeks to cash in on nostalgia for her earlier records and the relationship people have developed with her public persona. It’s definitely not about creating new music or telling a new story the way an album like Midnights does.

On a personal level, this kind of catchiness is great in songs (for that matter, so is quippiness in movies), but if there’s no underlying subtance, it creates a much shallower listening experience. It’s sad to play a song on repeat so many times that it becomes almost annoying; it’s even more sad to come back months later and find that, other than the catchy hook, there isn’t much to enjoy about it.