Want to reflect on tweets I'm reading about I May Destroy You where people are confused by what happened in the finale. It's made me realise why I'm so gassed by how Michaela Coel has disrupted the linear and ultimately limiting parameters of storytelling in mainstream television

1 tweet said the finale had 'plot holes'. Most TV trains us 2 expect a complex but ultimately neat web of story arcs that culminate in decisive conclusion(s). This isnt true 2 the fragmentation of experience & it's not the only way 2 tell a story. It's simply the most common one.

Ofc, non linear storytelling is the norm for a reason. It's deeply satisfying. We are accustomed to the beats that form this narrative shape and we subconsciously anticipate them. We usually have to turn to more fringe art forms like theatre or poetry to see alternatives to this.

A linear plot is a feat of wilful engineering that creates order & symmetry. This has its merits. But it can coddle us into thinking life also works that way, when it doesn't. Seems a specious extrapolation, but we are literally the product of the stories we do (or don't) tell.

The narratives we tell ourselves about the world can be disingenuously neat and discrete as a direct result of how we think stories 'should' work. Yes, we're able to distinguish between 'fiction' and 'reality' on one level, but we also turn to stories to be instructive.

This is why we obsess over who the 'good' and 'bad' people are, on screen and off. It's why we demand that every strange or unsettling incidence be accounted for. We are looking for the clarity and redemption in stories that we sadly do not get in our lives. I get that.

But I am excited to see TV that's true to the disarray of our lives, thoughts and feelings. Experimental and ambiguous choices being made in television, arguably the 'everyman' art form is neccesssary. I love that Michaela trusts her viewer with the complexity of her vision.

This type of storytelling is essential to critical thinking, moral fortitude, our ability to discuss the human condition in an exciting, pluralistic way. This, folks, is what it is to grapple with what keeps us up at night. We're a mess & our story frameworks should reflect that!

(I'm not saying that if the finale was not to your taste that you are too 'stupid' or 'uncultured' to get it, before you even go there! We all like what we like & that's gravy. But we also are products of what we're fed, and the more varied that media diet, the better. DASSIT)

As per, this thread is Typo City. Use that critical engagement I'm chatting about to ascertain what I mean cos my fat thumbs and autocorrect are moving very anti-black.