Why is Calvin and Hobbes like a Greek tragedy, or like Macbeth? This question can be answered in many legitimate ways—it probably has as many answers as the question posed by the Mad Hatter in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: “Why is a raven like a writing desk?” (Fun fact: Lewis Carroll wrote this question without an answer in mind, but when pressed, he said that both can produce a few notes. I, however, an unsatisfied with this answer; my favorite is “Poe wrote on both.”) Unlike Carroll, however, I did write this question with an answer in mind. My answer: because all three leave things to the imagination.
Plays, like movies, are a visual and auditory medium, that each have certain constraints and freedoms. Movies can easily move the camera from one set to another, but camera shots must be planned carefully to show only the important information because of the edges of the screen. Plays are able to bridge the gap between audience and actor more easily, because stage actors have the ability to touch the audience. However, stage acting is limited by set pieces that can’t move (unless you’re Broadway; apparently Broadway just has an unlimited amount of money) and the fact that people will have a difficult time seeing an actor’s face. Movies, however, do have one significant leg up over plays: they can show violence well.
Violence in stories is absolutely not a new concept; in fact, Greek tragedies were doing horribly violent things to their characters long before the introduction of modern-day special effects. Most good playwrights, however, would write action like that offstage. But why? Was it because the Greeks were simply too upright and couldn’t stand such things? Hardly. We’re talking about the society that produced The Iliad, one of the most violent works I’ve ever read. (Seriously. It makes the baptism scene in The Godfather look tame.) The reason that Greeks kept this stuff offstage was because of something that Horace explains in “The Art of Poetry.” He explains that usually, it’s better to “show, not tell.” This refers to storytelling techniques where the audience gets to learn about a character or plot through the actions in the story, rather than being told in something like a voiceover or a Star Wars crawl text. Horace says that usually things are better absorbed if people get to see it rather than hear about it, except with violence. The reason: violence looks fake as hell.
Okay, so he didn’t say exactly that, but that was his general point. Violence simply doesn’t look good onstage, and for a long time, it didn’t look good in movies. Making a bloody death look as realistic as possible would require, well, an actual bloody death. Not only would this be unethical, but it would be difficult to replace actors. Contract negotiation alone would be a nightmare. Movies, even now, tend to follow this rule, or at least ones that aren’t rated R. Typically, the camera pulls away at the last second before a villain hits the hero over the head, or sometimes both characters are shown only in silhouette (conveniently eliminating the need to show blood), or in some cases, all you can hear is the scuffle. Movies that are rated R now have the ability to showcase violence in all of its “glory” because of advances in the movie and theater industries. Fake blood looks almost like real blood, makeup and prosthetics can simulate severed limbs, and CGI special effects can make up for the deficit. (Though I know that there will be people who say that CGI always looks tacky.) But why does it have to look so great? Who cares if it looks fake?
Most of you have probably already answered this question: the audience doesn’t want to be reminded that they’re watching a movie, or that they’re being told a story. People are willing to suspend what they think reality looks like in order to enjoy a book, movie, or play. But live-action movies and plays have an interesting problem: their world looks like ours. If fights look ridiculously fake, or blood looks like ketchup, you’ll be reminded that the people on the screen are actors, not characters. Once, when I was in high school, my teacher put on the clip in Julius Caesar where Julius is stabbed to death. This was clearly a low-budget production, because the clip was a group of men surrounding Julius, calmly lifting their swords up and down as Julius “writhed” on the floor. We all laughed, because it looked ridiculous—stabs are quick, short, jerky movements, not fluid and slow. This would be why Macbeth is better; Macbeth killed Duncan offstage and thus the audience isn’t subjected to a shoddy recreation of murder. Consciously or not, Shakespeare followed the tragic Greek formula for violence, and in doing so, he did the play a favor. Besides, I demand only the highest quality in my murder recreations.
But is that the only reason violence is better offstage? If you can show it if it looks real, why do some movies still shy away from showing it? This would be why Macbeth is like Calvin and Hobbes: sometimes, leaving things to the imagination is just as effective, if not more effective, than showing it. Longtime Calvin and Hobbes fans will remember “The Noodle Incident” referenced in the comics. Internet theories abound, but all the strip tells us is that Calvin came home from school early (apparently there were sirens), his parents don’t appear to know what happened, and there were noodles involved. Bill Watterson, the writer and illustrator for the comic, says that he leaves the incident unexplained because his readers could come up with something much more imaginative than he could. (I personally think that Calvin blew up the teacher’s lounge microwave.) The same concept applies to Macbeth, albeit more graphically. Macbeth comes from offstage, his hands smeared in blood. The audience can imagine the murder—did Duncan stir? Did Macbeth hesitate, even a little? Where’d he stab him? Did he look back at Duncan’s body? If he did, was he triumphant, or remorseful? The lines afterward indicate a trembling man, but an actor could choose to inject a moment of triumph if he desired.
Imagination can sanitize or terrorize as much as a person allows. Some Calvin and Hobbes fans think that Calvin’s “Noodle Incident” was that he played with his food at lunch; others, like myself, have crafted more elaborate stories. It was left up to the readers, and many playwrights and screenwriters trust their audience to do this. As many people know, the monsters we imagine under our beds at night are always worse than what we find when we flick the light switch.
This post was last edited on December 24, 2020.