The Scene That Must Be in a Tale

What we want, what we need, what we must have in a tale’s end

La Scène à Faire

The great French drama critique of the XIX century Francisque Sarcey was well known for one theory above all, what he called ‘la scène à faire’ which Archer the American critic translated as the ‘Obligatory Scene.’ Alas, M. Sarcey nowhere explained fully what he meant by this term. But we can guess, and it may be that in guessing we will learn more than if we but heard all of what M. Sarcey thought of his term.

It is in the first place no doubt related to what Chekhov is said to have written:

If you introduce a loaded pistol in Act I of your play, you had better fire that pistol before the final curtain.

I paraphrase the great playwright, for I have heard the saying in several forms. One prominent form has it that the pistol of Act I must then be fired in Act III, the final act, but I think it could also be fired in an intervening act just as well.

Our Minds as We Watch or Read

Let’s poke into what Chekhov said. If we the audience see a loaded pistol in the first part of a play, we expect to see the pistol fired at some later point.

Why would this be so?

The start of a tale (most of all of a tale put in the form of a play or movie, both of which need to condense the tale into a single evening) sets forth the hero, his problem, and how he hopes to solve it. It also puts us the audience in a certain frame of mind — that is, the start of the tale will leave us expecting to be entertained in a certain way (within the bounds of the kind of tale we take it for), and hoping for one outcome while fearing another.

This tradition is based upon the way our minds relate to tales. It may be artificial and we may have to learn it, or it might be basic to the way man’s mind must work, or it might be basic to the way the Universe must work — I won’t argue for one or the other here, because I don’t have any idea. (If it is wholly artifice, then there may be a different way to construct a tale entirely. This is something for the more adventurous, or experimental, of talesmen to explore.)

With this in mind, we can look for audiences to learn, without even knowing that they have learned, some conventions that come as logical outcomes to this rule. We the audience will learn these conventions in two ways:

1. Without thinking, we will learn it as a pattern in all the tales we’ve heard so far, and come to expect the pattern to be repeated in all the tales we’ve yet to hear.
2. We will feel a greater pleasure when we hear a tale that obeys this rule; when we hear a tale that breaks the rule, we will feel a sharper disappointment.

The rule can be broken in two ways. If we take Chekhov’s pistol, we see how:

1. The pistol, shown us in a flourish in Act I, cleaned, loaded, cocked, and put upon the mantle in center stage, is never picked up again or fired.
2. No pistol is shown to us in Act I (or II). Then in the moments before the final curtain, a pistol is produced and fired — without warning.

The second of these ‘unlawful acts’ is known generally as the deus ex machina — this is when suddenly, out of nowhere, some person, entity or device appears and solves all the tale’s problems. We feel cheated when the tale ends like this, which is why even the hint of the deus ex machina is taboo. ‘Well,’ we feel, ‘if this happened now, it could have happened in the beginning or any point on the way, so why did we have to waste all this time on this stupid story?’

What We Look For

It is the first ‘unlawful act’ that gives rise to the notion of the Obligatory Scene. When we hear a tale, we are aware of conventions the tale will follow, because we have heard many other tales, we know what a ‘tale’ consists of, and we look for this tale to follow the pattern, conform to the conventions, and ‘obey the rules’ that we have come, however unconsciously, to expect. Among these conventions, I think two in particular concern us here:

1. A genre is a tale tole in its own conventions, which are more narrow than those that rule over tales in general
2. The solution of the tale’s problem is implicit in the way the problem has been shown to us.

As to no. 1 above, when we see the scientist in his home garage try to invent a time machine, if we think we hear a satirical tale, we look for him to fail. But if we think we hear a tale of science fiction or fantasy, we look for him to succeed, and move through time.

As to no. 2 above, when we see the tale present some person or object (such as the pistol) in a way that suggests we pay heed and remember it, then we will look to see it figure prominently in the hero’s success or failure. (In the specific case of the pistol, it is not something that was generally taken out and flourished in the bourgeois polite society M. Chekhov depicted in his plays, and so the mere presence of the gun would have been unusual, and memorable.)

These two sets of expectations — those that come from a genre, and those that come from the manner and the timing of the way the tale’s elements are set before us — have a strong effect over what we look for through the rest of the tale.

They both create, by way of these our expectations, ‘scènes à faire’ — those Scenes That Must Be in the Tale.

(Composed with pen on paper Wednesday 26 March 2008)