YWTT: Action Films as Literary Works

This final prompt from You Write the Title III is by EFS. 

Two things I love.

I love giant movies where everything blows up and there are baddies and fast cars and ridiculous spectacle.

I also love literature – geeky, classicky, long books, the kinds I was supposed to get into in school but rarely found interesting then.

I never thought of one as part of the genre of the other, though, but it’s a fun exercise to do so. I think it’s an easy enough argument.

Literature is, technically, the art of the written word. While maybe the final product of an action movie is visual and aural rather than type on a page, it certainly had to be a written work at one point in the process. Maybe not as scintillating as the later stage, but a vital step in the process.

I could even argue that action movies are a kind of poetry. Poetry is about finding meaning not in the logical procession of sentences but in the rhythm and swing of words – about playing with the sounds, not just the definitions, to say something that catches at your interest and your emotions. Poetry is the suspension of disbelief of grammar.

What’s different about an action movie? It puts logic in abeyance, creates un-lifelike situations and grabs your attention with sound and fury. Action movies use CGI,  and stuntmen the same way that poets use the alphabet.

You’re detonating the tools that you have to grab at your audience and make them hold onto you for the duration. Maybe action movies aren’t strictly literature, but they’ve got much the same goals.

Also in the You Write the Title III  series:

• The Audacity of Mustaches
• Why Hot Women Should Date Jeff Hoyak
• If I Were a Billionaire
• If I Had My Very Own Unicorn
• The Tao of Henry
• Milk, Elmo and Mommy: The Complex Life of an 18-Month Old
• Shakespeare and Auto Repair

And if you’re curious, here are some previous You Write the Title posts:

• World’s Greatest
• Life as a Black Belt
• If There’s One Thing I’ve Learned
• Are You Experienced?
• I Love Trevor Bratton So Much
• Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway
• How I Hit the Jackpot