The Decreasing Impact of Death In Sci-fi

brumgrunt writes "Are science fiction TV shows and movies overusing death as a plot device? And, more crucially, do any of us believe that a dead character is really dead any more?"

Comments

Re:Nothing new to see here

[Moraelin]

Hell, it's been a plot device for ever, not just in television.

You may remember hearing about a really old character who was killed, was buried, and then to the amazing of everyone involved, *wham* they live again. You know who I'm talking about, right? Yep, Snow White and her glass coffin. Or Osiris. Or Dionysus. Or the couple dozen killed-oops-he-lives-again deities the cult of Osiris-Dionysus eventually assimilated. Read: pretty much any vegetation deity known around the Mediterranean. Or, oh, right, that dude in Jerusalem that a bunch of Romans nailed to a stick and made a scarecrow out of, circa 32 AD ;)

Give Tolkien a break

[PhilHibbs]

Complaining about Gandalf's resurrection is a bit thin, since it hadn't really been abused all that much when Tolkien wrote LotR.

Re:Give Tolkien a break

[hey!]

Well, the question shouldn't be how frequently *other* authors abuse a device. The question should be whether a specific *story* abuses a device.

I think "abuse" in this case means the author undermining the logic of his own story to achieve something that takes more skill than he's displayed. Killing a character off for emotional impact then simply saying, "well death is a reversible process in this universe" throws doubt on *everything* in the story. That doesn't preclude resurrecting a character, but the resurrection has to be handled on a level above in-universe machinery if the reader is not to feel cheated.

I've heard a lot of literary complaints about LotR over the years, and most of them are from people with an obviously superficial understanding of the story. Yet the criticism that Gandalf's resurrection is a bit of a dodge is one of the ones most worth considering. Perhaps the strongest defense that can be mounted for Tolkien is that Gandalf's resurrection was narratively *unnecessary*. We saw Gandalf fall and *assumed* he was killed, but Tolkien takes pains to show that we jumped to a premature conclusion. Gandalf actually survived the fall, and only perished (if I recall) several days later after hunting down and killing the Balrog.

This actually shows some unusual artistic instinct on Tolkien's part. Normally resurrection would be a cheap plot device to get a killed off character back, but Tolkien actually takes the trouble of getting the character back *without recourse to resurrection*. This leaves him free to put resurrection on the table without making the reader feel cheated. Furthermore since Gandalf is already in an exempt category as an immortal (we know, for example, that *Sauron* came back after he was presumed dead), he *can* be resurrected without bringing all deaths in the story into question. Gandalf's resurrection doesn't mean that Boromir or Theoden or any of the various other mortal characters might return.