I’ve enjoyed the Marvel Cinematic Universe since before it was actually called that. It was 2008 when the first Iron Man movie came out, and I remember being genuinely surprised by how much I ended up enjoying it. I didn’t know anything about Iron Man, outside of some cartoons I had watched randomly as a kid, and I knew even less about anyone involved with the film. The concept of a rich guy gaining all his superpowers from a mechanical suit seemed lame to me, and yet the movie did the most remarkable thing. It made Iron Man cool.
Now, 15 years later, we’re drowning in superhero fare. Money has unfortunately convinced the powers-that-be that the only thing worth making is more people-in-bright-spandex stuff. And with the recent announcement of Marvel’s perennial rival DC Studios making a ten year plan that criss-crosses films, streaming, animation, and games, it looks like we’re going to be in this universe for at least another 15 years.
That isn’t strictly speaking a bad thing as long as the stories are fresh and unique, and other stories that are not super-powered are not being crowded out of our attention. The main issue I’ve had with recent MCU-and-ilk shows and films have been the exorbitant exposition and backstory that as a viewer I am always blindsided by.
Exhibit A: The Disney+ MCU shows
The typical MCU shows on Disney+ follow a similar pattern:
Pre-show marketing: Great but inexplicable concept
Episode 1: Bombard viewer with details and explanations to set the context, while aggressively connecting to the wider MCU
Episode 2: Do something interesting
Episodes 3 - 5: Run out of steam
Episode 6: Talk, talk, talk, shoot lasers from hands, talk, talk, talk, leave ending for another show or movie
It’s exhausting.
The idea of a one-shot, completely contained story has mostly ceased to exist in the MCU, and therefore, in all of superhero-dom. Everything has to connect to something else, which means writers are bending over backwards to encourage viewers to play mental gymnastics to justify why Loki needed 45 minutes of talking to introduce Kang the Conqueror in the final episode of Season One of Loki. After which I still wasn’t sure what exactly had happened because I had drifted off.
The message is being delivered twice at the same time, halving the impact.
This idea of a data dump in order to cover all bases and answer every possible question anyone could have occurs everywhere. My favourites are instruction manuals for electronic devices or cars. Most are written with the target audience of machines, and out of 400 pages, only 12 will be in a language you can understand. Why is it so difficult to provide instruction manuals in only the languages of the country you’re in? There’s no reason why I should have access to a Swedish manual for my headphones when I live in Singapore.
Exhibit B: Edgar P. Jacobs
A repeat offender of this type of writing is Edgar P. Jacobs, the creator of the Blake & Mortimer comic book series. Beginning in 1946 till his death in 1987, Jacobs wrote (and illustrated) 12 stories before his work was continued by a collection of writers. But while the artwork has managed to remain fairly consistent, adhering closely to the ‘ligne claire’ style pioneered by Hergé, the creator of Tintin, with whom he worked closely, it’s the writing that has changed since his death. Because his writing was unbelievably dense and verbose for what is essentially an adventure comic book series.
Accounting for the fact that these were written in their original French before translating into English, it is still too many words per page. Moreover, the text simply describes what the artwork in the panel already shows us clearly. The message is being delivered twice at the same time, halving the impact. Simply getting through a page can seem like a slog.
Balancing depth and story
How often do we see this in everyday life? People sending paragraphs of text on chat apps, or a laundry list of sentences on social feeds, or articles that go on and on with you wondering how much time has to pass before you understand what the point of all this is?
Because accumulating knowledge is one thing, distributing it efficiently is quite another.
I see this all the time in presentations. For over 10 years, I’ve wondered who exactly is going to sit through a 100-slide proposal? And yet, without fail, they’re always made for some unsuspecting audience. This is especially odd because these triple-digit decks are often made with the explicit purpose of getting more money.
Audience: So what’s important?
Salesperson: Everything.
What a great pitch.
Depth is important. It builds credibility, and lets the person in front of you know that you know what you’re talking about. Only so far as the person knows what you’re talking about.
How many times have you had a university professor who was incredibly knowledgable and experienced, and yet you couldn’t follow anything that they taught in class. Because accumulating knowledge is one thing, distributing it efficiently is quite another. Which is why teaching is also a skill, and good teachers are excellent communicators.
Fatiguing the audience
What you say is important, but equally, and sometimes more important, is how you say it. Political speech writers, the good ones, are adept at saying what they want without actually saying it. The phrase ‘I apologise for causing offence’ is a great example of a non-apology. There’s no apology for what this person has done. Instead, they are sorry that you took offence to it.
And then you have those who say the most awful things but in a way that makes them sound legitimate. We’ve all used the internet long enough to have come across examples of this.
The biggest challenge when delivering your message is fatigue. There are many ways to keep your audience’s attention, but not exhausting them when you do so, is hard. There is a tendency in society nowadays to equate less volume with less value. That is simply not true. Everything should be in balance. Nobody is asking you to dumb down your message, what they’re asking is for you to make it easy enough that they can get 80% of what you’re trying to say. People know that complex things are complex. But don’t make things complicated to convey an ill-earned validity of your message.
Audiences are not afraid of being challenged, but they want to be challenged in their way. Removing complexity can make a message simple, but boring. The opposite leads to fatigue and obscurity. Walking that line effectively is what makes good communication.
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They say a picture paints a thousand words, and sometimes that is true. Photographs and paintings can communicate a lot of information simply by displaying a single visual frame. Great examples of this can be found in art galleries around the world.
National Language Class by Chua Mia Tee (SG) - painted in 1959, the year Singapore gained self-governance from the British, the scene of a language class asks a deeper question on identity and belonging, and evokes self reflection. On display at The DBS Singapore Gallery at National Gallery Singapore.
Boschbrand (Forest Fire) by Raden Saleh (ID) - painted in 1849, the immense picture freezes a moment of panic and tragedy as a fire rages through a forest and animals scamper for protection. On display at The UOB Southeast Asia Gallery 2 at National Gallery Singapore.
Check out The Boys. It has the superheroes and it's definitely a show that doesn't waste too much time with explanations.