Text or Subtext?

What conversations around Jordan Peele's movie Nope say about our expectations of storytelling.

Jordan Peele's latest movie, Nope, has sparked some interesting conversations since its release. One half of the audience seems to love it and the other half thinks it is Peele's worst movie so far. Wherever you stand on the film's merits, the discussions around it are fascinating, and touches on an issue that has been going around in critical circles for years. That is, should the success of a story be based on its text or subtext?

Audiences who love the movie will point out its rich subtext, its symbolism and social commentary.

Audiences who were underwhelmed by it, point out its incoherent plot line and lack of character development.

I haven't seen the movie, so I can't speak to its merits. This is not a review, let me state that outright. What I am most interested in is the conversations surrounding the movie and how it has opened up differing ideas about what makes a good story. But before I dive into the weeds, let me explain what I mean by text and subtext.

Text and Subtext: What are They?

So what is text? Text is simple: It's what's there on the page, screen, or stage. It's the story, the characters and their development, it's the plot. Sometimes it might include the theme, especially if it's simple and unambiguous, like "Love conquers all." Text is what you engage with when you read or watch a movie in real time. It is what you point out when you summarize a movie or novel to your friends or readers.

Subtext is exactly what the word implies. It is the text beneath the text. It involves complex themes, analogies, symbolisms, metaphors and similes, morals, or lessons within the story. In other words, it's the message. Sometimes the message might be easy to tease out or it can be ambiguous (Think of movies like 2001: A Space Odyssey). Either way, it's the part of the story that readers and viewers engage with after the storytelling experience.

Both text and subtext are important to storytelling, and help create greater depth to our reading and viewing experiences.

Reader/Viewer Expectations

The arguments surrounding Nope come from two different factions over how to judge a piece of media: Should it be judged based on its text, its ability to tell a sharp, well-written story? Or should it be based on what it has to say?

This divide has been ongoing, long before the rise of social media, but it seems to have gotten more pronounced in the past few years. The first time when this divide became obvious may have been with the Star Wars sequels. When The Force Awakens came out in 2015, it was obvious to fans that J.J. Abrams take on the franchise was largely nostalgia bait. It's entire plot, more or less, played on tropes fans were familiar with. Many fans loved the movie, but others were a bit underwhelmed. When Rian Johnson's The Last Jedi came out, however, the divide grew even larger, from fans praising the movie's bold direction, to others claiming the story was nonsensical, or, hyperbolically, that it destroyed their childhood.

Whatever you might think about the movie's haters or fans, one thing became clear: Those who praised the movie loved how it de-emphasized the "hero's journey" narrative and its willingness to critique fan nostalgia; while its detractors hated it for its plot holes, implausibilities in established canon, character destruction, and "woke politics," whatever that means.

This divide extended to other products, from YA novels to animated shows like Steven Universe to the Star Trek franchise to Jordan Peele's remake of Twilight Zone, and on and on. Fans or detractors of these franchises were quick to single out the subtext in the stories or their alleged poor storytelling or so-called woke agenda.

While much of this divide can be explained through political partisanship (which became even more strident after Trump's 2020 electoral win) and how each side wanted the arts to validate their ideological beliefs, politics alone doesn't explain it. Not all disagreements with storytelling today can be neatly categorized in a Left/Right paradigm, though many on both sides of the political divide will insist otherwise. For instance, there have been grumblings among ADOS (American Descendants of Slavery) writers and readers over the rise of "trauma" narratives in YA novels, with its focus on BLM and anti-racism themes, often for the benefit of the white gaze, and the exclusion of ADOS readers who simply want good stories that reflect the rich diversity, both painful and joyful, of their lives.

As author L.L. McKinney wrote in an essay for tor.com over the sudden interest in books written by Black/ADOS writers following the 2020 protests of George Floyd's execution by the hands of police:

So, back to the previous line of questioning; why didn’t you hear about The Nightmare-Verse, or many other stories by Black authors? Because our books don’t center on Black pain. In the industry, stories about police brutality, the struggle, poverty, etc. have been dubbed 'issue' books, and it’s a not-so-secret secret that if your book doesn’t fall into this category, it won’t get any real push or marketing. These are the 'right' Black books I referenced earlier. Nearly all other Black books are treated as less important. They’re denied the time and resources needed to make them successful. They’re ignored by the industry, by librarians, by awards committees, by schools, and yes, even by certain readers. Unless, of course, there’s a protest going on. Then everyone wants those ally cookies, nom nom.

Lauren Michele Jackson, in an essay for The Vulture, concurred: "This, maybe ironically but maybe not, reinforces an already pernicious literary divide that books written by or about minorities are for educational purposes, racism and homophobia and stuff, wholly segregated from matters of form and grammar, lyric and scene." When stories, particularly Black stories, are reduced to "teachable moments" for white readers/viewers, then the real joy of storytelling and craft gets lost under a miasma of social and political subtext that have no hope of ever changing or addressing the problems in the first place.

But the differences in story expectations go even deeper than politics or a desire to address contemporary issues in stories (which, quite frankly, go all the way back to the ancient Greeks). Many filmgoers who came out of the theater after watching Nope described their utter confusion over what they watched, and not always in a good way. Again, I haven't seen the movie yet, so I can't say whether their reactions are valid, but it's clear to me by reading some of their arguments in YouTube comment sections or on message boards that their confusion stems not from the subtext that many of the film's lovers are quick to point out, but on the textual level. Character development or plot cohesion just wasn't there for them.

So it seems to me, in the back and forth between audiences, this divide over text and subtext may have more to do with the fact that many storytellers as well as critics and some audiences are sacrificing text in their drive to deconstruct stories.

The Rise of Critical Theory and Deconstruction

Before the release of his film, Jordan Peele articulated his reasons behind creating horror for modern-day audiences in an interview with Craig Melvin from the Today Show: "…the notion of Nope, and where the title came from, which, on one hand is something Black people recognize as our point of view in a horror situation, is this acknowledgement that…you can't have black people in a flying saucer film and have it be the same experience. There's a different relationship." Fundamentally, Peele's work has sought to deconstruct our understanding of horror, redefining it to fit an ADOS perspective in which horror and terror means something entirely different and very real. For us, horror hits differently, and Peele's films acknowledge that.

Peele's determination to deconstruct filmmaking and storytelling, I think, is widely shared among a lot of storytellers today. This is not a new phenomenon, however. Deconstruction emerged out of the poststructuralist/postmodernist movement over fifty years ago, and has influenced all forms of art from literature (Thomas Pynchon and William Gaddis) to film (Quintin Tarantino's early films) to architecture. A quick Google search offered some concise definitions of what deconstruction is:

"…a method of critical analysis of philosophical and literary language which emphasizes the internal workings of language and conceptual systems, the relational quality of meaning, and the assumptions implicit in forms of expression."

In essence, deconstruction values subtext as a part of or dominant analysis over the text, particularly in the socially constructed or politicized meaning in language or symbols. While there is no one definition of poststructuralism since it covers a lot of ground in terms of the disciplines that apply its methodology, one common theme within it is that there are no universal or agreed-upon truths within language, and that words or symbols of words can have multiple meanings depending on social context. This new form of critical thinking swept through academia during the 1970s and 1980s, and offered voices that were otherwise marginalized within universities and society at large a chance to be seen and heard.

While these ideas were largely confined to academic circles, they eventually made their way out into wider cultural arenas, eventually settling into social media. Go on YouTube and you'll find a whole genre of videos that seek to deconstruct or "explain" a movie or novel's subtext. Nope spawned more than twenty videos alone in the weeks following its release, all purporting to explain its complex meaning. Audiences today are much more primed to recognize and understand subtext than ever before. This isn't uncommon. There were no doubt scores of film goers who held late-night discussions about 2001: A Space Odyssey after its release. A whole cottage industry explaining every detail in Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of The Shining exploded in the years since it played in theaters, one that even inspired a documentary, Room 237. But these discussions were largely among a niche group of fans who were deeply embedded within geek culture. Now that geek culture has become mainstream, the need to find meaning in every shot, line of dialogue, or symbol has also become the dominant way in which audiences engage with culture. Music, film, novels, and television shows that capture the cultural zeitgeist launch a thousand think pieces by editorial pundits or blue-check Twitterers, each seeking to offer their take on what the piece actually means or its overall statement on society at large. As someone who has written book reviews for various publications, I plead guilty for valorizing subtext over text.      

Peele's films certainly fit within this framework. It deconstructs our viewing experiences and allows fans to engage with horror films on a different level. The subtext within his films, Get Out, Us, and Nope, are the driving force in his tales, and ones that seize the public imagination. However, it also fits within another framework that might explain why audiences are so divided over his latest movie. In the effort to deconstruct storytelling, Nope also denies readers/audiences the spectacle they come to rely on so much from modern filmmaking. Perhaps, that is precisely Peele’s point. But the issue remains: Should this leave storytelling just for its own sake out of the equation?

Where is This All Leading to?

So is that it? The divide between audiences over films like Nope comes down to whether they enjoy or don't enjoy deconstructive storytelling? Not likely. Look at Pulp Fiction, a postmodern nonlinear box office hit that broke down, invented, and reinvented the classic tropes of film noir. Or how about Twin Peaks: The Return, which likewise deconstructed the cultural memory of David Lynch's original series run, much to critical and popular acclaim. Meanwhile, The Last Jedi's deconstruction of the Star Wars' mythos continues to divide fans. And though many disagree about Nope, it has clearly touched a nerve, since, as of this writing, it hit the $100 million mark at the box office. I don't think it simply comes down to audiences who embrace or reject postmodernism as a form of storytelling, but that some readers/audiences aren't willing to judge the merits of a work of art on its subtext alone. For some readers or viewers, a strong subtext pregnant of complex meanings, a powerful political statement, or any other underlying messages that only the most cold-hearted could scowl at will ever be enough if the characters are one-note and the plot incoherent. In the end, people still want stories in which they can connect with on an emotional level.

As a storyteller, I am particularly conscious of creating stories that engage readers on multiple levels. With the Book of Dreams series, which can be read here at my newsletter, I wanted to create the kind of adventure stories that excited me when I was a young girl, while at the same time explore ideas or issues that concern me. But more than anything, I just wanted to tell fun, adventurous, exciting, scary stories that will entertain readers as much as provoke them. Hopefully, I'm hitting my marks, but that is something only readers can judge. All I can do is tell stories as best as I know how, which is what all storytellers can truly promise.

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