Tag Archives: Batman

Everything I need know about Allusion I learned from “The Big Bang Theory”

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Allusion is when a reference to something–a person, place, thing, or work of literature–is mentioned in a story. The idea is that people get what the reference means and the connection brings a deeper meaning to the reader’s experience. As an English teacher, I already knew about allusions and how they worked, but it wasn’t until I started watching The Big Bang Theory that I learned how to use them in a piece of writing to help develop rich settings and characters.

[Tweet “It wasn’t until I started watching @BigBang_CBS that I learned how to use allusions in writing.”]

Let me explain. For those who have never seen it, The Big Bang Theory follows the lives of four stereotypically nerdy scientists as they struggle on the outskirts of popularity. They eat, sleep, breathe, and live sci-fi, sometimes literally (remember Sheldon’s Gorn-infested sleep or the group’s misadventures as a Star Trek Next Gen landing party?). Their lives are programmed around television schedules, comic-cons, new sci-fi movies, and trips to the comic book store. But what makes this show especially enjoyable for me are the endless references–some of them quite obscure–to current popular culture. As a devout Trekker and sci-fi enthusiast, I identify with the boys and their never-ending struggle to fit in.

[Tweet “Read about my ‘The Big Bang Theory of Allusion’ as a way to make characters seem real. #WritingTip”]

I’ve adopted what I’ve dubbed “The Big Bang Theory of Allusion” in The Revenant (and my current work in progress tentatively called I Was, Am, Will Be Alice). The theory tells us that, because as writers we want our characters to seem as real as possible, we should make them consumers of current and real popular culture. This is not a new idea. Shakespeare did it, referring to bible passages or ancient Greek and Roman mythology (keep in mind he had 500 years less of popular culture to draw on). In To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee draws on civil war knowledge, politics, and what we now think of as classical literature, but which would have been popular and current at the time, such as Ivanhoe, Dracula, and Tom Swift. Many of the references to movie stars such as Mae West, alluded to in Tennesee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire may be lost on today’s readers, but at the time of its release, these references would have brought a deeper meaning to the story for its audience.

The main allusions in The Revenant are about superheroes—Superman, Batman and Spiderman–but there are also references to characters in the sci-fi canon. Zulu, the male protagonist, imagines himself Khan Noonian Singh on the deck of the S.S. Botany Bay fighting his nemesis Kirk, as well as Hook on the deck of the Jolly Roger seeking out his nemesis, the crocodile that bit off his hand. Kat, the female protagonist, imagines herself as Buffy of vampire slayer fame and Zulu as her Angel. Zulu prefers to think of himself as more of the Spike type. Going after bad guys like he does, Zulu draws parallels between himself and Jeff Lindsay’s Dexter, the vigilante who satisfies his need to kill on people who have circumvented the law. There are also references to Hiro Nakamura of Heroes comic book and television show fame. Fans of these shows will recognize the allusions and understand the thoughts of the characters making the comparisons; others might recognize the references as allusions but miss some of the meaning, and that’s okay. We don’t need to know anything about The Gray Ghost Dill offers to swap with Jem if he touches Boo’s house in Mockingbird other than that he’s staking a treasured book on the bet.

[Tweet “Does using too many allusions date your work? That depends on syndication and DVDs. #WritingTip”]

The concern with over-use of allusions is that it may date a piece of literature. How many people will remember shows like The Big Bang Theory or Dexter or Buffy the Vampire Slayer ten years from now? How many in twenty? Given the examples in this essay, quite a few, I’d say. Classic Trek was cancelled in 1969, yet the legacy of that show is still going strong. Shows like Buffy, Heroes and Dexter are still sold in DVD/BluRay collections and available for streaming online anywhere from two to ten years and more after cancellation. Given that The Big Bang Theory is now in syndication, chances are it will continue to be broadcast to tickle the funny bones of future generations with its allusions, keeping anything it references in mainstream popular culture, for years to come.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this post on The Revenant Blog Tour. For past and future posts, see my Blog Tour Itinerary.

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The Anti-hero

I love Dexter, be it reading Jeff Lindsay’s novels or watching the television series. It was weird at first, rooting for the bad guy, but the more I read/watched, the more I realized that “bad” had shades of grey. Lately, many shows feature protagonists who are more anti-hero than hero. Take ABC’s Once Upon a Time, for example. It’s no secret that my favourite character on that show is Rumplestiltskin/Mr. Gold, a man who killed his wife, chopped a man’s hand off, held a woman hostage, and beat an old man with his cane, twice. Through it all, I root for him. I feel the loss of his son, the anguish in his love affair with Belle, the plunging psyche as he picked up the remains of his prized possession, the chipped cup, from the hospital floor. Scandal is another example. Olivia and her team have murdered, stolen, and lied. Olivia herself is in an affair with a married man and was involved in rigging votes in the last presidential election. Is it wrong to want to see her and Fitz together? To want Fitz to remain blind to her conspiracy? To want Mellie to die in childbirth? To love Cyrus for calling off the gun for hire he’d paid to murder his own husband to keep the secret buried?

For two weeks now, I’ve been watching FX’s The Americans. The premise is intriguing: Russian spies carrying out covert missions while posing as the all American family. As I watched this week’s episode, I questioned my interest in the show. Talk about anti-heroes? Elizabeth and Phillip pose as heads of a nuclear family, living out the American Dream in their house in the suburbs with their son and daughter. Last week, they used their garage to store the spy that raped Elizabeth during her training in the trunk of their car. This week, Elizabeth poisoned an innocent college student and the two blackmailed his mother for the cure. Elizabeth played the nurse to the boy while Phillip beat up the uncle, broke his hand, strong-armed the mother, and nearly suffocated the boy to get what he wanted, which was for the mother to plant a bug in a politician’s office. As I watched, I thought, “How horrible. I don’t even think I like these characters.” Then Phillip sat in his car after suffocating the boy and nearly cried while Elizabeth consoled him. I won’t say I root for him as I do Dexter, but I think I watch to put together the glimpses of humanity. So long as the gruesome brutality is balanced with the humanity, I may continue to watch.

I am no stranger to television brutality. Shows like True Blood, Vampire Diaries, and Walking Dead are full of it, but the macabre is acceptable, almost expected, given that the characters are vampires and werewolves and hunters and zombies and just trying to survive. Shows like this don’t bother me much. What I find horrific is when the monsters are human, drawing blood for nothing more than the horror of it. Dexter, I understand. He witnessed his mother brutally murdered in front of him as a toddler. Dexter’s impulses are born of blood. He knows what he does is wrong. Unable to quash his compulsion, he has found a way to control it instead, killing only those who deserve to be killed. Not the same for Joe Carroll on Fox’s The Following, who gets others to kill for him a la Charles Manson. I can’t figure out why he does what he does other than the fact that he can. American Horror Story is another show that pushes the blood-soaked threshold, but it does so with a subtle irony and hidden horror stereotype allusions that elevate it from horrific bloodbath to interestingly compelling.

The line between good and evil has blurred for the traditional superhero types as well. Gone are the days in which the hero does good both in and out of their costumes, like Batman or Superman. Today’s heroes fall nothing short of human. This week’s Arrow, for example, showed Oliver brutalizing his own mother for answers. On Person of Interest, Detective Carter often bends and/or breaks the law to save Reese and Finch. Even the president of the United States is not exempt—this week’s Scandal saw Fitz murder Verna in her hospital bed to prevent the jury tampering secret from getting out. Gone are the days of good and evil, of black and white; welcome to the days of anti-heroism and shades of grey.  

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