This week, I covered The African Queen in my Analyzing the Script on Screen class. I love that film. It is such a paragon of great screenwriting.
But, lately, whenever I use it in class, I always feel compelled to precede it with a disclaimer. It is a sad fact that these days, almost 60 years after its release, despite being among the great cinematic masterpieces, the film comes across as woefully dated. So I have to at least acknowledge this. “I know, I know,” I say to my students, “it’s full of regrettable racial stereotypes. Yes, and the special effects are out of the stone age. And, okay, it’s also infused with 1950s sexual repression, giving it the unfortunate distinction of having perhaps the most unsexy onscreen kiss in the history of cinema. But try to look past all that to benefit from what the film has to teach us.” I’m never too sure if this appeal is having the desired effect. (Another dubious distinction of this film, only recently earned, is being the last of the films on the AFI top 100 films list to have an official release on DVD. While I’m ecstatic this has finally happened, I can’t help feeling the insult to the film that it took so long.)
This morning, musing over my coffee, reflecting on last week’s class, I was brought back to a thought I’ve often had about The African Queen: I wish someone would do a remake of it. But not a liberally reimagined, in-the-spirit-of type remake. I wish someone would do a scene-for-scene, word-for-word exact remake of the film’s screenplay while incorporating all the advantages of current day filmmaking. You see, the screenplay is perfect. But the execution, while being at the top of the craft for its time, has become a major impediment to a broad appreciation of it’s mastery.
I can already hear the collective gasp. Mon Dieu! Is she really suggesting that a mere mortal director and two everyday film stars try to match the work of gods like John Huston, Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn?! Sacrilege!! Arrest that woman!! Ban her blog!!
Yes, I’m suggesting that – in the interests of promoting and upholding greatness in the art and craft of screenwriting. Of course, it would have to be done in the most capable hands and with the highest respect and affection. And the motivation for doing it would have to be not only for its own sake, but also as a sort of (admittedly elaborate) academic exercise. It would be the first time (that I know of) that a screenplay is reproduced as its own work of art in the same way that plays are. The current day director and stars would simply be re-interpreters of a masterwork of dramatic literature, as if they were doing Death of a Salesman on Broadway.
I’m seeing Martin Scorsese directing, right? With his interest in film history and preservation, not to mention his command of the medium, he is the director I would most trust with this treasure. And for Charlie Allnut, I keep getting Robert Downey, Jr. popping up in my head. Can you see it, too? He’s plenty rough around the edges to be at first repulsive to Rose, but has all the charm necessary to slowly grow on her affections. And for Rose Sayer? I can see either Kate Winslet or Cate Blanchett having the necessary British imperiousness that melts into essential humanity, with the added advantage of keeping the Kate tradition going.
To further promote my cause, I’m going to do something I haven’t done yet in this blog. I’m going to post the introductory chapter from the book I’m working on – Beyond Thrills and Chills: Toward a Deeper Understanding of Character and Theme in Screenplay Structure – which covers the major points from my lecture last week. Maybe this will help convince someone that this screenplay needs to be preserved in an updated form that doesn’t take an erudite film sensibility to enjoy. (It’s long, being that it’s a book chapter — remember those? — so if you’re more of a sound bite person than a substance person, you can stop here.)
Here it is.
Introduction:
The African Queen
by Jennine Lanouette
Do not skip this chapter! I sympathize with the impulse to pass over an introductory chapter and I certainly wouldn’t blame the reader for feeling impatient to get to such undisputed masterpieces as Chinatown and Raging Bull. But before you dismiss The African Queen as so much bad rear screen projection, let’s not forget that it was written by James Agee and directed by John Huston, who are certainly co-equals in the pantheon of Polanski, Towne, Scorsese and Schrader. In fact, the latter four, no doubt, would bow in gratitude to these forebears. Polanski even put Huston in his film. “Ugly buildings, politicians and whores all get respectable in their old age,” Huston tells us in the guise of Noah Cross. Sadly, this does not seem to apply to chugging, coughing old boats. Sometimes they have to be rescued from obscurity.
The African Queen is the film that took to a new level my understanding of plot, character and theme and how they can function together in screen drama. It happened in the context of a lecture class I started teaching in the mid-1990s called Script Analysis, in which I would illustrate screenwriting principles by analyzing classic films.
One of the reasons I had selected The African Queen to analyze was remembering that, when I was in graduate school in the early 80s, it had the distinction of holding the record as the most-frequently-cited film on all-time best films lists of top critics. (Don’t ask me if this is actually true or not. It’s what I was told and at that time it was entirely believable.) In my study of its structure, I soon became convinced that it is the near equal balance of plot, character and theme story lines that gave this film the capacity to become so universally endeared to film aficionados. For those whose memory is hazy, here’s a recap:
At the outbreak of World War I, Rose Sayer, a British missionary in Africa, is stranded alone in the jungle after the Germans march in to conscript the natives and, in the process, burn the village and fatally assault her brother, the Reverend. She is found by Charlie Allnut, the local jack of all trades, who takes her onto his boat The African Queen to go into hiding until the war is over.
But Rose has another idea. She wants to go down the river to blow up the German battle ship The Louisa. Charlie humors her at first, hoping she’ll see the folly of her plan. But the further down the river they go, the more empowered she becomes. He is despairing at the dangers they will face until they successfully pass Shona, the German fort, and then survive several miles of deadly rapids. In their exhilaration, they fall in love.
However, their troubles aren’t over. Several more challenges await them — a sheer drop over a waterfall that requires significant repair to the boat, a swarm of insects that prevents them from anchoring on shore and, finally, the reeds and mud of the river delta that beaches the boat on a dirt bank. Just as they give up hope, a rainfall upstream swells the river to lift the boat off the mud.
As they drift out onto the lake, they see the Louisa doing its patrol. They go about executing their plan when a storm blows up. Their little boat is capsized and they are taken prisoner by the Germans, who sentence them to death. But before they proceed with the hanging, Charlie asks the Captain to marry them. He pronounces them man and wife just as the Louisa collides with the capsized African Queen, detonating Charlie’s makeshift torpedoes and blowing itself up. Rose and Charlie swim off to Kenya together.
Is this a story about two people stuck behind enemy lines who go down the river to blow up the Louisa? Yes, it is. Or is it a story about a man and woman who are stranded together in the jungle and through all the hardships they face, they fall in love? Yes, it’s about that, too. But which is the “real” story?
“Real” story? Why do we want to reduce an entire film down to one dominant story? Why do we want to prioritize one through line of a film drama over other equally compelling through lines? I have seen others analyze this screenplay by naming the adventure story as the main plot and then subjugating the romance to the status of subplot. What are we gaining by doing that? Other than succeeding at upholding our plot/subplot notion of what stories are made of. But what if the stories that are being told these days are becoming more complex than what can be contained in that model?
I maintain that this film actually has two distinct storylines – one, the adventure, functioning as the plot, and the other, the romance, operating in the arena of character. The two stories are equally balanced, inextricably intertwined and completely interdependent on each other. Thus, within a cohesive whole there can be individual plot and character stories and the overall impact of the work is the greater for it.
But let me back up for a minute and explain what I mean when I use the terms “plot,” “character” and “story.” Plot is the action of the story and is where we see the main character (classically referred to as the “protagonist”) play out his or her relationship with the immediate other (the “antagonist”). Character, on the other hand, is the infusion of individual human nature into the story and is about the main character’s relationship with him or herself (also known as “the inner journey”). Those two are pretty straightforward. “Story” bears a little more explanation.
The ultimate test, as I see it, of whether or not a given chronicle of events constitutes a story is if there is an A to B progression from its beginning to its end. In other words, in order for us, as an audience, to feel we have been told a story we need to have a sense that we’ve ended up somewhere different from where we started. That different place can take the form of the triumph over an enemy, the solving of a mystery, the inner transformation of the main character or any number of other such possibilities. But it is ending in a different place that gives us a sense of purpose in the story, whether it’s by achieving mastery in conflict, by bringing hidden information to light or by being emotionally and psychologically transformed. Just so long as by the end we have a feeling of having progressed somewhere, of having arrived at B.
But don’t get too stuck on this statement. It is not my opinion that all films must go from A to B. I am simply making the distinction that a film that goes from A to A is, in structure terms, simply describing A. If this is your intention, for example, if you want to present a rumination on the unchanging nature of human behavior or give an unvarnished exposure of a corrupt or tragic situation, that can be a valid purpose. And your audience can learn something important about the situation you have described. If, on the other hand, it is your intention to tell a story, then you have to get to B.
How do you know if you have gone from A to B? Here’s my diagnostic technique for measuring A to B progression, as applied to The African Queen: Where are Rose and Charlie at the beginning of the plot story? They are stuck behind enemy lines in the midst of a world war in a small boat with only a few weeks worth of provisions. Where are they at the end? They have made it down a wild and dangerous river and succeeded at blowing up a German battleship. This accomplishment definitely represents a significant distance from where they started. Thus, a clear A to B progression. How about the romance? At the beginning, Rose is a righteous, uptight, spinster missionary with a distinctly low opinion of Charlie Allnut. By the end, she is an adventurous, vulnerable, open-minded woman happily married to the man she formerly dismissed. Whoa! How’d that happen? A very definite A to B progression there as well.
Two distinct storylines with individual outcomes. But, at the same time, they are each benefiting from being told together. Imagine if The African Queen was just an adventure film with no romance – two guys stuck on a boat in the African jungle during World War I trying to get down the river to blow up a German battle ship. You’d have to add a lot of stunts and special effects to keep the audience in their seats for that one. On the other hand, imagine if it was just a romance with no adventure – a man and a woman stuck on a boat in the African jungle during World War I waiting out the war in a river backwater. You’d have to add a lot of sex to keep the audience in their seats for that one. In either case, it adds up to a lot of cheap thrills. This film goes beyond that.
So, to look at how this interplay between the external action of the plot and the internal progression of the character is carried out in The African Queen, we’ll take it through the major structural markers.
The point of attack (a.k.a., the inciting incident) is when the Germans march in, burn the church and the village and fatally assault the Brother/Reverend. In the plot, this begins the story because it’s the moment when Rose becomes stranded behind enemy lines. She is in dire straits and has to do something to address her external circumstances.
Simultaneously, this begins the character story because, during the ten years she’s been living the missionary life, her brother has been a stand in for a husband. She follows him and defers to him in all things. So long as he’s around, she will never be open to another man. Once he is removed, the opportunity exists for her to discover there is more for her in life than spinsterhood.
The end of the first act is when Rose leaves on the boat with Charlie and then hatches a plan to go down the river and blow up the Louisa. In the plot story, she has set out on a course of action for overcoming her circumstances. In the character story, not only is Rose stuck on a boat with a man, as if its going to take that kind of Petri dish isolation to get her to open up, but she has also launched a partnership with him – she needs his cooperation to succeed in her plan. This close working relationship is only furthering the potential for you-know-what to happen.
Throughout the first half of the second act, they go through a series of power struggles: Charlie takes Rose down her first set of rapids to cure her of her crazy idea, but, instead, it has the opposite effect. She is exhilarated by it. Charlie then goes on “strike” by getting drunk, calling her a “psalm-singing skinny old maid,” in response to which Rose pours out the rest of his gin. Charlie then flatly refuses to go down the river, so Rose uses the cold shoulder treatment to coerce him into it. And it works. Charlie can no longer stand the isolation. He relents and agrees to go down the river.
These obstacles to reaching their goal are not big, scary external events, as one would expect in a pure action story. Rather, they are inter-relational conflicts that must be gotten past in order to start focusing on the goal. In all this back-and-forth power grabbing, they are simply working out who’s boss. It turns out, of course, that Rose is boss.
Along the way, though, we gain further insight into Rose: the sheltered naiveté revealed in her physical exhilaration going down the rapids; her genuinely hurt feelings at being called an old maid; and her unrestrained ability to retaliate. Indeed, her cold-shoulder piety turns out to be far more unbearable than Charlie’s drunken insult. These deeper revelations into her character are giving us a greater understanding of the internal challenges she will have to get past in order to transform to the degree that she does in the end.
The mid-point is when they have the dual successes of passing the German fort without being blown up and navigating the rapids without crashing on the rocks. In their exhilaration, they come together in an embrace and kiss. Plot story: They’ve mastered a major obstacle in their journey. Two obstacles, in fact. Character story: This first collaborative success has caused Rose’s righteous defenses to come down and she’s fallen in love.
One of the things I enjoy about this film as a relationship story is that its not the same old saw in which a man and woman go through a series of adventures leading them to fall in love and then we’re supposed to take it on faith that, somehow, they will live happily ever after. On the contrary, in this story, Rose and Charlie fall in love halfway through and then spend a good part of the rest of the film working through a few relationship issues, to put it in contemporary terms. In dramatic terms, they encounter a series of challenges that each serves as a test to their intimate connection.
First, while they are still in their honeymoon phase, with Charlie imitating hippos and baboons as Rose laughs hysterically, they suddenly hear the sound of a waterfall looming up in front of them. Before they have time to steer the boat to the shore, they are caught in the current and pulled over a sheer drop. The boat lands afloat but there is damage to the propeller and drive shaft.
Charlie is initially discouraged at the magnitude of the problem, but Rose counters his disempowerment by mentioning once having seen a Masai native do blacksmithing with just a set of bellows on a rock. Charlie concurs and then improves upon the idea, describing how he would do it instead. Before long, he has forgotten his discouragement and fully embraced the necessary task. While, in action terms, we then see them applying the requisite elbow grease to complete the repairs, more important is the character significance of Rose’s gentle nudging that enables Charlie to discover his own inner resources. Thus, in mastering the challenge, they have also begun to develop their partnership.
The second challenge comes when, after an evening of gliding along a placid stretch of river lovingly extolling each other’s virtues in their adventure, they steer to shore to anchor for the night and are overcome by a swarm of insects. Rose immediately loses it, becoming completely nonfunctional in a state of hysteria. Charlie runs for a tarp and throws it over her, then pulls up the anchor and uses a long poll to push the boat back out into deep water. This is only a momentary obstacle and doesn’t require a stunt-laden special effects sequence to be bested. But it does provide our first opportunity to see Rose showing vulnerability, in great contrast to her former stoic rigidity. Charlie, on the other hand, compensates for her display of essential humanity with quick thinking and endurance.
Finally, they come to the river delta and are soon navigating through shallow water surrounded by reeds. Charlie has no choice but to get in the water and pull the boat by a rope from the bow. When he climbs back on deck for a rest, Rose screams at the sight of leeches on him. Now its his turn to lose control, stuttering and shaking in fear. He hates leeches more than anything. Rose gets the salt to poison them off his skin. When all have been removed, they try pushing the boat with polls from the deck but get nowhere, so Charlie climbs overboard again to resume pulling it from the water. The partnership seesaw of vulnerability and strength has shifted its balance again, with Charlie on the low end this time, showing his vulnerability as Rose compensates with strength. But, most notably, we also see an unmistakable compassion in Rose as he goes back in the water, another contrast to her former impenetrable righteousness.
Then we come to the end of the second act, with the boat immovably stuck on a mud bank in the delta, Charlie in a malarial sweat and Rose anticipating their imminent death in her prayer to God to let them into heaven. Plot story: they have failed at their mission, their cause is lost. This is the structural low point that counterbalances the triumphal high point the story will end on. Character story: In her prayer, she says, “Judge us not for our weakness, but for our love.” She has accepted her feminine sexuality and essential womanhood to such a degree that she is not afraid to ask for God’s acceptance as well.
The climax is when they are about to be hanged, Charlie asks the Captain to marry them and then the Louisa collides with the African Queen and is blown up by its torpedoes. Plot story: They have succeeded at blowing up the Louisa. Character story: Rose is now a married woman who has experienced the benefits of intimate partnership in the accomplishment of a seemingly impossible task.
The resolution is when they swim off to Kenya. Plot story: They will, individually, survive and thrive. Character story: Now begins their life together.
For years, I presented this film in my classes simply in terms of its simultaneous plot and character stories. I would tell students, “Look how great this is! Two stories going on at the same time! And look at how elegantly intertwined they are!” I would also discuss the construction of individual scenes, comment on the character quirks of both Rose and Charlie and, of course, revel in my favorite bits of dialogue: “Nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we’re put on this earth to rise above.” (Be sure to read these in your most high-toned Eleanor Roosevelt inflection.) “I never dreamed any mere physical experience could be so stimulating!” And, “I don’t wonder you love boating!” Then, at the end of class, as a sort of icing on the cake, I would try to remember to point out all the religious motifs that appear throughout the story.
There are actually quite a few of them. Not only is Rose reading a bible all the time and performing rituals like singing in church, saying grace, burying her brother and pouring out gin bottles, but there are also all these not-so-thinly-veiled biblical references. Going down the river, they encounter the rapids, the swarms, the reeds, the leeches, the pestilence – like the ten plagues of Egypt. In the delta, the image of Charlie pulling the boat through the reeds has a distinct resemblance to Jesus bearing the cross. Then come the floods with the animals fleeing two by two, and the clouds parting and the light beaming down. It’s all straight out of a Sunday school textbook. Then the swollen river lifts the boat off the mud, floating it through the reeds with the passed out Rose and Charlie on board, and you can’t help thinking of the baby Moses in the bulrushes. So I would talk about all these religious motifs, like aren’t they all just so cute.
Then came that fateful day when I was yet again preparing my African Queen lecture for class. I had recently been contemplating in the abstract the fact that drama is actually made up of three fundamental elements – plot, character and theme – and exploring how these three operate together in drama. I had begun to consider the possibility that, if plot and character can function as individual A to B story lines within a dramatic structure, maybe theme can as well. Maybe an A to B theme storyline can be found that would start with a mundane, everyday truth and progress to a higher, more universal Truth. How would that work? Well, if plot is about relationship with the immediate “other” and character is about relationship with “self”, then theme would have to be about the main character’s relationship with the larger world. Therefore, to find that progression within the story, we would have to ask the question: How has the world changed? Or, how has our understanding of the world changed?
I decided to take another look at my outline and structure chart for The African Queen to see if I could find an identifiable theme storyline. I stared at my notes and ruminated . . . “If it’s true that films can function on all three levels, what would be the theme level of African Queen? What would it be? . . . What would it be? . . . ” And then, it just jumped out at me. “Merciful Mary, Mother of God! There it is! Those aren’t just cute little randomly placed religious motifs. Those are carefully planted beacons signaling the way to a Universal Truth!”
To look at this story through the lens of a religious theme: Where are we at the beginning of the story? Rose lives in a missionary’s world of church-going, hymn-singing, bible-quoting and “right” living. In the opening scene, she is mightily endeavoring to hold together a Sunday morning service, but the music is a nightmare, the parishioners are barely engaged, and all it takes is one discarded cigar butt from Charlie to scatter the congregation. Where are we at the end of the story? Rose has co-habitated with a man in the wild and feels no guilt about it due to the depth of her love. Anticipating her imminent death, she appeals to God to let them into heaven even though they have had pre-marital sex.
The God Rose believed in back at the beginning of the story would have thrown her straight into Hell for this. No question. But her concept of God has expanded to allow for the possibility that love can take precedence over orthodox notions of morality. Her understanding of the world has shifted from an old-school perspective of constraining, by-the-book religiousness to a more progressive free spirituality, a sort of Emersonian self-reliance in which the individual cultivates their own personal relationship with God. The theme story of The African Queen, then, is a journey from institutional religiousness to a pure spirituality.
Looking more closely at the structural markers, as we did with the plot and character stories, some interesting patterns emerge. Throughout the first half of the story, the religious references are limited to the rituals of sermonizing, hymn-singing, prayer mumbling, bible-reading, and the like. It’s not until after the mid-point that the biblical images start to appear – plagues, floods, bulrushes. Hmm, let’s look more closely and see what other mystical references we can find.
Now, wait a minute, how exactly do they get past the German fort Shona anyhow? The native conscripts are firing at them, but apparently they’re not highly experienced at using these guns. So the German commander grabs a rifle and takes aim. But just as he gets Charlie in his crosshairs, the waning sun beams into his scope and he is momentarily blinded. Well, that could be a coincidence.
Okay, what about what happens later when the boat is stuck on the mud and Rose prays to be let into heaven? As she finishes her prayer and slumps over, surrendering to her fate, the camera pans up from a high angle to reveal that they are actually only a few hundred feet from the open lake. Then we cut back upstream to where the rain begins to fall, which floods the river and brings them their salvation. So, that’s just an act of nature, right?
But there’s one more that really can’t be ignored. There they are on the deck of The Louisa, sentenced to death and about to be hanged by the German captain, when, out of nowhere, the capsized African Queen bobs up from the depths right in its path, torpedoes aimed straight for it. That makes three so-called coincidences that just happened to save their butts when all appeared to be lost. Is something going on here?
Of course, divine intervention, while popular among the Greeks, has not been considered a legitimate dramatic device for some time now. But they get away with it in this film because it lends crucial support to the theme. In order to arrive at a personal relationship with God, it helps to know that there is a God. Hence, God makes His entrance on page 55 of the script in the sights of a German officer.
The origin of this theme is easily found in the life of screenwriter James Agee. When he was six years old, his father died and his mother sent him off to a boarding school run by Episcopal monks for religious training. There he met and began a lifelong friendship with Father James Flye. His mother, meanwhile, remarried another Episcopal priest, Father Erskind Wright, whom he didn’t particularly get along with. He then underwent a spiritual crisis while at boarding school that he later described in his novel The Morning Watch. Published in 1951, he would have been writing this novel about the same time that he was working on the script for The African Queen. While his novel afforded him the opportunity to express his inner conflicts through lyrical prose, the movie script gave him another avenue of communication, through images and allegory.
Indeed, in the novel, The African Queen, by C.S. Forester, on which the film is based, Rose and Charlie do not get married by the German captain and do not blow up the Louisa. The captain hands them over to the British, who then sink the Louisa. Charlie is sent to enlist and Rose is sent back to England. The triumphs at the end of the film version were, apparently, purely of Agee’s invention. Thus, for Agee, The African Queen is one big metaphor through which to express, and find a resolution for, his own personal spiritual dilemma.
Recent research suggests that the ability to communicate through metaphor is critical to human existence. Cognitive scientists are discovering that without it we would not be able to take in new information and process it with all the other information we’re already holding in our puny little heads. We utilize metaphors hundreds of times a day just to be understood by our fellow humans. When we have a new idea to communicate, we will search for just the right concrete image to get it across. “It’s like . . . It’s like . . . It’s like I’m in a cage in this job and my boss only let’s me out once a day to feed me!”
Sadly, in recent times metaphor in storytelling has often seemed like a lost and forgotten art. I get so weary of hearing people say, “That was completely unrealistic! It would never actually happen that way!” Who cares! Did you get the point that was being made? That’s what matters. Did you hear what the writer or director or artist was wanting to tell you? I mean, honestly, how likely is it that the plot of The African Queen could happen in real life? Not very, when you think about it. But what a tragedy if “realism” had been the standard by which Agee and Huston made all their creative decisions. Rose Sayer preaches that nature is what we’re put on this earth to rise above. I’m here to say that it is through the use of metaphor to communicate a theme that we achieve that transcendence.
Pure plot can tell a story all by itself that has little meaning greater than the immediate sensations caused by the exciting events unfolding on the screen. Add a character story to the mix and you get some insights into human nature along with your superficial thrills and chills. Put the two together to create a thematic metaphor and you have the potential for the concrete embodiment of larger ideas.
Finding the structure of a plot story is comparatively easy – you simply track the external conflict. For the structure of the character story, you look for how the internal transformation of the character has incrementally evolved over time.
I’m sorry to report, however, that there is no one system for finding a theme structure. Or none that I have yet found. The good news is that, therefore, there is much flexibility in how it can be achieved. In my experience, each theme structure shows up as its own unique system peculiar to that particular story. The African Queen happens to be one that is very balanced and symmetrical, a little like the fastidious nature of its main character. I have not yet seen another structure that is quite so tidy as this. But it is this programmatic quality that makes it a convenient example for introducing the idea that separate character and theme structures can exist.
So how do these individual theme structures get created in the first place? How do they get so deeply embedded under the surface of the plot and character stories? That’s a question for the ages. I don’t know the entire answer. But I do know a few things. I know, for example, that, generally speaking, artist’s don’t go about planning out their metaphors and assigning thematic meanings to them. It would be difficult to “think up” a thematically rich metaphor. More often, it simply bubbles up from the unconscious in an image or a situation, as does most creative raw material. Sometimes a writer is aware of the metaphor and theme that are suggested by the plot and character elements they are creating, sometimes not. Indeed, a writer is not even always intentionally weaving a theme into their work. Sometimes, they are just driven by a need to make a statement, and they may not even be aware of that.
This is the beauty, and the mystery, of the creative process. The artist is gripped with an inspired idea, endeavors laboriously to manifest it in a coherent form and then stands back to look at what they’ve just created. What happens next likely falls somewhere on a spectrum in which, at one end, the artist is surprised to find whole other layers of meaning that they didn’t consciously include or, at the other, the artist is no longer able to find their original inspired idea in the confused mess they have brought into being. Where the work falls on this spectrum is completely dependent on the artist’s ability to equally manifest both art and craft through an even balance of conscious and unconscious processes. It is my firm belief that the best way to cultivate such skill is through deep analytical study of the successful work of others. The goal is to consciously assimilate into one’s unconscious the guiding principles of art and craft that govern those works. This is the intention of this book.
Coming soon to a bookstore near you (with any luck).