Dual Classification

#1

I don’t know why yet, but when I look at a story I am seeing two classes.
For example: in the movie Soylent Green starring Charlton Heston I see the Situation class; the way life is in that story: a futuristic Sci-fi story, a society plagued with gross overpopulation and synthetic, severely rationed foods.

The second class I am also seeing: The Fixed Attitude being unique to the story, a strange and tragic culture.
Which is the dominant then, Is it the class that has the most effect on the overall story or the first seen, obvious, Situation?
And where does the Fixed Attitude class fit in?
(Please try to make your response simple, I just started with Dramatica theory not two weeks ago, Ty.)
Any help will be appreciated.

#2

In a complete story, both will be present. Are you saying you see both of them for a single throughline? As in, the OS could be either?

If so, it’s not uncommon to have that problem. In order to see the correct class, you need to try to see the whole story at once. This can take some practice. But it’s necessary as no single story event will illustrate a story appreciation on its own. The meaning of the story point comes from the relationship it has with all of the other storypoints. Without those other relationships to compare it to, murdering people and selling them as Soylent green could look like universe, physics, psychology or mind.

In order to narrow it down, consider what the theoughline is trying to address, its purpose. Is it trying to address the nature of how the world is? Or is it trying to address the beliefs, loves, fears, prejudices that can be found in such a world? Is the purpose to change the way the world is, or to change the beliefs that people have?

I haven’t seen it all the way through and it’s been a while since I’ve seen any of it, so I can’t say which apply or if it’s even a complete story.

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#3

Yes it’s OS, I am seeing dual classes, I look deeply at everything I guess.

I’m in the same predicament. I turn that movie on and I can’t watch it all the way through, I don’tlike the human ingredient in the Soylen Green nutrition bar and it’s slow moving. I always turn it off. I have to force myself watch the rest of it. I’ll definitely look at it with new eyes now. Thanks to your comment, thank you @Greg

#4

Hello,

OS is a perspective for everyone, it’s ‘They’. So the question is what it is everyone is concerned? Where is a source of the conflict for the story. Is there a problem because ‘They’ are in particular situation or ‘They’ have a problematic standpoint?
I saw this movie years ago but refreshed with a review (which may be misleading…). If source of the problem is people lives in overpopulated NY with not enough food - I vote for situation. But… if it is about learning who and why killed Simonson - then it is Activity. And after short review of plot description I would say this is most likely. It is not about changing situation (finding food for everyone, escaping NY or so), it is not about changing or confronting fixed attitude. It is about discovering the truth (or protecting it).
But… I would need to see it once again to reduce guessing factor.

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#6

Maybe you are looking for something that is not there and wasn’t meant to be there. Maybe you mix story domain with theme. Maybe it is simpler than we think.
Try to identify Story Goal and you have OS Domain and Concern as well.
So… what is a Story Goal for Soylent Green? What it is every character in the movie is concerned? Not the whole NY population but every character of the story?

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#7

I haven’t seen Soylent Green so I can’t really comment on that specifically, other than to wonder why you’ve chosen that movie to analyze since you don’t seem to be enjoying it that much :slight_smile:

It is almost impossible to do Dramatica analysis on your own when you’re just starting. It’s too easy to misinterpret or misunderstand something. This is definitely something that more of a skill that comes out of experience rather than something that can be answered through more details from a book. At the beginning it seems like every story point could be anything (e.g. why isn’t every story Obtaining?).

This learning curve is without a doubt the most frustrating thing about Dramatica.

There are a few ways around this. The Dramatica user’s group is one – I think all of the old episodes are available on Youtube. They’ve done quite a few over the years. If you find some from movies that you know well, you can listen to how the group puzzles out the storyform.

Another option is to go with categories. Watch a few movies that have been analyzed that have an OS of Physics/Obtaining, and compare them with movies that are in Mind/Memory, or Psychology/Conceiving. I believe this is the fastest way to get a feeling of the “personality” of different kinds of stories.

We used to do more group analyses on this forum (you can look them up) but not as much lately.

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#8

Yes, I haven’t gotten that far yet in studying theory.

#10

@Lakis Watch “Solent Green” here :sparkles::smiley::sparkles:

[HBO Max (requires a monthly subscription of $17, I like it though because Max has a heap of big name star movies, it’s definitely worth it :wink:)

https://www.max.com/movies/soylent-green/039ae44f-87ca-4da3-b8c3-d2323e5c2110)

:memo:Note: Friendly reminder ~ Movie streaming platforms add and remove Movies & TV Shows on a regular basis, this movie may not be available for too long after this post was published, making it, in the future a dead link. (Today is November 3rd, 2023)

#11

I just finished watching “Soylent Green” (SPOILER ALERT: link to watch the movie at the bottom of this post) to the end. A dystopian futuristic sci-fi flick.

The OS is :sparkles: Activity :sparkles:
Everyone, especially Thorn, a cop & the MC, is trying to either solve the murder of Richard Simonson or keep them from solving it to hide a horrible secret.

Simonson’s death was an assassination. He was murdered by the rich, powerful, and absolutely corrupt people that manufacture Soylent Green: a square, green type of nutrition bar fed to the starving masses that don’t even know what a cow or the shore looks like.

Thorn is a steadfast, logical, DO-ER who wins in the end and finds out they are liquifying all of the deceased corpses and putting the liquified remains in the Soylent Green to feed to the masses who have nothing else to eat besides Soylent red and so on. The rich eat very scarce but real food. A small jar of Strawberry jam costs $150.00, called “150 D’s”

Thorn sneaks into one of the garbage trucks they use to take the dead to a “waste disposal” into the manufacturing plant of Soylent Green, and watches, while descending floor by floor, the process. He barely makes it out alive where he tells his boss at the end, “I’ve seen it, I’ve got proof…soylent green is people…you gotta tell them, you gotta tell them!”

After talking to his boss for a moment
Thorn is taken away to the hospital on a stretcher, shot at least twice and bloody.
He reaches his arm straight up in the air, his bloody hand toward his boss as they are wheeling him away, and says,
“You gotta tell them! You gotta tell them! They have to be stopped!”
The End

The movie turned out to be a lot better than the slow moving way that it started out as it introduced the primary characters and murder of the director of Soylent green.

The reason he was killed?
Simonson became of no more use to the other big wigs in the corporation after he found out the dead were the main ingredient. He stopped doing a thorough job, and was occasionally was seen crying by his girlfriend“,
a pretty whore that came with his
penthouse rental called “furniture”;
who he could no longer make love to knowing the great evil that was going on in this dystopian society set in 2022 in New York City (population 40,000,000).

Great writing and acting, the camera man and director weren’t great but didn’t ruin the movie either. As I learn Dramatica theory there will be a lot more theory than storytelling from me in a post/comment like this.

Watch “Soylent Green”

#12

Yes, both appear to be present for OS Classification. But I was wrong at first.
I just finished watching the whole movie and there’s actually only one OS Class, that’s Activity.

It turned out to be a pretty good movie too, even though it started out really slow while they introduced the primary characters and the murder.