Timewaster's Guide Archive
Departments => Books => Topic started by: 42 on December 31, 2003, 05:34:35 PM
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So with Lord of the Rings I have been hearing the phrase “deus ex machina” being thrown around. So I’ve been what does “deus ex machina” mean? So I looked is up on dictionary.com. Apparently it refers to Greek and Roman plays where they would lower a machine god onto the stage who would miraculously resolve the conflict of the play.
So what so bad about that? I think it comes down to how well the deity resolves the conflicts. Let’s use Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes. The movie is an alright, somewhat discombobulated remake. Until the monkey is lowered out of the sky and all the problems disappear. The problem is that the monkey doesn’t really resolve any of the problems, but the storytellers use it as an excuse to ignore the previous conflict. Bad deus ex machina monkey, bad.
So if deus ex machina is so annoying then why do storytellers still use it? Well, because it can work sometimes, particularly if it is the theme of the story. Deus ex machina doesn’t bother me in Lord of the Rings because it kind of a theme in the story. First it’s used repeatedly which gives it some credibility. Also, LotR and books like the Chronicles of Narnia, rely on the concept the there is a God that helps in unexplained ways. Also, that individuals need divine help to accomplish great things. LotR also makes use of Satan ex machina having many unexplained bad things happening. (Tolkien, “hmmm…I just had them defeat a bunch of orcs. I can’t use orcs again. Let’s drop in a Balrog. I don’t know what that is, but it has got to be really bad.)
Course many people find it easier to accept that problems can happen for no reason, but have a difficult time accepting that solutions can also happen for no reason. That is why we have prozac.
So does this make sense? Or is deus ex machina just bad no matter what?
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Deus ex is, in my opinion, not always bad.
In fact, I see many climaxes being a 'Deus Ex' of one sort or another. In my mind, it's a continuum--a scale of how justified your climax was. A well-foreshadowed or well-developed sudden salvation when all seems lost is actually a very fulfilling plot device.
Tolkien is very much into Deus Ex endings, but I think he does them well. The movies take away from this, because of the aforementioned condensing, but there's still usually some foreshadowing.
Lets look at several of the movie versions, and put them on the scale. The best, I think, is Gandalf's appearance at the end of the Two Towers. This is a well-foreshadowed appearances; he even told them he would appear on the dawn of the third day. It works so well because we're anticipating Gandalf's return, we're reminded that we're anticipating it right before he comes, yet we are still uncertain how he will save the day. When he appears with an army we have forgotten, yet one that was very justified in appearing, there is a moment of glorious realization, and the day is saved. This is an excellent climax, though it is a 'deus ex,' since the heroes were saved by an outside force.
A lesser use of Deus Ex comes when Aragorn leads the ghosts out to smack down some orcs. This appearance is foreshadowed, true, but it is too convenient. The reason Sprig disliked it is because the story hadn't 'earned' such an easy end to the battle. We are left thinking 'well, if Aragorn can do that, then what was the point of all those other battles everyone fought?' He led too powerful a force into battle, brought it literally out of nowhere, and invalidated everything everyone else had done.
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actually (and you history fans will want to date this remarkable event) I think I'm 100% agreement with you, 42. Sometimes it's an unthought out way to just resolve everything so you can stop writing or fix an impossible situation. Sometimes it's used as part of the story legitimately.
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How come so many posts have messed up quotation marks, or is that just me?
I don't see where the ending of LotR is dues ex. If the purple Wizard had shown up, teleported Frodo to Mount Doom, and then tossed the Ring in for him, that would be deus ex. The two battles EUOL mentioned arn't really deus ex either. The ending to Planet of the Apes that 42 used as an example, that is deus ex. People always throw around jargon just for the heck of it. I don't mean EOUL by that, just if you are hearing a lot of people say that about LotR.
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Messed up quotations marks usually come from pasting the text from a program that uses 'smart quotes,' such as Microsoft word. I try to spell-check my documents in Word, to spare you all my inherent Sanderson Spelling, and sometimes I forget and add a few lines inside of word. Any quotes or apostrophes in those added lines come out screwy on the board.
I think that you're using too narrow a definition of Deus Ex. Yes, originally it referred to a deific source saving the heroes and making everything turn out all right. However, in most recent literary uses, I've seen the term applied to any time that the heroes themselves don't have to solve their problems. Any time an external force resolves the conflict, that is Deus Ex.
And, as I've said, I believe a continuum is appropriate in discussing the term. Sometimes the heroes gather the force that saves them, which lets them participate in the conflict resolution. However, they still aren't the ones saving the day--it's the ghost army that does all the difficult work.
I guess it comes down to what you define as an 'external force.'
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See saying that the heroes ought to have to save themselves is kind of bogus. It's very appropriate for some stories, but gets kind of rediculous when it's over done.
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again, it comes down to how it's presented. If the force somes out of no where, than that's not a good application, but if it's specifically hinted at before or led to, then it's not a bad application. Note I'm not quibbling about what is or is not "deus ex machina," just how to use it well.
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Frodo obviously being the main character/hero, Aragorn is the main hero as far as having all the heroic qualities and such. Nobody expects Strider to just march down into the thick of battle and defeat the army himself. But it was him who went down there, talked the undead army into fighting for him, got them to the battle, etc. If not for Aragorn, none of that could have happened. Victory couldn't be solely contributed to him more than that short of him going in with sword in hand and killing the whole army himself. The battle at Helm's Deep is more tangled I suppose, but Gandalf is still one of the main characters... he is one of the 9 companions of the Fellowship. There was also more than the riders of Rohan, there was also the trees from Fangorn that Treebeard sent. The Ents I could see them counting as an outside force, although I don't think even they count since Merry and Pippin had to talk them into it first. I think using diplomacy (or whatever you'd call it) to save the day counts every bit as much as strength of arms. Even if the hero used trickery to win, its still a win. This actually connects a bit with what I was saying of Elric, how he uses unheroic means to do heroic things.
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Speaking of non-deus ex machina, can the phrase, "just believe in yourself" and its ilk be strucken from the literary existance.
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In the name of all that christians spend time worrying about - Eagle prince, use paragraph spaces for crying out loud! English is not meant to look like a cinderblock dropped onto the page!
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Usage and grammar are for the weak. :P
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I don't mind Deus Ex Machina, as long as its used well. As a Speculative Fiction fan, much of what I read is more about ideas than it is about plot. Deus Ex can be a handy device to keep the plot under control to allow the ideas to be put out in the open. That said, it isn't always justified. Take Lynch's Mulhollund Drive. Fantastic film, but when I figured out <SPOILER> it was all a fantasy/dream, I was disappointed, as it diminished the fabulous film into meaning nothing. </SPOLIER>
On the subject, did anyone else note the humour and wit in the way the video game "Deus Ex" uses "God from the Machine " literally, while leabing the "machina" out of the title? More so the actual plot had no Deus ex Machina device? The way the player controls things, ina cause and effect, emergent, and consistent world is rather interesting given the premise.
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I agree that deus ex machina can be good in some cases, but usually it's not. In battles, however, I consider it cheating, probably due to my wargaming background: the helm's deep people had their army, the uruk-hai had their army, and then you have to play out the battle to see who can win with the resources at hand. Bringing in a third army is against the rules. :)
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Ah, but they were playing a reinforcements scenario - the 3rd force was part of the helms deep force, who had to hold out for 4 turns until they arrived. :)
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You do realize that the riders of Rohah are their army.
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now now, there were elves in the battle.
They just disappeared mysteriously.
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In my defense, there were no elves there in the book. Still, the RoR are Rohan's army, not the elves or the 300 farmers over the age of 12 or even Aragorn. Its not "cheating" when its your own army, more like the other way around. Cheating would be attacking someone when their army wasn't around to protect them.
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ok, i see what's going on here.
see, I agree with you that it's not really Deus Ex Machina when they show up, since after all, this is what Gandalf went off to do in the first place.
However, you should realize that when Fell starts talking about "cheating," he's making a joke.
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Yes I know he is kidding. I just felt it was worth pointing out that the Riders of Rohan arn't a foriegn or outside army.
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The reason the Helm's Deep battle is less of a Deus Ex has absolutely nothing to do with which army belongs to whom. We're talking about plot constructions here, not the pretty clothing placed over them. Here is a potential interpretation of the plot:
The heroes are fighting. They cannot win. A god-figure arrives and destroys the enemy army for them.
That is a very clean Deus Ex. It doesn't matter whose army the god figure brings.
Now, the thing about Helm's Deep is, that wasn't exactly the plot structure. The heroes weren't set up to 'defeat' the enemy. They were, as someone said before, trying to 'last x days' against an overwhelming foe. Because of this foreshadowing and slight plot alteration, the plotting instead becomes:
The heroes are fighting. Because of bravery, strength, and cleverness, they last the time they needed to in order to be saved, despite the fact that they should have been defeated.
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The thing you're missing, EP, is that I'm looking at the battle, not the narrative, and I'm expressing it in wargaming terms. In that sense the Rohirrim are completely foriegn because they come from outside of our closed scenario; bringing them in when they haven't been "paid for" makes the armies unbalanced and destroys the integrity of the scenario. Obviously a game is a little different from real warfare, but part of the point I made at first was that my view of literary battles has been tainted by my experience with games.
EUOL's explanation is the best one, I think, and can also be expressed in wargaming terms (and provides what I feel to be a better interpretation than Entropy's Reinforcement Scenario). Helm's Deep is essentially a Siege Scenario, where the defender is given fewer points and must simply survive a number of turns--if they live they win, if they don't the attacker wins. The arrival of the Rohirrim does not take place during the game but after it--the last turn is over and the attackers have not destroyed the defenders, so the defenders win the scenario.
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see, the problem with that scenario is the Helm's Deep side has 600 men, while the orcs have at least 10,000. how unbalanced can a wargame scenario be? I mean, they shouldn't have lasted ONE round, let alone all night.
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Yes, but they were holed up in a highly defensive structure, and because of the positioning, only about 600 orcs could attack at any one time. They would have eventually lost, but by adopting defensive tactics, they were able to last out. Look at how many orcs went down before getting anywhere near achieving anything simply by the archers.
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Yes, but the 600 have a fortress on their side. Plus not all 10,000 can attack in one round. Many has to wait until the people in front of them died to that they could move forward, be killed, and let the guys behind them repeat the scenario.
And let us not forget that these are orcs they are fighting. In all generic fantasy orcs are nothing more than cannon fodder.
Actually, I find it to have that kind of Song of Roland feel to it were the good guys kill a hundred of the bad guys on each of their attacks, but the bad guys only get to kill a couple of the good guys so that they occassionaly look like a threat.
Also, if it looked like the good guys actually stood a chance in Hades of winning all the suspence, build-up, and dramatic elements would have gone to waiste. Sorry, but watching battle scenarios is about as dull as a rubber ball gone flat. Need we be reminded of Inchon, or the endless number of of bad war movies made almost entirely of battle-plans and fight shots?
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Besides, Tolkien quickly established that his heroes are inhumanly good at fighting. When you have people that heroic, you need overwhelming enemy numbers to present a challenge.
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piffle. The orcs were hardly cannon fodder. That one ran in with 5 arrows sticking out of important parts of his body. And more than 600 were able to attack at once, I think, counting seige engines and ranged attacks.
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My only Tolkein Deus Ex Machina complaint is: eagles. Whenever there is no way to escape, bring in the eagles.
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I see where you are coming from HOM, and I realize that I'm just arguing to be defensive, however,
The eagle and Shadowfax are parts of what makes Gandalf who he is. They show the mystic elements of his wizardary and his connection with nature and Middle Earth. You can only see that through the eagles and Shadowfax.
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Gandalf uses summoning spells to bring in the eagles. See that little ray of light they show. That's really a portal to another dimensions where the eagles live on white clouds with rainbow bridges.
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Yes, not from the Misty Mountains. Any place but there.
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I was watching Star Trek IV yesterday and I was wondering what the opposite of Deus Ex would be, like if at the first of the story a god-like figure shows up and causes all the problems to begin with. (In case of some odd reason nobody has saw Star Trek IV, at the first a giant indestructable ship-type thing shows up and starts destroying the planet because it can't hear any whales. As soon as it does, it just leaves and everything is fine).
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a giant indestructable ship-type thing shows up and starts destroying the planet because it can't hear any whales. As soon as it does, it just leaves and everything is fine
Because, you know, that's what we'd all do if we didn't hear whales.
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It's been a long time since I've heard a whale. I better start layin' some smack down.
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well, to be honest, I don't hear whales much either. Just voices. But soemtimes the voices sound like whales.
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I bet if the Greeks had thought about it, they'd have used a Whale Ex Machina.
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Useless fact of the day: latin for 'whale' is balaena.
So balaena ex machina
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I'm gonna say no, probably not. Now a Deus ex whale, THAT sounds likely. (Sophocles? meet Jonah...)
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But that doesn't make sense - god from the whale? Whale from the machine - the whales were transported in a freaking huge Klingon ship.
You know I"m right.
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no, you're definitely wrong. Basically, d.e.m is a machine descending (or a device being introduced) where a god (or some sort of coincidental solution) comes out to wrap everything else. You're saying a whale comes out instead of a god. I'm saying the device used to introduce the god is a whale.
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Useless fact of the day: latin for 'whale' is balaena.
So balaena ex machina
Looks a lot like bologna. Hmm. Bologna ex machina....
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You're saying a whale comes out instead of a god. I'm saying the device used to introduce the god is a whale.
Yes, that's what I'm saying, because that's what happens. Just because I like it better.
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Looks a lot like bologna. Hmm. Bologna ex machina....
No no, It looks like baleen, because that's what many whales have instead of teeth! (ok, obviously it's the other way around word-wise, but you know what I mean.)
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I"m the god emperor here. I'm going to use a whale to do my interventions. And I'm going to destroy any whale that tries to change the fate of mortals.
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/me pats Saint on the head
That's nice.
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You won't be so cavalier when a whale falls out of the sky and lands on you.
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Probably not. 8)
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If we're resorting to whales falling out of the sky, I'd rather be a bowl of petunias.
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see... deus ex whale right there.
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But the whale dies!
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And I don't think the Greeks believed in reincarnation.
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That's ok, they didn't name their literary devices in Latin either, and that hasn't stopped us.
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but you're fun to argue with.
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I am ever to please
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Nah. I wouldn't say that.
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so, am I in the right place for an argument? Or is this abuse?
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Whales are just low tech submarines.
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they have a much more intelligent approach than subs though.
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Funny you should mention argument versus abuse. I spent 10 minutes before class today arguing/explaining to one of my classmates (who is from California) why California isn't real.
It was one of the highlights of my day. :)
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I think they're not real, partially because of the adament letter about sock with sandals that appears every semester in the Daily Universe.
For the record, that moron Californian is what made me INSIST on wearing socks with sandals for several weeks out of the year.
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That's not why I think it isn't real, but that's fine.
California: Land where the temperature is always perfect, everyone makes tons of money and everyone wears designer clothes and looks like (either) Brad Pitt or Pamela Anderson. You can go to the grocery store and see imaginary people like Wesley Crusher, or a movie star, (who we all know only exist on the big screen, or in tabloids.) 40 minutes to the mountains and 40 minutes to the beach.
No way in toast that kind of a place can really exist.
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you forgot all the immigrants being paid fifty cents an hour, the vast numbers of blue collar workers, and the constant threat of annhilation by earthquake. Plus smog and traffic.
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See? it's just like a movie. You can't prove a place like that really exists.
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on that note:
http://images.ucomics.com/comics/td/2004/td040131.gif
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That's excellent.